The World According to The Flu

 

I haven’t had a glass of wine in a week! Up until this minute I haven’t even thought of wine. Or whisky. Or burgers or sushi or slap chips or shawarmas. My usual indulgences.

I’ve transitioned nicely between a grueling stomach flu – think food poisoning that lasts over a week, to a full on head cold/flu where some unseen bugs have invaded my soul, attacking every limb of my body. Making my neck too tired to hold up my head, and my throat ripped to shreds within. When I swallow, shards of glass scrape their way down. When I cough, there’s a mini explosion inside that leaves me momentarily crippled. So I lie as still as possible. Light hurts. I close my eyes to the walls that threaten to shrink this room into a cell. I squeeze my eyes closed and succumb to the flood of thoughts.

It’s amazing how a period of imposed starvation and suffering can help put your entire life in perspective.

Two weeks ago we were touring wine farms and gluttonously devouring eisbein with crackling (read pig’s knuckle with charred skin), and literally drinking mojitos on tap. Before that we drank goldfish bowls full of brightly coloured gin with syrupy flavours and bubbles and random bits of floating fruit. We bar hopped in the Waterfront, we bar hopped inland. We hiked and rewarded ourselves with wine tasting and a pie. There's a theme here...

 

Now, chicken noodle soup is my best friend. The packet kind where a toxic looking yellow powder with a few sad dehydrated noodles are dissolved in your sad rental house tea cup. Our counter top resembles a dishevelled pharmacy.

As I sip my tepid water, trying to fend off the dreaded dehydration, I realise I’ve been in holiday mode for the past few weeks. Then who an I kidding - I admit it’s actually been the past few months. Then I admit that it’s been since we retired in 2011!

When we lived on a boat it was a world in itself. People asked “what do you do all day?” but it had it’s flow. On the boat I busied myself with route planning and passing tools for repairs jobs. But I also learned to bake bread and I dabbled with beading, making anklets and boat shoes and bracelets. We hikes uninhabited islands and we sat in warm clear water with a beer in hand, contemplating our beautiful remote existence. The ‘real world’ was very far away in both philosophy and distance.

But now we are in limbo in a sense. We are living on land in between flights. Immersed in the lives of others. Watching the commuters, hearing the busied conversations of hectic lives. We are still far from this world in many ways and yet here we are. We need to carve our own path here.

It might be time to make some decisions and become a tad more responsible. It might be time to add up what’s left and invest sensibly and settle somewhere. To admit that we can’t live this wild and free life forever. To grow up?!

The doomsday newsfeeds creep into my conscience. ‘Economic crash on the horizon’, ‘house prices rising’, ‘fuel costs skyrocketing and affecting air travel’.

Health concerns loom. We’re not getting any younger. Where can we settle with health care?! That’s simultaneously affordable? South Africa? Spain? Canada? Panama? Mexico? Thailand? Who knows...

What is our budget if we’re to make it to old age? Should we own assets? Will we be homeless and starving at some stage due to our reckless ways?

And just when the fog outside threatens to crowd my entire sense of contentment, I remember that I’ve only got this illness for a few days. It’s not the end of the world. I’ll lose a few extra pounds. Not a bad thing. I’ll look at my bad habits and alter a few. Cut down on cheese and alcohol maybe. I’ll try to plan at least a year in advance. I’ll start budgeting. I will write. I will write. I will write. I promise myself today.

But I refuse to stop being free. I will literally die inside if I don’t find new adventures. Even if those are beach walks where the clouds tell new magical stories daily. I cannot choose a stable life. Uncertainty feeds my soul. There might be a little unknown motorhome out there somewhere in Europe with our names on it, or at least waiting for it’s Shiloh sticker?! What I know for certain is that there will be no mortgage, no driveway, no lawn to mow on our horizon. Not while our dreams of adventure are still alive.

I like wine. And whisky. But I must remember I’m not on a two week holiday. This is my life. I will appreciate the freedom and the privilege to peak into other lives, other worlds. But I won’t buy fudge. That’s for holidays. And bad for my waistline. We will hike and find obscure markets and thrift shop and visit old friends and make new ones. We will find cheap flights and visit family and cherish all those moments while we can.

I will try to live in moderation without disappearing into oblivion.

I’m not dead yet, therefore I am not done yet.

Amen.

 

Volunteer torture - a lesson in spas

 

I am defeated. I feel as if I’ve fallen down a flight of stairs and then been mugged. What’s more accurate is that I climbed up in an elevator to a chamber of torture, and handed money willingly over to be assaulted.

‘Come for a massage!’ my friend coaxed. She was smiling. She looked excited.

‘It’ll be great! Get all the kinks out!’ she promised.

‘It’s authentic!’.  And I suppose it was. Calming instrumental music played at the reception desk, while a few small and seemingly harmless Thai ladies came and went into the rooms beyond. We were greeted with deceptive smiles and soothing voices, and I was at ease. Spa-like vibes surrounded us. JW settled in on the reception sofas and I gave him one last chance to join, for a romantic ‘couples massage’. Not. Best decision he ever made.

 

It’s 72 hours later and I can only now lean back against a chair without an involuntary gasp or whimper from the pain.

Thai massage, let me tell you, is NOT a joke. I’m surprised I made it out with my spine in tact. Muscles unfortunately did not survive. It’s true that most of them existed on my body unused and unappreciated. They surrounded and protected my bones and were happily living a comatose life, covered with a healthy layer of fat. But now! Oh now, they want me to know how very unhappy they are. So far out of their comfort zone that they are making my life extremely unpleasant.

It all started out ok. I was led to a dimly lit room, left with a towel and asked to undress and lie face down on the massage table. The room smelled nice – lavender maybe. I was looking forward to my relaxing hour ahead. 

The scene of the crime

 

My torturess returned and chatted briefly and lathered up with warm oil. What could go wrong?

She started to rhythmically massage my back, and then suddenly she was all elbows and knees and things inside me popped and cracked and bent in ways they were never meant to! She was on the table, a nimble frog of pain-affliction. I would cry out, moan, exclaim, admit defeat – but all to no avail.

‘You too tight!’

‘Nopainnogain!’ her mantra and constant retort.

I was a prisoner on high alert. Each second a new, more excruciating pain than the one before. Each time she would show mercy on one part of me, it would immediately be replaced by a fresh new hell somewhere else.

My mind tried frantically to make sense of it all. Could it really be this bad? It’s just me. I’m overreacting.. OOOOOOOWWWWW! Nope, definitely not overreacting. I’ve had massage before so how can this be happening?! Oh, was that Swedish massage? OOOOOOOOOWWWW! Yep, maybe that was it. How am I going to survive an hour?! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH NO!!!!

And so it went. And went. No hour has ever lasted so long. And the grand finale involved me seated, with my hands above my head – picture the ‘I’ve been arrested’ pose, a bony knee jammed into my spine, and my elbows suddenly pulled backward until my spine formed an upside down L. Bent in half! Every part of my psyche, soul and body screamed ‘NO!!!!!!’. Irreparable damage had been done. Childbirth?! Pa! Bunion surgery? Nothing on this.

And then she was gone. Probably rolling her eyes at the disheveled mess left in her wake. Off to the next conquest. And there I lay. Knowing I needed to pull what was left of myself together, get clothes on! And make it back to the lobby without sobbing or falling in a broken heap in the hallway. And then I’d have to open my purse and offer up money!

The biggest insult of all were the tip jars with the name of each torturess, sat neatly and expectantly on the counter. And my own shame forced me to comply. And red faced, swollen and utterly defeated, we left.

‘Come back again soon!’ someone called out. Over my literal dead body.