The beast within

Turns out that turning on the air conditioner (yet another concession to increasing age and decreasing ability to sleep off a rough night well into the morning) was the way to sleep in Istanbul. It continued to be a gorgeous city, although never that well suited to travel with a toddler in the near 90 F sunny days. Not enough playgrounds nearby. And I think M was more than a bit worried in a big, new city, and wound up trying to constantly establish a 6 ft circumference safety circle around A. Good luck with that in a city where even the mosque guards can be found cooing to a baby, giving him their walkie talkies to chew and slam on the carpets, and later young women take the same baby for a walk always within sight of his parents. The people were so lovely and kind, and loooooooove children. Their own, yours, that one over there, all of them. There was not much personal space for A to inhabit when everyone wanted to pinch her cheeks. She declared in the middle of the trip "I no like Esstanbul," which I'm sure was not referring to all the gelato she ate, the birds she chased or the food she happily gobbled up. M and A and Aunt P had a tour guide show them around for a few days while I was at the conference.

I finally hit my stride at said academic gathering. My poster was moderately attended, I chatted with a handful of attendees, at coffee breaks and lunches, I hung out with the Brazilians. It was okay. I had time to think about my own research and where to take it from here, and went a few steps forward during the meeting, listening to the various English-as-a-second-language speakers' presentations. Know what? In a meeting like that, where even the native English speakers are working hard to keep up with the galloping change in accents that roam the span of each session, more text on slides is a good thing. As is reading directly from a slide. I'm a convert of the extreme context specificity of the "little text; no direct reading" rule.

Once I got home, work is again slow, and so I feel the same. And in an ill-advised google search of Candida Diet (something I might at some point need to consider, due to a combination of the d&c after the miscarriage and probably the cortisone shots), I am once again reminded of why "we don't do google searches on medical problems", children. Ugh. Look it up - you can eat beef, eggs, macadamia nuts, and peppermint tea. Oh, and eventually work your way up to yogurt. It is depressing, but not as creepy as all the folks discussing it on the forums (children, if you didn't obey, and actually did the google search, for the love of Pete at least don't read the forums...). They are busy writing things about the Candida Die-Off in which the candida is described as being angry at you, who are not offering sugar on its altar of gut and other parts destruction and attacks you. And you feel like crap.

So guess who tried a mini-version of no caffeine (coffee beans and tea leaves are moldy, apparently), sugar or carbs today? Someone with a death wish who really should have known better, but thankfully had daycare for both child and dog at midday. And then drank black tea finally. And then had a pizza and ibuprofen for dinner in hopes that the sudden flu symptoms (huge headache, aches, nausea, and I kid you not, even leg pain from my back) would go away. They did. I'm chalking it up to either caffeine/sugar withdrawl, or the ability of ibuprofen to handle flu symptoms. And pretending I didn't read anything about angry microbes.

In either case, I will most likely be offering white bread and jam and coffee to "the beast" tomorrow for breakfast. M replied to my texts about how horrible this felt by telling me to "feed my Trill." Nerd.