Bring on thee pain royale

I have been sick a lot lately. My mom thinks that it goes back to February this year when I caught pneumonia, while I was moving from my house to an apartment, doing the majority of packing and loading my car and carrying everything by myself, in the cold nighttime, after work in the wee hours of the morning (1-4 am). Plus I had the stress of working at a new job which I figured that I would not last long at if I even managed to make it all the way through the 8 weeks of training. I could barely talk, coughed constantly, ran a cold shivering fever constantly, suffered through hot flashes, and could barely stay awake in my exhaustion. I seriously should have been in the hospital, but that would have meant that I would not get to keep the job I doubted I would keep anyway. So I plugged away night after night, staggering with box load after box load as I sweated in the freezing cold all while wondering if the new neighbors would find my nearly lifeless body the next morning lying on my doorway when I blacked out. Luckily that did not happen, my immune system fought tooth and nail to keep me alive without medicine, and I even stayed at that job regardless of how little affection I honestly feel towards it.

I was feeling better after my latest bout until last night. I was already exhausted from trying to work a couple 12 hour days to work off some of the points I have accumulated from being sick and missing work and was slowing regaining some strength back into my voice as the broken glass which I swear was buried somewhere within my throat started to work it's way loose. Then I turned into a broken toy.

We stopped and snagged some food to take home after work, and I ate about twice as much as I should have but I blame that on it being tasty. I mixed a drink and sat down at my computer to play a couple simple videogames to amuse myself as I winded down and prepared to catch a bit of very needed sleep. Too bad, so sad, I got a single hour of intensely bloody nightmare soaked rest while I lay curled up in a ball on my bed in so much pain that I couldn't even cry. But you can bet that I did whimper pitifully quite a bit. Once again I got to enjoy, and actually still am, the suffering of food poisoning.

There was no way for me to get comfortable enough to manage any rest all night long. When the pain became unbearable I would roll off my bed onto the floor and stagger into the bathroom in an attempt to purge my stomach enough that the pain would lower enough to allow me a brief, yet still very painful and brief respite. The bad thing was that my stomach had no desire to listen to logic and purge itself to allow the both of us to feel better. It fought me on that every single time.

My cycle for several hours was:
1) crying on my bed curled up in as tight of a ball as I could manage
2) falling to the floor
3) sticking my finger so far down my throat that I could feel my spine
4) waiting for about a minute as I cried about keeping that same finger poking the very back of my tongue wondering why it wasn't making me sick
5) coughing and gagging up a small amount of orangish slime which tasted even worse than it looked
6) repeating steps 3 and 4 several times
7) staggering back to bed with eyes blurry from tears to start again at step 1

This process occurred about every half hour for about 8 straight hours. It is not often that I cry and has been a few months since I have but last night and today I have cried more than I probably have over the past few years added up together and wrapped up in fancy paper and ribbon. Finally I managed to start gagging up clear liquid and the pain stayed at a constant, and barely bearable level. Of course all the cramps and pain in my stomach, along with the forced vomiting, caused my back to strain several muscles in it as well.

Luckily, this story could not get any worse, as long as you leave out how I was supposed to work today and although I could barely stand up straight still had to run my roommate to work since he was unable to get ahold of anyone to pick him up. Or when he called me after I had gotten back home and collapsed to inform me that my boss told him that I was required to come in today regardless of the shape I was in and had to manage to last a couple of hours because the company we contract for needs more billable hours and is threatening to make overtime mandatory (regardless of the fact that they will lose countless hours when a significant portion of the call center gets fired for not being able to comply with an additional 3 hours per day per person for 2 months straight).

So already weak from the first car ride I had to make another one to the other side of town. I almost fell climbing out of my car and shuffled my way slowly across the parking lot with one arm tightly wrapped around my tummy. About one minute after collapsing into a chair (and almost missing and half hanging off the edge) while I was very shakily setting up my desk to start taking calls, my boss walks over and asks if I am OK. Of course my natural sarcasm kicks in and I smile at her through eyes on the verge of tears and say that, "I am fine, why do you ask?" Of course she rolls her eyes and tells me that I look horrible and what is wrong. "No, no, I really am fine, other than the severe food poisoning which kept me curled up in ball without sleep all night while I cried and cursed my virtual nonexistent gag reflex as I shoved a finger down my throat about 30 times or so to little effect." So she sent me home since I was obviously going to be more worthless than normal on the phones (my evaluation, not hers). As I slowly shuffled my way towards the door, I got chased down by a couple of guys who insisted that they walk me to my car to keep me from falling down in the parking lot because I looked about ready to black out.

Fortunately it is a rare occurrence for my physical pain to come close to matching the emotional and psychological kind that I live with daily. At least the mental kind has worn itself into a sort of numbness over the past 30 years.

(Afterthoughts)
The fact that I 'sucked' so bad at "finger down my throat bulimia" has got to be either horrifying or extremely erotic. Sadly, this was not a situation where no gag reflex was any type of advantage.

My fingers are numb but it's all for the yum

Ahhhh, turkey sausage links of frozen and icy cold goodness waiting all in rows to escape from their cardboard box of a jail only to feel the warm kiss of a scalding hot grill. Hella tasty when cooked, tooth breaking nasty when unprepared for human (or demoness) consumption (the eating kind, not the Tuberculosis version). My morning excitement consisted of transporting the little tubular prisoners into ziplock baggies where they will serve out the rest of their sentence. Considering that I had 20 pounds of them left between 2 boxes and supposedly 160 links per box (320 for the mathematically challenged). If I used both hands (meaning one then the other) I could load a single bag with my fingers turning numb then switch hands and load the next one and still have barely enough coordination to fumble the bag closed, hooray!

(Afterthoughts)
Damn right, boring and trivial but my finger do smell like icy turkey now so it's all cool.

More great cooking tips by Aunt Lizzy

Yesterday I discovered a small piece of terrific tip goodness while fixing myself a snack that is happily going straight from my kitchen into your eager little ears. For those of you out there who own a Fry Daddy, if you have left it stored for about a year, even with the cover on, don't use the oil that had been left in it when you shoved it out of the way all those months ago. Not only does it pump out noxious fumes when plugged in, but it makes the food you cook in it taste rather poorly and quite possibly poisonous. I learned this lesson the hard way which honestly was a lot less enjoyable than the way y'all are discovering this tip. After I managed to hold my breath and keep my eyes closed to slits so that I was able to fish the food out of the device, the first bite tasted horrible, just simply horrible. However, the second bite drove home the realization of just how big of a mistake the first bite had been.

(Afterthoughts)
Yes, no joke, I seriously did that and it is 100% true story (and how did I ever wish it wasn't.) So there y'all go. Um, knowledge is power!?!

My wasted day

Unsurprisingly I woke up early after a night of little sleep. So in order to distract myself I went to the grocery store and made myself a nice lunch for a change (even though I hate cooking for 1 person and can't seem to get the hang making that little food.) With a lot of time to kill I also made rice krispy treats coated in hershey chocolate bars to take to work with me. I figured that would be a good distraction to prevent anyone from possibly noticing the pain in my eyes, and even if by some odd chance they did, those might have a chance of tricking them into thinking I was fine. Because who the hell would make treats for their coworkers if they were in a bad mood (non-poisoned ones I obviously mean lol.)

(Afterthoughts)
Told y'all I would totally blow off and ignore my bad mood in a few days, it's already starting to happen, screw dealing with issues when you can eat chocolate coated and crunchy cereal marshmellow bar thingies instead. Hooray!

About time for another rant

I haven't had a good rant post in quite a while and we happened to run across this topic briefly on break at work last night. It had something to do with talking about how some sports dude was doing really good and spouted out that he was hotter than a bagel fresh from the toaster over. (I have no idea who the hell he was, I just babble nonsense stuff like that to keep the conversations going lol.) But then I was like, ya know, I actually hate freaking bagels, those things suck. And the 4 guys I was chatting with all chimed in that none of them really cared for them either. So of course, I had to say something more.

"You know why bagels suck? It's because they make them by mixing bubble gum with ground up cardboard and then baking it into a donut shape! Read the ingredients, it's right on the side of the bag."

That had all them all shaking their heads and laughing. The general consenus was that I should be writing a book about all my strange theories and ideas because I come up with bizarre new ones on a daily basis.

(Afterthoughts)
Ok, not much of a rant, but who cares. The important thing is that I really don't like bagels and my description of them is totally accurate on how I think the experience of trying to eat one really is. Yuk!

My new fossil discovery

Digging around in frozen depths I discovered these beauties hidden beyond the sight of casual by-passers. They are resting in a pan full of sludge in that pic but are simply amazing when viewed up close on a display plate. So what are they exactly? Ancient fossils from an era long past? Or something more recent from maybe the past couple of centuries? The truth is that they are t-bone steaks from one of my family's pet cows, baked in a potato cheese teriyaki garlic sauce. Ha ha. Looks like a train wreck but are damn tasty. I was hoping a friend of mine would be able to visit and stay for a couple of days but unfortunate circumstances prevented that from happening. So I was kind of sad and depressed about that so I decided to cook myself a nice meal to try to pick my spirits up a bit. Of course that meant that this meal did not come out of my oven until 3am and I finally managed to roll into bed at 5am this morning. Oh well, sleep sucks anyway, I never have truly enjoyed it (seriously, I hate sleeping, all joking aside.)

Pizza Mia confusionism

I have finally figured out the reason for pizza's always seemingly arriving at your door always seemingly to be sliced in such a way that a couple of the slices are tiny compared to the rest. It is so that when I wake up in the middle of the night hungry, it is the perfect quick snack size. Just enough to quell my hunger and make my taste buds happy. Um, this sounds like a PSA, lol.

(Afterthoughts)
Regardless of size, it always beats coatloaf.

Hello grocery store

I am lazy, I admit it. I need to go grocery shopping terribly bad. I have pretty much totally ran out of food in my house. I am tired of eating coatloaf, I'm a growing girl and need protein that doesn't come from coats. I will probably get to it next weekend though. I guess I had best get used to coatloaf until then.

(Afterthoughts)
I just noticed that I started every sentence with "I" in this post.

I put what in my mouth?

This is the sandwich I made when I got home from work tonight. From bottom to top: Wheat toast, cheese, ham, chicken breast, egg, turkey sausage, wheat toast.



(Afterthoughts)
I wasn't sure how it would turn out but, damn, it was tasty. :)

Auntie Lizzie's cooking tips

Pizza is great. I think it is simply just terrific, and I love it. But when you reheat it in the microwave after it's been in the refrigerator for a couple of days, it tends to turn into tough, chewy cardboard. The best way I have found to solve that problem is to coat the pizza in garlic butter before heating it. It is also totally tasty. It is a messy treat (use a fork, not your fingers) but, damn, it is sooo freaking yummy. Hope that helps. ;)

(Afterthoughts)
You are totally right that I seriously do that everytime I have leftover pizza. It may not be the girliest meal to eat, but guys love it when they are over and that is always a bonus lol.

Noooooo!, I've been replaced with an alien clone

Last night after work I ended up at a place that should shock a lot of you. If I ever see mention of the place on anyone's posts I always rant about it lol. So yes, that's right, I went to the evil Nazi coffee overlord's domain, Starbucks. Now before anyone get's too excited thinking I have changed my views on the place, I have not, and they are cemented even more firmly into my psyche now. Now for the reason y'all are dying to know, why did I go there considering how much I dislike the place, their attitude, and mostly their overpriced coffee swill. One reason only, to hang out with one of my friends. She loves the place, probably due to their mind control methods which I have yet to figure out (in the coffee? music? subliminal advertising?) I'll even admit that I had a good time (not because of the coffee I gagged down) but because it was just nice to hang out with my friend and just sit there and chat. That was really nice and something I don't get anywhere near enough of lol. So don't anyone think I'm getting soft about the coffee house illuminate, cause I still don't like 'em or their stuff that is almost, but not quite, coffee.

(Afterthoughts)
We did sit outside, no way I would stay under their roof longer than necessary.

Um, yuk?

I picked up a bucket of KFC Sunday and have been munching on that these past couple of days. The thing that still gets me about it even after all these years is an old comic book that I read when I was in high school. The issue I'm reminded of was based on 'cholesterol vampires' who would suck that out of your blood (and turn you into one of them.) Their victims of preference were those who had a high fat diet, and the vampires wandered around like zombies moaning stuff like "mmmm, chicken skin pudding," hence my remembrance every time I eat KFC. The thought of that still cracks me up today lol.

(Afterthoughts)
Ok, although 'chicken skin pudding' is a funny concept with the vampires, the thought of eating it does turn my stomach, blech, sometimes even I wonder just what the hell I was thinking when I started typing lol.