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A good day! I had a nice long lie-in and then I went to the fabric store and got several yards of half-price cottons in Christmas colors to make gift bags, and red ribbon to tie them, and some cute remnants to make hankies for mom, and some felt to make these great ornaments for the grownups: https://betzwhite.com/2014/11/first-flake-felt-ornament-tutorial.html

Also stopped at Safeway for peppermint extract and candy canes to make peppermint bark. I think that will be a fun project to do with Lulu on the weekend. I almost came away without the candy canes because all I could find were gross fruit-flavour ones, eww, but then a nice man came past and got down on the floor to look on the very back of the bottom shelf (I couldn’t see down there from my electric cart) and found two boxes of mini peppermint canes for me! So kind!

And I stopped at the UPS place to drop off my most recent failed medication pump. Eyeroll.

Came home and knitted and watched the internet drana unfold (Elon is banning journalists from twitter now) and enjoyed the Major Announcement lololol. (Note to future readers: the orange clown is now selling NFT “collectible cards” with his face photoshopped onto superhero bodies with laser eyes. I swear to god I’m not making this up. When I first read the story and saw the image I assumed it was satire. NOPE.)

Then bath, hairwash, huge salad, slab of cheese, a little tv with sweet Dave, and bed. A good day!

Writing BEFORE I’m about to shatter from exhaustion. A tired day today. I had enough energy to do one thing, and it had to be the dishes that had been sitting there a couple days. So I did that and then I finished Lulu’s House Socks! https://zirk.us/@Kayray/109514100581044989 It is way easier to share a link to my Mastodon post than to upload and embed an image separately. Here they are on Ravelry if you’re curious about how I made them https://ravel.me/kayray/hsf5 . Now that I know my gauge and proportions it will be much much quicker to whip up a couple pairs for Freyja and Dave. Lulu’s were on 32 stitches; I reckon Freyja’s should be 24 and Dave’s 44.

I experimented with the new toe-up Fleegle Heel for Lulu’s first sock but I didn’t like it and ripped it back out. It didn’t have a sharp enough angle. I think a sock should have an almost right angle bend.

I had to take a nap this afternoon. I lay down for a few hours and even slept a bit. Definitely still working through withdrawal. I ate pretty well today so far — big bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, and leftover mac n cheese for lunch. Now I’m hungry again, yay!, and we got some green beans in the veggie box so I think I’ll make those with mashed potatoes for dinner.

Migraine misery mostly gone, only slight headache remains. I baked a big batch of Rosenmunnar cookies today, filled with homemade cranberry jelly (strained to removed seeds and skins). Dave calls them Jammy Dodgers and loves them. And that wore me out completely so I did nothing for the rest of the day.

We watched two episodes of My Mechanics on Youtube tonight — Seized Rusty Vise and 1930s Desk Lamp. So fascinating and soothing! https://youtube.com/@mymechanics

I lost weight again goddammit. Only weighed 99.8 lbs this morning. So, I ate macaroni and cheese for dinner instead of a big salad. And I’ll munch on hazelnuts now while I do my duolingo lesson here in bed. So tired I went to bed at 6:45pm.

Migraine. Not terrible, but I had to spend the afternoon in bed napping.

Dave went to Trader Joe’s and did a fantastic Big Shop. He got everything on the list, which meant I could have a huge delicious salad for dinner. Such an amazing feeling to not need to go to the store. He’s a keeper.

Dave’s home, Dave’s home! Yay!!!

This morning I went out to Ace for more little white lights for the tree and then finished decorating it. So pretty. Let’s see if it works to link to a Mastodon post here: https://zirk.us/@Kayray/109496929461177090 . You should be able to click that link, click through my Content Warning and see my tree. I promise it’s just a Christmas tree! Nothing naughty! On Mastodon it’s polite to put anything sensitive or potentially triggering behind a Content Warning so people aren’t ambushed by politics, headlines, health issues, sensitive holidays, etc.

If you’re on an iPad or similar, you can tap the tree photo, then long press it to see the descriptive alt text, which we put on photos so that the visually disabled community can participate in conversations more easily. Mastodon is all about accessibility, community, and consideration for others. What a lovely place it is.

Finishing the tree used up a lot of energy so then for the rest of the day I knitted and played TrainStation2 and finished series 2 of Happy Valley. Made simple black bean soup for dinner and we watched an episode of Only Connect and one of Edwardian Farm and now it’s SLEEP TIME!

Oops almost went to sleep before my nightly Duolingo lesson and blog post! Weird night last night. My brain was buzzing like a beehive and I had insomnia, freaky dreams, and bad sweats. Return of the Withdrawal Symptoms, which is to be expected for some months. It’s cool, I had a good day anyway. Tidied up a bit, did some knitting, and put lights on the little tree! Dave should be home by the time I wake up, and maybe before I actually fall asleep. *heart eyes*

It’s funny, last Friday was a Totally Sleepy Day too. Went to bed at a reasonable time last night, slept till 9am, was just too sleepy to get up till the afternoon! I think I’m still in withdrawal mode. So I just went with it! Body says rest, so I rest. Only a little bit sweaty last night too.

I knitted and read Mastodon and listened to Chloe‘s new recordings of Little Town on the Prairie and finished the audiobook of “The Feast” by Margaret Kennedy which was FANTASTIC. So good, so good, so good. If you like family comedy and social satire and a mid-century English setting, you’ll love it too! Do not read reviews — there WILL be spoilers. I was very glad I read it knowing nothing. Scribd has only one more Margaret Kennedy novel and my libraries have none. So I’ll need to start seeking out used editions. If you absolutely must read a review, this is a good one: https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2021/11/07/the-feast-by-margaret-kennedy/ but seriously, just read the book. Read the review when you’ve finished the book so you can revel in someone else loving it too.

Made good progress on Henry’s sleeves and also knit half a sock for Lulu. And I took a BATH and washed my hair today, yay! Dave will be home tomorrow night and I wanted to be a bit less smelly lol.

Why do the ants come marching into the bedroom all of a sudden? Ants, ants, ants, everywhere. Are they cold? Is the rain flooding their nests? I honestly don’t mind much except that when one crawls on me and I squish it, the stink is eye-wateringly bad. A horrible chemical smell. Formic acid, I guess, but jeeze, how can something so tiny smell so strongly?

Oh. Also. DAMN it’s dark in the winter in Portland. We’re still leading up to the shortest day and boy is it weird. It’s pitch-black night well before 5pm. I’ve never experienced such short daylight hours in my entire adult life. We moved here in mid January and the days were already much longer by then. This is really freaky. No wonder midwinter festivals are all about light and color and hoping the sun will return! And this is only PORTLAND, not even very far north. I’m totally gonna celebrate Midwinter’s Day — I think that’s when The Dark is Rising BBC radio play will start, too.

My SAD lamp arrived today and I look forward to waking up with some fake sunlight tomorrow morning.

Best day since hospital last Saturday. Slept pretty well. Had night sweats again but only medium-bad, where the night before they were AWFUL. Went back to sleep a few times after waking early, yay me! And then after I woke up and read my Mastodon feeds for a while I sat in bed and knitted for an hour which was a nice start to the day. Then I made a fried egg on an English muffin for breakfast. I was kinda worried I might start losing weight again ‘cause I’ve had a run of not-great days but I’m still 102, yay.

And then I FINISHED all the little kid Christmas sewing projects! Three pairs of snuggly pajamas for Lulu, Freyja, and their 3yo Uncle Mikey, and a pair of rainbow joggers for Em. Completely finished, size tags and all, ready to wrap and ship. I need to find some inexpensive Christmas print fabric to make more gift bags since I refuse to use wrapping paper.

Also took out the kitchen garbage (a very light bag) and discovered that the garbage crew hadn’t emptied our bins on Monday. Turns out Dave forgot to pay them. Oops. Lol. Also did the washing up, and ate a big salad for lunch. Now I’m sitting in the livingroom with a fire in the fireplace, watching Happy Valley series 1 (it’s as good as I remember) and winding five skeins of my favorite thick sock yarn into balls. Dave wants Sleeping Socks, and since I was already paying for shipping I bought some extra. It’s the best there is for thick, heavy slipper-socks! https://halcyonyarn.com/yarn/127/tuffy-canadian-sock-yarn

I haven’t felt well enough to get out of bed and sit in the living room for an extended period of time since last week. This is nice.

I realized yesterday that the beautiful gray winter gloom here in Portland might be affecting me. I absolutely CRAVE bright, yellow light. None of our lights seem bright enough, and I just want to go to bed by the late afternoon. I’m used to the strong, nearly constant California sunshine. I love the gloom here, but I think my body needs more sunlight, so I did some research and ordered a small but well-reviewed SAD light. Hope it will help me stay awake past 5pm and maybe feel more awake in the morning.

Ok I think my mashed potatoes are finished boiling!

Rough night last night, absolutely drenched in sweat all night. Really tired today. Got some knitting done. Brought little Christmas tree in from porch and assembled its little stand and put it on a little table in the window but that’s all I could do today.

It’s so amazing to have an appetite again. And I can just keep eating! Like, I’m sitting here in bed just knitting and snacking on hazelnuts even though I’m not technically hungry. Calories, baby! Nutrition! Woohoo!

This morning I started sewing right away before existence could exhaust me, and I got Lulu’s pajamas all sewn together. Now I have three little pairs of PJs plus Em’s rainbow pants that just need tags sewn in, yay!

I also made my first attempt at a traditional Christmas Pudding, following Townsends’s recipe, generally, but I made a TINY pudding using only 2 oz of each main ingredient instead of a pound. I figured my first try would be bad and I was right, lol. Horrible chemical aftertaste, and bland and soggy. Next try, I’ll use butter instead of vegetable suet, and add a lot more spice and maybe a bit of molasses, and I’ll steam the pudding instead of boiling it. And I’ll wrap it in white linen instead of an orange tea towel. And I’ll use just dried fruit instead of adding Dave’s glacé cherries.

Went to store for salad stuff this morning and it tired me out.

Headache all day. It snowed and snowed and snowed! The snow mostly melted by the time it hit the ground but it was so beautiful coming down all fluffy. Toward the afternoon it stuck enough that the lawn turned white and there was a layer of snow on all the parked cars and rooftops.

Dave is out of town for work again so I really need to try to stay alive and out of the hospital.

Normal morning and then my heart went bananas at 10:30am. Just whammo, 168 BPM out of nowhere. Yesterday Dave had travelled to a friend’s birthday celebration a couple hours away and spent the night so I was alone. Managed to grab my go-bag, unlock front door, sut in the entry floor, and call ambulance after 20 minutes, when I was sure it wasn’t going to clear up.

EMTs arrived. They asked all the questions as usual, hooked me up for ekg, etc. I felt SO BAD, was pretty sure I was about to faint. They lifted me down the porch steps and onto a gurney and then I puked over the side. And then within 2 minutes, by the time they got me into the ambulance, I was fine. Boom. Puking does it every time. Stimulates the vagal nerve. I wanted them to let me just go back into the house, but my bp was still lower than my low-normal so I let them take me to OHSU. By the time we got there my bp was closer to my normal, and by the time the ER nurses took fresh readings it was good enough that I was ready to leave. Doc tried to make me stay but I’ve been through this so many times. There’s nothing else they can do except run tests, and the tests always say the same thing. So I checked out (against medical advice, but with common sense) and Henry fetched me home.

Now I’ll be extra-tired for a few days. No big deal.

So yeah. I’m still alive, by gum. But so tired.

Went to bed early last night, didn’t really wake up till ten this morning, napped all day long, ready for bedtime now and it’s only 7:30pm. Heh. Not an unpleasant day. I’ll just chalk it up to part of my withdrawal. Goodnight!

Oof tired. Less hungry today but I managed a big bowl of oatmeal for breakfast and a big dish of lasagna for dinner.

Ran errands: bought a little Christmas tree, then went to Ace for a tree stand, extra pack of lights, bird food, and squirrel food.

Final episode of Taskmaster was tonight! So good. And then I watched the first episode of Alex’s new show, The Horne Section TV Show, which was just the kind of odd fun you’d expect from Alex.

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!