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How great is that word? Keskiviikko! How can that possibly mean Wednesday? Delicious.

Speaking of delicious, I made leek-and-potato soup this morning. So good. I ate three bowls over the course of the day.

Hey, do you want to read a really good, really clear explanation of why I love Mastodon so much? Well here’s an article for you!

https://escapingtech.com/tech/opinions/i-was-wrong-about-mastodon-moderation.html

Yes. What he said. Exactly that.

Other things I did today: the washing up. How can two people generate so many dirty dishes? Also lots and lots of knitting while watching the last two episodes of A Murder is Announced, and then a long luxurious bath before bed. I’ve realized that baths take a lot less energy than showers, and washing my hair is easy enough. Dunk and soak, lather up, rinse off under faucet, wrap in turban, continue bath. It’s still tiring, which is why I like to have my bath right before bed.

I think I might make another spinach salad and eat it while watching a bit of YouTube in bed, after I do my Finnish lesson. Still holding steady at 103 lbs. Maybe I’ll put some cheese in my salad.

Had a rather sweaty night and woke up a bit too early, but still felt pretty good today. Holding steady at 103-ish lbs. My face is cute and round again instead of haggard and thin, and my appetite is SO MUCH BETTER. I can just eat things basically all day without thinking about it, hungry or not. And I do get truly hungry sometimes. This morning I made cauliflower cheese, and munched on cottage cheese while I was cooking. And then I washed two bunches of spinach so I can make lasagna tomorrow. Dave went shopping and brought home some nice little hothouse tomatoes, so I made a spinach salad. Had some good flavorful tender celery in the fridge too. I haven’t eated a salad in ages because when I could only eat like one thing a day, I felt like it was foolish to fill up on raw veggies. It was sooooo good. I’ll save some of that spinach tomorrow and make another. Also ate a yogurt, and a cookie, and a bowl of cauliflower cheese, and I have my apple and goat cheese here in bed with me.

Hmm, what else is new… Dave has to go out of town AGAIN on Sunday, boo, but it will be for a maximum of two weeks and he’ll come home sooner if there’s no pressing reason to stay.

Oh the cleaners came yesterday so the house SPARKLES. I wish I had the energy to keep it that way. Thinking maybe I’ll hire a Taskrabbit sometimes between big cleanings to sweep and vacuum and change the bed linens.

It has been raining all day. Dark, gray, and rainy. Heaven. Everything is green again, the way it should be in Oregon. Our dead lawn is beautiful again, though I wish it were native plants instead of stupid lawn. Maybe someday. There’s a tiny chance of snow late Thursday, fingers crossed!

Writing earlier before I get too tired. Feeling quite good today! Got plenty of good quality sleep. I was awake for about an hour before dawn, and nearly gave up, but went back to sleep till 8:15! Miraculous.

This morning I did the dishes and got the place decluttered for the Cleaners, and made three horrible phone calls that I’d been putting off. Now the cleaners are here and I’m having a little rest.

Oh! I did something clever! Yesterday while I was sewing I ran over a pin with my serger and had to change the blades. And then I did it AGAIN, and installed my last set of spare blades. Before ordering new ones today, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I could figure out how to sharpen them. Couldn’t hurt to try, right? So I found my scissors sharpener. It’s a little orange doohickey shaped like a guitar pick with slots to run your scissors blades through, which grinds them against a couple of ceramic rods. Low tech, works pretty well for sharpening scissors between professional shapenings, you know? Here it is: Fiskars Sharpener.

So anyway, I figured out how to hold my serger blades juuuust right and scrape them against the ceramic rods and it WORKED. I reinstalled a sharpened set and they function again! Happy dance! Now I just need to stop serging over pins…

I’ve got Em’s rainbow joggers finished, and jammies for Mikey and Freyja finished. I started on Lulu’s jammies this morning. I say finished, but they need size labels sewn in and a bit of topstitching around the necklines. I’ll do that all at once on the Featherweight.

I also ordered some cute sparkly nail polish for Em from Orly (breathable, ethical).

After I finish all the jammies, I’ll get back to work on Lulu’s special little rag doll. She needs more clothes and a trunk or zipper pouch to keep everything in. Also want to make a matching doll for Freyja, to give to her when she’s five or so. I want to make it NOW so that I can use it for fitting extra clothes for Lulu’s doll, and so that when it’s finished Henry can put it away for safe keeping in case I perish before Freyja is five. Which is almost guaranteed but, on the other hand I’m not supposed to still be alive now so who knows?

My appetite has been SO MUCH BETTER lately. And, I don’t want to jinx anything, but my weight has been hovering around 103 for several days! First time in what, six months? nine months? that I’ve been over 99!

I think I’m nearly finished with the medical cannabis gummies withdrawal. Burning thirst has mostly subsided, sleep is edging toward normal-good, nausea is back to normal levels, funky taste in mouth is mostly gone, etc. Now I need to give all my docs a full report so they know not to recommend it to others, or at least to warn people!

Another pretty decent night last night. Got up about 7 and sewed another pair of pjs, the ones for Freyja. Then I sat in the living room with Dave and put on a Lucy Worsley doc about Agatha Christie. Watched two episodes and then lay down for a nap and slept for maybe 20 minutes but rested for a couple hours. I napped yesterday afternoon and slept for over an hour! Still catching up from that really bad spell of insomnia.

Let’s see, I knitted a few inches of ribbing on the second leg warmer, and did the dishes too. Had a big chat with a new friend on Mastodon about great UK tv and she told me there’s lots of Time Team on YouTube, so we watched an ep while we ate dinner and Dave liked it, yay!

Saturday morning (LAU-an-tai-ahh-moo)

Yesterday (day after Thanksgiving) I literally stayed in bed all day. Napped a lot, listened to hours of the Killer Psyche. Too tired and worn out to get up. Lesson learned. Don’t over-do it, Kara.

But, I had a good sleep last night in spite of all the napping yesterday. Woke up at five, rested till six, ready to start the day. I’ve got Christmas sewing to do! And I’ll have a lovely bath in our new hot water.

Medical marijuana gummies withdrawal update: insomnia is much much better, sleep pattern is close to normal. No dry heaves in a while, and nausea is just my normal medication side effect nausea. Incredibly thirsty all the time. Weird taste in mouth (has been since the beginning, forgot to mention). Appetite much improved. Mood good. Only one episode of tachycardia in 2 weeks (on Thanksgiving). Yay me!

(Friday morning)

Oh yeah I wayyyyy overdid it yesterday. But it was so much fun to cook a feast! Next year I’ll make one dish per day starting Monday and just keep everything in the fridge till Thanksgiving.

My Apple Dessert Invention turned out GREAT. See, Dave doesn’t like cinnamon and I much prefer puff pastry to shortcrust, so I wanted to invent something small and apple-y that would fit that brief. Here’s what I did:

Kara’s Apple Dessert Invention 

Peel, core, and chop one big green apple. Cook until tender in a little saucepan with 1 Tbsp butter, 1/8 c packed brown sugar, 1/4 tsp allspice, 1/8 tsp nutmeg, 1/8 tsp cloves. When tender, sprinkle in about a tsp of flour and cook to thicken. Then chill this mixture. 

When apples are chilled, cut 4 squares of frozen puff pastry (thawed in fridge) about 4 or 5 inches square. Divide the apple mixture evenly among the squares and kind of pull all the corners into the center and pinch closed. 

Put them on a square of baking parchment in a little pan (I used my smallest cast-iron skillet) and bake at 400° until puffy and golden. Yummy!

This is VERY lightly spiced and not very sweet. If you like things sweeter/spicier, taste the apples before you thicken with flour and adjust.

Another note for next Thanksgiving — I won’t bother with turkey. It’s the least interesting part of the whole feast. I’ll just roast a single turkey breast for Dave if he wants meat.

In other news, I’ve locked my twitter account and deleted my “following” list except for eight friends who haven’t migrated to Mastodon yet, so that the Fedifinder tool will still look for them. I haven’t said anything over there since the 17th, so I’m not giving Musk any traffic or ad views. What a colossal prick he is. He fired a whole bunch more engineers the night before Thanksgiving, and now the work visa folks have 60 days to find new jobs or get deported. Over the Christmas and New Years season. I feel so awful for them, god.

So anyway! Yesterday I basically passed out from exhaustion at 8pm. Had a pretty good sleep, if a bit patchy and nightmare-y, and woke up around 6:00am. I’m gonna STAY IN BED today, yessir.

Oh! Bob the Plumber worked for hours yesterday and we have a new water heater and HOT WATER! YAY! I will perhaps have a nice bath today, later on.

Excellent day, overdid it, too tired to write

Ok! Definitely on the downhill slope of withdrawal! Last night I went to bed at 7pm, turned out light at 8, lay awake an hour, got up, read Mastodon for a few minutes, lay back down and was asleep within half an hour. Woke up 4-5 times in the night but went back to sleep right away each time, then woke up for real at 6am. I felt pretty darn good today! I did some sewing — cut out and assembled a pair of rainbow print comfy pants for Em. All I need to do is attach the waistband tomorrow, and then I can get started on the jammies for all the Littles.

Then I was worn out and rested and played games and read Mastodon all afternoon, and then I made killer Chinese cabbage egg drop soup for dinner! I based it on a recipe I found online but made a few changes. Here’s my version:

Napa Cabbage Egg Drop Soup for two

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups chicken stock
napa cabbage, roughly chopped. I used six large leaves
1-2 Tbsp grated ginger root (keep it in the freezer!)
2 eggs, whisked
a FEW DROPS of sesame-chili oil
optional topping: thinly sliced green onions

Directions:
Heat oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add onion and sauté for until softened. Add garlic and sauté for a couple more minutes.
Add in the stock, chopped cabbage, and ginger. Simmer for 10 minutes, or until the cabbage has mostly softened.
Then, while the soup is still simmering, use one hand to continuously stir the soup round and round while you use your other hand to slowly drizzle in the whisked eggs. The eggs will cook instantly in the hot broth. Stir in a couple drops of sesame-chili oil until completely combined. Taste and season with salt, as needed, plus any extra sesame oil, and/or ginger that you think it might need. I added ginger and sesame-chili oil a bit at a time until the soup just started to have a nice kick.
Serve garnished with green onions if you’ve got ‘em.

God it was good. We both absolutely inhaled a large bowl each and there’s still some left over. Dave says it’s the best egg drop soup he’s ever had *heart eyes*

If you keep a ginger root in your freezer, and have chicken bouillon, sesame-chili oil, eggs, onions, and garlic always on hand, all you need to buy is a napa cabbage and you’re good to go!

Still no hot water, but Bob the Plumber is gonna take away the old water heater tomorrow and maybe install a new one on Friday if possible. Fingers crossed.

Ok in my strange alternating good nights and bad nights schedule, last night was a Good Night and I slept soundly all night and woke up refreshed at 7:30am. Did a little joyscrolling on Mastodon, then realized I was hungry! Actually hungry! So I got up and made oatmeal.

When I say oatmeal, I don’t mean the gross pasty instant stuff. No, I mean put “old-fashioned” rolled oats in a pot with water and cook them till they’re all soft and a bit gooey but still a little bit chewy and oh my goodness they’re good. And my delicate stomach doesn’t complain. I never used to like them with sweetener but lately I’ve been sprinkling a spoonful of brown sugar over the top, with a glug of heavy cream. The important thing is not to stir. That way some bites are sweet, some are creamy, some are both, some are neither. Really really good. I need to buy more oats tomorrow. Day before Thanksgiving… I’d better go early!

I’m so happy that Dave is home. He reached over and held my hand when he woke up at 7, and it woke me up a little bit and was so sweet. *heart eyes*

I did something creative today!! I cut out ALL the components to make a pair of pajamas each for all the very little kids — Freyja (size 2T, she’s a chonk), Lulu (size 6, she’s tall for her age) and Jayla’s little brother Mikey (size 3T with extra length, he’s a long skinny fella). I had just enough fabric for all of them. It’s a cozy brushed cotton French terry, with a print of sweet simple sleepy animal heads on a navy blue background. I bought it a while back from knitfabric.com but didn’t have the mental energy or physical stamina to cut into it till today. Er, no, I cut out Lulu’s pants a couple weeks ago. But all the rest today. The cutting is the most time consuming part, and now I can sew everything together in an assembly line so it’ll only take a few days.

I think I have enough rainbow jersey remaining to make a pair of comfy pants for Em, too. Hmm, I should cut those out tomorrow and add them to the assembly line.

Except tonight is scheduled to be a Bad Night — we shall see!

Our hot water heater died in the night. D’oh. Hoping to get a new one asap. No fun heating water on the stove to do the dishes.

It was a sleepless night but not as bad as last week. About 5 hours of sleep. Nearly fell asleep on the sofa this afternoon listening to my murder podcast. Thus morning I made a tofu-based cottage pie and it turned out great! Just swapped in a block of firm, pressed, cubed tofu for the meat. Honestly it didn’t even need tofu, the veggies in gravy with mash on top is totally sufficient, but the tofu protein is good for me. H

ere’s the thing my family is all laughing about this week: Guy on a Buffalo

The more often you watch it, the more silly stuff you notice!

I got ten hours of sleep and felt pretty good today. Took a half a Benadryl last night at bedtime, and was able to go back to sleep each time I woke up. I’ll do that again tonight.

I made leek and potato soup in the morning and Dave arrived home in the afternoon YAY!

Bad night but not as bad as the bad nights last week. Maybe 5.5 or 6 hours total, so I felt gritty and tired today but not utterly wretched.

Henry came over and did some chores and we watched some Taskmaster. Dafty in the middle! Crumbs in my bralette! Lololol.

My Beloved Englishman started driving this morning and is halfway home! He’ll stay at Mt Shasta tonight and be home tomorrow afternoon or evening HOORAY!

Good progress on Jayla’s legwarmers. Ready to start the ankle ribbing on the first one already — the pair should easily be done by Christmas. Measured Henry for his cardigan today, which almost certainly won’t be done by Christmas :D

I took a Benadryl last night the first time I got up to pee, just to make sure I wouldn’t lie awake for hours again, and it knocked me FLAT. Slept till 8 and then super groggy all day. Stayed in bed and did nothing. Oh, no, I did get up and take a nice bath and wash my hair. Other than that, nothing. Half a tab, if I need Benadryl again!

I was talking about true crime with a new friend on mastodon and she recommended the Killer Psyche podcast. I can’t really give you a link because there’s no actual website, but you should be able to find it on your favorite podcast platform. I’m listening via Amazon Music because it’s ad-free there. (I’m sorry, I know Amazon is pure evil but it’s a life-saver for us exhausted/disabled people.)

The podcast is presented by a woman who was a psychiatric nurse and then an FBI profiler. She says she has fifty years experience so she must be in her 70s, right? She sounds like a grandma. I’m happy to have found such a great podcast that’s hosted by an older woman! In every episode she explains the psychological motivations behind the deeds of an infamous criminal. I started with the very first episode, about the Unabomber. She was one of the undercover agents who captured him. Just fascinating!

Oh, here’s a fun thread, if you’re following the Demise of Twitter.

Mosquito Capital writes:

I’ve seen a lot of people asking “why does everyone think Twitter is doomed?”

As an SRE and sysadmin with 10+ years of industry experience, I wanted to write up a few scenarios that are real threats to the integrity of the bird site over the coming weeks.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1593541177965678592.html

(Guide to acronyms at bottom of thread)

Good stuff, eh?

Slept pretty well, no sweats, normal dreams, but woke up very early, like 5am, and by 8am i already felt like i needed a nap so I decided to stay in bed all day. It was so nice. Just me and my books and knitting and electronics. Pleasant and peaceful and restful.

I got hungry twice today! I ate a big bowl of oatmeal for breakfast m and then in the afternoon I bought a big veggie burrfrom Rigoberto’s and worked on it slowly for the rest of the day. Like a python. And then I thought I might as well eat an apple and goat cheese for a bedtime snack even though I wasn’t really hungry. Yay me!

Taskmaster was great tonight. :D

Wednesday night: KES-kih-vee-koh-ill-tah-nah

I accomplished a thing today! I lengthened my wool pants. I’m so skinny I had to buy size small, but I’m all leg so they were about 7 inches too short and the cuffs rode halfway up my shins when I sat down. I absolutely love the pants — the only ones I could find anywhere that are 100% wool, no polyester, so I was determined to make them work. I cut off the cuffs, inserted a wide band of purple cotton fleece, and sewed the cuffs back onto the bottom. I chose the fleece because it was the warmest, thickest, softest scrap I had. They’re funny-looking but now they fit just right :)

https://pixelfed.social/p/Kayray/498701630379941259

(Wednesday morning. KES-ki-vee-ko-ahh-moon-ah)

Last night was so much better, for a Bad Night! Stayed up till a reasonable time (9:30-ish), slept till 3. Woke up, had a session of horrible dry heaves, lay awake for an hour listening to audiobooks. Then thought I might as well try a Benadryl, and switched over to the James Acaster stand-up special on Netflix. Contrary to my longstanding assumptions about screens at night, I’ve noticed lately that stand-up on netflix works well as an aid to sleep. Trying, and failing, to keep my eyes open seems to make me drop off quite quickly, and the audio of a stand-up set is akin to an audiobook.

So anyway — fell asleep again before 5am and slept soundly till EIGHT!!!

I’ve got a bit of Benadryl grogginess but it isn’t bad and I think I might have enough gumption to sew extra length onto the too-short legs of my new wool joggers, after I read Mastodon for a while and do some chores.

Look, now you know how to say Tuesday in Finnish. Rhymes with CHEESE pie. Yeah I’m tired.

I’ve noticed that Good Nights (several hours of solid sleep, no sweats, comfortable stomach, no nausea) and Bad Nights (broken sleep totalling only a few hours, sweats, nausea, weird-feeling stomach) seem to exactly alternate. True to form, last night was technically a Good Night, but I was so tired from the previous Bad Night that I went to sleep ridiculously early and woke up at about 4:30am, so this has been a long day.

Went to New Seasons to return a bad pomegranate and some foul incense, got more apples and hazelnuts. Home before 9am lol. Henry came over and made a pot roast while he worked. He’s such good company. He made the hours pass so quickly. And he put clean sheets on my bed!!

I was worried I’d fall asleep by 6 but look, it’s already 8:30 so my goal of staying up till a reasonable time has been met. Just need to do my duolingo and my math, and then I can put on an audiobook and hope this night is not too bad.

Last night wasn’t the worst — no nausea — but I only slept for about five hours so I’m pretty ragged today. True to my word I did not beat myself up about being tired but allowed myself to stay in bed and just rest all day. Did some knitting, watched some BBC, joy-scrolled on Mastodon. I think it’s so interesting how you can exchange pleasantries with a ton of people and then suddenly a handful of them are your new friends.

Posting on Mastodon is sometimes called “tooting” (very silly, but also kind of adorable) because someone asked the German inventor to call it that and he didn’t understand the, ahem, alternate meaning in English. I called it “posting” for a while but now I TOOT with pride. I even made a little meme:

https://pixelfed.social/p/Kayray/497956552838514007

Have not figured out how to embed a pixelfed image yet. Embed code doesn’t work.

God I’m tired. A little too early for bed but I think I give up for the day. I’ll just listen to Chloe’s recording of The Long Winter until I fall asleep. Oh first I need to do a quick duolingo Finnish lesson and a little easy math on khan academy. I’m reviewing third grade now. Easy peasy of course but I think it’s good for my brain to chew on some numbers for a change.

I think tomorrow I’ll switch to Finnish days of the week for my post titles.

Key:

Monday = maanantai
Tuesday = tiistai
Wednesday = keskiviikko
Thursday = torstai
Friday = perjantai
Saturday = lauantai
Sunday = sunnuntai

So yeah after ten hours of good sleep last night I felt like a million bucks today! Relatively speaking, of course. I did laundry, tidied the bedroom, had Roomba vaccuum the bedroom, and tidied the kitchen, with of course lots of breaks and spending happy time on Mastodon.

I even ate something! A big (for me) bowl of pasta with my eggplant sauce, and two Trader Joe’s cinnamon rolls, which were amazingly good because I figured out that you can steam them! I took two rolls out of the tube (fridging the rest for later) and set them on a piece of parchment paper in my steamer, and steamed them for about five minutes. I’ll go six or seven minutes next time (they were maybe a tiny bit underdone in the very center) but oh man! So soft and chewy and squishy!

The more I use Mastodon, the deeper I fall in love. Today I learned that you can put server/@username.rss (e.g. http://zirk.us/@kayray.rss) into a feed reader and get a feed of that user’s previous 20 original posts — not reposts or replies, just their actual original posts. I find this incredibly handy. I installed the NetNewsWire rss reader (free, opensource) on my phone and set up feeds for myself, Henry, and my siblings, so I’ll never miss their posts and I won’t double-post my own thoughts (my short term memory is basically nonexistent).

Now I think I’ll do some knitting and catch up on Strictly Come Dancing before bed. Rooting for Hamza!

I think tomorrow I’ll switch to Finnish days of the week for my post titles.

Key:

Monday = maanantai
Tuesday = tiistai
Wednesday = keskiviikko
Thursday = torstai
Friday = perjantai
Saturday = lauantai
Sunday = sunnuntai

So yeah after ten hours of good sleep last night I felt like a million bucks today! Relatively speaking, of course. I did laundry, tidied the bedroom, had Roomba vaccuum the bedroom, and tidied the kitchen, with of course lots of breaks and spending happy time on Mastodon.

I even ate something! A big (for me) bowl of pasta with my eggplant sauce, and two Trader Joe’s cinnamon rolls, which were amazingly good because I figured out that you can steam them! I took two rolls out of the tube (fridging the rest for later) and set them on a piece of parchment paper in my steamer, and steamed them for about five minutes. I’ll go six or seven minutes next time (they were maybe a tiny bit underdone in the very center) but oh man! So soft and chewy and squishy!

The more I use Mastodon, the deeper I fall in love. Today I learned that you can put server/@username.rss (e.g. http://zirk.us/@kayray.rss) into a feed reader and get a feed of that user’s previous 20 original posts — not reposts or replies, just their actual original posts. I find this incredibly handy. I installed the NetNewsWire rss reader (free, opensource) on my phone and set up feeds for myself, Henry, and my siblings, so I’ll never miss their posts and I won’t double-post my own thoughts (my short term memory is basically nonexistent).

Now I think I’ll do some knitting and catch up on Strictly Come Dancing before bed. Rooting for Hamza!