Well. THAT was almost a bust.

What I did a really good job of not talking about online is that I’d scheduled a trip to the SF East Bay this past weekend. My intention was to surprise my Bean for her baby shower — Baby Boy Tipton will enter the world on or about May 5, and Shan, the other side of our 17-year friendship triad, cleverly scheduled the baby shower for the first weekend of my Spring Break. Ever my mother’s daughter, I suppose, I thought it would be lovely to lie on the RSVP and show up anyway.

Shan also generously offered to have me stay with her family, too. “Hooray!” thought I. “It’s been so long that her oldest daughter surely won’t remember me, and I haven’t even met the baby yet. What a lovely offer!”

And then I spent the first evening and night befouling her guest bathroom, courtesy of a stomach bug bad enough to make me vomit. A LOT. (If you know me, you know I don’t vomit. I’m almost always able to…um…work with gravity, rather than against it.)

(I know it’s faster to just throw up, but think about this: By the time whatever you need to eject is ready to be ejected, it could go either way, and if it’s formatted to head south, I don’t want it heading north.)

By Baby Shower Day, I thought I was better, that maybe I’d just eaten something that disagreed with me, but I wasn’t better enough. I went all woozy after showering and brushing my teeth was TRAUMATIZING. (If you generally don’t throw up and then you spend some time throwing up excessively, anything that engages your gag reflex is a problem.) I quarantined myself to protect my pregnant friend and the other guests; my hosting family was likely already contaminated by that point, and, thankfully, didn’t make me sleep in the garage. Instead of attending the shower, I curled up in front of some classic 80s movies, slowly eating red grapes and water crackers.

By that night, though, I was close enough to normal to venture out to dinner with everyone. I couldn’t eat much, but that wasn’t really the point — I was so happy to be keeping down the grapes and crackers (and the subsequent Jamba Juice) that I didn’t care.

The following day was some much-needed girl time with Bean and Shan — pedicures and lunch in the sun. That night, I was able to eat and thoroughly enjoy a joint birthday dinner at Shan’s mom’s house, where I used to spend about as much time as I spent at my own house.

Monday, I had a little more time with each of my girls before boarding a plane (without, finally, being forced to gate-check my carry-on-sized bag). In the end, I missed the excuse for my trip and managed to fulfill the reason for my trip, and that was even better.

My stomach still doesn’t seem to be completely back to normal, but it’s getting there. The fallout from being revived by grapes (mostly) and Jamba Juice is that I’m still craving a massive amount of fruit, either whole or in smoothie form. It’ll be months before we have any fruit in season here, but…I can live with frozen tropical fruit (and berries, until they come in), and I may have to make an exception for grapes and bananas. I haven’t been, generally — I can’t remember the last time I had bananas in the house.

But smoothies, man… Those are good eats.