Sicko (with edit)

 Today I am thankful for a good dream. 

I pray it is the last dream of a certain soul.

I'll blame the fever. 

So - 

I fell ill at work yesterday. 

Probably an ear inflection, 

which led to me taking the sulfa drugs I still have in my possession so I wouldn't have to go to the doctor, 

those drugs made me sick to my stomach, 

I turned white as a ghost. 

My colleagues sent me home. 

Now, I have vertigo so I called in. 


Sigh - 

I can't walk straight due to the vertigo 

the last thing I want are my patients thinking I'm drunk or somethin'. 

*****

Vertigo, 

I always get that when I'm near an old friend I love but refuse to allow myself to feel it. 

Salman Rushdie claimed vertigo to be due to the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to stay strong. 

My first bout of vertigo occurred on 8-19-08 when someone whispered "[y]ou're still pretty.  Let me know what happens with that guy." into my ear. 

I think I shook my head up and down as if I were saying "yes."  If I did that, that was one promise I never kept. 

Truth be told, it's over between me and "that guy" but I'll never quite know what happened with him or why he did the weird crap he did.  How does one talk about what one does not understand? 

The vertigo was so bad, I fell in a bookstore buying a book for the vertigo instigator.  It was book on how to do chiropractic at home.  

It's still on my bookshelf.  I never remembered to bring it when I ran into him.  

I guess I could mail it -but- after thirteen years, it's probably a tad bit outdated. 

That initial bout of vertigo lasted over a week.  I ended up in the ER due to dehydration. 

*****

Today's bout of vertigo could be due to the dream. 

It was a beautiful dream 

but it's creepy because I don't want to dream of certain people anymore. 

Since, I've started putting bay leaves under my pillow, 

I don't dream unless I forget to raid Apollo's tree. 

I was so sick yesterday that I fell asleep as soon as I made it home from work forgetting my new ritual. 

The dream is wonderful. 

I'm in a winter wonderland. 

I see my old friend playing in the snow 

with a young woman with long dark hair. 

She's wearing a tan trench coat. 

They make snow angels. 

They get into a snowball fight. 

It's beautiful. 

I wake up after one of them throws a snowball at me

and gets me in the face. 

Maybe the universe is letting me know that I can stop praying for him now. 

*****
We are so very differant. 

He likes the snow. 

I like being an ice queen. 

There is a memory of being seventeen years old and ice skating for the very first time. 

I actually remember him asking if I wanted to go to the skating rink.  We always had unplanned adventures.  I was excited until I stepped into the building. 

This was always my idea of skating.  Remember I grew up in the 70's with a bunch of obnoxious neighbor boys.  This was how we skated outside in the court yard of the apartment complex where we grew up.  I have many scars from all that.  Great times! 

This was his idea of skating: 

Could two people be any more different? 

That was the day I probably when I realized how adorable my friend was shaped because I couldn't stand. 

My memory is....well....of me continuously falling and winding up on the ice with a nice view of his behind. 

That poor man. 

I wonder how many times I fell and took him with me? 

That poor man. 

At least I didn't punch him or purposely push him into a wall. 

Still, that ought to give him some good karma with the angels. 

*****

I know I'll think about him when the city creates that ice rink every winter. 

I'll probably never see the ice sculpture show now (since he lives up there).  My kids are begging me to take them into the mountains to go shopping.  In the past, they never bought anything at Silverthorne.  We just looked around, walked by the river and wound up at the Dillon Target to buy things they knew they'd actually wear.  Yeah, they had a lot of flannel.  

Uh.....no.  We have a Target two blocks away from the house that carries flannel. 

We don't have to go to Silverthorne anymore.  Castle Rock is closer. 

The shopping in the mountains thing is now a running argument in my home.   My kids hate to shop. 

I wonder where this is coming from? 

Strange....

*****

To be sure, this needs to be the last dream of him. 

If not, I'm going to have to order another laurel tree from Greece. 

Happy New Year, 

S. 

Edit Two Days later 

My bed smells like bay leaves but I'm sleeping better than ever. 

Could be the illness but I'm going to credit the fact that I'm not terrified of dreamtime. 

They say if you write a wish on a bay leaf and burn it, it'll come true. 

I now have a ton of used bay leaves.  What should I write on them? 

Maybe I should wish to increase my IQ?  

I do have a bit of a warning. 

I took two sulfa antibiotic pills justifying that it is often prescribed for sinus infections and that I hadn't taken one since I was 16 years old. I thought that, perhaps, the doctor was wrong about the allergy back in the '80's. 

I also did not want to expose myself to the germies in the doctor's office. 

So, I popped a pill that he accidently prescribed to me in November. 

Don't do that. 

Just don't. 

Don't take drugs that you know you are allergic to. 

I feel like I'm itching from the inside out. 

There are welts all over my body. 

Even my fingernails are swollen. 

I used to think that I got the chickenpox for the second time at the age of sixteen. 

I remember scratching so much that I have prominent scars on my chest, arms and legs from all that scratching. 

The skin eruptions were probably from the allergic reaction to the drug. 

Don't tempt fate. 

It's uncomfortable. 

It's a shame that I can't go to the store for calamine. 

Hugs, 

S.