The Day I Felt Like Dung

Blogging yesterday…er, I mean, today…ahem (back-dating) is easy, ‘cause I was oddly sickly and that translates to not doing or eating a whole hell of a lot, even though there were still things I got done.

I woke up and it was like the pizza from the night before hadn’t moved in my digestive tract. Or it moved and got stuck. I felt pretty terrible—my stomach full and no desire for any breakfast—so I didn’t eat any, at first. I did water the garden.

Oh, I’d woken up around 6:45, but that’s not important.

Angie made spelt waffles, but I didn’t touch them. I tried to drink some water, but even had a hard time with that because my belly was so full (how?). Finally, around 9:45 I forced some waffles and OJ into my system, roughly 1.5 waffles (‘cause some was shared with Liam) and a pint of OJ, but I still wasn’t feeling better—I just wanted to eat. I’m not one to fast.

I was starting to feel odder (not otter). My legs were strangely sore, but not in a good “I worked ‘em hard yesterday” way—it was odd. Oddness. It spread to my entire body. My entire body was feeling odd. Sore.

But no matter, ‘cause the nausea hadn’t struck yet and there was house cleaning going on. Our house was a wreck, so we’d pretty much started cleaning straight out of bed, and we got most of the house clean. After I ate we loaded Liam in his stroller, threw his Strider bike on top, and started walking toward Carmichael Park. We stopped off in the parking lot of a church nearby because there were some slopes and it’s going to be fun when Liam realizes he can pick his feet up on the Strider and coast down those slopes, but he’s not there yet. Regardless, we strapped on his helmet and he strode around a bit before we again loaded him up and headed over to the playground at Carmichael Park.

I still wasn’t feeling terrible, just weird. Odd. Maybe I never did feel terrible, but it did get worse.

We played at the playground. Liam learned he doesn’t need Momma or Poppa to go down the slides anymore, and it was pretty cute to watch him walk up to one, sit down, then scoot forward and take the dip to the ground. I got pictures.

   

Look at that smile. I love that kid.>>>>>>>>>>>>

We had an interesting experience in different parenting styles, Angie and I. Liam walked over toward this edge where he had climbed up earlier but where he couldn’t easily get down and it was a bit of a drop, maybe 2.5 or 3 feet, and Angie kindly guided him away. A bit later, when he approached again and I was closer than Angie and she said “Don’t let him go off the edge!” …well, I let him go off the edge. He tumbled, cried for about 10 seconds and of course I jumped off and picked him up and he was fine—he stopped crying and pushed away to get down so he could play more. Sure, it could’ve been worse, but a lesson was learned. I think. He didn’t do it again. 

There were two praying mantises on a bench, and we tried pointing those out to Liam, but he wasn’t super interested. I should have caught them and brought them home to deal with some of the garden pests—these damn caterpillars—but I didn’t think about it.

We came home and I started feeling worse. Nauseated. Just generally crappy. My skin hurt to touch. Odd. I didn’t eat any lunch. I tried to drink some water and it nauseated me. I tried to get some garden work done and it nauseated me. I napped, at least a little, and that didn’t un-nauseate me.

I tried to do more garden work. It’s these caterpillars, see: they can do some significant damage real fast. I felt terrible, though, and not real up to the task. Even worse, if I was going to get something chemical-wise to try to hurt them, I’d have to go to the nursery I hate and I’d have to do it soon because it was after 4:00 and they close at 5:00 no matter what and surely aren’t open on Sunday or Labor Day and I’m not sure my garden can take much more of these caterpillars. I mean, they don’t affect everything, but what they do affect, they affect.

I went to the nursery I hate to get something to try to deal with the caterpillars—spinosad—and that stuff’s kinda cool because it’s some bacteria that was found in a soil sample taken from a Caribbean rum distillery by a vacationing scientist or something and it was declared a new species and it has never been found anywhere else but the guy that found it fermented it and discovered this new organic pesticide…or I guess it’s probably not always organic, but it can be. The stuff I bought is. And if those little fuckers (the caterpillars) eat it, like I hope, it’ll over-excite their nervous systems and they’ll die. That’d be grand. But it’s a gamble, ‘cause they have to eat it. So I picked some off by hand, too, but I wasn’t feeling too up to the searching, so I only found one or two. One, I think.

I actually just sat on the ground at the nursery because I didn’t feel well enough to stand up, reading labels, trying to decide if I was gonna get spinosad or bacillus thuringiensis, but the latter wasn’t an organic formulation and that’s important to me. They both do essentially the same thing.

There’s a guy that works there that sorta reminds me of a white version of Thorny from Sooper Troopers, except he isn’t funny and seems a bit more like a dick, but he reminds me of him none-the-less in his aviators he seems to always wear in the three times I’ve been there. He’s the guy that tried to sell me non-organic fertilizer when I was looking for organic fertilizer. I refused his assistance this time, and I sat and read labels as I’m wont to do, anyway. (Ask my wife: I research damn near everything. I typically know or have an idea of what I want before I ever even start toward buying it, then I read the labels anyway.)

I didn’t eat dinner, but I did drink a glass of water. (I think I’ve mentioned wasn’t feeling well.) We watched a bit of Bubba Ho-Tep, but we didn’t finish it. Liam ate his first hot dog. (Not an Oscar Meyer, but a GOOD hot dog, and I was a bit jealous, but there was no food going into my stomach—I felt like the dung.)

I mostly just laid around and maybe started feeling a bit better before bed, but definitely not 100 percent, and I read some in the bean bag and I read some in the bed some and then I went to sleep some. No food, no alcohol, no pills, just sleep, although it wasn’t the best sleep, but you’ll have that. Or I will.

I’d bet some money I’ll be feeling much better tomorrow, since, you know, it’s tomorrow right now and I’m back-dating this entry. So don’t you worry about me. I don’t know what was wrong, but dang, it sure was odd.

So I say good day to the better day that finds me feeling better. And I say good riddance to the day that found me feeling so crappy. That was annoying. Now I need to figure out what I’m going to do today.

“What are we gonna do tonight, Brain?”

“The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!”