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I was braced for all the possible 2nd Pfizer Covid vaccine side effects but it’s been easy so far. My arm is slightly sore, and I woke up at 2:30am and never went back to sleep. (Writing this at 6 as the sun comes up) My mom had insomnia after her first vaccine, but I haven’t read of it happening to anyone else, have you?

I have so many side effects from my other medications that it’s hard to know what’s Pfizer-effect and what’s Kara-normal. Are my joints a little more painful than usual? Maybe. Is my stomach a little more funny? I think so (but I can’t define “funny”. Just feels odd sometimes) Mild nausea is par for the course. Coincidence that it happened tonight?

Well, the insomnia is the only bothersome thing and whatever, I’ll just have an extra-tired day. NBD.

The symptoms I was dreading — headache, fever, and unusually crippling fatigue — haven’t hit at all yet and it’s been nearly 22 hours since I got my jab. I expect crippling fatigue today because I got 4 hours of sleep. No problem. I shall Netflix and Nap :)

I got my second Pfizer shot today! (Recap for people in the future — we’ve had a terrifying deadly global Covid-19 pandemic for over a year. The wonderful scientists have developed a few vaccines which are now being distributed. It took a while to get the distribution going but now it’s efficient and easy to get your jabs!)

I’m waiting for the side effects to hit… so far, just very mild soreness in my arm. Most people get a sore arm, maybe headache and fatigue. A few get fevers, chills, body aches, flu-like symptoms etc. but it only lasts a day or two and then we are about 95% protected from Covid!

In two weeks, when the vaccine is fully operational, I will go to the LIBRARY for the first time in over a year. They’ve been closed this whole time but will soon re-open with careful safety protocols (we vaccinated folks still need to mask up, stay distanced, etc)

Also hope to sit in my friend’s garden and enjoy the Springtime and seeing a human who isn’t in my household.

Better times are coming! Hang in there, everyone <3

I’ve been learning Finnish on Duolingo for the last few weeks. I chose Finnish because Finland is cool and Finnish is completely unrelated to English and German so it’s a real challenge and very interesting! I can already say a few useful things:

minä olen Kara. (I am Kara).

Suomi on hyvä maa. (Finland is a good country)

Hän on velho (She/he is a wizard)

I’ve been watching a Finnish crime drama (All the Sins) with English subtitles and I recognize some of the spoken words, which is thrilling!

Super sleepy, can’t stop yawning. Made soup, ate soup. Cozy Grove was released for Nintendo Switch last night! I had pre-ordered because I’ve had so much fun playing on my phone. I SUPER recommend Cozy Grove. It’s calm and sweet, with a focus on, you guessed it, being helpful. The game is doled out in small doses, and is meant to be played for maybe half-an-hour to an hour per day. Can’t say enough good things about it, seriously. Beautiful artwork, lovely storyline.

When I was in the hospital just before Christmas (another terrifying bout of atrial fibrillation) my mom got on FaceTime so she could play Christmas carols on the piano for me. Next day, when I was home, we FaceTimed again but switched to Bach (ahhhhhh Bach). Ever since then, we Facetime for about an hour almost every afternoon and she practices Bach and I listen while I read or play on my Switch or just rest. So nice to be able to spend time together sharing music that way, and I don’t need to do conversation.

It’s almost Bach o’clock!

Today is my little sister’s birthday (I live with her, her husband, and their daughter) so I pried myself up out of bed and bravely made choux buns! They turned out so pretty, especially the second batch, which are the ones I remembered to egg wash :D

I used this recipe:
https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/choux-pastry/

I don’t have a piping bag and didn’t want to fool with plastic bags so I just put spoonfuls of batter on the parchment paper and smoothed them out with fingers dipped in water.

For the filling, I simmered a cup of heavy cream with a scoop of coffee beans and a spoonful of sugar. Strained, chilled, whipped. Then I sliced open the buns and spooned in the filling. Half were coffee cream, and for the other half I whipped a cup of heavy cream with a spoonful of Nutella.

They’re waiting in the fridge to be eaten after dinner. I hope they taste as good as they look!

All worn out now so watching Mister Rogers with Niece <3

First, I want to thank everyone for the heartwarming comments, texts, and emails! Wow. A lot of people check on me and hope I’m ok, and a lot of people love my audiobook recordings. Wow. Just… wow. Thank you, everyone! <3

If I write something every day, instead of, like, once every 6 weeks, I can tell you about the small Good Things that I discover.

Today’s Good Thing is my current favorite bedtime snack. I always get really hungry just after I turn out my light to go to sleep, so I fix myself a snack ahead of time. My Snack of Choice lately is a sliced green apple and a lump of goat cheese. The tart crunchy apple, the creamy cheese… oh man, my mouth started watering as I typed this!

Since I have no income except my government SSI benefits that are just enough to cover my rent, I also get food stamps, which are not actually stamps anymore, but a handy debit card that is automatically refilled each month, with leftover funds carrying across from month to month. I can buy any kind of food or beverage, but not booze or vitamins. My benefits are nearly $200/month which is more than enough for a single vegetarian-type person who shops are Trader Joe’s. I have enough, after basics, that I can buy myself delicious treats, such as fresh pineapple and the aforementioned goat cheese. Yummy!

Look at me, writing another post so soon! Thank you, Trevor, for leaving me such a nice comment on yesterday’s post. Glad you enjoyed Gatsby!

Beverly Cleary died a few days ago. She was 104! One of those cases of “wow, she was still alive??” I wish I had written her a thank-you note 40 years ago. I never cared much for Ramona, though I know she is loved by nearly everyone. The Ramona books stressed me out. I was happier reading about Beezus and Henry. And I LOVED the teenage books. I must have read “Sister of the Bride” and “The Luckiest Girl” a hundred times. Our library didn’t have “Jean and Johnny” or “Fifteen” when I was a kid, but I read them in my twenties and loved them too. When I head about Beverly’s death I downloaded allll the Henry Huggins books and all four teenage books so I can do a big re-read. I started with The Luckiest Girl, which is just as great as I remembered, and then Fifteen which is also very enjoyable. I love how the heroine’s thoughts spin out of control with every turn of events. So real, so relatable.

Is anyone reading this? Probably not, it’s been months since I last published a post. Well I’m still alive. This year has been weird. I had a couple of months of pretty bad depression which it turns out was caused mostly by hypothyroidism because of a dose change. Right now my dose of thyroid replacement hormone is back where it should be and I’m feeling better.

Every day feels the same as every other day. It’s really weird. We’ve been in lockdown for so long now. And it’s not like there’s anywhere I particularly want to go (except for visiting family) but it would be nice to have the option I guess.

I had my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine two weeks ago so my second dose will be next Saturday and I’m super excited about that! Just about everyone in my family has had either one or two doses already. We are still all incredibly careful but some of the worry has lifted of course! Such a relief! Our local libraries will be opening up soon with limited hours and lots of safety precautions so that’s super exciting!

My PAH is progressing, unfortunately. I’m on 7 liters of oxygen per minute 24 hours a day now and I have almost no energy to do anything, ever. There are so many things I want to do but it’s hard to get the energy to sit up and sew or record audio books or bake or do anything really. Ugh. So I lie in bed and listen to audiobooks and watch Netflix and BBC and Channel4.com. And I play a lot of video games :-)

Right now I love Cozy Grove for iOS. So sweet. And Henry buys me a subscription to classic World of Warcraft which is just like it was in the olden days before any expansions and that is super fun! We play together sometimes, just like we did 16 years ago when he was a little fellow.

I’m writing this by dictating to my phone and it’s working pretty well. I need to clean up a few typos here amd there, but it’s no work at all so maybe I can get into the habit of writing more often, if anyone still wants to read my random thoughts!

It has been a whole year since I had that brain surgery, yuck! It took months and months to recover from that but I think I’m myself again.

OK I’m gonna go back to watching my current Scandinavian Murder Show on Channel 4 which is called “All the Sins” . It’s a Finnish one this time but there’s no snow — it takes place in summer, for a change. A woman just walked outside in what looked like broad daylight to find her husband and said “it’s 3 AM come to bed” LOL.

Which reminds me my brain is not doing so great. My thoughts are kind of cloudy, it’s hard to focus, my memory is shot, and I’m having trouble with vocabulary. Crossword puzzles are much much harder than they used to be. But I’m still trying to keep my brain active so I’m learning Finnish very slowly on Duolingo, as well as reviewing German. Finnish is super fun because it is not an Indo European language and so it’s completely unrelated to English and German. No cognates!