Below is the entry I had written yesterday with the impending migraine’
I made a grave mistake last night. I had my little heart set on grilled pork tenderloin and garlic roasted potatoes, but by the time I had gotten home, I had tossed the potato idea out the window because it was too much work and too much time. Then I thrust the responsibility of making the tenderloins upon Esteban, who was feeling churlish and didn’t want to light the grill. Do them in the oven then, fine’ how hard was that? We have a spice blend whose sole purpose of existence is to make pork tenderloin taste oh-so-wonderful. That’s what it does. Grill it or bake it, you can’t screw up with that spice blend. It’s foolproof.
But not Esteban-proof.
When I went back into the kitchen, Esteban had placed the pork tenderloin medallions in the very largest lasagna pan we own. Then he had covered them with a blizzard of the pork tenderloin spice and what was possibly the largest amount of mushrooms ever assembled. There was something like four inches of mushrooms. It was sitting in brownish juice slurry.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, peeved.
‘Pork chops!’ Esteban replied.
‘What’s that stuff it’s in?’ I asked, mentally replaying the instructions I gave him ‘lightly sprinkle pork rub over them and pop in oven for thirty minutes’ wondering which word sounded like ‘mushroom’ or ‘pork soup’.
‘It’s mushroom juice.’ By mushroom juice, I believe he was referring to the salty chemical broth that they package the mushrooms in. ‘Fine’ don’t eat it then.’
We have this argument every six months or so. It’s my fault, really. I’m a control freak with the food prep. When I am hungry for pork tenderloin, I want it done a certain way, describable in the words ‘seasoned’ rather than ‘coated in black pepper’, ‘simple’ rather than ‘au fungi’, ‘moist’ rather than ‘swimming in stuff that should have been dumped down the drain’. Esteban endeavors to be creative, to feel like a chef, to be lauded for his culinary skills, but he has, unfortunately, had some singularly disastrous results.
I had already said far too much. A smart woman does not crush her husband’s attempt at housework because she’s a perfectionist. Obviously, I’m not a smart woman.
Just the same, I prepared myself some peas’ as a contingency plan.
When I took the first bite of Pork Loin Au Esteban, the top of my head shot off and satanic fire came shooting out of my nostrils.
‘Pepper much?’ I asked him as I returned to the kitchen for a large, nay ginormous, glass of icy cold skim milk.
Esteban looked shocked. ‘No! No! I swear! I just used that stuff you said’. And a little ground black pepper.’ He made the motions of grinding our fancy schmancy pepper grinder’ motions that were the equivalent of peppering every Cesar Salad served at Red Lobster until the advent of the next millennia.
‘It’s a little hot, that’s all.’ I said, trying to soften my tendencies to be a harpy fishwife.
He took a bite and then made the face which indicates that his throat had involuntarily closed upon itself and said ‘No more if you’re going to be giving me THAT shit!’.
‘Holy cow! It is hot!’ He then apologized profusely and I tried not to be grumpy about the forty-two cans of mushrooms and three pounds of pork loin he’d used while creating his experiment in nuclear fusion.
I ate one medallion’ and three glasses of milk. Thank god for peas.
Don’t get me wrong’ Esteban is actually a very good cook at what he does, but he has the notion that ‘If some is good, more is better’ which is great if you’re talking about Russell Crowe, sex, or chocolate, but bad when you’re talking about pepper, Carrot Top the comedian, or the vocal stylings of Ms. Yoko Ono.
‘. And that’s when I went home with the migraine. So there it is.
So the migraine.
The sucky ‘I hate breathing’ migraine.
The god awful ‘A Bullet-Wouldn’t-Hurt-Any-Less’ migraine.
The fucking ‘Put my head in a vise and eviscerate me, hanging me by my bloody entrails rather than endure this head trauma another second’ migraine.
Ahem.
I went home early yesterday, got my comfy boxer shorts on, found some of my very favorite thermal socks and put them on, even though I only had one red one and one black one, and topped it off with an extremely fuzzy fleece sweatshirt. Then I curled up in bed for about fifteen minutes until I got entirely nauseous. Then I sat at my computer, in the dark, with the brightness of the monitor turned down low, and played the soundtrack of The Last of the Mohicans and Shakespeare In Love and the Etoys theme song, which seemed to make it feel better. 1940’s jazz, which is my perennial favorite, did not. Something about cymbals made me want to hurl.
I’ve only had migraines for about three years and luckily, only get them about four or five times a year. I’m fairly lucky, as I can more or less function with them. I have a friend who once had to be carried, drooling and incapacitated, from Olive Garden where their hospitaliano apparently didn’t extend toward migraine services. She doesn’t remember it.
I was supposed to go to Quilting class but there was no way I would be able to withstand starring at little seams in a brightly lit room with the sound of sewing machines whirring around me. I’d bite someone’s hand off, of that I am certain. Or wound them with my rotary cutter.
At 6:30 pm, Esteban came home. Apparently, it freaked him out to see a completely dark house, yet my car was in the driveway. He opened the door ‘WEETABIX??!?!?!!’ and flipped on the lights. At that point, Chelsea started her insane meowing and a John Phillips Sousa marching band began their rousing rendition of ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ inside my head, complete with roundabouts and kick steps.
‘turn off the light please! I have a migraine and it will make me throw up and please stop the cat from meowing before I throw her out the window!’ I whispered.
‘Oh,’ Esteban said, whispering, but still incredibly too loud.
‘you can’t turn on any lights in the house and I don’t want to talk and you can’t turn on the tv or stereo’ it just needs to be dark and quiet’ with no movement’ and no food smells’.so you can’t cook anything.’
‘Ok, I’ll go out and get something. Do you want anything?’ He complied.
‘no! no! I’ll puke! I can’t think about food’ I can’t look at food’. If you go out and get something, you can’t eat it here!’
So basically, I chased my husband out of the house. I was a big meanie. I didn’t care. My head hurt.
I spent the rest of the night catching up on the MightyBigTV archives, including the hilarious ‘Ed’ recaps.
I think, however, that I may be onto something. The Migraine Diet should have me svelte in no time. Nothing but water and Advil (for a little roughage). Patent pending.
Parts of this diary just got hit from someone searching on Google for Weetabix ass splinter. No shit. I have arrived. My ass splinter is now the stuff of Google infamy. On a side note: someone from Appleton, Wi, using Ameritech isp reads this site seemingly regularly…. send me an email and reveal yourself!
