A Snapping Turtle in my Stomach and an Absence of Water

Someone hit a water line in Downton Delray, effectively shutting off the water for several blocks. A great inconvenience.

It’s due to storm all afternoon and I woke up with a dreadful sense of vertigo and nausea, cancelling my volunteer work for the day. Up North, I get tunnel vision and a migraine that feels like a giant iceberg on my amygdala, while down here, I feel nausea collecting in the back walls of my throat and vertigo that won’t quit.

I finished Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned today and began reading Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Only, I stopped just after the first chapter when my roommate decided to idle in front of me, her cheeks turned downward, her chest facing me while she texted someone on her phone. It was the expectation of another conversation, her idling presence, that added to my resentment and derailed my concentration. I resented her for that and stopped reading my book.

She demands entertainment all the time and finds it hard to sit still and enjoy the quiet, while all I want is quiet and the wonderland of my books, especially when I begin a new book that captivates and enchants me such as this one.

I find it odd that the water is out while a rush of nausea has taken hold of my nervous system. It is raining like it does in Georgia today, rain through the fronds of the palm trees, stippling the cobblestones of our courtyard while the reptiles dance and dart in between the stubble of the bushes.

I have plenty of sparkling water and ginger ale to settle my stomach but am debating getting some soup delivered.

H said to avoid the temptation to crawl into bed with whichever means necessary, and yet, today with this sudden sickness, that is all I want to do.