Hoping my gynecologist doesn't make great Bacon Turkey Bravo sandwiches (Or: I'm still sick and not fit to be out in public)

I emerged from my haze of fog today, my illness that pinned me to the couch for the past seven days, to return to the world of normalcy, maybe do a little work, maybe have some conversations with people that are not J or the dogs, or talking to the characters on 90210. I've been feeling better, sort of, save some major congestion in my right ear, which means I can't really hear anything except this high-pitched ringing sound it's causing, and when I went to the doctor this morning she looked in there with her little ear-inspecting instrument, and she laughed, and said "Woah! You've got so much fluid in there!" and I laughed too, because apparently I had so much fluid in there it was kind of funny, and then I asked her what I could do about it and her expression turned more solemn and she said "you just have to wait it out."

So I'm opting to, you know, get off the couch while I wait it out, and returned to the newspaper office today and stopped over at Panera Bread to get some lunch and I was waiting for my soup and salad, standing there, cringing at everyone, trying to make them understand that I was there but I wasn't exactly all there if you know what I mean because I can't hear out of my right ear for Christssakes, except I CAN hear my my own voice, and other noises I might make, like swallowing, very loudly, like I'm in some cavern, and how is a person supposed to live like that? And I noticed this guy who works there, who is always very friendly, just chatting it up with all the customers and I squinted my eyes a little and realized he looks kind of like my gynecologist and then because I really wasn't feeling up to snuff, I think, I started to wonder if maybe he WAS my gynecologist and that I'd just never recognized him because in the doctor's office he's always wearing a lab coat or whatever, and today he was wearing Panera clothes.

I couldn't believe it and thought about how it probably wasn't good that my gynecologist was moonlighting at Panera Bread because, first of all, how come he wasn't making enough money at his practice? What kind of place was I entrusting my reproductive organs to if the doctors have to get additional part-time jobs at local eateries? Also, if you're a reputable doctor, wouldn't you find that kind of job - the kind of job where you're handing out samples of freshly baked cinnamon buns out to strangers, which is exactly what this guy was doing - beneath you? Not that a job at Panera is beneath anyone, believe me, I love those guys who make me my You-Pick-Two combo meal with soup, salad and an apple as a side, it's just that, you know, I figure it might be beneath a doctor. A good doctor anyway.

After standing there frowning at the guy for the brief period before they called out my name to let me know my to go order was ready (see? another reason I love it there, your food is ready in a flash) and then really, really thinking about it, I realized that the Panera employee was undoubtedly not my gynecologist, they just looked a little bit alike. Which, honestly, is also kind of weird.

Anyway, what I learned today is that it might be another good week before I'm feeling back to my normal, healthy, non-delusional self. And that's ok. I've become incredibly awesome at "resting" (watching as many episodes of "The Girls Next Door" as is humanly possible and all our movies on DVD, over and over again).

Once again things don't go exactly as planned

Last night I decided to make some dinner for J and me, because I was just getting to that stage of being sick where I still wasn't feeling that hot but was also getting bored. I decided to make soup, specifically Pasta Fagioli, which is this traditional Italian soup with pasta and beans and is one of the four or so things I can make pretty well without messing it up or stressing out. Plus, soup. I figured that would be good for me in my state. A cure in the form of food, I thought. This soup, it takes a long time. You sort of add things little by little, letting it simmer for a while. The recipe I use comes out of a cookbook compiled by Italian-American women, and always yields a ton, a whole, huge pot and we can eat leftovers for several days.

It was almost done, and of course it was after 9 pm, as J and I can't ever seem to get it together to eat dinner earlier than that, and I tasted the soup and decided it needed more salt, so I picked up this cylindrical container of sea salt we got at a gourmet store one time. I think we'd meant to give it to someone for Christmas or something because we don't normally go around buying gourmet salt for ourselves, but we've been using it, and the thing is the grains of this particular type of salt are kind of big, and tend to stick together, so you really have to shake the container to get anything out, and I don't know if it was maybe because I was sick and a little more easily frustrated than usual, but I couldn't get any salt out and began shaking really hard and before I knew it the plastic top had dislodged from the container and all the salt, all of it, had fallen into the pot.

At this point I started screaming "Oh no!" and J ran into the kitchen to see if maybe I'd hurt myself or fainted and I had to tell him that I'd shaken the salt container too hard and poured all the remaining salt into the pot and, of course, he started laughing, because I mean, I guess it was funny. It was, it was funny. I don't know if it was more or less funny than what we did next - J decided we could maybe resolve the issue with science, by draining all the broth and rinsing all the pasta and soaking it a little to remove the salt, and then trying to save it with tomato sauce. So we did all this and settled onto the couch and had each taken a few bites before we sort of put our bowls down and admitted, "It's still pretty salty, isn't it?"

So just so you know, just in case you ever accidentally stir your entire three-quarters full container of sea salt into your dinner, don't bother trying to save it, because we've tried and it doesn't exactly work. And since it was already so late and we were tired, we just sort of broke off a few pieces of some really good bread I'd bought to go with the soup, ate that, and then polished it off with some jelly beans left over from Easter. I've accepted at this point that we're never going to be culinary experts, exactly. But we know every restaurant in town.