To Blow or Not To Blow...

I ate some bad Chinese food at lunch yesterday, apparently. I got home from work about 5:30pm and my head was spinning. I had the worst headache I’ve had in a long time. So I lay down while my family eats dinner and within an hour I’m dry heaving in a Tupperware container on my couch. My headache turns to nausea and continues until bedtime. I manage to fall asleep after several hours of dry heaves but never actually producing any vomit. I try. It would have felt so much better to just puke and get it over with so that I could enjoy my nights sleep.

At 11:30pm, I wake with terrible stomach pain; the kind that doubles you over, makes you wanna barf and die at the same time. I sit on the toilet for 20 minutes, nothing. Lay back down in bed for a while, get up again and sit on the toilet for another 20 minutes. Nothing. I lay there in agonizing pain until it hits me: FUCK! I’m 95% certain that I left a candle burning on my desk at work. It’s now 1:00am and I’m having a total panic attack that I’m going to burn my entire business to the ground. Don’t get me wrong, with the way business is going right now, insurance money would be kind of nice. However, you know, all these years of work up in flames, not great.

“Ok,” I say, trying to psych myself up. “You’ve got this. 20 minutes there, blow out the candle, 20 minutes back. That’s it.” So I get out of bed, again, toss on some pajama pants and a hoodie, and get in my car to drive to my office. Five minutes into my drive, the stomach pains hit again. My eyes are watering. I’m trying not to speed because nobody else is on the road right now except for police. I’m 10 minutes from work. I’m dry heaving and sweating and trying not to mess my seat. I finally get to work, pull into the parking lot and barely get my car into Park before I am literally running to the front door.

I’m clenching so hard that I can’t focus so I drop my keys. It takes me forever to find the right key again because why do I have so many fucking keys on this key ring?? I finally unlock the door after jiggling it for two minutes because of course it’s stuck. I can already see the candle flickering inside and know I’ve made the right choice. I’m simultaneously filled with relief and so, so much regret.

I enter the building but, ya know, I’m alone in the middle of the night, so I have to do the whole thing in reverse to lock myself in. By this point, the alarm system is doing its hyper-speed chirping to let me know that I have to deactivate the system or the entire place is going to be swarming with cops in three minutes, wondering why I’m there and looking like a swamp creature without a bra.

My stomach is grumbling. No, that’s not even the right word for it. It’s a deep, guttural groan like nothing you’ve ever heard. I think my stomach may actually explode. Is this how spontaneous combustion happens? Shaking, I manage to turn off the alarm, and rush over to the candle. As I bend over to blow it out, I shit my pants. Like, not just a shart. Fuuuuck.

Then, I start laughing hysterically. I’m laughing so hard, it’s making the situation a whole lot worse, but I can’t stop. There are definitely worse times to shit your pants as an adult than alone, in the middle of the night, at an office building that you own…but it is still not ideal.

I waddle to the restroom to finish what I had started and clean myself up.

Finally feeling a bit better, I emerge from the bathroom, pantless, in search of a solution. There is no saving my pajamas for the ride home. I consider burning them in a trash can, but the entire reason I am here in the first place is to prevent a fire. I don’t happen to have any extra pants at my office, so I tie a spare hoodie around my hips and drive home buck naked from the waist down. I’ve never driven more carefully in my entire life, knowing there was no way in hell I wanted to explain what had just happened to an officer who pulls me over.

I arrive back home just after 2:30am, get myself actually cleaned up, and crawl back into bed; where my husband has slept soundly through the entire thing. Butt (get it?), my building didn’t burn down so that’s good. #cantmakethisshitup #shithappens #shittynight