Today we went to the Dolly Sods and Alara threw up everywhere.
Which, according to the last couple years of dating, isn’t too out of the ordinary. We’ve determined that she’s usually due for a quarterly barf, but this one came a little earlier than normal.
That got me thinking.
A barf every 4 months could be justified. Maybe not entirely normal, but it’s at least on the spectrum of normal. Any more than that, and a few red flags are raised up.
I racked my brain as to what we ate yesterday. Dumplings. Those goddamn dumplings.
But I ate almost 10 of them and didn’t feel the slightest bit sick. Then I realized…
Roughly 2 months ago we also had dumplings. And I’m 99% sure that’s what she ate before throwing up last time. I remember this because I almost tossed the bag after… But I decided to risk it and eat them anyway with no effect.
This connection set off a chain reaction in my head. Dumplings. What’s in both of these? Soy. What’d we eat all the other times Alara’s thrown up in the past couple years? Soy-based things.
I know because we checked the receipts. Alara keeps an extensive journal of almost everything she does, and took photos that we were able to connect to the dates. We simply traced back the day and the meal photo, and boom. Soy. An active ingredient in every nausea-related event.
Even on our second date ever, in which she notoriously drank too much (2 drinks) and barfed up a storm, we made dumplings from scratch. It’s been an inside joke for years that she can’t hold two drinks down. But now that myth’s been busted.
Which leads us to today. This stunning, soy-based realization fell upon us shortly after doing a sunrise hike at the Dolly Sods.
I suppose I should give you a little context.
The Dolly Sods Wilderness Area has been on our to-do list for almost a year now. It’s about 3 hours from DC, waaaaay out in West Virginia, but it’s notorious for these brightly colored bushes that go absolutely wild in the fall. Think red. A sea of red.
But we showed up just a tad too early this season. We may have been a little too excited for fall colors, and the leaves were only just beginning to change. Think half yellow, half green. Or I could just show you:
It wasn’t bad per say, just not what we expected. Color-wise. But we made the best of it. And when I say we, I meant me.
Alara’s stomach was doing backflips all morning, and we barely made it a mile before deciding to call it. It’s not fun to hike when you’re feeling like your insides are about to come out any second.
We hopped back in the car, drove about 2 minutes down the road, and pulled over, and she yacked red chunks all over the pavement.
Well, that’s not where we were expecting to see colors this weekend. But the world works in mysterious ways.
She’s better now. But this day will go on in infamy as the day we discovered her soy-based allergy. We can call it… The Dolly Soys.
