Tough Day, Stomach-Wise

This morning I awoke with a bad stomach-ache, and by 10 it had worsened, with more pain and then periods of nausea and throwing up, and I couldn't eat anything. Everything that I had just eaten kept coming up, but all the older stuff stayed down there and just kept jumping up and down. And right in the middle of all that two very nice ladies knocked on my door. They were Jehovah's Witnesses, and I had been guessing that they would soon be around again, and that would've been fine, but not at such a moment, and it was all I could do to look friendly and keep from telling them that I was sick.

I also didn't want to have to tell my wife that I was ill. She is still down in Florida, on the 18th day of her month's stay down there, visiting relatives, and I am a grown man several times over now, and I should be able to make it on my own for a mere month, though some might say that I am so many times over that I'm now well down on that downward slope, to where I am no more competent to manage things on my own than I was on the upward pull so many decades ago.

For instance food is definitely a problem, and it could be that not eating enough of it had an effect on this problem. Knowing when to eat and how much is so much beyond me that it comes in handy to have someone around who can keep better track of it, and there is only one such person available, my wife, and she's not here right now..

My distress had to be caused by food-poisoning, though I hadn't eaten anything questionable lately. Now, however, I've decided that I might very well have poisoned myself while doing my stained glass projects, at which I've been heavily active during my wife's absence. The work involves using two toxic chemicals, flux and patina, that get in touch with my bare hands, and though I've tried to be extra-diligent in washing my hands over and over, still it's possible that some might have gotten on the popcorn that I bought a few days ago and always end up getting my hands sticky with the butter or whatever is on it. So I guess I'' have to take the popcorn and also the potato chips out of the shop.

I also suspect the fumes from soldering that I try to keep blown away from me by a big fan, but I don't always remember to turn it on.. Stained glass solder is 60% tin and 40% lead. That just so happens to be exactly the same percentage of Democrats and Republicans currently in the U.S. Senate, and also with exactly the same degrees of toxicity.

But fortunately, after about four hours of suffering, the pain went away, and soon I was able to eat and drink and keep down the easiest things I could think of -- a piece of cake and some milk with honey in it -- and now I am having soup for dinner with no bad effects.

Meanwhile, a little earlier, as I was walking up the hill late in the afternoon to pick up my mail, I saw water flowing in quantity, out from under my workshop, though it was a clear, bright day.

My jerry-built plumbing connection above the shop sink had come loose, but luckily, instead of flooding my former darkroom as it had always done in the past, this time all the water went into the sink and from there down to where it drains out on the ground under shop, watering some roses and clematis along the way. But it had been doing that for about five hours straight -- far too much wear and tear on the well pump that I had installed with so much difficulty last Fall. It took only a second to cut the water off with a valve inside the shop, and due to the nausea, pain, and weakness, I had been in the shop hardly at all that day.

I wonder what kind of day tomorrow is going to be. I have important things to do.