new york is cold but...

so I had this great brunchy lunch with saasha on wednesday, just before my train home, good talk, good food, and it was all nice and fun and satisfying at a beautiful little place in brooklyn (on myrtle, between washington & waverly), so after I finished my horseradishy eggs I ordered a meatball sandwich to go, said goodbye, and then I schlepped my things down to the subway, and then into penn station, where I bought black & white cookies for those at home who demanded them, and a large iced coffee for myself because I was sleep deprived and possibly a bit hungover, long talks and cocktails with chris the night before til after 2, not asleep til after 3 and then jumping up at 9 to start packing up and rushing around, and anyway, the iced coffee, it was hard to juggle all of my stuff and an iced coffee, and even with it I kept nearly nodding off as I waited for the boarding call and then, on the train, fifteen minutes down the road and a migraine kicks in so I take the excedrin and feel the madness of coffee + migraine pills and I listen to my music and read my magazine and concentrate on not grinding my teeth or chewing my cheek or clenching my fists and after a few hours I feel better, and hungry, and so I eat that to go sandwich, and it's awesome, this soft, triangular bread so that it's almost like a pocket or whatever, full of cheese and sauce and meat and I think (when did I switch tenses anyway? no matter - ) about how this is actually my first meatball sandwich in about three years, the last one being one I got delivered and thoroughly enjoyed on an evening when the kids and I wound up afflicted with our first (of two) truly awful stomach flus during our first six months in new orleans, and the violent vomiting of said sandwich was enough to put me off of them for quite a while, but this sandwich, wednesday's sandwich, that sandwich from brooklyn, this triangular delight, it was so good, it was so soft and juicy and...
it was 3 or 4 hours before my stomach began to throb. I ate lord knows how many papaya enzyme tablets. I pleaded with my stomach. you know, silently. I read my book (the lovely bones) and refrained from moaning aloud only because I am extremely self-conscious and the train was packed. I thought about the double irony of a) my recent history with meatball sandwiches and b) the fact that on the trip up it had crossed my mind how truly awful it would be to get all vomity on the train. and it was, friends, it was. goddamn.
nobody has ever flat out told me that they like to puke, although I do know folks who've done it as part of a performance, for shock value, or as the result of a dare, and seem to have been able to walk away feeling fine. I have always hated to puke, and it's not an exaggeration to say that I did it nearly every day of my pregnancy with nash, and then again with my pregnancy with liam, and that with that second nine month stint, something, presumably related to my gall bladder gone bad scenario, shifted and vomiting became more horrible, more painful and always with this almost comical projectile violence. and that has stayed on, friends. the broken (or are they just bruised?) blood vessels around my eyes tell the tale.
so, I'm home. and it's good to be home but it'd be better to be well. it was a great trip but it would have been better to not finish it off with a pukefest on rails. I'm back on sugar until I'm feeling better, because ginger ale is a really important part of life right now. I haven't puked since wednesday, but I hurt, I hurt all over but especially my stomach, ow ow ow.