Okay, so 2005 hasn’t gotten off to great start, but I expected it. How could I not? After a Chinese dinner with H.E., my fortune told me, “The current year will bring you much happiness.” Just my luck. It was New Year’s Eve at the time. December 31, 2004, and only a handful of hours before the “current year” was over.

So 2005 began with pain and rain and doctor’s appointments. My computer nearly died, and my commute’s eerily fried, and you already know about my artist rank falling.

But let me tell you about how my commute is fried. It’s ruined, I tell you. I cannot stand the thought of getting into my car and driving anywhere. Anywhere. All because of a Kodak Moment I’d rather forget.

I’ve mentioned before that this year began with pain, and I wasn’t kidding. Weird weather changes occasionally trigger my migraines, and with the endless storms suddenly giving way to hot Santa Ana weather, I developed a monster of a migraine Tuesday afternoon while at work—my second migraine of the year. After Tylenol Sinus proved ineffective, nausea from the pain threatened to take over so I took a Relpax and left for home early.

Not nearly early enough.

Not even a third of the way home, I puked all over myself. It just sort of took me by surprise while I waited for a red light to turn green, and my free hand went up as though to catch it. I probably looked a little silly with my hand at my mouth, as though I prettily exclaimed, “Oh!” But it’s hard to look pretty when the eggplant parmesan you had for lunch and all the iced tea in the world spews out of you in a huge chunky gush like you just struck oil. And the hand? The stupid hand acted like an NBA backboard and bounced some of that gush onto my face and glasses, all over my jacket and jeans and God knows what, and there I sat, stunned and soaking as the frickin’ red light turned green.

What else was I to do but drop my hand to the clutch, move into first gear, and go? Like some automaton, I drove, all wet and sticky in my mess. There was no way in hell I would pull over and clean myself up. I was too much in pain to think about much else but go home. I HAVE TO GO HOME.

So there I drove, stewing in my spew. I’d gotten part of the steering wheel, the right side of my seat, the stick shift, and the parking brake. When I stopped at another light, I used my relatively clean hand to fish my cell phone out and call H.E. In a daze of shock and pain, I told him what happened and asked him to meet me at the gate to help me clean up. Then I put the phone away, wrapped my hand on the gooey wheel, and continued my commute as though nothing was out of the ordinary.

I drove like that for what seemed like hours, though it was really only minutes. The interior smelled like parmesan cheese, tomato sauce, and stomach acid, so I cracked open the window a bit and wiped a small chunk of eggplant away from my eye with a pitiful sniffle. If the sun hadn’t already fallen, my fellow commuters might have looked in at me and seen me crying tomato tea, and just the thought of that embarrassed me. I felt like I did when I’d peed in my pants as a toddler in school, standing beside my aunt in the motorcar so I wouldn’t get the seats wet on the way home. I darted my eyes at the cars beside me and hoped no one could see my shame.

Two-thirds of the way home, I started to worry about a repeat performance so I looked over at my empty lunch box on the passenger seat and sighed. Hey, I brought the eggplant parmesan in the box to work. I might as well minimize the mess and bring what was left of my lunch home in the same way, right? So I unzipped and flipped open the lid, and I set the box on my lap, ready for an encore.

None too soon.

At yet another light, I hurled into my lunch box like a girl possessed. Thank goodness my head stayed on straight because I puked again right after that. The torrent was so strong, there was absolutely no arc in the fall. The vomit came out of me in a thick straight line from open mouth to open box, and I refused to glance over at the driver on my left to see if they noticed.

Exhausted, I closed the lid, set the box aside, and drove home. Then I parked, got out of the car, and waited for H.E. to come by with towels and cleaner. I must have been quite a sight when he arrived. Ravishing, in fact. Look the word up. It works.

The rest of the night was kind of a hazy migraine blur. I got undressed. I showered. I went to bed. And H.E. cleaned up after me.

After a long, awful, sleepless night, I went to my car to go to work. Except for the seatbelt straps, it’s relatively clean, but the smell is still there, taunting me like a bag-covered seat in a movie theater, and I’ll tell you—I don’t think I want to eat another eggplant parmesan for a long, long while. With all that tomato sauce, it looks much too much the same coming out as going in.

And the sight of that just makes me want to puke.

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