a tasteful predicament

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I don't know about all y'all, but I love spicy food.  Like when the sauce bottle cautions, "Use one drop at a time." No, really.  (If you've ever had Dave's Gourmet Total Insanity, you know what I'm talking about.  If you think that stuff hurts going in...).  Whether it's salsa, sauce, or some other form of the blessed kick, spicy shows up on a daily basis in my diet.  Great, right?

Well.

That all changes when your taste buds grow - and I'm not talking about developing a pansy-er palate as you get older.  I mean, something is wrong and they swell to three times their normal size.  Your tongue hurts and every taste is amplified.  You can still taste what you ate last Thursday for your mid-morning snack kind of amplified.  You never knew that dish you are currently masticating does not, in fact, comprise ONE flavor, but thirty-four - and now you can identify each of them.

As an individual unfortunately prone to cold sores for the past couple years (apparently people in the U.S. start getting them when they hit age 20), I am used to taking a collective month-long fast from spicy foods each year (acids/spicy food exacerbate symptoms).  This past week, however, has been a novel adventure.  Yes, I have a cold sore... but no, this is not the typical experience.  My tongue looks like it's a petri dish of pink warts (too grotesque? sorry...), and needless to say, my regular consumption of spicy foods has been drastically altered.  I've waited it out a while, but recently I've decided to get others' opinions:

Mom:  "Oh, Sara, you better get that checked out."
Christian:  "Whoa, sweet."
Dad:  "Buck up."
Dentist:  "I'm not alarmed."
Internet:  absolutely nothing helpful

Although these sources have been largely unhelpful, I have learned that enlarged taste buds are probably the result of the same things that spike cold sores: stress, heat, tiredness, eating spicy foods, etc.  I tend to get pretty severe cold sores, so the taste bud weirdness is probably part of the package.  Ugh.  Hopefully these puppies cool down soon.  Seriously.  This whole being-burned-by-mild-salsa thing is killing me.


In the meantime, given the probable causes, I think I have ample argument to go sleep in a nice, air conditioned room.  For a long time.  And have ice cream when I wake up.  Eh? :)

a woeful epistle

Alas!  Dear Friend,

Perhaps it is the kindred spirit of dear Anne of Green Gables rattled to wake in me a speech utterly dramatic (I may or may not have spent an hour reading just now...), but nevertheless, I am afflicted sorely with recently felt and soon-to-come woes.  O awful pang!

Shall I number my misfortunes?  Please, do dam thy tears:

I am a most miserable Irish set dancer.  Indeed, graceful motion alone seems to elude me.  How terribly dreadful! You would imagine that out of my six feet and half inch, some part of me might want to cooperate with another, but - alas! - it is hopeless.  More than that though - how dearly I wish to be Irish!  Even in my imagination!  But when one has not red hair (Anne, be happy!), nor Gaelic tongue, nor feet of an Irish dancer, what can be done but to succumb most despairingly to one's own fate?  I thought perhaps taking a class this summer might cure me of my clumsy malady, but as the mirrors in Dance Room 301 so brutally honestly showed last night (my first class), my future remains bleak and ever so American.

When one finds despair in a particular corner of life, often he or she copes by finding joy in another, no?  Words provide such hopeful solace for my wilted soul, and so naturally, I turned to Dictionary.com to browse my favorite words (no, really... I'm not being facetious on this point).  What greeted me but this story flashing across the home page: "Obscure language isolate will die with this woman."  A language?  Dying?  It happens all the time - and it is occurring with greater force every day as people learn global languages - but how sad it is!  This particular language is called Kusunda; not only is it moribund (worse than endangered - no kids speak it), but also isolate (meaning that it is not related to any other spoken language).  At any rate, this story dampened further my already drenched spirits.

And lastly, I have little joy for which I may hope in the near future, as tonight I begin my first math class in four years.  Granted, it is only a summer course in college algebra, and I honestly do not find mathematics to be the dismal plague I so often describe them to be - in fact, math was once a favorite subject of mine... but where the open wound of my wearied heart craves the salve of sesquipedalian locution, poetic verse, and vibrant musical tones, it is slathered with a coarse cream indeed: sharp points of rigid numbers and dryness of exact measurement.  How tragical!  What hope can sustain me?

Friend, it is a pity to lay my griefs upon you so heavily now in our brief acquaintance - do please find it within yourself to forgive me.  Thank you.  Thank you ever so much for your patient ear and sympathetic visage.  It heartens me.  I can now surrender myself to the grave - or math class - content to know that I went with a speech most romantic.  I am ever eternally, gratefully yours,

Sara