My smelly Valentine

So, I finally have a Valentine's Day in a serious relationship, a first for me, and it was nothing short of a disaster. All because - guess what? I have yet another stomach bug!!!

The day before I felt sort of weak and shaky and diarrhea-y; I had chalked it up to my new diet and spending all week marching around in the hot sun. But Theo had spots of diarrhea all week, too, so I knew something was in the air. We had a challenging weekend in which I had a singing gig that went until 1 AM Saturday, then had to get up extra early the next morning to get to the baby kennel to drop the kids so The Boyfriend and I could go to the atheist church I went to a couple of times when the boys were younger. There we ran into some online atheist friends of The Boyfriend and went to lunch with them. At least this made him really happy - I was having horrible stomach cramps, diarrhea and nausea at this point, but was managing to keep it together. Then we took a nap and picked up the kids, then went to our Valentines activity which was seeing his favorite movie, Moulin Rouge, at this historic theater downtown where they make a big event out of it; floor shows, dancing, bars, etc. The Boyfriend had been talking about how much he loves this movie since we first met, and has been so excited about this event. But by this time I felt so horrible, especially from having not eaten all day, that every minute I wanted to tell him that I just wanted to stay in bed. But again I sucked it up because it meant so much to him.

We skipped dinner because I couldn't bear the thought of sitting in a restaurant around food. Once we got to the theater, it was packed and loud and hot - we got seats in the nosebleed section and there were all kinds of problems around us; a loud drunk girl needing to be forcibly evicted, a foursome who got up to get a drink, came back twenty minutes later to find their seats taken and got in a big fight about it.

All the perfect environment for you when you're weak with hunger but horribly nauseated, throat and mouth so dry but every time you take a sip of water your stomach churns in painful spasms, and constantly afraid you're going to shit your pants. So, yeah, good times.

Then at last the movie starts. And it is completely inaudible. For some reason the sound is so bad that you can't hear any of the dialogue and it's just a muddy mess; everyone starts leaving and shouting for them to fix it. They turn it off, make a sweaty announcement about trying to repair the bad mix, start it up again - only to have it be exactly the same. At least this is my out - I tell The Boyfriend I can't follow it because I can't hear anything and I really just want to go home. We stumble out to the lobby where tons of angry patrons are yelling at the hapless door workers about getting refunds. The Boyfriend gets a shitty fast food dinner because he's starving, I eat a tablespoon of applesauce (resulting in intense cramping and stomach churning and general misery) and collapse into bed without brushing my teeth and with a full face of makeup on.

Oh, and no school today because it's yet another pointless school closing holiday. Awesome.

So for now the issues between me & The Boyfriend have been tabled. I need to get well first (still feeling pretty awful today, but better than yesterday) and we need to get back to some kind of norm where he's not working until midnight every night and exhausted and stressed out. 

At least all this stomach upset has jump started my ineffective diet. I'm down three pounds as of today. So...there's that.