The in-between...

More missing time, lost days.  SIGH.

It occurred to me, recently, that I have come to a place where I live in the in-between.   I live in-between the daily bouts of violent waves of nausea.  I live in-between the blood sugar crashes.  I live in-between the flares of neuropathic pain.  I live in-between blood pressure plunges.  I live in-between dizziness.  I live in-between syncope (fainting) and pre-syncope.  I live in-between the heart palpitations.  I live in-between chest pains.  I live in-between blurred vision.  I live in-between bouts of abdominal agony.  I live in-between crushing migraines.  I live in-between nights of insomnia.  I live in the in-between.

On Facebook, I "liked" two Chronic Life pages:  Chronically Hopeful.  Chronic Perseverance.  I find them helpful, at times, because my lived experience is common on those pages.  This came up in my feed and I have been thinking about it ever since.  I mean, I think that I would say that I can no longer remember what it is like to no longer feel tired (granted, most days it would be exhausted), but more so I think I would say that I can no longer remember what it feels like to feel healthy.  My "good" days are still what most would consider "bad" ones.

I can be so ill that it frightens me, filling me with despair.  And yet, later on, when the spate of illness passes, I go on with life.  I cook or putter in my raised beds or do laundry.  Sometimes, it is all I can do to simply lie on the sofa holding my Fluffernutter.  But I savor that.  I play with his curls and give thanks that the nausea or pain or dizziness or whatever has passed, has eased for the moment.  I whisper sweet nothings in his ear and tell him about the plans for the next in-between.

I struggle so mightily to write, to gather my thoughts and put them down coherently.  I start and stop and start and stop.  I get interrupted with illness.  I start and stop.  Interrupted.  Life passes and it is not remembered here.  That grieves me.

Like this thought:  the in-between.  I cannot speak of it eloquently, nothing near as what flits through my head.  I try to capture those thoughts and they slip through my fingers.  But I know that it is an important thought, a great revelation, actually.

Last fall, I saw Pati Jinich make Tacos al Pastor.  It was the first show of hers that I saw and I was just struck by how ... authentic ... she was ... and her recipe.  So, I set out to find the recipe, which took a while since I did not even know her name or that of her show.  Then, I set out finding the ingredients. There was the pacemaker interruption.  And the Grand Visit of 2015.  And then it was back to trying to find three things, mostly:  guajillo chillies, achiote paste, and bitter orange juice.  Surprisingly, but logically, all three were at an hispanic grocery store, though the bitter orange was not tracked down until I first found an image of what I needed and a second trip to the store followed.

Gosh, for months I've been living on the plan of learning to make those tacos.  Also, too, was learning to make corn tortillas, because I wanted to make them with these tacos, to eat the tacos the way they were intended first.  I do not even like corn tortillas, but I have heard homemade ones are worlds different than store or even restaurant corn tortillas.

Doing so has had me struggling to gird my loins for making these tacos.  Thus, a lot of talk and not a lot of action.  But ... a lot of dreaming.

Thursday, after a false start (I didn't realize I was out of onions), I made the marinade, adobe de achiote.

I flirted with burning the peppers rather than toasting them, but I caught my error just in time.

Of course, I do not need all these tacos all at once, so once the meat was marinated, I divided it up into smaller portions.  Note:  the marinade stains!

I have not yet posted the corn tortilla recipe I followed, because I actually did not really follow a recipe, having read millions of them and watched tens of millions of You Tube videos and knew that the basics are masa harina, salt, and hot water.  I will, eventually, but I want to think about what recipe I choose for my recipe rememberer blog, what way I want to make them.

I rested the dough, but not long enough, perhaps.  I rested it not because I saw that step on many recipes, but because most of the flatbread dough recipes I've been perusing mention that step.  I also forgot to wrap it up to rest it, which I think would have been better, because the one corn tortilla video recipe that did have the step of resting the dough wrapped the dough in plastic.  Then I shaped it into balls (I totally need help shaping dough balls) that I let rest as I cooked the pineapple and pork.

I will admit that this recipe fascinated me because of the pineapple.  Four years ago, someone served me grilled pineapple. I went ape over it and had about five helpings.  Maybe six.  Or seven.  My one attempt at grilling pineapple was such a colossal failure that I have been forced to live on that ancient memory (that I cannot actually remember).  I was drooling making these!

I have looked at corn tortilla presses for months and months, but 1) I don't have much room in my kitchen for more cooking tools and 2) all the complaints of broken arms on the cast iron presses put me off.  Plus, well, the money.  Truly, if I had the money, I would have bought the press.  Thus, my tortillas are only mostly round, having to make do without a press in the making of them.

Several video cooks had recommended using a heavy pot, so I used a pot and then my beloved French rolling pin.  Like I wrote above, I do not care for corn tortillas, so I am not a good judge of my success.  But my realtor, whom I cajoled into joining me for the tacos, thought they were good.  At least she said she did.  I am not sure if she would be honest if she disliked them.

I think that the tacos were quite tasty, even on corn tortillas!

Having lots of marinated pork and a lot of pineapple still to use, I made the tacos again today, using my beloved flour tortillas.  I will have to eat them on corn tortillas to be certain, but I think I actually preferred these flavors on corn rather than flour.  However, I also want to have the tacos "Gringos" style with "melty" cheese (I love that Pati Jinich used that description/classification).

Anyway, all that was a very long-winded way to describing an example of living in the in-between.  In one of those moments, I watched the show.  In other moments, I searched for the recipe.  In still other moments, I tracked down all that I needed (including watching enough YouTube videos to gird my loins enough to try and make corn tortillas).  And, in the in-between on Friday, I finally made the new tacos.

I was so ill much of the wee hours of the morning and on into late morning, I almost called my realtor to tell her not to come.  But the nausea had eased and, these days, with the repeated blood sugar crashes that are plaguing me, I needed to eat anyway.

I will say that I wished I were cooking with a partner.  By that I mean my realtor was sort of ... well ... she was not really comfortable with how I prepared for us eating, counting back the time of cooking.  I didn't want to start until after she arrived, because I didn't want to have the food waiting if she ended up being late.   I set the table, so it would be ready when I was done.  I crumbled the queso fresco and put it in a bowl with a spoon.  For the cooking, I had visualized all the cooking steps and had set out the tools for each step.  I made the corn tortilla dough and set it aside to rest.  I cooked the pineapple and covered it with foil when I was done.  I cooked the pork and covered it with foil when I was done.  And I rolled out and cooked the tortillas, covering them with a towel until I was done.  In between all those steps, I either cleaned or straightened the areas of the counter I had used.  Cleaning as I went seemed to bother my realtor.  But it is how I cope.  Visual reset is important to me, especially when doing something stressful, like trying a new recipe and wanting it to turn out well!

She was impressed with the tacos.  If I were being a proper host, I would have served some chips and salsa or queso, some rice and beans, and some dessert.  All I offered was the tacos.  That was all I could do.  That was my life in the in-between.

I napped after she left and then cleaned the kitchen.  By then, the late evening nausea had started.  But ever since having this thought about how my life had changed, about the in-between, what I think whilst I am battling my body has changed.  I still can get rather scared, when I am terribly ill, when all I want is to not be alone.  However, when I am not worried about perishing all alone, I practice the thought that this is only one part of my life, the illness.  It is not the whole of who I am.  Some days, it is all I can do to breathe.  But some days there are moments in which I live in the in-between.