Sarah almost dies. But then doesn't. And it's funny.

Hello everyone!

Guess what?  Now that I'm unemployed, my life is funny again because I have to leave my happy little cave in my house and go out and see things and do stuff.

Having a funny life, after what happened to me last night, is way overrated.  I like to call this story:  The time I also died on my Wedding Anniversary.

Hubby and I have a new favorite show on Netflix.  It's "Somebody Feed Phil."  Phil is Phil Rosenthal, the former writer and producer for "Everybody Loves Raymond."  Nowadays Phil takes a camera crew out into the world, headed by his brother Richard, and he eats things and talks to people while the cameras roll.  Phil is awkward and goofy and we just love him, and the show.

Here's the thing:  Whenever we see something in a movie or on TV, we want it.  Well, we do have the money to really travel, and we don't have the money, time, or kitchen tools to cook half the stuff we see Phil eating on the show. However, we DO have the money and access for a very large emporium of spirts and whatnot.  

(And more will now mean "near death" for me.)

Total Wine is generally the place we go after we've watched any cooking or travel show that features local spirits or brew. This is why we have a couple dozen bottles of some very strange stuff in our cabinet.

So on the last episode of Phil, he went to Oaxaca, Mexico. And he ate amazing food made by amazing chefs and saw amazing sites.  Blah, blah, blah.  What caught our eyes, is that Oaxaca is the home for Mezcal, Tequila's smokier cousin.  

We at the Bradley house like tequila.  We really do.  And, I recall having mezcal many years ago, and not hating it, so there's that.  Thus it was that while out and about and doing things, we stopped at Total Wine and picked up a bottle of mezcal produced in Oaxaca.  

Making mezcal...getting ready to kill me.


That was Sunday we picked it up.  Yesterday, Wednesday, was our anniversary.   32 years. Thank you.

Here's our wedding party. That's me in the middle in the white dress. It was 1990, don't judge.

So last night we went out to Bonefish Grill.  It's where we go to celebrate our anniversaries, generally, and my birthday.  They have a cosmo there that's amazing and they only serve it in Winter, starting on my birthday, and, apparently, in July (because Christmas in July or whatever.)  So we had our dinner, and it was a weird dinner because I'm 100% positive our waiter, Todd, was stoned.  The tip offs were subtle: He moved at half the speed everyone in the building did.  He told us it was his first night, which it absolutely wasn't.  He said "That's my favorite" to everything we ordered.  Oh, and he brought us our bill before he brought us our food.  And he brought the other table their food before their appetizer.  And he was going to be the star of this blog...until we got home and I nearly died.

We got home, fired up the latest episode of "Better Call Saul" (Because what else would you watch on your 32nd anniversary?) and we decided to toast each other with a shot of our new mezcal.  Hubby opened the bottle and poured two shots in our special Tequila shot glasses (which, if you don't know, are about double the size of a regular shot glass) and we saluted each other.

I snapped my wrist to fire the mezcal down my throat, a move I've done once or twice, and something...happened.  I don't know if I missed my mouth completely and just poured 1.5 ounces of real Mexican mezcal up my nostrils or if I simply doused my face with it or if I hit my mouth and my taste buds rose up as one and revolted, but suddenly my face was on fire and I was spewing about ten times the amount of mezcal that was in the glass all over the kitchen.

By the time I turned the 90 degrees from the counter to the sink, all of the orifices of my face had swollen and filled with fluid.  My eyes were puffy and running with tears. I had great wads of phlegm in my throat. My lips were numb. And my nose...my poor, poor nose...was filled to swelling with snot.  My throat and nostrils and lips were also on fire.  Like jumping off the diving board at the local pool and hitting the water without plugging you nose and inhaling all the chlorine.  Except the chlorine in this case was ON FIRE and I couldn't get away from it because it was trapped and entombed in my head with gallons and gallons of bodily goo.

I blew my nose to get relief, but when I did that, I'd cough and my nose would fill up again.

Fun fact: I'm claustrophobic to the point that I don't like wearing masks or hoods.  And if I can't breathe through my nose, I tend to panic.  So, I walked up and down the hall gagging out "I can't BREATHE!"

So, there I was, my eyes puffy and red and runny. My face all red.  I'm coughing up gobs of phlegm and every time I cough my nasal passages close up 100% and that makes me panic which makes me pant which stirs up the gunk in my throat which makes me cough which closes up my nasal passages which makes me panic...oh yeah, and my throat is burning with the heat of a 1000 flames and that's making me nauseous which is making me cough which is...you get where I'm going with this.

This went on for over an hour.

OVER AN HOUR.

I caught a look at myself in the mirror at one point and thought, "Wow...this is sexy at its best."

To his credit, Hubby did not laugh, although he told me later it all started out funny when I was initially spewing mezcal out, because it looked funny. And also to his credit, he mopped up much of whatever viscousness came out of me that didn't hit the sink.  So that was nice.

The hellacious burning in my throat and nostrils didn't go away for more than 3 hours.  And, honestly, I still have flaming snot (band name?) clogging my nose and throat now, more than 12 hours later. My throat is scalded, my nose burns, my eyes are bugged out and painful and I have a raging headache. Oh, and I'm fairly certain my snot is corrosive.

AND I DIDN'T SWALLOW ONE DROP OF THE STUFF!

There's no wisdom anyone can glean from this, except maybe, if you're doing shots of anything...DON'T MISS!