Year of writing 15

1/15/12

I hate when the things you love turn against you. We drove back from Ojai today with hopeful hearts and such. Along the 101 in Atascadero, there is a in n out burger, the one fast food place I can eat without feeling like I want to punch my stomach in the neck. We ordered # 2s, mine with the hot peppers inside, and commenced with devouring. Even Isla getting in on the action, wolfing down fistfuls of fries (daddy, do wolves wolf down things?). About an hour later, I started getting a mite queasy, but chalked it up to carsickness. We had two and a half hours to go, so I was pretty miserable. When we finally made it in the door in Richmond, I hightailed it upstairs to sleep off the effects of the car. Not so much. In 5 minutes I was on the toilet barraging the porcelain with a torrent of diarrhea. Then things started to get strange. I was feeling really off, and getting nervous, so I enlisted the help of my wife, who has the misfortune of being a nurse as well as a beautiful human being. I think the conversation went something like this: "tegan!"

" yes, Aaron"

"I think spmething's really wrong with me."

"Why? what are you feeling?"

"i just had bad diarrhea and now it feels like my arms and legs aren't part of my body any more."

To her credit at this point she didn't even smirk. Instead, I felt a rumbling in my gut and ran back upstairs. This time I misinterpreted the orifice which was attempting to expel its contents and had to reverse position on the toilet just in time for the first outrageous heaves that would leave the hamburger in the toilet, if not a little more blended. I can think of few things less pleasant than heaving into a receptacle which had just prior contained extremely messy diarrhea. To top it all off, our toilet is one of the water saving models, and takes what seems like several eternities to refill and this be able to flush once more. The highlight of the next five or ten visits to the bathroom was sitting on the toilet mid expulsion, while attempting to vomit into the bathtub AT THE SAME TIME! If I didn't feel like death being slapped by a poisoned hamburger, I would probably be proud of myself.

Lesson learned. You can't trust anyone, not even in n out burgers.