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I cannot take Sudafed.
I came back from China with the weirdest cold but then, I wasn't surprsied considering all the spitting and sneezing that took place in every public place. Combine it with the most killer jet lag I've ever experienced (15 hours of time difference makes for big jet lag) and I was ripe for one of the nastiest head colds I'd ever had.
It began on the flight home and went into full throttle the first night back. No need to go into detail here but suffice to say, there I was trying to sleep with every box of Kleenex I could find in the house. Normally, I would've slept it off but before I knew it, I had only 3 hours of sleep and it was time to get up and go to Temple for the Jewish New Year.
No sniffling and davening allowed there so I decided maybe I should take Sudafed.
Big mistake.
It made my head feel like it was a balloon detached from my head. My sinuses dried out but my eyes were constantly tearing and it gave me a killer sinus headache.
To top it all off, the Temple I'd been going to for the last 15 years changed Rabbis and the new Rabbi was "different," to put it nicely. He was a diminutive Argentinean man who came to Los Angeles via Sweden (he was THE Rabbi of Sweden for several years) whose accent made Charro sound like a Rhodes Scholar. It was as if Ricky Ricardo went Jewish and was conducting the service with malapropisms everywhere. "Hocus Pocus" became "focus pocus," and so on. The service was supposed to start at 10 but we didn't get to the first prayer until 10:50 because he was too busy entertaining us with his rearragned English while regaling the congregation with stories of his multicultrual life, his Yiddishe mother in Israel, etc. etc. OY!
Then the unspeakable happened. He introduced Happy, an African man in a dishiki. (Is that what you call those African shirts with wild prints that look like short Mumus?) Happy, we were told, would accompany us during morning prayers with drumming and African tambourine. ??!!?? If had selzter in my mouth, I would've done a spit take. I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen and heard it with my own eyes and ears. I kid you not that when it came to the Amidah prayers, he began drumming and asked the congregation to chant along with him, African style! Where was I? Zimbabwe Beth Sholom? After an hour an a half of this strange cultural mash-up, I'd had a splitting headache. For the first time ever, I slinked out of a High Holiday service. I just wasn't man enough to take the multi-culturalism any longer. I felt like I was in a bizarre episode of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm and with the Sudafed swirling in my head, the drum beat drumming, I was sure I was on Jewish acid.
It was time to go.
Iit only got worse.
When I arrived home, I was immediately shuttled to my landlady's house for New Year's lunch. Initially, I was looking forward to an enjoyable break from the mystery meat Chinese food and veggies I had been eating for the last two weeks. But I was wrong, wasn't I?
Just some background, my landlady is as sweet as can be. God Bless her, she's a Holocaust survivor and with her husband (Russian, who's always insisting that visitors should drink) and her daughter and son-in-law, they couldn't make a more nice family. But I forgot about what can happen when it comes to food and people come from deprived backgrounds. They eat when given the opportunity to make up for what they didn't have back then. For me it was a disaster. Whatever effort I had spent the last 5 months eating clean went out the door (I was good about not eating white flour, avoiding processed sugar, etc..even in China where I just went veggie when the mystery meat appeared). It was time to suffer.
First, I was pried with wine (hey, goes well with Sudafed, right?). Then I was offered (read "force fed") home made gefilte fish, (unusually sweet for some reason). Then the rest came down for me like plagues on the Egyptian Pharoh. Matzoh balls (the biggest I'd ever seen), noodle kugel (Manhattan city block sized portion), chicken (half) and stuffing (oh Hell, if you're going to go all carb, do it right) and lemon honey cake (two servings, at my landlady's insistence). Let my stomach go!
In the end, I just couldn't refuse. Each time I protested that it was too much, I imagined my landlady gaving me a look as if all her days at Auschwitz were in vain -- maybe because I wasn't appreciating the food which she slaved so hard to make and which she was serving us to make up for the food she was denied there? A shonda that I should waste a morsel. As I rolled myself out of her apartment, I was convinced that I was going Jewish hell for even thinking that. BTW, do you do know what Jewish hell is? Eternal guilt.
I came in after lunch feeling as if I had a nuclear reactor fuel rod burning in my stomach. Suddenly, all those carbs in me made it difficult to even keep my eyes open. (Pile some jet lag on that plate, won't you?). I just had to lay down. An hour later, I woke up sweating like Wayne Newton on "Dancing With the Stars" and my heart racing a mile a minute. And for a moment I wasn't sure if I was going to puke or poop. (Thanks for sharing, Jack). I finally did the latter, (thanks for sharing again, Jack) but that did the trick. It felt as if a weight was lifted off my shoulders (or belly, as it were). Good boy, Jack!
That night, I followed my other neighbos' advice and took good old dependable Alka Seltzer - Nightime Cold Medicine. This time there was no dealing with the acid flashback nightmare that was Sudafed. (In fact, my neighbor said 10 mg of Sudafed was way too much for my delicate little system). And you know what? All went well and I slept like a baby. This morning I woke up with barely a sniffle and my cold nearly gone. Now all I had to deal with was the big bowl of jet lag that I had on top of my head.
Here's wishing you a Happy New Year.
I came back from China with the weirdest cold but then, I wasn't surprsied considering all the spitting and sneezing that took place in every public place. Combine it with the most killer jet lag I've ever experienced (15 hours of time difference makes for big jet lag) and I was ripe for one of the nastiest head colds I'd ever had.
It began on the flight home and went into full throttle the first night back. No need to go into detail here but suffice to say, there I was trying to sleep with every box of Kleenex I could find in the house. Normally, I would've slept it off but before I knew it, I had only 3 hours of sleep and it was time to get up and go to Temple for the Jewish New Year.
No sniffling and davening allowed there so I decided maybe I should take Sudafed.
Big mistake.
It made my head feel like it was a balloon detached from my head. My sinuses dried out but my eyes were constantly tearing and it gave me a killer sinus headache.
To top it all off, the Temple I'd been going to for the last 15 years changed Rabbis and the new Rabbi was "different," to put it nicely. He was a diminutive Argentinean man who came to Los Angeles via Sweden (he was THE Rabbi of Sweden for several years) whose accent made Charro sound like a Rhodes Scholar. It was as if Ricky Ricardo went Jewish and was conducting the service with malapropisms everywhere. "Hocus Pocus" became "focus pocus," and so on. The service was supposed to start at 10 but we didn't get to the first prayer until 10:50 because he was too busy entertaining us with his rearragned English while regaling the congregation with stories of his multicultrual life, his Yiddishe mother in Israel, etc. etc. OY!
Then the unspeakable happened. He introduced Happy, an African man in a dishiki. (Is that what you call those African shirts with wild prints that look like short Mumus?) Happy, we were told, would accompany us during morning prayers with drumming and African tambourine. ??!!?? If had selzter in my mouth, I would've done a spit take. I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen and heard it with my own eyes and ears. I kid you not that when it came to the Amidah prayers, he began drumming and asked the congregation to chant along with him, African style! Where was I? Zimbabwe Beth Sholom? After an hour an a half of this strange cultural mash-up, I'd had a splitting headache. For the first time ever, I slinked out of a High Holiday service. I just wasn't man enough to take the multi-culturalism any longer. I felt like I was in a bizarre episode of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm and with the Sudafed swirling in my head, the drum beat drumming, I was sure I was on Jewish acid.
It was time to go.
Iit only got worse.
When I arrived home, I was immediately shuttled to my landlady's house for New Year's lunch. Initially, I was looking forward to an enjoyable break from the mystery meat Chinese food and veggies I had been eating for the last two weeks. But I was wrong, wasn't I?
Just some background, my landlady is as sweet as can be. God Bless her, she's a Holocaust survivor and with her husband (Russian, who's always insisting that visitors should drink) and her daughter and son-in-law, they couldn't make a more nice family. But I forgot about what can happen when it comes to food and people come from deprived backgrounds. They eat when given the opportunity to make up for what they didn't have back then. For me it was a disaster. Whatever effort I had spent the last 5 months eating clean went out the door (I was good about not eating white flour, avoiding processed sugar, etc..even in China where I just went veggie when the mystery meat appeared). It was time to suffer.
First, I was pried with wine (hey, goes well with Sudafed, right?). Then I was offered (read "force fed") home made gefilte fish, (unusually sweet for some reason). Then the rest came down for me like plagues on the Egyptian Pharoh. Matzoh balls (the biggest I'd ever seen), noodle kugel (Manhattan city block sized portion), chicken (half) and stuffing (oh Hell, if you're going to go all carb, do it right) and lemon honey cake (two servings, at my landlady's insistence). Let my stomach go!
In the end, I just couldn't refuse. Each time I protested that it was too much, I imagined my landlady gaving me a look as if all her days at Auschwitz were in vain -- maybe because I wasn't appreciating the food which she slaved so hard to make and which she was serving us to make up for the food she was denied there? A shonda that I should waste a morsel. As I rolled myself out of her apartment, I was convinced that I was going Jewish hell for even thinking that. BTW, do you do know what Jewish hell is? Eternal guilt.
I came in after lunch feeling as if I had a nuclear reactor fuel rod burning in my stomach. Suddenly, all those carbs in me made it difficult to even keep my eyes open. (Pile some jet lag on that plate, won't you?). I just had to lay down. An hour later, I woke up sweating like Wayne Newton on "Dancing With the Stars" and my heart racing a mile a minute. And for a moment I wasn't sure if I was going to puke or poop. (Thanks for sharing, Jack). I finally did the latter, (thanks for sharing again, Jack) but that did the trick. It felt as if a weight was lifted off my shoulders (or belly, as it were). Good boy, Jack!
That night, I followed my other neighbos' advice and took good old dependable Alka Seltzer - Nightime Cold Medicine. This time there was no dealing with the acid flashback nightmare that was Sudafed. (In fact, my neighbor said 10 mg of Sudafed was way too much for my delicate little system). And you know what? All went well and I slept like a baby. This morning I woke up with barely a sniffle and my cold nearly gone. Now all I had to deal with was the big bowl of jet lag that I had on top of my head.
Here's wishing you a Happy New Year.
By the way, for those of you looking for a Temple to go to in the L.A. area but want to know how they each rate, check out this link:
Los Angeles Synagogue Review
Los Angeles Synagogue Review
1 comment:
jesus this made me laugh. considering how i usually spend yom kippur (taking percaset and watching gay male porn from the '70's). you're experience makes me understand that i have done the right thing in changing my Jewish High Holiday "tradition". next year maybe i'll try playing african drum music as a soundtrack to the porn.
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