The Pink Cup Giveth, the Pink Cup Taketh Away

I've written before about how, three mornings a week, I take a pink cup to work half-full of cottage cheese and peaches. The reason I use the pink cup is because it's tall and deep, ideal for avoiding spills in the car.

Little did I know that the pink cup would come in handy in another way last Friday...

So, there's been some illness recently in my house, and on Friday I was feeling fairly poorly at work, sort of achy and queasy and offish. I didn't feel quite bad enough to go home, but close. Here's how bad I felt: all I could stomach for lunch was a Coke.

Around midafternoon, I started to go south. Tylenol wasn't cutting through the achy feeling, and my stomach was feeling worse and worse. At one point, I announced to the guys in my cubicle that I was going to go throw up, but nothing came. By around 3:30, I was feeling bad enough that I needed to leave work, something that hasn't happened in several years.

When I got into my car, I put the pink cup in the cup holder, just in case, even though it was dirty with that morning's cottage cheese dregs. Sure enough, as I was driving across the freeway overpass with nowhere to pull over, I started puking.

With one hand on the wheel and one hand holding the pink cup to my mouth, I barely managed to make it down the other side and pull over. It was mostly the Coke, so it came out easy and filled the cup. I managed to reach across and open the passenger door and dump the cup into the gutter, and then round two started, another half-cup's worth.

Man, that wasn't fun, and the drive home felt like it went on forever. I hit my bed at four and didn't really wake up again until late Saturday morning. I had chicken noodle soup for lunch and then a Happy Meal for dinner, and I think I'm doing okay now.

I wonder if I'll still be able to use the pink cup for breakfast, or will it now carry nauseating connotations? I should have gotten a photograph of the cup half-full of vomit, but I guess I just wasn't thinking clearly....