Last week I had the stomach flu for the first time since I don't even remember when. Mainly, this meant that I couldn't eat anything without feeling ill and puking out my toenails (sorry for the graphic). If I didn't eat anything, I was fine. Starving to death started to look pretty attractive, let me tell you. Convincing Brad to let me starve to death, however, was more difficult. I, on one hand, was convinced that I could survive (or starve to death peacefully, take your pick) on fruit punch-flavored gatorade and water. He was going down the Ensure path, which means gross protein drink. Good grief, as if being sick with the flu isn't bad enough, you want to make it worse?!
The stomach flu also brought up all sorts of fun married things. Brad has seemingly decided that being sick for two days is just about all anybody needs to be sick for. Day 1 he was very attentive, worried, did all the laundry, and brought me water. Very helpful. Day 2 was about the same, with a small increase of rolling of eyes. Around Day 3 (and especially day 4), his efforts grew increasingly desperate. He bought large quantities of things he was sure would cure me--and I'm not entirely convinced that he was worried about my stomach more than he was worried about the fact that I hadn't gotten groceries or otherwise fed him in four.days. and he was reduced back to taking sausages for lunch and getting chinese take-out.
We all feel very sorry for Brad.
To his credit, he brought me water to the very end and expressed GREAT relief at my improvement on day 6.
The other interesting thing about have the stomach flu when you're married is that everybody and their aunt hear "married" and "puking" and think PREGNANT! BABIES! YAY! FUN! which, in general, freaks out the newlywed and certainly-not-wanting-a-baby me.
I.am.not.pregnant.
On a completely different topic: we went to Tennessee to see Mike and Katie last weekend! I have a good friend who swears that the more you hurt afterward, the more fun you had. With obvious notable exceptions (see: torture/stomach flu), I find this is generally true. It was certainly true on Monday, after Brad, Katie, Kelly, Mike, Adam, and I beat up our bodies in the water just about every way we could come up with.
We went tubing! Tubing is when you get out of a perfectly good and reliable boat and hang on for dear life to an inflatable device that would probably be better used to rescue someone from drowning somewhere in the middle of the ocean. Then we tie this device with a 70-foot rope to the perfectly good boat and take off at completely unreasonable speeds.
This is fun.
In the picture, you can see that my compatriots are grinning like idiots. I don't know how or why their faces would contort that particular way in their travails. My head and neck, when tubing, is completely locked into position to avoid biting my lip (which I did anyway), biting my tongue (which I managed to avoid doing), or allowing my head to hit my tube (which I also did). I also figure that it minimizes the amount my brain jiggles around in my head. Less movement is less movement. Plus I'm in pain, in which case I don't usually smile.
I have no idea why we do this for fun.
We also wakeboarded. I like wakeboarding. You're above the water instead of skidding on top of it, although we do run into the same problem of the rope and the abandoning of a perfectly good boat. I try not to do anything stupid like trying to jump to great heights (like my husband), resulting inevitably in much crashing and hurting, and so generally I manage to hurt no more than my muscles and my pride when I fall.
The next day, we abandoned the good boat altogether for the simple inflatable--the tube--down a river. Down-river tubing is awesome. It's exciting, all you have to do is float, and you can even talk between rapids!
Unfortunately, it has not rained for about a month and a half in Tennessee, and the water level was very low. Rocks had been sharpened. Stones were jutting out as much as they could possible reach. Everything was a little more dangerous than usual.
Especially dangerous were the inhabitants of the river: every single citizen of Tennessee and their extremely overweight aunt were on this particular river on the fourth of july--every.single.one. Every hillbilly and redneck for miles around was, I swear, floating down at the exact same time at us.
So not only did we have to avoid the rocks and scoot our butts over the ones we inevitably hit, we had to avoid the large and often very stuck rednecks! AH!
Bumper tubes galore!
Honestly, I've inherited the greatest family. It wouldn't be nearly as fun with anybody else. Well, maybe not so painful. These people are hard to keep up with, man. But they sure feed ya good!
Suffice to say that the four of us slept a lot and driving was not a popular election of activity all the way home.
