56-Year-Old Women Should Not...

1. Be having visits from the Red Fairy.
2. Eat refried beans while enduring a visit from the Red Fairy.
3. Need Midol, and be without it on the Sabbath.
4. Have flushed the anti-inflammatory prescription last week, just because they hadn’t taken it in two months.
5. Have food cravings; see #1.
6. Miss church because they had chills and fever; maybe it wasn’t those beans after all?
7. Throw up on Mother’s Day. So hard they get a nosebleed.
6. Kill spiders by throwing up on them; so I didn’t, but that deserves its own paragraph, below.

I called my friend Leslye to let her know that neither of us would be at church. LittleBit had a command performance at her restaurant; all those Sabbath-breakers taking Mom out for her once-a-year lunch. And I? I was otherwise occupied. I asked Leslye to snag some chocolate for me, if that was what they were handing out, because I wasn’t always going to be throwing up.

I really hope they didn’t give me another mouth to feed geranium to keep track of.

I woke up a little past 2:00, about five or ten minutes before Middlest called me from Virginia. I asked her what time it was. [Our block of meetings run from 11:00 - 2:00.] I suspect that the real reason I was sick is because the Adversary did not want me at church, and not simply because Mother’s Day is my least-favorite holiday. Witness: I’ve never gotten sick on Father’s Day, and I’m not all that crazy about it, either.

After I was done chatting with Middlest, I left a message on Leslye’s cell phone. “Please tell me there is not a tall, good-looking man wandering around the chapel with a ring box in his hand, looking for me!” Hey, if he really is Brother Right, then he’ll be there when I’m there, and not when I’m not. Right? It’s all about the timing.

My friend Tinks sent me this Mother’s Day card. [OK, that link takes you to a generic page. Click on Mother’s Day More and then on What Mom Hears. Unlike Mother’s Day per se, I like this card!

And on we go to the story about not-barfing-on-the-spider. I was sitting in the tub, minding my own business, hoping that the hot water would warm my cramping abdomen and get it to stop. And all of a sudden my mouth started watering, so I grabbed the little washtub that I use when LittleBit and I are having Gilmore Girls moments, soaking our feet side by side while we eat popcorn and watch old musicals. And I propped it between my knees and my chest, and I waited. And then I saw a tiny little spider, no bigger than the head of a quilting pin, scrambling frantically to get out of the washtub. And I thought, “Nobody, not even an eensy weensy spider, deserves death by vomit.” So I dipped a corner of the washtub into the water and drowned him in tub water. It seemed the kinder thing to do.

OK, how lucid are you when you know you’re about to hurl?

I cautiously sipped some apple juice around 4:00pm. It stayed down. I followed that an hour later with a bowl of ramen noodles. They stayed down. Bowl of applesauce at 6:00pm? It stayed down, too. Houston, our stomach has landed! I spent the late afternoon updating my queue on Ravelry and the evening watching most of Waking Ned Devine while knitting away happily on the medium Serpentine Mitt. And catching up, gingerly, on a day’s worth of calories.

Got an email from one of the Good Brothers, offering empty boxes and a strong back, for my move. Got another one from Leslye, saying that she had my chocolate for safekeeping. Got about four hours of sleep when I went to bed very late last night, and while I would rather stay home and knit or spin!!! I think I am well enough to be a responsible corporate citizen and get on the train this morning.

It’s Monday. I’m vertical. That’s progress!