I made it back to the farm by 10:30pm and it was clear to me that the head cold was coming on. What what what could I do to help my immunity? I didn’t have my normal home ‘potions.’ I dug into my vitamins for tomorrow in advance – C, D, Echinacea, Zinc – yes, that all should help. What else could I do? Oh I know, I have garlic in the kitchen, I can cut a clove up and swallow it. Supposedly raw garlic is so powerful in antioxidants it helps fight colds and flu, right? So that’s what I did, and then I quickly got ready for bed.
It felt so good to be finally laying down. I had hoped everyone was still at La Moscadella enjoying themselves. I could hear the rain tapping as I closed by eyes. I must have drifted off, when all of a sudden – wow, I felt my stomach feel super sour. My goodness, was it too much for me to eat the garlic raw on an empty stomach? Maybe I needed to eat an apple to help balance it out? Ugh, this hurts. I can’t even get comfortable.
Oh no, is this the soup finally doing it’s thing? The soup that expanded in my stomach to make me full all evening. Here to say, throwing up, just is not an option. I haven’t done that since I was 7 years old (you read that right), and I avoid it at all costs. I’m looking up sour stomach on my phone and what is best to do. This was going to have to be worked out another way. And so it was, every hour on the hour all night long I was up in the bathroom working it out – adding chocolate thunder to the sound of the rain outside. Thankful that I hadn’t had even a bite of food or a drink of wine at Thanksgiving, it would have made this night even more challenging.
In between bouts I thought – ‘Gee, with my hourly toilet flushing, I sure hope I’m not disturbing Mike and Veronica below me.’ ‘How am I going to fly home like this? I simply can’t. This needs to go away tonight.’ I sneeze. Oh yes, great. My head cold is hitting now also. Traveling like this will not be fun. Oh, I longed to be back home in my own bed and to not have to deal with the next two days of preparation to leave and then traveling all day home.
At this point, I am so relieved that I opted out of all activities during the day on Friday and could just focus on healing, packing, and taking my final COVID test to make sure I was clear to fly home on Saturday. About 4am, I finally fall soundly asleep.