My mishpucha

Last night, I discovered that I have a very low gag reflex.

This is not what you think.

I mentioned a while ago, or maybe not, that I picked up some sort of bizarre stomach bug last week. I ate a bad chicken. Ordinarily, I welcome food poisoning and stomach flu because I inevitably lose weight. Not this time. The only things I could stomach were carb-rich foods.

Not that cookies and bagel chips help when you’re feeling bloated and wishing you could barf. Last night, I tried to force the issue. I became very intimate with my epiglottis (my fingers reach! Who knew!?) and developed a newfound respect for bulimics. They work hard at what they do, people. Don’t dis them.

Today, I felt human at last, so I decided to put in a full hour at the gym — and that’s why I’m spent right now. I had been going three days a week, but skipped six days when I got sick. What a weird, weird body I have. I put on muscle and develop endurance quickly, but it all seems to vanish quickly, too. Six days away. Six. Six! I can’t get over it.

Instead of the usual nonsense, I thought I’d toss a few photos up onto the blog.

Here you have me and Jake at the San Antonio Zoo, some time in 1997. I’m looking quite tired, I think. Sporting a somewhat fuller beard and mush than I do nowadays, perhaps five pounds heavier, more hair. Note the Rasputin’s Records tee shirt. Rasputin is waving at you with his right hand, or perhaps he’s blessing you. Not sure which.

Jake looks happy. Odd that he’s wearing a jacket; nowadays, the kid complains if his bedroom temp at night rises over 60F.

San Antonio has a fine zoo. While we lived there, they had a Komodo dragon on loan from some other zoo. The SA Zoo also has an Aldabra tortoise exhibit. Aldabras are, if not larger than the Galapagos tortoises, similarly huge. Here’s a photo of a big fellow.

Later that same year, the three of us went to Las Vegas for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Which reminds me: next year is number 60. Oh joyous day! Sis, we planning anything?

NO, Jake is not flipping off the camera, although I wouldn’t put it past him. True story: once, when he was four or five, we were walking in the park when he noticed a boo-boo on his middle finger. He showed me the injured middle finger. Only the injured middle finger. And he asked me, “What’s this?”

“The bird?” I said, and burst out laughing, and then had to explain what was so damned funny.

We look happy here, don’t you think? We rarely take family photos, and when we do, we’re usually disgruntled over something or another (stuck in the airport, that sort of thing). I’ll bet we’d been drinking.

Karen broke her pelvis in early December. Not a terrible break (she didn’t need an operation) but it put her down for a good long while. The bone has healed, but she’s still having significant pain in her back, hip, and leg. Always a challenge to figure out what’s the MS, what’s the injury. Anyway, I wish she would get better so that we could vacation as a family. We haven’t been away together, all three of us, for two years, maybe more.

Okay, I’m rambling now. Time to go back to Kate Rothwell’s Somebody Wonderful, my first 100% romance novel unadulterated by psychic powers (Lilith Saintcrow) or — oh yeah — psychic powers (Holly Lisle). (In case you’re curious, I reviewed those books here and here.)

Kate, I’m loving it. I really am. Although, every time Mick calls Timona “Timmay,” I flash on South Park. Sorry.

D.