Getting my rocks off

I've had to take time out from recanting stories about my older child, because...dudes! I have been so sick since I posted last!

I was SO sick. How sick was I?

• I missed the Big BobNoxious Birthday Lake Bash on Saturday night;
• I missed Toya's birthday/Karla's going-away bruncheon at Threadgill's on Sunday morning;
• I could not sit up for approximately 24 hours; but instead had to lie on my back, in the dark, with my eyes closed;
  

and, to rub salt in the wound,

• I was EVEN completely unable to read the new Harry Potter book, because the words swam around so much on the page that I had to go throw up every time I tried!

In a nutshell, I was totally fine until about three o'clock on Saturday. I was happily making seven-layer dip for the big party, and I was just about to get out the sour cream, when - BAM - double vision, nausea, and big-time vertigo just slapped me across the face. I crumpled to the couch, and then to the bed, where I stayed except for periodic trips to the bathroom to vomit, hold my swimming head, moan, and then vomit again.

And, what was it? Flu, maybe, or a bad bug? Perhaps an underdone bit of potato? No, silly, it was ear rocks, of course! Otherwise known as "Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo," - although I fail to see how something can at once be simultaneously "benign" and "paroxysmal" - this apparently common phenomenon occurs when these little bits of particulate matter, which normally float around in your inner ear, get dislodged from their proper floaty position, and start bumping up against the little hairs that help you stay balanced. The result, as my doctor told me, is like "being on a really really fast, intense, merry-go-round. Except it doesn't stop." (He's a really cheerful man. He then just as cheerfully told me that "It'll probably get better in a few days. If it doesn't, come back to see me so we can make sure it wasn't a stroke.")

So, to treat this - it hasn't gone away, mind you, although I'm not vomiting anymore - I take motion-sickness drugs, and have to do some sort of head-positioning exercises to move my little rocks back around where they should be.

The stupid crap that happens to your body as you get older, I tell you. (I also pulled a muscle the other day...in my TONGUE. While YAWNING.)