My poor neglected blog

I haven't written in a while and here's why. I think I may have mentioned feeling like crap a few times. Basically, I got back from Africa and shortly thereafter, every time food hit my stomach I was so nauseous I thought I was going to die. I also had a low grade fever. Mercifully I was without other *ahem* intestinal distress so I thought I'd just feel better in a day or two.

Monday morning (day 5) as I was sitting in my boss' office, I realized I needed to see a doctor. So I called my clinic for an appointment. The hold time on the phone was so ridiculously long I actually drove to the clinic before I was taken off hold. I got right in to see a doctor. When I described my symptoms and recent events, he agreed it was not an African parasite/bug/amoeba. But then he started asking me all these mildly frightening questions like "have you ever had abdominal surgery?", "do you have ulcers?" and then decided he needed a blood count to make sure I wasn't bleeding internally. There is a lab in that clinic so a few minutes (and one freaked out phone call) later, I was declared not to be bleeding internally. Then my doctor put me on a clear liquid diet.

Have you ever been on a clear liquid diet? I mean really been on the diet. Food never smelled so good to me. I was allowed to eat juice, popsicles, soda, honey, broth, tea and jello. By the way, I don't like tea or jello and without the tea there's really no good vehicle for the honey. So I was juice/popsicle/broth girl. Yeah, none of my pants fit anymore, but in a good way. Nice. I was on that diet 2 or 3 days. This morning was my first morning of real exercise. I went to the gym. My body is a little freaked out right now. I'm thinking about running tomorrow. Not sure how far I'd make it but it's worth the experiment I think. This could be the beginning of marathon training, right here. Also, my stomach is the size of a walnut. I'm hoping to keep it that way. It's really amazing. I'm trying to adopt a new attitude about food. Like, I don't need as much of it and I don't need to eat as fast. It's a life style change so it's not easy but it's going ok so far.

Other than Monday, I was at work all week. Things got back to normal there. The outgoing message on my voice mail says that some messages are being erased before I can check them. As a result, no one is leaving me messages right now. I know some were erased from when I was out of town. Eep. Sorry.

Tonight is Halloween, my least favorite holiday (other than Columbus Day, the most racist holiday ever). Any night where I have to dress up in an outfit designed to make everyone look at me is my idea of hell. I liked passing out candy in the past. That was always fun. But now I live in a condo and we don't get any kids here. My mentee called me and I wound up taking her and her friend out for Chinese. They were equally thrilled about dressing up for Halloween. Although they did take the time to tell me there's a guy (staff) at their after school program they want to set me up with. Their description?

• white


• has hair


• has his own car


• has his own place


• funny, likes talking to people

What more could I want? I'm required to wear my hair down if I meet him. This is my mentee's rule, not his.