gross | Literature and Libation

I never understood this phrase. I’ve seen a lot of dogs barf, but afterward they are usually quite chipper and ready to play. I have never been ready to play after being sprawled in front of the toilet/sink/bathtub for an hour. I’m usually ready to sleep, or possibly roll around on the floor pathetically. If the term was, “Sick as a Leper” I might be more understanding.

I started feeling strange on Wednesday morning. I have a generally strong immune system, so feeling sick is an uncommon affair. I did not present with the normal symptoms of sickness, but instead felt strangely detached, almost “floaty” if you will. The closest thing I can relate it to is the late stages of a hangover or the early stages of a pain killer high. Either way, it was quite unsettling and made it very hard to focus on anything. I went through my workday pretending I was fine, trying to remember what spreadsheet I was looking at, forgetting, and having to remember again. I was confused as to actually how confused I was. I was in a bad way, but did not even know it.

My mind would not focus on the things I needed it to, instead I would begin to remember things from my distant childhood that made no sense in my given situation. I remembered a small playhouse that my sister and I had played in and a big spider that had made a nest near my water guns. A brief flash of a rat eating a Snickers bar at a terminal in Baltimore-Washington International airport shot into my brain, and was gone just as quickly. I even at one point remembered things from events that I had made up in writing or exaggeration. It felt like Salvador Dali had ripped a hole in my brain with a knife made of chocolate covered bumble bees.

I had made myself a promise to go for a run that day, in an attempt to negate the beer I drank over the weekend. Despite the strangeness of my aura, I donned my running attire and began to stretch. The sun seemed ridiculously overbearing, and my already rampaging mind made loose connections to Camus. I began to jog my normal circuit, but quickly realized I should not be exerting myself in any way, given my current state. My mind continued its frantic wandering, while my legs screamed in lactic objection. I finished a mile and a half before my body painfully demanded I stop.

Instead of continuing and completing another circuit, my exhausted mind decided to cut across a piece of grassland that separated two office buildings. It seemed a good plan; I would run about 1/3 of the circuit, return to my car and rest. My mind reached for the shade of the nearby trees, but my legs kept a straight and true path across the grass. About 10 paces in, my right foot sank – ankle deep – into a nasty bog. I surveyed the land around me. In my stupor, I had to failed to notice that this “grassland” was not in fact solid, but a mire of awful smelling water. I daintily crossed to the other side, attempting not to step in any more of the foul liquid.

Sweaty, exhausted, sort-of-high and stinking like a swamp, I managed to make it back to my office. I pulled my soggy shoes off and threw them in the back of my car. I drove, or floated, to pick up Tiffany from the Metro then somehow all the way home. I was completely lucid, but definitely not the person I usually recognize as myself.

At home, the feeling continued and made the entire evening very surreal. I believe we were watching “Hoarders” on TV, but I may be blurring one of the previous evenings into this one. The next logical thought was that drinking a beer might settle my brain. One Stella Artois later, I was ready to pull a Rip Van Winkle. I mumbled something incoherently to Tiffany and glided peacefully up the stairs.

The last thing I remember is trying to read the Transition of Juan Romero and thinking I was in Mexico. I may have also heard thunder, or read about thunder, one of the two. The next 8 hours involved some of the most vivid, border-line hallucinogenic dreams I have ever experienced in my short life. I was at one point searching from a Troll doll in a dessert (yes, like a giant hot fudge sundae), at another arguing IT with several of my bosses, present and prior, in a hotel swimming pool. The content of the dreams was not any more random than usual, but the sheer reality of the whole thing made me unsure what was waking and what was not.

I woke up to Tiffany’s lovely face, assuming it was another dream about waking from a dream. I slowly realized it was the real reality, not the weird time-loop one from the night before. Tiffany asked me if I felt well enough to go to work. I think I responded with nearly inaudible whimpers. My head still felt detached from my body and I was incredibly hot. I crawled to my computer, and apparently (even though I still don’t remember) sent an email to my supervisors telling them I wouldn’t be coming in. I promptly passed back out of consciousness but do remember Tiffany kissing me goodbye for the day.

The rest of the day was full of more confusion and dream-laden sleep. I went to eat breakfast, and mixed two kinds of cereal together, for no real reason. After Tiffany suggested I drink some lemonade for Vitamin C, I almost poured myself a glass of white wine. I attempted to play a video game on my computer, but only managed to open 10 instances of the same program without realizing what I was doing. I decided bed was the safest place for me. I spent the next 11 hours watching 15 minutes segments of random TV shows while slipping in and out of my strange coma. I really have no idea what else I did on Thursday.

It was not until 10:00 PM that I regained some level of mental composure. I informed Tiff of my crazy dreams. She very kindly nodded, smiled and gasped in disbelief at the appropriate times. She’s pretty awesome; most people would think I was just out of my mind. I fell asleep again at 11:30 PM and slept all through the night, remembering only a few crazy dream/nightmares this time.

I woke up this morning feeling mostly human. I was all reattached in the proper places and could actually focus on things for more than 2 seconds. I excitedly prepared for work; not because work is exciting, but because I didn’t feel half-way to zombification for the first time in ~40 hours. I put on one of my favorite shirts, grabbed my other work junk and skipped out the door to my car.

I opened the driver’s side door.

My nose was hit with a smell more rancorous than the set of the Sex and the City movie.

My swamp shoes were still in the trunk of my car and had been for 2 whole days; in direct sunlight plus 90 degree weather.

I may need a new pair of running shoes.

Food does not last long in my office. Not because it spoils; there are more potent forces at work here than wussy mold and puny bacteria. It is consumed by the office en-mass; the cubes a black hole, the kitchen its event horizon. Anything edible, left in a remotely public area, disappears before most people even knew it was there. I am not saying this in disgust of my coworkers, but instead out of sheer amazement and obscure admiration. It takes a force of will (and stomach of iron) that I am not blessed with to pull off this voracious feat.

During the 2009 holiday season, one of our graphic designers brought in a fruitcake, as a joke. This “cake” was truly an abomination upon baking and there was little about it that even seemed edible, never mind palatable. The batter was some strange hybrid of pumpkin, spices and Devil’s Food Cake, while the haphazardly drizzled icing was of the burned cream cheese variety. I’m pretty sure she said she got it from Ross. This thing had green candied cherries. Green cherries. Even Sam I Am wouldn’t have touched this thing.

I have a rule that I will try almost anything once, so I managed to force down a very tiny sliver of this cake, much to the chagrin of my onlooking coworkers. The next hour could only be described as a fruitcake delirium, with my poor brain and stomach playing host to the nightmare. After recovering, I decided to place the cake as far from me as possible, which happened to be in our public kitchen. I left it there in hopes that someone would destroy it (if it even could be destroyed by conventional means) and went on my way.

I came back not an hour later to get some water (having been severely dehydrated from eating the cake) and noticed that the cake had not been destroyed, instead someone had actually eaten a slice. A slice much, much bigger than the one that ruined my morning. I couldn’t help but shudder at the idea of someone actually enjoying this monstrosity. I went back to the designer who had brought the cake and informed her of the development. She was amazed and said she felt a bit guilty, as she never expected anyone to actually eat it.

2 hours later, the cake was gone. Completely. Not thrown in the trash, not forcibly stuffed down the garbage disposal, not melted to oblivion in the microwave; just gone. It had been eaten. By my Office. I cannot pinpoint which individuals ate it, so I assume the shadowy entity that is the Office simply engulfed the cake in a Poltergeist style manner. I did not notice anyone convulsing in their cubicle, or otherwise acting as if they’d ingested something their body would reject, so it is impossible to discern the ultimate fate of the cake. It has given the Office sustenance, that is all I know.

This morning, around 9:30 AM, someone left a container of “Chocolate Cheesecake Fudge” in the kitchen. A small section of this (about the size of my fingernail) damn near put me into a diabetic coma. As of this post, the fudge is gone. While I have no empirical proof, I believe it has gone the way of the fruitcake.

Update:

Becca has informed me that “4 boxes of yellow creme filled, fudge covered, nasty cookies” disappeared from her office in a record 22 minutes. Perhaps this beast is larger than I initially guessed.

In an attempt to understand/study my workplace, I have created a flow-chart of how to handle food in and around the Office:

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Sick as a Dog

There is no Office, only Zool