kayray.org

Life has been rather a difficult slog recently. All night long I wake up either to pee (I’m on huge doses of diuretics to help my heart) or to mop up the night sweats. Last night I kept track. Woke up at 10:30, midnight, 1:45, 3:00, 5:30, and 7am. I’ve been resting for the last hour.

In the daytime it’s a struggle to do anything. It’s hard to concentrate, and nothing is much fun. Every task requires so much planning, and energy that I don’t have. I want to be ME again. I don’t feel like me.

This really sucks.

I “only” sweated through one thick towel last night which was nice I guess. I’m dreading going to sleep tonight.

I managed to Roomba the kitchen and dining room, and I even swiffered the kitchen very slowly. Living room tomorrow. I’m trying to do it all more frequently so the little bin doesn’t get so full after each room. There is a lot more orange fluff to vacuum up since Owen moved in. He’s such a good cat. Such a love.

Played a lot of Zelda. Did a few shrines and found another stable. So much fun!

The night sweats are destroying my life

Felt lousy. Bad sleep, weird stomach issues.

Watered plants. Lay on sofa for hours watching Max Miller on YouTube. Finished two books, started two more (one audio, one paper).

The night sweats are KILLING ME. Every night, waking up drenched in sweat over and over and over. Docs can’t figure it out. I don’t even look forward to bedtime anymore. Arghhhhhh.

Dreamt I was walking hand-in-hand with my dad down a path in a cool shady forest. Such a calm, peaceful dream. <3

Five pounds of fluids drained away since yesterday morning and only 97 pounds of Kayray remaining. Gotta eat more. At least it’s easier to eat today because I don’t feel so full. I made a huge milkshake for breakfast and have been eating little bowls of leftover pasta all afternoon. Just popped a Trader Joe’s pain au chocolat into the oven for a lil snack.

Finished my Procreate Planner brush/stamp set. I went back in and increased the size of every brush, added months, renamed them all, made a set, and cleverly noticed that you can “set new reset point” for each brush so I did that too. I think that means if people tinker with a brush they can hit the Reset button and it will go back to the state it was in when I set the reset point, i.e. perfect. I’ve uploaded my brush set plus a blank “ringbound” planner that you can customize with different colors or whatever. The ringbound planner is based on this tutorial by Every Tuesday.

Here’s a link to my Procreate files:

Kara’s Digital Planner Files

I put up some example jpgs too, to give you some ideas. Now, I can’t imagine that digital planner pages are much use to anyone! I guess you could print out hard copies of your designs. Or you could export as pdf, open in Books, and notate with Markup. I dunno what people do, but there are digital planner pages all over the internet so they must have some kind of use! Anyway I had a ton of fun making all the calendar brushes/stamps. And I learned so much!!

If you want to use the planner file, feel free to delete every layer ABOVE the “Planner Master” group. They’re only there as an example of one way to lay out and decorate your planner pages. Then, duplicate the “Planner Master” group and give the new group a different name. Lock and hide the original group to keep it safe. Then you can tinker with the copy. When you get the colors how you like them, you can flatten the new group and then start your layout and decorations. Keep layout and decorations on new layers, of course, and then you can re-use your perfect, flattened planner page for succeeding weeks.

Easiest way to recolor, say, the spiral binding, is to make your active color the one you want to use, tap that layer, tap “select”, and tap “fill layer”. Presto change-o.

I’ve been having trouble eating ‘cause I feel full after just a couple bites, even though my weight has been holding steady at 100-102, so I took my mighty diuretic today to see if that would help and I think it has. I made a big Bucket of Pasta (spaghetti with marinara, sundried tomatoes, a splash of cream, and a good shake of red pepper flakes) and have eaten two bowls.

I’ve been monitoring the Idiot Roomba while he cleans the living room carpet. He’s nearly finished with the second pass and it’s looking so much better.

Have spent the day alternately reading a decent crime thriller (The Dead Ground by Claire McGowan) and drawing in Procreate. I bumped into a tutorial on how to make a virtual weekly planner, and I worked on that for a bit and then went off on a tangent of creating my own “stamps” (brushes) for days of the week and calendar blanks. I found a free monospaced type-writer-ish font to use for the calendar blanks so the numbers line up all nicely, and I learned a TON, by trial and error, about adding text to a canvas. And how to make a brush be un-pressure-sensitive, and how to organize brushes into a folder, and all sorts of other things. I’m writing this on my phone and my iPad is across the room charging up so I can’t show you images of what I’m talking about but maybe I will tomorrow when I have assembled my components.

Of course the last thing I need is a weekly planner! Every day is exactly the same. But it was a fun and challenging project and I hope to make my stamps and brushes into a free bundle to give to other artists.

Today’s big project was to send the Roomba through the whole house. I know it’s a labor-saving device but I need to do quite a lot of STUFF to facilitate it. First, remove oxygen tubing and area rugs and power cables from the floors, and make sure the furniture is placed so the idiot robot doesn’t get trapped. And then I can only send it to one room at a time because it needs its little dirt cup to be emptied after every room, and to recharge its battery. So that means I need to get down on the floor and back up again many times on Roomba Day. And most of the rooms need multiple passes because I don’t do it every day.

So yeah. Roomba Day is a tiring day. But it’s nearly done now — it’s finishing up the dining room, and then after the battery recharges I’ll have it do the living room, and then the big bedroom if there’s time or maybe do that one tomorrow since the living room takes forever.

And then tomorrow I’ll try to Swiffer the hard floors if I possibly can. Very slowly and imperfectly, but it’ll be much better than nothing and it will smell so good when I’m done.

Great progress in Zelda today! I found a stable and tamed a wild horse so I have a mount now and can travel much faster! I solved two or three puzzle shrines and found another Skyview Tower or whatever they’re called, so I have a whole new area on my map. Went into a couple of easy wells and a very scary cave that I had to NOPE right out of. Found Hesta and got a couple new slots in my bags. Oh and I went up in a hot air balloon with an old dude and found a Dragon Tear and unlocked a Memory!

Hmm. Tired. Played Zelda, drew, read, watched Max Miller on YouTube. Finished excellent thriller “In the Dark” by Cara Hunter. So twisty!

This recipe sounds great and I wish someone would make it for me:

And this one… well, watch to the end and see what Max thinks of red wine mixed with barley flour, goat cheese, and honey. HA. His reaction is priceless.

To be clear, the cherry cake I made for Dave is made with glacè cherries, the preserved, sticky, bright-red, poisonous-looking ones you might find in a fruitcake. Not lovely fresh cherries! :D

Dratted Remodulin pump woke me up nine times with false alarms last night, so I was fairly weary today. Short of breath, too. Ugh. Ok mood though! Dave went grocery shopping so I made myself such a nice dinner. A big handful of fresh cherries, a sliced tomato, two slices of bread and butter, and a mini tub of hummus. Easy and cool on this hot day.

I was up with insomnia (worrying) for a while at 1am but I woke up feeling ok at 7:30 or so! Lounged about till 8, then got up and made a milkshake for breakfast (craving milkshakes lately), chatted with Dave, and had a pleasant start to the day. Maybe that odd period of sleeping 11 hours every night is over. No crippling fatigue today, and I did several things. No nap necessary. Labs came back — we’re gonna jack up the Levothyroxine some more.

What else… well I drew and drew and drew. Figured out how to do a sticker effect in procreate which makes such cute faux-stickers! I “stick” them to the virtual letters I write to Em, or stick them into iMessage. Really fun.

Dave has spent the last couple days helping Henry change the brakes in the Honda. It was a CHORE. Long story. But anyway I baked him his favorite cherry cake as a thank you for being awesome and teaching my boy some Adult Skills! He was so happy to have tea and homemade cake when he got home :)

Also played a bunch of Zelda. Got the glider, oh man that was fun getting rocketed into the sky, and went down into the Depths. Learned very quickly to sneak past the monster camps down there, yikes.

Watched an Antiques Roadshow and did some blackwork. Now I’m gonna make a tasty quick taco salad for dinner and call it a day.

I needed to get bloodwork done this week and today I felt ok enough to get out of bed and drive to the lab and get it done. Yay me! And when I got home I did the dishes and watered all my plants, which is a Big Project now that they’re all hanging up. Got it done, though. And then, inspired by Max Miller on YouTube, I caramelized a single onion, added a cup of beef bouillon, and had myself a little bowl of rich and tasty onion soup.

And now I’m worn out, justifiably so, and back in bed for the day. I’m listening to a really good Librivox recording of Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers. The narrator enunciates a little more than I prefer but is otherwise really good, and has such a warm and cozy voice that I can easily forgive the over-enunciation :)

Another stay-in-bed day, through I didn’t actually need to sleep. I hope I feel like getting up tomorrow. I really want homemade soup, and there’s a cabbage in the fridge just waiting to be souped. Today I made do with black beans in the crock pot except I accidentally had it turned to low. Put them in at 3:00, checked at 4:30 expecting beautiful rich bean broth and creamy well-done beans… nope. Well now the pot is set to high so they should be done before too long. The pinch of baking soda will help. I’ll be sipping bean broth before bedtime.

UPDATE: 6pm and I’ve just checked my beans. Still raw, because I turned them from Low to Warm instead of to High. Eedjit. *eyeroll*. To be fair, all the markings are rubbed off my crockpot, but usually I remember that the FIRST click is high, then low, then warm. Gotta make new marks with nail polish or something. Well, I’ll bet they’ll be done within the hour now that they’re actually cooking and have at least been warm for several hours.

UPDATE: 7:15 and I finally have my big mug of rich steaming black bean broth!

Spent most of the day watching Max Miller’s Tasting History YouTube channel, working backwards from the most recent video. That French Onion Soup from 1651 looks simple and delicious. That’s probably why I started wanting soup all of a sudden.

Stayed in bed all day. Napped and ate. It’s all I could do.

I’ve been kinda down because I feel so weak and fatigued every day. Had to give up on my “1000 steps a day” plan because some days I just CAN’T. Seems like I really am going down the drain. Ugh. But today I realized I’ve only been out of the hospital for one month, exactly. Maybe I’m still healing and recovering. Maybe. Maybe next week I’ll be able to start my little PT exercises again. Maybe.

So frickin thirsty ALL THE TIME.

I played a lot of Zelda over the past few days. Finished up Sky Island mostly (skipped the miniboss and there are probably some Koroks yet to find) and dove down to Hyrule proper! I’ll start adventuring tomorrow.

Followed one of Calvin’s tutorials and painted a mock-watercolor watermelon in Procreate. This is my second attempt. I think it looks pretty good.

Massive fatigue

For the past few weeks, ever since I came home from hospital actually, I’ve been taking my morning handful of pills when I get up to pee around 4-6am. And then I fall back asleep till 7 or 7:30, get up to pee, and then fall back asleep until 9 or 10. It’s like clockwork. I think some of those morning drugs must be soporific. It’s highly atypical for me to be able to get back to sleep so easily if I wake early. Hallelujah, though!

Slept till 10 this morning, and was groggy till noon. Weird. Nice, but weird. Owen slept on the foot of my bed all night. He gets up and follows me to the bathroom and then I tell him it’s time to go back to sleep and we climb back into bed and zonk out again. Sometimes he sits by my head and sniffs the night air through my window for a while. Good cat.

I finished making macramé plant hangers and got all seven of my tasty plants hung up out of his reach. Thank goodness he’s not tempted by my geranium, baby lemon, or ficus, so those can stay in the foyer on the table in the bright sun.

1000+ steps again today! Fourth day in a row.

I took a bath this morning and changed my bedding and tidied up my room so bedtime will be a real treat tonight. The night sweats have been so awful lately, and I can’t change my sheets every day, so they get yucky. I sleep on a towel to try to soak some of it up. Yuck. The apple Health app has a place to track your night sweats, so I know for a fact I’ve only had TWO non-sweaty nights in the past 30 days. UGH.

Here are my plants hanging up all safe:

Operation “Keep Owen from Eating My Houseplants” has begun. Dave helped me hang a chain from the ceiling today. It stretches across my windows from one side of the room to the other and is about six inches below the ceiling. Now I can hang all my plants from the chain and they will be out of Owen’s reach. I’ve already made three macramé hangers and need to make three or four more. Had to give one of the pothos a severe trim to keep it from dangling too low, but I stuck the trimmings back into the pot to make the plant more lush.

Ugh so tired.

Happy 2-year anniversary to us! *heart eyes* We’re watching a wonderful docu-series about crime scene forensic scientists in England. So good!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004p7f

I felt more tired than yesterday but less crappy than the previous week so I count that as a win. And I walked 1200 steps yesterday so I’m not surprised I felt a bit more fatigued today. Since I can only walk very slowly today, I’ve been getting my step count in by distance rather than time. I’ve taken many very slow walks today from bedroom door all the way to sliding glass door in living room, and I’m at 838 steps with plenty of time for a few more laps before bed. I’m sure I can get to 1000 without any trouble. It’s nice to have an easy goal.

For the past few days I’ve been practicing my hand/eye coordination by copying a Hungarian folk art-style illustration. I know I was only copying, but it was tricky and fun! Super irritating that pixelfed still won’t embed. Grr! Here’s a boring old link.

https://pixelfed.social/i/web/post/574401617225948031

I felt less crappy today, yay! Not great, but less bad.

Played some Tears of the Kingdom this afternoon. Made my way back to the tower thingy and got Fast Travel and um the other thing that makes time go backward. Recall! Another nifty new mechanic. So now I’ve Fast Traveled to the southernmost shrine and am ready to try it tomorrow.

Ken inspired me to try to up my physical activity in the most gradual, low stress way possible so today I set a timer for one minute and walked back and forth in the house, three times. And that got me to 1200 steps! Significantly up from my daily average of 650 or so. Very proud of myself.

Owen is OBSESSED with trying to eat my houseplants. He’s totally insane about it. I keep moving them to higher and higher places but he figures out how to reach them every time. Crazy cat. Now my plants are shut into the bathroom until I can hang them from the ceiling. I’m growing a little pot of alfalfa seeds for him to snack on, but I suspect he won’t care for them. Crazy cat. Good thing he’s so soft and affectionate. Lol.