“Bat” and Jordan are coming on Friday and I’ve got all kinds of things planned for the weekend, so I’m terribly excited about that. It also gives me a “clean up the house” deadline of Thursday. I was already doing laundry on Monday with my clothes in various piles on the spare room bed categorized by color and severity of agitation they’d get in the washer. By Tuesday, I had my “delicates” hanging on a drying rack in the spare room, with some remaining piles of clothes to be laundered still on the bed. I knew I was going to lose Wednesday night to do what I had to because Mr. W made our tax appointment super-early for Wednesday after work, so I also needed to get my tax documents in order on Tuesday evening. I could do that while laundry is going, no problem, except that since it was so early, I hadn’t received any tax documents in the mail from my banks and mortgages, yet. I’d managed to pull some 1099s from online, and just needed my mortgage statement for my old house. I couldn’t pull that from online since I don’t have an online account with that lender who had recently bought over my loan from my original lender. So I was a little stressed about that. On the drive home Tuesday, while I had all this on my mind, Mr. W said that his son had decided to come over that night and stay over. “Maybe he’ll already be there when we get home, and then we can all go out for dinner!” he said. I immediately thought of the lingerie hanging on the drying rack in the spare room (where Son normally stays when he’s over) and the piles of dirty laundry on what would be his bed. Crap!! All my financial stuff is also kept in that room, so I’ll have to pull all that out of there FAST to get out of Son’s way. I hoped Son wouldn’t already be there, cuz I don’t want him to walk into a room with embarrassing laundry all over the place and then my having to kick him out of the room so I can pull receipts and statements. So…things to do ASAP:
* finish laundry
* pull tax stuff
* see if the mortgage statement miraculously made it into our mail box; if not, then get on mortgage lender’s website and make a new account so that I can download the statement immediately

It also occurred to me, as I’m thinking of all this, that I’ll have to wait until Son leaves to clean up the guest room and bathroom, launder the bedsheets, etc, and I can’t do it Wednesday because of the tax appointment, so I’d have to do it Thursday. So Thursday, I gotta clean the house and guest rooms, get fresh sheets put on, find time for a haircut, AND oh, crap, Mr. W’s daughter needs black work clothes for a new job she got as a singing hostess at an upscale restaurant. She needs this before the weekend, and I’m busy all Friday with my out-of-towners, so that only leaves Thursday, too. I felt the stress mounting with all these impending deadlines, and a rare headache started creeping in. That car ride home seemed interminable. I have things to DO, man!!
“I don’t think I’m gonna be able to go out for dinner with you guys,” I told Mr. W. “I have too much crap to do.”

When we got home, Son wasn’t there yet, so I immediately went to work putting stuff on my drying rack away. On one trip downstairs, I noticed Mr. W by the front door, hand on the doorknob. He said to Daughter, “You ready?”
I asked, “Where’re you guys going?”
He said, “To dinner. Wanna come?”
I said, “I can’t. I’ve got too much stuff to do before [Son] gets here.”
So they left, and as Mr. W didn’t extend an offer to bring me back dinner, I figured I’ll just find something really quick and simple to eat while I’m at home. It started as a productive evening; I put in a new load of clothes and moved the remaining load to our bedroom, then boiled some instant Ramen on the stove and added yolkless Eggbeaters and baby spinach. While that was cooking, I pulled tax documents from the spare room upstairs so I could be out of Son’s way ASAP when he got there. I ate the ramen straight from the pot as I worked on the tax documents. Then I got online to register for a new account with my mortgage lender bank since indeed, my mortgage tax statement was not in the mail. At the final step, I was eager to get into my account and download the last missing item for the tax appointment the next evening. Instead, I was aghast when I read on the monitor, “Your password will be mailed to you within 5-7 business days. You may then come back to this website, put in your login, and enter that password to access your account online.” I don’t have FIVE TO SEVEN BUSINESS DAYS!!!

An unfeminine word escaped my lips. The headache was greater, and I felt sick. I was feeling sick pretty soon after I ate the ramen, but it was more than just a nuisance now. It was incapacitating. By this point Mr. W and Daughter had come home from dinner, and I showed him the message on the screen. He said the same unclassy word, and was upset about my inability to be prepared for the tax appointment the next day. I teetered upstairs and fell over sideways on the bed, hoping to ride out the sickness within a few minutes. An hour went by. Another hour. I told myself I’d be up to move my laundry from the washer to dryer once the clock reached 8:15p. Everything hurt at 8:15 and I was severely nauseated, so I stayed in the same prostrate position. (I couldn’t tell if the body pain was sickness-induced, or due to the 4-mile hilly run I took Daughter on the day before, or maybe it was the heavy weightlifting I did at the gym at lunch.) I heard Son arrive. Soon Mr. W came to see what had happened to me. I mumbled that I needed to get downstairs and see about my clothes in the washer, but that I couldn’t move. He asked if they just had to go into the dryer, and I said I’m not sure, I’d have to see what the clothes were because some may have to be air-dried on the drying rack. He left. I receded from reality again, and was soon after aware of the sounds of the washer and drying going downstairs, so I knew that Mr. W had put in additional laundry, which meant he took mine out of the washer and likely put the load in the dryer. I forced myself up to go downstairs, opened the dryer and pulled the damp, hot clothes out of there, closed the dryer, and went back upstairs to put them all on the drying rack. Mr. W said something about how they’re not dry yet, and I responded that if this particular load dried in the dryer at the setting he had, all the clothes would shrink. I arranged the wet mass on the drying rack, and then went in the bathroom and threw up.
Half an hour later, I threw up again.
Fucking ramen. I figured I’d been eating so well now for so long that my body totally rejected the preservatives, chemicals, sodium and MSG in the instant ramen, which I’d always known is one of the worst things one could eat, but there was one package left and SOMEONE had to eat it so it doesn’t go to waste. It was soooo not worth it.

The next day, despite not sleeping well at all, I forced myself to go to work, knowing I was going to abandon my judge on Friday to pick up Jordan at the airport, and we’re in trial so he’s very anxious about my not being there. He even offered his WIFE to pick Jordan up so that I didn’t have to take the day off, but of course I couldn’t let her do that. I threw up at home before we left, and felt so much better after doing so that I figured I was fine for the rest of the day, but was wrong and threw up again at work. I’ve never vomited 4 times like that in memory. Fucking ramen. I couldn’t believe I still had ramen to throw up after 14 hours; my body was obviously not letting any of it go down. I pensively sipped at only a mug of cool tea all day on Wednesday. Mr. W ended up trading our tax appointment with one of his friends, who had a March appointment, so at least that pressure was gone.
Around lunchtime, I’d totally forgotten it was yoga/pilates day at work, which I normally participate in, but I couldn’t do it. I instead crawled into the jury room to nap at lunchtime, and dry heaved a little upon waking, but didn’t vomit again. I could just feel the pregnancy rumors starting at work.

I did get better throughout the day, enough to try a small bowl of plain miso soup for dinner, and altho my stomach protested a little with a small stab of pain, it didn’t come back up, so that’s a good sign. Mr. W and I also went to some clothing stores and got Daughter her work clothes on our way home yesterday, and shopping is much faster without her, so that’s out of the way. She was happy with our purchases. This morning, I was dying of thirst and weak from malnutrition, so I sucked up two cups of soy milk for breakfast. My stomach protested a little, but insignificantly, so now I’m having more tea at work. I’m slowly expanding my food capacity again. Today, Daughter and I will go get haircuts after work and she needs her work shoes and I wanted to get her running shoes, so maybe that can all be done in one shot. Then Mr. W will help me clean the house. It’ll be okay, I tell myself.

I vowed to never eat instant ramen again.