GRATITUDES:
1. My sweet, infuriating, wonderful kids💕
2. My husband, who would do anything possible for me❤️
3. My creativity
4. My life

Last night was a first for me. I slept soundly for a good eight hours, without the use of painkillers or Benadryl. This morning I’m feeling a bit bleary but otherwise in pretty good shape. My red blood cells actually CLIMBED slightly overnight, which makes me feel a bit better about my progress. All the other numbers are still in the toilet but at least I don’t have to worry about another transfusion just yet. That Benadryl haze gets a bit old after a while.

My new readers came yesterday! Rory brought them down when he and Lauren came to visit and I LOVE them. They’re both the same style but slightly different colors and the frame shape has a nice contemporary flair. I was really getting tired of the silver wire-framed ones that I had borrowed from Rory – the nosepieces hurt my nose and they weren’t very flattering, at least not to my face. Too severe.

The food fantasies continue. I ordered a bamboo steamer and a small Asian-style rolling pin because on one of my breaks, I’m going to attempt to make xiaolongbao, or Shanghai soup dumplings. I’ve watched video after video, pored over many recipes, and researched ingredients and where to find the more exotic components. We have a good meat market in New Braunfels where I should be able to buy the pork neck bones and maybe even the fatback, but we’ll see. There are online outlets for some of the ingredients and I may have to rely on these for the fatback and the Chinese black vinegar, because honestly, if I were to ask for these things at our local HEB I’d be stared at like I had just blurted out profanities in Swahili.