I spent the day with Schmoobs yesterday watching him work with his nerd corps as they prepared for their first show of the season, which took place last night about a 90-minute drive away from our home. It was a wonderful day - I got to meet the latest additions to his man harem and see him fully immersed in an activity that makes him happy and sometimes (often) drives him crazy - despite the entire day being over 100 degrees with heavy winds. It was like spending the whole day standing in front of a gigantic hair dryer.
When dinnertime rolled around, we and Schmoobs' teaching staff piled into two cars and chose to have dinner away from the group at Joe's Crab Shack. I was happy with the idea since those effing Crab Shack commercials always make me hungry and I was finally able to indulge my curiosity. Now, because I was essentially resigned to being outside in the disgusting Southern heat without the ability to shower for pretty much 20 hours (gack), I decided to forego getting a bucket of crab legs (I don't want to touch food with my hands unless I can wash up soon thereafter...I have issues, this has been well established) and instead opted for what their menu claimed was "paella." What I got instead was a skillet of white rice swimming in some kind of tomato sauce with a bunch of little bitty grocery store freezer section shrimp with faux scallops and assorted clams and mussels. And a giant mound of fried calamari on top. Anyway. I was hungry and didn't want to be a douche, so I ate it, managing to down about half before finally giving up.
Cut to three hours later. The corps had finished their performance. It was great. And I slowly but surely started to get that foreboding feeling of bile starting to crawl up my throat. Over the next hour, the desire to find a nice, hidden secluded spot to privately retch my brains out became overwhelming. But just imagine a high school campus being overrun, not just by a thousand performers and staff members, but also an entire stadium full of audience and you will understand that there was nowhere I could go to stealthily puke without anybody seeing me. Also, "bathrooms" = porta potties. So...NO.
So, deciding that the best course of action was to quietly pull Schmoobs aside and tell him that I wasn't feeling well, I took his car keys and curled over with the air conditioner blasting while I waited for their post-show obligations to finish so that we could go home. The sensation of the bile and vomit rising and subsiding came and went in waves. About an hour later, nearly midnight by this point, the desire to just finally puke my brains out and get it over with became overwhelming, so I figured that the best thing to do was drive just a bit off campus and find somewhere nice and quiet to retch. So that's what I did. About a mile away, I pulled into a completely dark and empty business park. I pulled over to the right curb of the parking lot driveway, opened up my door...and letterrip. It was both painful and glorious at the same time. It was mostly violent dry-heaving and then spitting out a mouthful of bile and drool. About four repetitions of this.
Just when I was finishing up the fourth go-round, tears streaming down my face, I looked over my shoulder to my left and noticed...a pair of headlights that had pulled up right behind me and stopped their car. Police officer. Sh*t. He exited his car, walked up to me, shining his flashlight and I just started in on it:
Stubborn Tomato: "Hi... I'm so sorry. I was just driving by and started feeling really terrible. I just needed to throw up."
CAN YOU IMAGINE? Some strange person in a parked but running car by herself vomiting on the side of a road? At midnight? As soon as the words left my mouth, I was sure the policeman was going to issue a breathalyzer test.
Thankfully...
Officer [raised eyebrow]: "Ma'am, do you know you're on private property?"
Stubborn Tomato: "OMG. I'm really sorry. It's just that... I was driving down the road... Joe's Crab Shack. We had dinner and... My boyfriend's working at the drum corps show at the high school just down the road. And we had dinner at Joe's Crab Shack. And I just started feeling really sick and I needed to just vomit. I mean, clearly [motioning officer to look down at the puddle of bile by my feet just underneath the driver's door] ...I just needed to puke and..."
Officer: "Well, you can't be on private property..."
Stubborn Tomato: "Oh, okay. Okay. I understand. OMG I'm so sorry. I'm just headed back to the high school. I just felt terrible and I'm leaving right now. Please. Okay? I can leave right now."
Officer [brief pause]: "Alright theeen...go on."
Oy. I guess, no matter how ridiculous and insane my rambling was, it was pretty clear that I wasn't drunkenly slurring my words. So I made my way back to the campus parking lot and spent the remainder of the night curled in a pathetic fetal position in the pleasantly overly-air conditioned car while Schmoobs and his staff could finish so that we could finally make the 70 mile drive home. Did I mention that it was still 95 degrees when we were heading back into town? At 2 in the morning?
Also: I wasn't aware that two of Schmoobs' staff members were coming home with us so that they could spend the night and drive back to Louisiana today, so I didn't bother to tidy up our place beforehand. And the last thing I remember mumbling to them before closing the bedroom door behind me was, "I'm sorry the carpet is so dirty. I should have vacuumed. I'm sorry. [pointing to a spot where our President of the Finer Things Club had vomited up a hairball earlier] Puke..."
When dinnertime rolled around, we and Schmoobs' teaching staff piled into two cars and chose to have dinner away from the group at Joe's Crab Shack. I was happy with the idea since those effing Crab Shack commercials always make me hungry and I was finally able to indulge my curiosity. Now, because I was essentially resigned to being outside in the disgusting Southern heat without the ability to shower for pretty much 20 hours (gack), I decided to forego getting a bucket of crab legs (I don't want to touch food with my hands unless I can wash up soon thereafter...I have issues, this has been well established) and instead opted for what their menu claimed was "paella." What I got instead was a skillet of white rice swimming in some kind of tomato sauce with a bunch of little bitty grocery store freezer section shrimp with faux scallops and assorted clams and mussels. And a giant mound of fried calamari on top. Anyway. I was hungry and didn't want to be a douche, so I ate it, managing to down about half before finally giving up.
Cut to three hours later. The corps had finished their performance. It was great. And I slowly but surely started to get that foreboding feeling of bile starting to crawl up my throat. Over the next hour, the desire to find a nice, hidden secluded spot to privately retch my brains out became overwhelming. But just imagine a high school campus being overrun, not just by a thousand performers and staff members, but also an entire stadium full of audience and you will understand that there was nowhere I could go to stealthily puke without anybody seeing me. Also, "bathrooms" = porta potties. So...NO.
So, deciding that the best course of action was to quietly pull Schmoobs aside and tell him that I wasn't feeling well, I took his car keys and curled over with the air conditioner blasting while I waited for their post-show obligations to finish so that we could go home. The sensation of the bile and vomit rising and subsiding came and went in waves. About an hour later, nearly midnight by this point, the desire to just finally puke my brains out and get it over with became overwhelming, so I figured that the best thing to do was drive just a bit off campus and find somewhere nice and quiet to retch. So that's what I did. About a mile away, I pulled into a completely dark and empty business park. I pulled over to the right curb of the parking lot driveway, opened up my door...and letterrip. It was both painful and glorious at the same time. It was mostly violent dry-heaving and then spitting out a mouthful of bile and drool. About four repetitions of this.
Just when I was finishing up the fourth go-round, tears streaming down my face, I looked over my shoulder to my left and noticed...a pair of headlights that had pulled up right behind me and stopped their car. Police officer. Sh*t. He exited his car, walked up to me, shining his flashlight and I just started in on it:
Stubborn Tomato: "Hi... I'm so sorry. I was just driving by and started feeling really terrible. I just needed to throw up."
CAN YOU IMAGINE? Some strange person in a parked but running car by herself vomiting on the side of a road? At midnight? As soon as the words left my mouth, I was sure the policeman was going to issue a breathalyzer test.
Thankfully...
Officer [raised eyebrow]: "Ma'am, do you know you're on private property?"
Stubborn Tomato: "OMG. I'm really sorry. It's just that... I was driving down the road... Joe's Crab Shack. We had dinner and... My boyfriend's working at the drum corps show at the high school just down the road. And we had dinner at Joe's Crab Shack. And I just started feeling really sick and I needed to just vomit. I mean, clearly [motioning officer to look down at the puddle of bile by my feet just underneath the driver's door] ...I just needed to puke and..."
Officer: "Well, you can't be on private property..."
Stubborn Tomato: "Oh, okay. Okay. I understand. OMG I'm so sorry. I'm just headed back to the high school. I just felt terrible and I'm leaving right now. Please. Okay? I can leave right now."
Officer [brief pause]: "Alright theeen...go on."
Oy. I guess, no matter how ridiculous and insane my rambling was, it was pretty clear that I wasn't drunkenly slurring my words. So I made my way back to the campus parking lot and spent the remainder of the night curled in a pathetic fetal position in the pleasantly overly-air conditioned car while Schmoobs and his staff could finish so that we could finally make the 70 mile drive home. Did I mention that it was still 95 degrees when we were heading back into town? At 2 in the morning?
Also: I wasn't aware that two of Schmoobs' staff members were coming home with us so that they could spend the night and drive back to Louisiana today, so I didn't bother to tidy up our place beforehand. And the last thing I remember mumbling to them before closing the bedroom door behind me was, "I'm sorry the carpet is so dirty. I should have vacuumed. I'm sorry. [pointing to a spot where our President of the Finer Things Club had vomited up a hairball earlier] Puke..."
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