O, Bitter Irony

For two weeks, I had stomach flu. Not the horrible gut-wrenching over-in-two-days kind but the slow torture kind that had me confined to a diet of plain crackers, plain chicken, plain noodle soup, and ginger ale for two weeks. TWO WEEKS, people. And I am a girl who likes food. In a simple, uncomplicated, not-confusing-it-with-love-but-just- enjoying-it-for-its-own-sake way. I like how it tastes. I like cooking it. I like the over-the-top descriptions of it on restaurant menus. I like sitting around convivially eating it with other people. I like different colors on my plate. For me, food is one of the rare few unalloyed (well, except for the waistband thing) joys of life.

And for two weeks much of that joy was denied to me. Every once in a while I'd go wild and have some applesauce for the vitamins. But venturing farther afield than that, I quickly learned, was courting disaster.

Then, finally, blessedly, the flu subsided. This week, for the first time, I ate a normal variety of food and felt fine. And it tasted GREAT.

That lasted a couple of days. Then I got a nasty head cold, complete with scratchy sore throat and completely stuffed nose.

Now I can eat whatever I want. But I can't taste it.