SICK THOUGHTS

So anyway, I got really sick. As you know, the day after Matthew and I broke up, I didn't feel much like eating, but unfortunately, I hadn't eaten much for a while anyway, and so the end result is that Thursday night found me dragging myself across the kitchen floor to prop my head up on my arm and try to eat something, because raising my head resulted in fainting.

I managed to feel better by the next day, but even though I was eating every single day, evidently I wasn't eating enough, because by the night before last, I was back on the kitchen floor, only this time it was even worse. I've basically spent the last 24 hours having difficulty remaining conscious, but I'm better now.

Anyway, I went to a doctor yesterday because I was in *really* bad shape and I just wanted to make sure that eating and drinking orange juice really is sufficient to keep me out of the hospital, and she basically told me that I'll probably be all right, but that I need to keep a box of cookies with me at all times, and that the minute I start to feel faint, I need to eat a cookie.

A doctor has ordered me to keep cookies around at all times and eat them. Every prayer of my life has been answered!

Anyway.

So, if you've never fainted from malnutrition, let me tell you, it's a terribly unpleasant experience. I mean, fainting sounds like this fairly innocuous thing. But when it's malnutrition, you wake up feeling like you've been sitting on both your arms and legs wrong, and they're all kind of numb and wobbly and feel awful. And you feel like your heart can't quite beat right, and you're pretty certain you're about to die, and you feel just plain awful all over, and then everything goes whooshing like someone's pouring water over your head, and you find yourself heading toward the floor.

It's awful.

And it goes on for hours and hours and hours. Eating something doesn't just make you feel better right away. You feel like this, and you can't sleep it off. It's just miserable.

The reason I'm telling you this is that I was lying there and started thinking about how awful this was and how could it get any worse and I hope it doesn't get worse and what must dying feel like dying must feel worse and although I'm not afraid of death per se the process must be pretty bloody awful and I hope I don't have to live through this for very long and what if death takes a long time.

So I decided that if I was going to die, beheading would be a pretty good way to go. I mean, it is pretty instantaneous.

So then I started thinking about all of the political things that end in beheading, and really, that's not such a bad thing, if you think about it. I mean, we all have to die eventually, and if you're going to go, why not do something worth fighting for, and then getting beheaded?

Granted, if there was torture or something first, that would be a real bummer. But the actual beheading part is kind of nice. You don't have to go through any of this hours of fainting and feeling like *that*, and it's just all over really quickly.

Then I realized that I was seriously trying to figure out what kinds of things I could do to make the planet a better place and get myself beheaded.

I have decided that it is a very bad idea to make major life decisions, or career choices at any rate, when you're sick.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but one of the things I find fascinating here are the different brand names. For example, almost everyone I know has something in their kitchen called "Aromatic Fairy," and nobody finds this amusing at all. (It's a dishwashing liquid, incidentally.)

Far more entertaining, however, are the product descriptions. In the United States, we generally have usage instructions or whatever printed in the standard English and then the occasional French and/or Spanish. But here, there are generally eight to ten different languages, and some of these, I swear, are not actual languages at all, but just words someone has made up to be funny. And by "to be funny," I mean, of course, at my expense.

For example, my bath soap contains the following product description/usage instructions: "Gebruik DOVE Cream Bar als een toilet-zeep. In tegenstelling tot gewone zeep droogt Dove..."

I'm sorry, but that is totally made up. You cannot convince me otherwise.

No way is "toilet-zeep" a word.

Well, if you will excuse me, I must go now and purchase some cookies. I wouldn't, you know, but my doctor insists.