Too sick for the tulip festival

It’s the last weekend of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, and I’m sick.

I’m also a bit perturbed because I’ve been looking forward to the festival for months. I’ve hauled home I-don’t-know-how-many tulip bouquets from the grocery store to practice taking photos for the big trip, and I’ve been checking the bloom map for weeks to be sure I caught the fields at the height of color. Instead, I caught the flu.

I can’t smell or taste a thing. After a few days, that gets weird—like the world is missing a dimension. When I could smell the hyacinths in full bloom on the back porch, they were a bit cloying. Now they’re just purple. 

And I’m a big fan of bagged lettuce, but you can’t always trust that it’s fresh until you smell it. Out of habit, I take a big whiff. Nothing. I take a bigger whiff, as if I can will myself to smell. Still nothing. I eyeball it. The edges are only a little brown. I look at the “sell by” date. It’s still within the statute of limitations. I eat it, trying not to think about the fact that it could be completely rancid and I’d never know.

But that’s lettuce, which doesn’t really smell much anyway … unless it’s rancid. However, I feel like I’m in an alternate universe when I fill up the car and spill some gas on my fingers. I see it glisten so I know it’s there. I sniff my fingers. Surely the reek of gasoline—which always gives me a horrible headache—will cut through my inability to smell. Nothing. And I already have a horrible headache.

Not being able to taste is also odd. It just so happens at a time when I could stand to lose a pound or twenty, so you’d think I’d take advantage of it. But food crutches die hard.

I can’t even taste my morning coffee, but I still flood it with fatty half-and-half and drink so many cups that my hands jitter and my eyes dilate. Why not switch to decaf herbal tea while I have a reprieve from it tasting like dandelions?

I still crave foods, too—potato chips in particular. They’re my friend and they want to make me feel better, even though they’re like greasy shards of glass on my sore throat.

And since I can’t smell or taste, it’s hard to know when I’m full during a meal—because I’m certainly not sated. Mostly, I’m just bored with chewing.