Some Thoughts on Thankful and Being More of It

I just had a 24-hour bug that racked my guts and left me praying to God that it would stop or that I would just die. Apparently I didn't die, but it looks a little like I did. Meanwhile Penny cried like a banshee and I kept asking Bryan, Can't we give her something?! after he already gave her something.

Her tooth broke-through her gums this morning and I broke-through my malaise of hopelessness to find myself several pounds less myself and also, more thankful than ever. Maybe a state of hell is required to really really appreciate, say fresh, cool, water, drinkable right from your very own fridge.

When my war-torn lips met the glass, and the cool oasis washed the torrid, sickly thickness from my Sahara-bruised throat, my first thought was OMG, Do people know water is this good? And my second thought was Well, I will write about it. Blogging as the proverbial hollering from the mountaintops.

For overhearing my declarations to God, my husband helpfully sided, Well, there are no Atheists in fox holes. Except for these Atheists in Fox Holes. And I agree with the exception. But there is some telling (my telling) about what happens when you have lost all hope, when you have no one to count on that might pull you through, like a solider with a gun, and it is this: people like me start babbling from the toilet and get on the verge of becoming as thankful as ever.

I diverge.

My brother sent me the photo above from France and titled it Restaurant of Death which, I might add, could not have come at a more opportune time. Poisson is Seafood in French, which could be mistaken for poison in English, which would be funny if it wasn't SEAFOOD that POISONED ME and made me wish for an untimely death. You see, I ate oysters on the half shell from a brunch buffet. It could have been just one bad oyster that sent me to hell. Or two. Or three. Or the whole dozen I ate, there is no way to know for sure.

As I write this, I realize selecting raw oysters from the plethora of other well-cooked items on a brunch buffet is a Bad Idea. Hindsight is a bitch. Guess I get my kicks where ever I can find them. In fact, I am feeling their ghost right now, squarely in my stomach and back.

And so I walk around, a shell of my former self, admiring all that is/was, amazed at this new, more thankful perspective, post purge.

So, should you poison yourself with poisson? Find God in a fox hole? Learn French? Drink water? The hell if I know.

Update 1/16: I love fact checkers in part because I am not one. My dear friend Laura read this post and immediately scoured a report by the GAO on exactly the topic of oyster poisoning. It turns out, raw oysters do not turn many stomachs. Only 32 people per year get sick from the bacteria (Vibrio Vulnificus, smarty pants) found in raw oysters. The report concludes that the FDA and Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference cannot agree on a common goal to reducing infections. I would say, if you can save just one person...Thank you, Laura, for saving me for oysters in the future.