Crossing THAT Off The List!

I suppose before I can cross something off my "won't ever cross my lips" list, I should have it on the list first!

The latest item that needs to be put on before it's taken off is an experience I had on Thursday afternoon. [But let me just insert this in and ask a question: am I the only one that makes up lists after I've completed the task and then crosses the items off at the end of a project??? Let me know!]

Anyway, for the past several days, one team member or another has been sick, so it wasn't exactly surprising that I began to feel queasy to my stomach on Wednesday afternoon. I came home from work and at Krinny's suggestion, I took a 2-hour nap and felt much better!

I thought that was the end of my stomach issues, but Thursday I started feeling yucky again. So I began to go through the possibilities and realized I had two options:

1. I caught the stomach bug going around the team.
2. I had a very good reason to take worm medicine.

Neither option was preferable, but the second one just begged to be noticed. You see, it's a foregone conclusion that living in Asia means I am susceptible to getting worms or parasites in my food. We take lots of precautions with food we buy and prepare at home, but the honest truth is I don't know if the food vendor down the street is as careful as I am!

The solution isn't to stop eating from the vendors on the street; rather, we take worm medicine every couple of months just to make sure we're on the up and up instead of the down and out:).

So that's what I did, but I still didn't feel like I was running at full speed. As I was sharing this with Carolyn (who has an upper respiratory infection herself), she said, "Well, I have some charcoal if you want to take some."

HUH?!?

After convincing me that the charcoal helps with killing any toxins and posions in the stomach, I agreed to take some but wimped out at preparing the glass for myself. Do y'all remember the green and purple ketchup they came out with several years ago? I heard it tasted just like ketchup, but since I already had a preconceived idea about purple and green ketchup (eww!), I never tried any. I wasn't about to let that happen with me preparing the charcoal for me to drink.

Carolyn, being the sweet lady she is, put it all together and handed me the glass (yes, my eyes were closed). Just as I took the first sip she told me it was best to get down as much as possible. Oh boy, let the fun begin! Down, down, down it went and I chose to ignore the little fact that it was in fact charcoal I was drinking.

Still being a wimp, I set the glass down without looking at it and expected instant results. Later I was telling Krinny about this and she said, "Oh yeah! Charcoal does....." and I was thinking, "what rock was I hiding under that I had no idea that this is normal to hear that someone just downed charcoal?"

But I suppose there's something to be said for it all - I feel much better today, which is good!

Now I have a problem - was it the charcoal or the worm medicine that cleaned it up? I'm not real anxious to go through that whole experience again too soon!

Ah, well, now I can say I drank charcoal... better go put that on the list to cross off:).

And of course I'm not going to tell you what else is on that "supposed" list because you know what they say about never saying never.... :D.