What A Week!

I vowed last week that I would start each day at The Swamp House w/ a cleansing smoothie and would try to eat healthy for the whole week.

Well . . . I did well the first day. I had the smoothie for breakfast (I have pictures!), a fat free latte and a tomato sandwich on double-fiber wheat bread. And then, and then, 2 vodka tonics, 3 glasses of wine, bacon on my salad, a Thai noodle dish and a dram of Baileys when I got home. Really bad.

But that was nothing compared to what happened the next day.

July 4th dawned bright and blistering hot on the Georgia coast. I had planned to cook a few Southern classics to celebrate the holiday: okra and tomato macque choux, blueberry pie and fried chicken. I made the first two and they looked great. Now, this would only be like the second time I tried to make fried chicken, so I was worried about the chicken cooking all the way through from the outset.

I didn't do such a good job w/ the chicken. Let's skip the boring details and suffice to say that by 7PM, I drank an entire bottle of Perrier because I didn't feel very well and then, well, I basically puked my guts up for the next 5 hours. Seriously, I was so sick that at one point I considered calling 911. I thought I was choking on my own vomit, a la Mama Cass.

The dogs were horrified. So was I. I went through 3 nightgowns before I finally pulled myself into the shower and cleaned up. I couldn't lay down for fear that something would come burbling back up, so I sat up on the couch and stayed awake all night. I couldn't even keep down the two saltine crackers I nibbled on. Life was not good.

I stayed in the fetal position for most of July 5th. My ribs felt like I'd been kicked by a donkey. I couldn't laugh or cough for the next two days without feeling extreme pain.

On Wednesday night, my chest started itching and I thought I'd been bitten by a spider. But no, I developed a terrible case of poison ivy all over my stomach and chest. I used calamine and tried not to itch, but by Saturday morning, I couldn't even wear a bra. I was headed home and figured that my Technu would do the job, but ended up at an emergency clinic on Sunday for a shot of cortisone after my 3rd sleepless night of itchy hell.

Thought my week of bad luck was over until Monday afternoon when my boy dog, Murphy, got into a yellow jacket's nest and, when I tried to get them off of him they swarmed onto me, causing me to shriek and jump into my friend's pool where I drowned the little bastards. But not before two had stung me, one right in the lower buttocks.

I've come to the conclusion that either the necklace I bought at the estate sale on Saturday is cursed or that all of the above is my subconscious effort to avoid dieting. I did lose 5 lbs last week, but it sure was the hard way.