You know that line …

in The Devil Wears Prada? This line?

Emily: Andrea, my God! You look so chic.

Andy Sachs: Oh, thanks. You look so thin.

Emily: Really? It's for Paris, I'm on this new diet. Well, I don't eat anything and when I feel like I'm about to faint I eat a cube of cheese. I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.

Yeah, that line. That's kind of how I felt yesterday, which is why there were NO WORDS in this space.

I woke up early, as I usually do, but felt pretty wonky. The elders in my family often spoke of having a "sour stomach," and I knew exactly what they meant. My husband insisted on taking my temperature, and it was slightly elevated – normal for me is 97.4, it was 99.4.

I suppose if I'd had a job to go to I could have made it, but since I don't I just went back to bed.

At some point in the early afternoon I started feeling like Emily. I'd had nothing to eat since dinner on Tuesday, and only a couple sips of coffee when I first woke up yesterday. And seriously? There's not a darned thing "comforting" about paleo when you're sick.

First, meat and vegetables, unless they're baked together in a big ol' flaky pie crust, aren't all that soothing for a sick stomach. And second, YOU HAVE TO COOK THEM.

I most definitely did not feel like puttering about in the kitchen.

Instead I dumped about a dozen wheat saltines onto a plate, put a thin pat of butter on each one and went back to bed. Oh, and I also had some grapes.

At about 7 last night my legs began itching. Lower legs, calves and ankles, I nearly broke the skin scratching them. It was driving me CRAZY. My husband, feeling helpless, drove to town to get some Cortizone. Applying that and knocking myself out with a Benadryl stopped the itching. Or at least I was able to sleep through it.

All I can think is that A (saltines) = B (itching).

While I have eaten wheat a couple of times since April with no ill effects, it's always been a tiny bit and combined with other ingredients. Saltines certainly have other ingredients, but not many, and I figure I might as well have just spooned the flour right into my mouth.

Or onto my lower extremities.

I could be very wrong. The likely scenario for a contact allergic reaction is almost always a new laundry detergent, but I've been using the same stuff for years.

And I certainly wasn't doing any laundry yesterday.

I'm sticking with my theory and will stay away from saltines from now on. I've no desire to test my hypothesis by trying the experiment a second time. 

And as for the Devil Wears Prada line? The scale was waaaaaay down this morning. The unfortunate truth, however, is that such gifts don't last. A day of normal eating will erase the stomach-flu benefit and I'll be back to inching my way down to goal.

Which is better than the alternative.