Fox Mulder, Solve This.

This entire post is brought to you by a Sunday afternoon spent laughing at Texts from the X-Files on Tumblr.

Saturday afternoon, Mum and I ate at Five Guys Burgers and Fries. We split a burger and our fries. She did not get sick. Then, Saturday night, Jennifer, Brandon, Andy, The Brother and I all went to a restaurant. I ate a tenderloin, grilled asparagus, and had a Coke. Brandon and Jennifer both had that same tenderloin. Jennifer had the asparagus, too. None of them got sick, either, but a mere two hours later, I was home, throwing up every part of my meal and possibly my very SOUL.

No one else had any symptoms (that I know of), which means I was allergic to something and not food-poisoned. But WHAT was I allergic to? This is the greatest question of my life. It is asked more than any other question. "I know I had an allergy attack at the Art Institute, but WHY?" "I suddenly got a migraine and threw up, so I must have eaten SOMETHING I was allergic to, probably with nitrites or nitrates, but who knows?" These are the questions which define my life.

Knowing me, it was a preservative and/or Liquid Smoke. Do people put Liquid Smoke over grilled veggies?* Or somehow, mango made its way into a pork sandwich. But which? Now I am afraid to eat anything. ANYTHING. Except I am eating Amy's Cheddar Bunnies, because I know those don't make me sick and also they are crackers. Crackers are good for you. They aren't poison. Usually. I think.

I need Mulder and Scully to come here and find out what the culprit was. I mean, I might have been POISONED. The Brother may have been trying to kill me. He could have put arsenic in my asparagus. Or this.

 The scary thing is, I will probably never know what caused this. But I haven't been this ill since my gallbladder was at its worst, and I don't think there's any organ left inside me that can be removed without killing me. People need their stomachs. Or their intestines. Or livers. Or at least one kidney.

In other news, I enjoyed a relaxing Sunday watching episode after episode of The X-Files. I would rather have felt well and done this:

Maybe some other Sunday. Like, next week. Or the week after. Or whenever Rachael feels like Thai food or I have time to make Pad Thai again. One of the two.

I really love Thai food.

*The answer to this is YES. Why? WHY?

Thai and Thai Again, a Christmas Miracle

I love Thai food. Really. I love eating as much Thai food as I can and then bundling up extra Thai food to take home for my next meal. I have eaten Thai food for breakfast. I once woke up late at night, went to the kitchen, and ate cold Thai food out of a carton in the fridge, the room lit only by the light from inside the refrigerator.

Delicious, delicious noodles.

Today, I met Rachael and the Bitter Knitters in Fort Wayne, for coffee and hilarity. When all my sleeve decreases were finished, Rachael and I decided to try a new Thai place that had just opened not too far away. The restaurant, Kozé, was gorgeous inside. We ordered, I ate yummy spicy noodles, and then we left. I drove Rachael back home. I drove home.

I went into the house. I dropped my various baggage from the trip. I went back to the car and took out the leftover Thai food. I went back inside, put the food in the fridge, and I went for my knitting.

Which.

Was.

Gone.

I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. My hands began to shake. A section of my brain turned off and another section turned on. This part of my brain said, "KNITTING KNITTING GONE KNITTING GONE WHERE LEFT? KNITTING KNITTING KNITTING."

My hands texted Rachael asking if there was any chance she had picked up my knitting with hers...?

I called Kozé. They had no knitting.

Part of me melted. Or exploded. It would have been better to leave my purse. A purse has ID inside it. Credit cards can be cancelled. Even if I bought the yarn I'd lost again, those days, weeks, MONTHS of work were gone forever. The yarn was in the parking lot? Or at the side of the road? Or worse, lost on the highway where it would never be found again, except perhaps by a road crew or a clean-up group, picking up trash and throwing it away in bags. I prayed.

My knitting would be tossed into a plastic bag and into a landfill. No one would enjoy it. No one would be warmed by it. I would never see it again. All that work was gone.

I called the restaurant again. I described the bag again, where we'd been sitting. I told them I wanted to check again before I made the hour and twenty minute drive to Fort Wayne again. They looked. Nothing.

Mum volunteered to drive because she thought I was apoplectic. We made it fifteen minutes down the road before my phone rang. It was Kozé. They'd looked again. They'd moved chairs around, crawled on the floor, and there was the knitting bag. It had been knocked back into the dark beneath the window next to our table when Rachael and I had left. It was safe.

"Oh, thank God!" I exclaimed. I thanked them profusely and told them I was on my way to them to get it. "Thank you so much," I said. "You have no idea, really. This is such a huge deal!"

I hung up the phone. I burst into tears. Mum burst into tears. (It's a sympathetic thing. One of us cries, the other cries.)

We drove to Kozé. We picked up the knitting. It's here, now, next to me at home. Mum and I celebrated on the way back with caramel apple ciders. I kept thinking, this is exactly like the parable of the shepherd except instead of a sheep it is yarn and I am a knitter and not a shepherd. This is the exact real-world application all my Sunday school teachers tried to give us. All the examples they gave (lost homework, toys, sweatshirts) fell short compared to the real deal.

The missing knitting bag, filled with an almost-finished sweater, stitch markers, scissors, a novelty needle gauge, an adorable sheep-shaped tape measure, a pattern, and the space pen Dad bought be because he thought it was so cool. All in all, several hundred dollars worth of stuff, safely home.

It is a Christmas MIRACLE. Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost yarn!