Catching Up - Part Two

Warning to the weak of heart: I’m sick, and this post is going to tell you about it.

Yesterday, right after writing up my last blog post, I went out to the city to see if I couldn't find a place with wifi and a plug in so I could finally get my blog caught up. While I was out, I also stopped by the library to find out just what exactly I needed to bring in to set up an account (passport and registration form: I’m set). But about an hour out I started feeling ill. It was hot, so I figured it was just a bit of a heat thing. I have a tendency to feel ill if it’s really hot – and this wasn’t really hot, but I hadn’t had much water, so…yeah.

 But I kept feeling worse, until every whiff of cigarette smoke made me feel like I was going to lose it, and I finally thought, to heck with it, I'm going home.

And then, about halfway home, I did lose it. In the middle of a very public pedestrian shopping area. I managed to stagger to a trashcan, so at least I wasn’t humiliated by leaving a mess all over the sidewalk, but now I had humiliation piled on top of the whole “I don’t feel well” thing. I hurried away from the scene of my crime, only to become a repeat offender two streets later.

I swear, I felt like everyone in the world was staring at me. I hate drawing attention to myself in public, and this is way worse than having an overly-loud laugh, or suddenly realizing your fly is unzipped. The one thing in my favor is that no one wants to look at a sick person – people instinctively look away. And I certainly wasn’t looking closely at them. So even if I were to run into any of these people again, they woulnd’t remember me.  The worse part was how long it took to get home, and how I didn’t know what to do – it’s not like there are public restrooms around here. And all my senses were turned up on high: everything was too bright, too loud, too smelly, too much.

And I had to stop a third time (this time, I found a secluded place in the park to unceremoniously dispose of everything I'd eaten in the last three days) before I got home. Then I spent half the night shivering so hard I thought I would shake to bits, even thought I was bundled up in a sweater and buried under five blankets. The other half of the night, I felt so hot I could have power an industrial oven.

I do NOT deal well with being sick. I'm generally a healthy person – I haven't been stay-in-bed sick in nearly five years, and haven't been tossing-my-cookies sick in even longer than that. So, of course, I feel quite sorry for myself. I am glad, however, that this happened while I was alone and technically on break, so I didn’t have to also deal with guilt of “missing work” or Anna feeling like she had to take care of me.

I’m hoping that the whole ordeal is nothing more than a little bout of food poisoning – not sure what gave it to me, but I have a few theories (frozen pizza that may have not been entirely frozen now that I think about it, potato soup that sat out overnight, a bad tea bag – is that a thing?). And I feel much better this morning – the fever is pretty much gone, and while I haven’t eaten anything the thought of food isn’t just entirely off-putting. So we’ll see.

Fascinating update, no? And here you thought you were reading this blog for the pictures of foreign cities and witty observations on German culture. Didn’t realize you were getting in for a bucket-load of complaining too, didja? LOL.

Honestly, the most annoying thing right now is that I don’t really have Internet access (I can see Facebook, barely, and I can look stuff up if I need to but it takes longer than dialup) so I can’t even post this blog entry until at least…Well, probably, like, Monday. Because nothing is open (therefore: no wifi) on Sunday.

Sorry for the rant – I should be back to normal blogging-ness soon.

~Mags