Brush With Death...Or Not

It's been entirely too long since I wrote last and I appologize for leaving you, my faithful (and by now, possibly nonexistent) readers without any musings to help you pass the time. I'll try harder to think more, observe more and subsequently write more. Crissy, this blog is for you…so you'll stop hounding me to post something new. Stern encouragement is obviously effective with me, so thanks!

Anyway, enough of the niceties…I've got a story to tell you. Like to hear it? Here it goes…

The other day at work the minutes and hours passed much like they normally do, with me hunched over my computer occasionally leaving my cubicle (or 'office' as I refer to it when talking to people who are unwise to the fact that I'm not of senior enough stature to actually possess a door in my work space) to refill my drink, shuffle to a meeting, or ride my Razor scooter to the bathroom.

Around noon I made my way to the kitchen, prepared a peanut butter and honey sandwich (the first I'd had since high school, easily) and went back to the salt mines. An hour or so later my stomach felt like it was cramping up. Tolerable, but mildly uncomfortable, and not the sort of cramping that is a result of digestion issues, if you catch what I'm throwing. It just hurt.

By 3:00 I was reeling. It felt like someone had reached into my stomach, wadded it up in their giant man hand and then started poking it repetedly with tiny sharp objects. I was miserable. After a team meeting I decided that I had to go home, curl up in the fetal position and hope that it would pass.

Around 3:45 I packed up my things and began the journey home (all 3 miles of it). I barely made it to the car and climbed inside in the same fashion that a pregnant woman would, easing into the seat, lifting my legs up and pulling them under the steering wheel and then groaning as I reached for the door handle.

"What on earth could be causing this," I thought to myself. "I don't think I've ever been in this much pain."

After going through the list of probable causes, I simply couldn't figure it out. Perhaps I'd developed an allergy to peanuts and my stomach was slowly shrivvling up like a sliced banana in a Ronco food dehydrater. Maybe the Crystal Light that I had with lunch was made with a rare sugar substitute that my body couldn't process…it was pretty sweet after all. Or perhaps I just needed to pee really bad and my body somehow wasn't able to let my brain know it.

As I drove home I literally did breathing excercises and when I finally arrived at my front door it appeared to be backlit by a heavenly light. Upon entering I immediately changed into pajama pants, and the second that I did, the pain was gone. Not like, sort of gone, or hurt less…it was completely gone.

Amazing huh?!

Well, not really…here's where embarassing tidbits are revealed to provide explanations for a miraculous recovery.

You see lately it's been pretty cold and I'm not sure if you're aware, but tights are magically back 'in'. I don't necessarily like this trend, but in an attempt to keep up, I bought a couple of pair. So unbenounced to colleagues or anyone else who doesn't watch me get dressed in the morning (which is pretty much everyone) I've been trying to pull one over on Old Man Winter.

That's right, sometimes I wear a pair of tights under my pants in an effort to layer up and keep warm during Starbuck's runs, etc, etc. It's not a big deal. That is, until the very tights that were supposed to keep me safe and warm instead started squeezing my guts so tight that I could barely move without yelping like a wounded dog.

You see, kids…apparently tights and eight hours of sitting on your ass don't mix…like oil and water or Red Bull and anything. I experienced that most intense pain of my life thus far as a result of wearing an article of clothing that's name is in and of itself a warning. They're not called "comfort hosiery" or "body hug" for a reason, they're called "tights" because they're f'ing tight!!

After figuring this out and having left work early with an assumption that I'd be curled up in a ball for the remainder of the day, I wasn't quite sure what to do. So I did the only thing that made any sense…logged onto the internet, checked my work email to make sure that I wasn't missing anything and flipped on Oprah.

Let this be a lesson to us all that wearing tights under pants for more than a few hours is a bad idea. Not only that, but when or if people find out that you wear tights under your pants…they'll make fun of you.

Go ahead and laugh it up. But I will say that that day my legs were warmer than usual.