I can't taste anything

Being sick isn't cool, and I'm not SUPER sick or anything. Just sick enough to prevent me from doing anything fun for fear of making it worse. My fever has finally subsided, and I finally got some antibiotics, but my plugged sinuses still haven't opened up. As a result, I can't really smell anything, I can't really hear anything, and I can't really taste anything. I'm basically relying on sight and touch alone.

The best way to describe my sense of taste at the moment is that while I can't taste the food, I can feel the taste of the food. So for example, right now I'm eating an orange and I'm feeling the juicyness, and I can feel my mouth reacting to the tangyness by salivating out of my cheeks, and plus I can actually taste a hint of orange. So it's like a muted taste experience.

This altered sensory state makes me nervous, because of Eric and food. When I was growing up, my mother loved to throw things out of the fridge. It was one of her favourite hobbies. We would have leftovers that were two days old, and she would gleefully toss them. I'm sure I never came within 10 feet of spoiled food even once while I was living under my mother's roof. One time I bought a small jar of mayonnaise and used it once, like just a little bit off the top. The following week my mother took it out and said (in Chinese) "Can I throw this out yet? I think it's gone bad." The woman is crazy.

In contrast, Eric once bought a giant package of ground beef from Costco. He put it in his refrigerator, and then the next day, the refrigerator broke. Their landlord didn't get it fixed for like a week. Eric desperately divided the giant package of rotting meat anyway, and put it in the freezer. Then about 5 months later, he brought the frozen rancid meat over to my house and asked me to make spaghetti and meatsauce with it. I defrosted it, and it totally stank, and felt really slimy. I told Eric we couldn't use it, it was horribly bad, and he insisted that we try, and that maybe the sauce and spices would cover it up. I enlisted my housemate Gloria's help, and we ganged up on him and threw it away. Then he got upset that it had gone to waste. The man is also crazy.

I'm kind of afraid that he will feed me something rotten, and I won't notice because I can't really taste anything. He bought some sandwich meat early last week, and we still have it. He says it's still good, but sandwich meat totally sketches me out. I think that you need to use it well within a week, otherwise you'll get a tummyache. He has also kind of touched it all over and taken it out of the deli packaging and put it in a Ziploc bag. I don't know why. But yesterday, when I realized we didn't have leftovers for lunch today, he suggested that we have sandwiches with the sandwich meat. I gently refused, and so today I have turkey kielbassa sausage slices and crackers. He also packed me some cheese, but I totally can't taste the cheese. I can sense the saltiness of the kielbassa in my mouth though, which is cool.

Yesterday, we got new groceries, and I cleaned out the fridge semi-Mom-style. So I should be okay. But if I get food poisoning, you'll know why.

I will end with a haiku.

Senses on their backs
Clumsy, fumbling with my tongue
That sounded like porn