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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!

Ten (10) solid hours of restful sleep! No sweating, normal dreams. Dreamt I was wearing a beautiful fur-trimmed surcoat like this:

No sleep. Like, literally maybe three hours cumulatively. I think I figured it out, though. On several doctors’ recommendation I’ve been taking a cannabis gummy, very low dose, just about every night for several years, to help ease medication side effects such as pain and nausea, and to give me a little appetite. Realized recently that it was linked to some of my tachycardia events so I quit taking them at the end of October, I think, or early November. Easy, not addicted, don’t crave it at all. I only miss being hungry. It was so nice when food seemed appetizing once a day.

Last night it occurred to me to check with Dr. Google.

My symptoms align EXACTLY with marijuana withdrawal. And I mean exactly. Gahhhhh.

In theory, this is probably the worst of it now, and within a few days it might start to ease, and then get better and better over 20 days or so. I hope. Lol.

So I’ve decided to be as kind to myself as if I were an addict in treatment. No scolding myself for being sweaty, greasy, and unambitious. All the self-care I can manage. If I can’t sleep, I’ll figure out some way to amuse myself instead of being anxious about not sleeping. And I’m not going to spiral out about how bad I feel. This WILL get better.

Henry’s little family has travelled by Amtrak to California for Jayla’s Grandma’s funeral, and my Englishman is still out of town, so today Henry came over and he did some chores for me and now we are having lovely quiet Henry-and-Kara time. So rare, so treasured. Watched a couple episodes of Taskmaster and now The Sting. Pausing frequently to chat about things.

Last night while trying to fall asleep I fell into the Pit of Dark Despair. Couldn’t stop crying, felt panicky and awful. It got really bad so I called the crisis hotline that I’ve had stored in my phone for YEARS. They wouldn’t talk to me cause I don’t live in California anymore, and the Oregon number they gave me was disconnected, but I managed to Google and found a crisis hotline specific to my county! A lovely woman picked up right away and let me sob and vent. We did slow breathing together, and she listened, and sympathized, and offered gentle support. It was so incredibly helpful, and after about fifteen minutes I stopped crying, felt much better, thanked her, said goodnight, and hung up. Managed to sleep for two hours too.

The moral is: if you have mental health issues, please google your local crisis hotline NOW, call to make sure the number works, and store it in your phone for the future. You’re allowed to call in ANY kind of mental health crisis. You don’t need to be suicidal. Call before you get to that point. They want to help! Xxx

Slept last night! Woke up several times, once with violent dry heaves, but went back to sleep each time and woke up feeling relatively well rested and human-like. Did the dishes, cleared old stuff from fridge, made eggplant and red bell pepper pasta sauce. Kept Lulu company over FaceTime (home from school for Veteran’s Day) and we ate oatmeal for breakfast together.

Mostly played on Mastodon all afternoon. Henry and Lulu came over to borrow suitcases for Jayla’s Amtrak trip to CA for her grandmother’s funeral. It was so nice to see them and he took away two boxes of donation stuff so it’s not cluttering the entry anymore, yay!

Super tired now, going to sleep. Fingers crossed that I STAY asleep, but I got some Benadryl delivered so I’ll take half a tab if I get wakeful in the night.