Acute Viral Gastroenterits. Tummy Flu. Whee.

I'm still not back in my own skin. This is a really unpleasant and creepy feeling. College and late high school were very very good to me ... I had my fair share of drug use. I NEVER felt like this. Not good.

4 baths, 3 changes of sleeping venue, at least 3 changes of sleeping clothes (including the total loss of them at one point), and I still can't comfortably sit still. Replace sit with a number of other words, like sleep/stand/slouch/lay down, etc, and you get the picture.

First shot they put in my IV was a painkiller. I still don't understand this one. The majority of pain was from the massive stomach upheaval when some group of collective dumbasses brought huge smelly bads of Wendy's food into the ER waiting room. I should have upchucked on them. Then, from the doc poking around on me.

Of course, at least it did help with all the multiple BPs they took. I've got blood blisters from the damn cuff. Why the fuck do they always insist on slapping a cuff on the arm that had the surgery? I am SO sensitive. Assholes.

IV. Three x-rays. Urine sample (which is just always fucking fun when you're dehydrated). Blood tests, which he took through the heplock -- and then wondered why it was going so damn slow. Shoulda barfed on him, too. Oh, and buddy? "As little adhesive as possible because I'm allergic to it" does NOT mean "lets wrap tape all the way around her wrist for the IV tubing." Asshole. The nurse that took it out had to cut the stuff off me.

I only know one of the three things they shot into my IV along with the saline, and that was the standard Phenergan that I had to ASK for -- I'm barfing, HELLO -- but they happily shot me up with a painkiller that is still totally fucking with me over 12 hours later.

I don't feel good.

Okay, I'm not technicolour power yarking anymore ... but the dizzy out of body thing I've got going on is far worse in many many ways.

Ptooey.

Theowho?

I don't know what I am. Eclectic Catholic, perhaps. I've touched the Other World, so to speak. There is No One Truth. My faith is a wide and generously forgiving creature, touching points of knowledge from everything I've absorbed and incorporating it into something distinctly my own.

I still wear a little gold cross. It's hanging not all that far from the pentacle tattooed on my hip, or the Eye of Horus that will eventually be on my lower back and part of a larger blended vision of combined Faith.

I believe in Free Will, only to the extent that we are allowed to make certain choices within the threads of our pattern. The keystones, the laylines, the basic warp of our lives, our Destiny, is pre-ordained. The weft in between is where we're allowed to make the most of how our Fate is woven.

Too much "wrong" can happen to those using Free Will to the very best extremes for any other course of belief. If Free Will was so effective, then logicially speaking, the life of that Good Child would always flow along the same comfortable lines of Will.

But Bad Things happen. No matter what choices we make, there's always what seems to be a "wild card" thrown in that tosses our lives out of our chosen path. It's no wild card, it's Fate, and it's guiding back towards the path Destiny intended.

Fate, you see, is not a fickle mistress. Fate is true balance. There is neither good, nor evil, nor right or wrong. The Wheel spins equally, and the Fate of one is balanced by the Fate of another. Fate chooses without bias, through that single half-blind eye that the Sisters of one mythology share.

It's the turn of a card, the fair lot drawn while another gains the short straw. Someone must win, someone must lose. Life works that way. There can never be one extreme without the other.

In the end, everything balances out.

In perspective, it may seem unfair. Cast your lot beside that of another, and see how he feels. Or another. Or another. Tally up the good and bad amongst you, the life of total hardship of one to the fairy tale life of another.

Black and White become Grey.