Lilac Colored Glasses

That’s “walk with me” in Dutch and no worries, you won’t have to start learning Dutch or depending on Babelfish (which sucks anyway) to read my blog, I just might practice now and then in my titles. Anyway why don’t you get a nice cuppa (insert your favorite warm drink here),sit back, relax and listen to the shitstorm that was Monday March 10th and the following post-shit storm flatulence that was today.

CB and I spent a lovely Sunday together (who knew celeriac could be an aphrodesiac?) and fell asleep fairly early while watching a movie. We set the alarm early so that we could both shower before leaving for class/work and when it went off Monday morning I groggily got out of bed and got ready to go downstairs. CB said his stomach was bothering him, but he says that occasionally when he’s waking up so I shrugged and headed downstairs for my shower. I had barely gotten wet when I heard CB pad past the shower room and into the toilet/laundry room. Then I heard some very violent vomitting and other assorted “my digestive system is imploding and/or has been invaded by a bloodthirsty alien embryo” noises. I stepped out of the shower and offered to help with anything but he waved me away so I finished my shower, got dressed and went back upstairs. He had already called in sick to work and was laying in bed, pale and groaning. CB is not a wussy guy when it comes to illness or injury and because Monday was a review day before the exam I decided it might be best to stay home with him, in case he needed anything.

It wasn’t even 8 a.m. yet so I took my time, e-mailed my teacher about the situation and asked what I ought to study. Then the wind started blowing pretty hard and a heavy clot of dark clouds hustled into the once clear skyline. I ran out quickly to get some chicken soup for CB and on my way back I could see several dozen plastic waterbottles flying across the street. Monday was recycling day for plastics and paper cartons and the wind had literally torn several of the bags open, sending a multitude of plastic bottle and milk cartons tumbling out onto the street and sidewalk. Just as I got home it started to rain.

And it just kept raining.

The wind was howling and tearing things apart. I went downstairs sometime around 10 and the tent CB had built to cover the freshly planted seeds was upended and blocking the backdoor (he had weighed it down with 4 heavy glass blocks). I uprighted the tent and flipped the blocks off the new soil before darting back inside. An hour later I went down to check again and a 7 foot length of grey pvc pipe was propped against the door so I used it to weigh down the tent which had blown across the garden while I was upstairs.

And it just kept raining.

I finally sat down to study around noon and noticed some pressure in my eyes and the back of my head. No big deal though, the weather can sometimes give me a headache, so I kept studying and the pressure turned into pain and it

just

kept

raining.

Finally around 1 o’clock I couldn’t stand the pain in my head any longer. It felt like someone had snaked a hot iron cable through the back of my neck and up into the base of my skull whereupon said cable activated a hydraulic press that was ruthlessly crushing my brain into one of those tiny cubes of metal you see at the dump. Oh, and my eyes? Yeah, Macho Man Randy Savage had a thumb in each one and was pushing as hard as he could while simultaneously kicking me in the forehead with the toe of his boot. I shuffled into the bedroom and asked CB if he could move over at all. He was barely talking and any physical contact made him have to hurl again so he just edged over enough for me to flop down next to him.

I think we were lying there for about an hour before I started writhing and crying and begging for some Aleve. CB dropped two into my mouth but an hour later they still weren’t working. That’s when I started to panic. I have never had a headache that bad in my life. I kept thinking “oh fuck, I have meningitis…what is the Dutch word for meningitis??” CB called the health center up the street, made us an appointment (I’m insured now, yay) and e-mailed my teacher, explaining what was going on and asking if I could take the final exam later in the week with a doctor’s note. We both fell asleep around 5, the appointment was at 8 and CB’s dad (bless him) was coming to pick us up because

it

was

still

raining.

We got to the medical center at 8 and the doctor saw us both right away. CB had a classic stomach virus that is apparently going around and I had a migraine. I have had migraines occasionally in the past, but typically I get a warning as it’s coming on; I see spots or hear sort of a high pitched buzz but this one hit me like a baseball bat to the face/temples/back of head/neck. One thing I didn’t know was that during a migraine your stomach stops working, which is why the Aleve took over three hours to start working. The best remedy is sleep and avoidance of stimuli (light off, sound low) so the doctor wrote me a note for two more days of rest (two! I heart Belgian doctors) and we came home.

CB woke me up around 3 in the morning to tell me that my teacher was unable to make any exceptions for the exam but that I could take it in the afternoon and was I okay with that. Well shit. Either I say no, miss the exam, fail level 2 and start all over or I take the exam, hope that I pass (I’ve had all high scores so far this level) and most likely move on to level 3. So I said yes and struggled back to sleep.

I woke up at 7 this morning, the remnants of the nuclear holocaust migraine still caked in the crevices of my skull, and began to review level 2. It took me three hours to get through the book before I went to check on CB who was already feeling much better. After a bit of bolstering, I went back and began making vocabulary flash cards and recopying those pesky verbs again. The wind was still blowing and it looked like it would rain again, so I took the bus to the Language Center. On the way I ate a cracker and some of it was kinda stuck behind my bad tooth (you know, the one that was filled in December that is STILL HURTING) so I tried clearing it out with my finger. When I removed my finger, lo and behold, it was bloody. Joy! An infection in my tooth could very well cause the migraine that blew the top of my head off yesterday, no? Anyway, not much to be done for that while riding the bus to an exam, so I sucked it up (my whining, not the blood…the cracker absorbed most of that, I imagine) and arrived 30 minutes early, saw and greeted all my classmates who had failed level one and were retaking it, and proceeded to take my exam. Some parts a flew through and some I totally blanked. We’ll find out if I pass on Thursday after CB and I return from Brussels (another long story but I won’t bore you with it) .

I then proceeded to walk home.

In the pouring rain.

With no umbrella.

It was the most enjoyable part of the past two days.