After much nagging (and then enlisting Mopie as a hired gun to do additional badgering) Esteban went into the doctor and got his blood tested. The results are good. He’s up two full points since the transfusions, which means that the change to his medications (and the horse’s dose of iron he’s taking, in addition to extra, er, stuff to make sure that he doesn’t suffer the side effects of said iron) (but maybe if he weren’t taking the extra, um, stuff, I could write about the zany side effects on the internet and then we could both quit our jobs) he is currently making more blood than he is losing. Which is sort of awesome, because it buys him time to figure out what he wants to do about his condition. There are some lifestyle changes he can make (which, when I hear it, always makes me think he’s going to start wearing designer clothes, J.Lo sunglasses and making out with truly beautiful boys) (which, aside from those obvious side effects would be, quite frankly, awesome) (and hot) but he needs to wait until he’s had one more month of solid improvement and gets that count up just a little more before he starts making any big changes. Which means that we aren’t moving to the Castro quite yet.
Go, little Esteban red blood cells, go!
The great thing about this is that Esteban is back to being Esteban. His blood loss was such a gradual thing that I sort of didn’t realize how much of a constant prick he was, sort of like I am during my princess time each month, except he was that way pretty much all the time. But now, he’s not. Now, he’s being silly and a little manic because he has so much energy and he’s making me laugh over and over again. It’s really awesome, actually.
I have an inexplicable headache this morning. I blame spring, or the insurgence of it. There are trees with buds and those buds are little capsules of misery. Those buds mean that the four sweet months of not needing to take Zyrtec have come to an end. Now I will be hyper and vaguely caffeinated from thirty minutes after I swallow a pill until exactly twelve hours later. Forget to take a pill? Try to soldier it out until the allergies kick in at noon, all hardcore? It’s a guaranteed TaiPei session in my pajamas until 2 am. Granted, it means that I can pretty much forget that I am severely allergic to dairy and have a slice of pizza without mentally calculating how much dairy I can have before I can’t breathe anymore, but still, it’s annoying. And I think the headache is somehow related. Either that or I’m getting sick.
Esteban and I had a productive weekend. We both had some projects to finish up, his for his day job and I had some freelance and schoolwork. He pulled a work table into my office and sat in the recliner. It was a warmish day, so we opened a window and let some of the stale winter air out of the house. It was a pleasant afternoon. We worked all day, punctuated by rotations of the (fucking) laundry, and then when we started getting hungry, I made dinner. A few nights ago, I slow cooked a chuck roast with adobo and chipotle for the sole purpose of having burrito stuffing. I did a quick check of the pantry and yes, we had everything I needed to make burritos, so I didn’t have to go out to the store. I shredded the beef, then grabbed two open packages of flour tortillas. One had been left open, so the tortillas were stiff and gross, and the other only had four very large tortillas in it. Normally when I make burritos, I make at least ten so that we have leftovers to eat through the week, because it’s one of Esteban’s favorite meals. It’s just a bunch of different packages of things thrown together, and I find it rather artless. They are just tortillas, an open can of refried black beans, some kind of meat, pre-shredded Colby and Jack, and a can of red enchilada sauce, it certainly doesn’t take any kind of talent or inspiration. It always reminds me of those little cheap boxes of pizza kits, where the crust is in a pouch and the cheese is actually powder. It seemed like every time I babysat as a teenager, the parents would leave one of those kits to feed their kids. The making aspect was fun with the kids, but the actual finished product was disgusting. And certainly the burritos are not disgusting, but just the same, it feels like cheating in a way. Perhaps if I could make an enchilada sauce that tastes better than the stuff that comes in a can, but really, I’ve tried and it’s just not happening. The best I can do is mess around with the beef and throw extra garlic into the sauce. This time, I used some adobo seasoning and a ton of cilantro as well.
However, with only four tortillas and a ton of filling, I made perhaps the biggest, heartiest burritos known to mankind. These were definitely porntastic burritos, primed for the money shot. Because of their girth, they took forever to finish cooking. Esteban has been absolutely starving since he’s no longer anemic, so he placated himself with Girl Scout Cookies while he waited. Finally, they were done, so we each had a half of one and caught up on the TiVo backlog. They were so good that we split a second one, and I declared them the best burritos I had ever, um, assembled.
After dinner, Esteban spontaneously made chocolate chip cookies (from a tube, left over from MoPie’s Birthday Sushi and Cookies extravaganza on Monday), and man, they were super good too. We worked until late in the evening, munching on cookies and extolling joy for living in a time when we have access to not horrible semi-homemade food. Except don’t let Sandra Lee know that I said that, because I hate that woman and her permanently erect nipples swinging low in her tight white sweaters.
(Which is just ridiculous, me taking attitude with Sandra Lee. The woman takes time to set a table, while we pretty much only eat in the living room. Maybe if she didn’t spend so much time making tablescapes, she would have time to throw together some bread dough from scratch though. Tablescapes! See what horror that woman has wrought? The lexicon has been semi-infected!)
Still have the headache. I had more to write, but instead, go here. We’re going to Milwaukee next week, which is very exciting, and going to meet up with Jen, Poppy, Hausfrau among others. I had to write a bio today for my reading, because apparently there will be a pamphlet of some kind, informing the audience of our biographies, or perhaps a town crier, which would be sort of cool. I ended up writing about my love of toast because everything else sounded way too pompous and annoying. When in doubt, go to the toast. That is becoming my creed. It has yet to fail.
