Up EARLY to drop Dave at Kaiser for an angioplasty. Home by 7:15 and went back to sleep for three hours thank goodness! Did house stuff, hung out with Lulu on FaceTime, sewed little undies for the doll, then picked Dave back up in the afternoon. Procedure went fine, and he’s just tired and a little sore.
Early to bed again. Need 12 hours of sleep. Ha.
Woke up at 3:30am and never went back to sleep so I felt dazed all day.
Baked a delicious apple cake.
Dave got his hair cut and beard trimmed at the barber around the corner and he looks SO CUTE!
Bedtime is ridiculously early tonight because of mega-fatigue and also we need to get up at 6:30am tomorrow so I can take Dave to Kaiser for an angio-whatsit.
When we moved in, our main bathroom had a stupid pedestal sink with no counter space and no storage, and one night the basin just spontaneously cracked straight across. We chose a nice new sink and vanity at Lowe’s (for a literal tenth of the price of one we liked at the Kohler showroom) and, after much sweat and struggle, Dave got it all installed yesterday! I absolutely love it. It has two big functional soft-close drawers, with cut-outs where the plumbing goes, and look at that handy shelf for towels! And a big smooth genuine marble countertop.
I guess it sounds funny to get so excited about a new sink, but I’ve been a renter all my adult life so the idea that we can actually change something that large to suit ourselves is still novel and exciting! Dave installed a new shower-head, too, and it’s the best shower-head in the world. The hose is really flexible and the head attaches to the bracket with a big strong magnet, so it’s easy for me to grab it and put it back while seated on my shower seat. He disabled the water-saver so the water pressure is great, and it has a pause switch on the side so I can let it dangle while I shampoo without squirting water everywhere and wasting it.
Exciting times! Lololol
It’s 8:30pm and I’m in bed all comfy, waiting for Dave to finish a meeting so I can reread the chapter that he slept through last night :D
Let’s see, what did I do today… laundry! I did laundry. I decided it was never going to rain again so it would be a good idea to wash quilts and dry them on a rack outside. But then it rained (only for a few minutes, but more is forecast tonight) so I only washed one and hung it inside. Plus a load of sheets and towels and a load of my stuff. I know it’s time to do laundry when I need to start wearing third-tier undies.
Dave wanted some ground lamb so he can make his own gyros, so we went to an actual butcher near here, but he doesn’t sell ground lamb anymore (too expensive, not enough market) so Dave bought some kind of big lump of lamb meat instead. Lol. Baa. Gross.
Oh! It was pleasant weather, only mid-80s, and Henry brought my big bags of compost in from my car on the weekend so I did some gardening! I filled up one of my huge grow bags and started a tomato cutting, and started thyme and cilantro in a smaller bag. I’ve been having trouble with my zucchini because the male fowers and female flowers haven’t bloomed at the same time so the fruits never form properly. Dave suggested harvesting the male flowers and putting them in the fridge to artificially pollinate the females when they bloom, and I think it might have worked. I have two little zukes that seem to have passed the stage where, if unpollinated, they turn yellow and drop off. Fingers crossed. Next year I need to plant two or three at once.
I also collected worm castings from my Worm Bucket and started a batch of Worm Tea to fertilize my plants tomorrow. The Worm Bucket is working GREAT! No smell, no flies. I only put in a few food scraps at a time and cover them well with shredded paper.
The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago today! I hope they find sooo much illegal stuff. From what I understand, they don’t do raids on a whim but only if they’re fairly certain to find what they’re looking for, so fingers crossed!
Today I “pickled” a bunch of homegrown cucumbers the same way I make pickled beets, which is to slice them and steep in a sugar and vinegar mixture. Not true pickling because they don’t ferment and aren’t shelf-stable, but still delicious in salads. We’ve been eating a lot of salad lately. Very nice in hot weather. It’s perfect summer weather now: mid-80s, so summery but not brutal.
I also made a huge casserole dish of cauliflower-cheese and put fresh sheets on our bed. And played a little WoW.
Dave had to get up at the crack of dawn to get to a 7am doc appointment so he fell asleep midway through our Project Hail Mary chapter tonight, sweet man. *heart eyes*. My god I’m lucky. We’re still just as ridiculously happy together as ever.
Went to Grand Central Bakery first thing and got two loaves to share with the kids, who came to visit today! They showed up around 11 and hung out for a few hours. Lulu’s rainbow outfit fits her perfectly with some growing room!
I sewed up Lulu’s rainbow outfit. All finished and so adorable. Hope they’ll visit tomorrow so I can give them to her. Also finished the doll’s blue flowered puff-sleeve dress. Hmm what next, little overall?
Short chapter tonight — Ryland figured out that Rocky “sees” with sound waves. Excellent.
We watched all three episodes of the new Woodstock ‘99 documentary on Netflix. Good lord. Just… wow. A literal and figurative shit show, and it just keeps getting worse and worse (the festival, not the documentary)
I still weigh 100lbs even, but I have noticed that cooking seems interesting and more types of food seem edible to me. For months it was pretty much green apples and goat cheese — a nutritious combo if it’s all you’re going to eat, but variety is better of course. Today I (get this) made chunky pasta sauce with onion, mushrooms, and zucchini and ate a little on some spaghetti!
Right now I’m gnawing a small block of cheddar for my bedtime snack.
I finished cutting out the pieces for Lulu’s rainbow outfit (joggers and t-shirt) and spent hours working on the doll’s little floral dress with puffed sleeves. Sleeves are finished, facing is finished, skirt is gathered and attached. Ready to hem the skirt and add tucks and fasteners!
In Project Hail Mary tonight Ryland has finally seen Rocky through the divider and they exchanged some basic science info by way of their clocks! So clever.
Much cooler today and I had enough energy to do some meal prep for the upcoming weekend heat wave. I defrosted and baked the second half of the cottage pie I made a couple weeks ago, made a Big Salad to keep handy in the fridge, and made a stir-fry with a bunch of the veggies we got in our veg box on Tuesday. Dave raved about the stir-fry, and he’s very happy to have salad ready for light meals. It’s helpful for me to have good food ready in case I ever get hungry, which, to be fair, is happening a bit more frequently. Haven’t put on any weight yet though.
Now I’m working on a little dress with puffed sleeves for Lulu’s doll. SO TINY. I’m finishing every seam with blanket stitch so that Lulu can wash her clothes endlessly without them falling apart. I loved washing my doll’s clothes.
Henry just sent this photo of Freyja’s hair. THE LITTLE STRAWBERRY-BLONDE CURLS omg omg omg. I knew she’d have my hair!
The truck arrived, the truck arrived!!! A 53’ truck jammed full of Dave’s Stuff (from his industrial unit in California) — woodworking machines, laser cutters, 3-d printers, music studio stuff (mixing boards etc), ham radio equipment, antennae, wood, and… STUFF. Lots of stuff. A crew of hard-working guys unloaded it all straight into his huge workshop while he supervised. It only took four hours! And now at long last he can stop paying rent on the industrial unit (which was about the same as our mortgage payment lol)!
And now, finally, he has all his tools and can make things again (after he gets organized). He’s a Maker, like me, so I’m thrilled that he has all his equipment again.
We went to bed at 7pm so I’d have time to read the next chapter of Project Hail Mary before we both got too tired. He actually fell asleep partway through (I knew he was asleep when he didn’t poke fun at my American pronunciation of “solder”) but he woke up again after a few minutes and I was able to finish the chapter. The Blip-A has sent a xenonite model indicating a tunnel between ships — I hope this means we get to meet Rocky in the next chapter.
Dave goes through about a gallon of milk every week (for his tea) and he doesn’t like grocery store milk, so he’s been going all the way to Trader Joe’s every time he runs out. I decided there MUST be a milk delivery service in Portland, so I did a bit of googling and found several companies that deliver boxes of locally-grown organic fruit/veg, along with dairy and some other types of add-ons. I’ve been trying them all, and so far https://organicstoyou.org/ is the winner! We got our first delivery from them today, and it was a generous and well-assorted box of veggies and good organic local milk. Their website is easy to use, and you can give them a list of produce you don’t like — so we won’t end up with radishes anymore. They offer multiple sizes of veg boxes, fruit boxes, mixed boxes, and even “kits” like a salad kit (greens, tomatoes, cuke, peppers, carrots), stir fry kit, grill kit, etc. For our first order I got the one-person fruit/veg box (we don’t eat much), a salad kit, and Dave’s milk. We got SO MUCH produce! A cauliflower, three heads of lettuce, a bunch of purple carrots, a box of golden cherry tomatoes, several roma tomatoes, a small box of blueberries, half a pound of cherries, two zucchini, a bunch of bok choi, a couple apples, a couple oranges, and two big onions! Next week I’ll skip the salad kit. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make a lovely stir fry with the bok choi, onions, zucchini, and carrots!
Felt good this morning but kinda moldy now. Headache, nausea, general ick. Early bedtime for me.
Better weather thank heavens! Only 89-ish, so hot but not like an oven. I can handle this. The highest temp didn’t arrive till late afternoon— morning and midday were only 80-ish.
Up bright and early for 9am doc appt. Nothing new. She’s pleased that my TSH and T4 are getting closer to normal, and is having me double my dose of supplemental T3 (liothyronine). Labs in six weeks, appt in 3 months, as per.
When I got home I lay down and slept for two hours! Wild!
Ate an entire burrito over the course of the day. Read Chapter 7 to Dave.
