Exhaustion, Sexism and Red Meat

So I started the day out at 7:30 this morning after sleeping 14 straight hours.  Rather than feeling refreshed, I felt like death warmed over.  Figuring I just had a classic case of “over-sleep”, I pressed through, got showered, and made it out the door to go help out Mandy by watching her two adorable boys for a few hours.  Thankfully the boys were highly cooperative by being extremely good-natured and adorable the majority of the time I was there, as evidenced by the following pic:  

I was still feeling weak and kinda puny when Mandy made it back and suspected it had something to do with the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything in 24 hours.  Partially because I went to bed at 5:30pm yesterday and partially because my band hasn’t been cooperating much when it comes to solid foods.  Ugh, no fun.  I still had a ton of errands left to run and I knew if I went home I’d only crawl back into bed.  So once again I pressed on and proceeded with my errands: fueling up my car, getting it washed, hitting the libary, and finally stopping to get the oil changed. 

As I walked in the door at the service station, I was greeted by a big, buff, blonde guy behind the counter who was immediately waaay too personable for my taste.  I just wanted to sit quietly in the corner and read my new library book without being bothered.  But he kept “checking” in with me, telling me things were going fine with my car, as though it were in major surgery.  At one point he popped his head around the corner and said, “Hey sweetie, can you come with me, I want to show you something.”  Thankfully he was only referring to the uneven tread on my tires, indicating the need for a tire rotation and alignment.  I was half afraid he was going to offer to “rotate my tires” by his tone of voice. 

Thankfully I was out of there soon and proceeded to stop by my hubby’s work to surprise him and grab a bite to eat.  Lunch was a mexican chicken salad of which I was only able to keep down about 5 bites worth.  Again – ugh, no fun.  Afterwards, I stopped by a couple more stores to pick up some household items and made it back home around 5pm.  Still feeling icky, hubby expressed his concern that I might be anemic and talked me into eating a hamburger patty for dinner.  I was worried that it would be too bulky and that my band wouldn’t cooperate, but I ate slowly and it went down relatively well.  Thirty short minutes later, I could already tell a big difference in my energy level.  Though I’m still somewhat tired, the fuzzy-headedness is gone along with the bone-deep weariness.  I don’t know if it was the iron or the protein or the fact that it was the most food I’ve been able to keep down at once for a week, but it did the trick.  Let’s hear it for red meat! And more importantly (and inadvertently unrecoginzed the 1st time I posted this) a really smart hubby!!!