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Tired. Got labs done though.

Felt pretty ok this morning despite bad night sweats. Sigh. Had a nice time caring for my garden in the morning sun. It’s great having a bucket to sit on while I disturb the little weeds and fluff up the mulch. A few of my cherry tomatoes have turned orange and there are several more baby zucchini. Not sure why the cucumber stopped flowering. Does it need more food or less food? More water or less water? WHO CAN TELL?

Finished reading a truly terrible thriller. Omg it was awful. The funny thing is that I requested it from the library without realizing I’d read it before, which only became apparent when I entered it into goodreads. I gave it one star the first time I read it a couple years ago, but since I couldn’t remember anything about it I decided to give it another chance. I was right the first time. Ha!

Got super tired around lunchtime and gave up and went to bed. Played Zelda for hours, started a much better book that I’ve been looking forward to, ate a quesadilla.

Dave ordered me a bedside table, the sort of hospital-ish kind that you can raise or lower or rotate over the bed and it arrived today. I’ve been keeping my bedside stuff (chargers, meds, lamp, water, etc.) on a chair but now I have a proper table, and I am thrilled!!

Should eat something more but I’m tired and have run out of leftovers. Peanut butter to the rescue.

I cooked that beautiful zucchini with onion, garlic, and red bell pepper. The zucchini was so delicious I fished about half of it out of the pan and ate it plain! It was tender and juicy and actually sweet! And then I mixed everything with jarred marinara sauce and made pasta to eat it on. I ate many little bowls all day.

Nurse Adam changed jobs so my new palliative care nurse, Karla, came over so we could get acquainted. Very pleasant.

I played some Zelda and unlocked a couple shrines and a tower, and found a stable and a big glyph. Looking for the eye now.

7:30pm and I’m so sleepy! But also very thirsty dammit. I’ll be up peeing all night again, grr.

Slept late. Took metolazone because I started to feel puffy yesterday and I wanted to take it before suffering for a couple days! Averaging 5 days between doses. Cut a few inches off my hair because it was bothering me. Still enough to ponytail and get it off my neck. Bath, hair wash. Big fatigue today but I beat the TotK Colgera boss on the very first try, thanks to an incredibly helpful YouTube video. Now the Rito village is sunny again and I have a bird sprit guy who will travel with me and blow wind when I need him to!

Now I’ll go back to exploration; unlocking shrines, towers, and stables; and doing side-quests. I’m headed for the stable in the Hebra mountains but stopped for the day in the middle of exploring a cave en route. I LOVE how you can save the game anywhere and how easy it is to just pause.

Watching The Martian with Dave. I don’t think I’ve seen it since Henry and I went to see it at the cinema. They did a darn good job on the screenplay. Impressive. We hope they will do as well with Project Hail Mary but the temptation for them to make Rocky Hollywood-cute may be a Problem.

Now Henry is here to do a few heavy-lifting 2-man chores with Dave, lovely boy. I’m sending him home with two pints of mini-dills, a tub of the cabbage + apple sauerkraut that turned out AMAZING, a pint of pickled pearl onions and jalapeños, half the big bag of miso paste I bought a while back (more than I can ever use), several pounds of carrots (I asked Dave to buy me some carrots and he came home with a 6-lb bag lol), a packet of PH test strips so he can test his own pickles, and the cutting board that Dave made for Freyja’s second birthday. He lasered the word CHOP! on both sides because that’s what she shouts when she helps Henry chop vegetables. She’s only two and she loves to help in the kitchen. She has a little chopper and now she has her own cutting board :)

Oh and I harvested my first zucchini, my third cucumber, and a little handful of strawberries this morning! Two pics below if you drag to the side.

Wild fires up in Washington mean yellow air here. Yuck.

Played so much Zelda! Ready for my first Boss Fight. Wish me luck!

A pleasant day. Didn’t feel as amazingly well as yesterday but pretty good nonetheless. Made Spanish rice that turned out perfectly, which went well with the perfect beans I cooked yesterday — soft and tender and creamy but still holding their shape. So good! I ate little bowlfuls all day with cheese and plenty of lime juice.

Fed my garden its fancy new food in the morning and sat out there in the afternoon as usual. Some of the cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen and look slightly yellow, and there are two cucumbers that will be big enough soon, and a fine healthy zucchini to pick in a few days! Lots of tiny zucchinis starting, too. Tomorrow morning I really need to tear some strips of cloth to tie things to their supports.

Played Zelda TotK for hours today! Finally started the main quest chain (after just exploring the world for the last three months) and am currently hopping from platform to platform with the world’s most annoying bird kid. Unlocked and solved the shrine up there which will help a lot if I need to leave and buy more arrows or something. I wasted a lot of arrows in the cave, burning thorns unnecessarily. Silly me. It’s such an amazingly fun game and it feels like I’ve still only scratched the surface after playing for more than 55 hours!

Finally! I feel good today! It is actually a Good Day at long last! I slept fairly well but the best thing is that after I was up for a while at 6 taking my meds and stuff I went back to sleep till nearly 9, probably a whole extra REM cycle. I don’t feel exhausted and muddled! My mind is clear! I am cheerful! So refreshing.

Instead of spending most of the day lying in bed I am UP and hanging out in the living room and doing things in the kitchen so Dave and I have had lots of chatting time. My sweetie-pie *hearteyes* I miss him when I’m too exhausted to be near People.

I love my homemade kefir so much. It’s so sour! I actually made a second small smoothie after my usual smoothie this morning because I craved MORE TANG. I also started a little pot of black beans so I can make spanish rice and beans for dinner (with lots of lime juice and tomatoes for TANG), and I ate a homemade pickle and a bowl of homemade three-bean salad (extra vinegar) for lunch. I think I’ll have some of my homemade ginger ale when I get my outdoor time later. Oh yeah we’re back to normal lovely summer weather. High of 82° today, and sunny enough to make shade for me to sit in.

I’ve been reading the Maeve Kerrigan series by Jane Casey. I remember being a bit underwhelmed by the first book but it was good enough to keep going and I’m glad I did because they get better and better. I’ve been reading the more recent books a bit out of order, depending on which ones the library sends first, but it doesn’t matter. I just checked goodreads and it looks like I missed #6, which is great! An extra book!I’m reading #9 now, The Cutting Place, and then there’s still #10 which was published this year, and there’s also a stand-alone novel which is bound to be just as good, The Killing Kind.

Oo looks like she has written a few YA mysteries too. I’ll give those a try, might as well, and maybe I can recommend them to Em eventually.

Dave brought home a container of mini-cucumbers for me to pickle so I started three pints of dills. I’ll try a 10-day cold ferment for half-sours this time, inspired by this video that Henry sent me this morning:

PICKLE IT!

A nice average day. I watered my garden in the morning and doled out a saucepan of Grass Soup Fertilizer to each pot. I let this batch steep in its covered bucket for over a week in the ridiculous heatwave and wow was it stinky! Anything that smells like that has gotta be good for plants :D

I harvested a double handful of chard and ate it for lunch, drenched in lemon juice, and then I had a bowl of seriously lemony tabbouleh. My craving for lemon and other sour things is unstoppable and irresistible. Lucky I have a fridge full of lemons and really tart homemade kefir and pickles and such.

Not as hot today, only 90°, so I was able to leave my windows open YAY but I couldn’t go outdoors because it was overcast all day and I didn’t want a cloudburn. Maybe tomorrow will be both cool enough and sunny enough for my outdoor time in the afternoon.

I spent many hours today reading and listening to my very good audiobook, and I filled an empty ink cartridge with the copper-colored ink that I bought a while back and wrote a letter to a friend. That’s about it for today.

I am wondering if giving in to my lemon/sour craving is helping my stomach. Or maybe it’s better today because of metolazone yesterday.

Better day. Got better sleep and I took my mega-diuretic so I feel less puffy and I can eat more than two bites of food. And my mouth doesn’t taste so foul.

Did some cooking first thing so I’d have something to eat when the afternoon crash hit. Orange juice and brown sugar glazed carrots — so good, and not too sweet. And I used my leftover mashed taters to make a double batch of fish cakes. Then I made my breakfast smoothie and went back to bed to read and nap all afternoon. So much reading, so much napping.

It’s still over a hundred degrees outside but I miss my afternoon fresh air time so much that I braved the heat and went outside at 4:30. My body was comfy enough if I kept misting myself all over with the hose, but the hot hot air was bothersome to breathe. I managed to stay out for an hour, though.

My garden loves the heat! I swear everything grew several inches over the last couple of days. I have lots of tiny green cherry tomatoes, enough chard to harvest for a meal tomorrow, a sunflower that’s starting to bloom, and I think I saw a zucchini that is growing properly instead of dying at 3 inches from not being pollinated. I’ll water tomorrow morning and get a better look.

So tired.

Heat wave. 107° outside though comfy inside, thanks to our good AC. Crazy fatigue all day. Lay in bed and did nothing.

Homemade ginger ale is finished and totally amazing! Super fizzy, extra-gingery, not too sweet. I rock. Seven-day process. Two days to ferment the water kefir, then five days of a secondary fermentation after mixing water kefir with ginger/sugar mixture.

A bit of insomnia last night but felt normal-tired today, so that was good. It was forecast to be a real scorcher today, 102°, so I sat out in the garden in the morning while it was still only 80° or so. There is ONE female zucchini blossom getting ready to open! I hope one of the 20 male blossoms will open at the right time.

We kept the shades down and the windows closed all day to keep the heat out. Dave likes to set to AC to 75° but that’s a bit cold for me, so while he’s been gone out and about today I’ve had it at 78° which is much better. God I hope the evening air gets cooler soon so I can open my bedroom windows at least!!

My stomach didn’t hurt today, yay! I scraped up enough energy to make flour tortillas per my nephew John’s recipe and they turned out great. Just need more salt next time. Hungry now, gotta find some dinner.

Such a nice day I’m having. Pretty good sleep last night despite my first severe night sweats in a while — soaked through a bath towel, ugh. But then I slept late, till 8 I think, and woke up feeling well-rested for a change. Went to Safeway first thing for pearl onions, a couple jalapeños, some tomatoes, and some lemon sorbet. Safeway is a slightly longer drive than our local Fred Meyer’s, but Safeway always has a blue space close to the door for me to park in and they always have plenty of electric carts for me to ride on while I shop.

When I got home I made my breakfast smoothie which was so good! I finally got my homemade kefir factory going at a good rate so I can ferment a jar for two days in the cupboard and then chill it in the fridge overnight, so with the addition of frozen strawberries and pineapple it’s thick and frosty. Yum yum yum. My stomach didn’t hurt at all today. Those good kefir microbes? Or just that I drained off all the damn fluid over the last couple days?

Then I sat at the dining table and peeled pearl onions forever, seeded and sliced the jalapeños, and started fermenting two pints, one for Henry and one for Dave. A half-tablespoon of salt per pint gave me a 2.5% brine, by weight, including water to top off the jar.

We had some nasty-ass old tomatoes in the fridge so I peeled and seeded them and got them started simmering on the ultra-low burner to make tomato paste.

Let’s see, I played some Zelda, ate one of my fridge burritos from the other day, read my book. Then in the afternoon it was Outdoors Time! My daily Outdoors Time went from a chore to a pleasant necessity very quickly. I have such a comfy set-up out here (I’m still outside as I write this). It’s a real scorcher today so I have the hose nozzle set to “mist” and I mist myself all over when I start to feel too warm.

Maybe I’ll make a quesadilla with pepperjack and tomatoes for dinner, with a cone of lemon sorbet afterwards and popcorn for my bedtime snack. (I’ve been making popcorn at bedtime lately)

Last night was really weird. Terrible insomnia plus I had to pee about 500 times. I was wide awake from 2:30 till after 6, but then I slept for a couple hours thank goodness. I blame the insomnia on the SMALL but daily coffee ice cream cones that I’ve been treating myself to every day for about a week. I love coffee ice cream so much! I’ll take a break for a couple days and then go back to my small daily cones and try to build up a little caffeine tolerance.

My dill pickles smell dilly and pickley! I’ve put one of the jars into the fridge so they can chill before I taste them.

Breakfast was a kefir-strawberry-pineapple smoothie made with my own homemade kefir :)

God I’m tired.

Normal day, not great, not terrible. Took my metolazone so I peed all day but also felt less puffy. It’s a fair trade. Started some lemon peel vinegar with the lemon peels from making a fresh batch of tabbouleh. Mostly drank water all day to satisfy my burning thirst, but also ate a big juicy salad and a homemade burrito. I had enough leftover beans and rice to make four burritos so I got a little assembly line going and have three in the fridge for another day.

It was sunny enough to make proper shade so I had my nice outdoor time in the afternoon, like for three hours, just listening to my book and watching the bees.

Oh crap my heart just started racing… oh it’s ok it calmed down and is “only” 110 now, which is pretty normal for me.

Tired day. Did nothing. Watched the Sewing Bee Finale with Dave. Tried to sit outside but it’s weirdly overcast so the sun is bouncing off the clouds and there’s no real shade and I started to burn. Dave likes his homemade lacto-fermented pickled onions!!

Another fabulous day! Partly because I don’t feel shitty and the contrast is still so wonderful, but also because I woke up feeling well-rested. Moderate night-sweats. Only up ONCE to pee before I woke up at 6 to take my meds. I never went back to sleep after that (I usually do) but I felt fine all day anyway. I had a rest outdoors in the shade in the afternoon but didn’t sleep. I swear, it feels like I’ve just gotten home from a long hospital stay.

This morning I used homemade kefir to make my breakfast smoothie for the very first time and it was so tangy and good! I have a new jar fermenting in the cupboard for tomorrow’s breakfast. Damn I’m awesome.

I also got two quarts of dill pickles started fermenting, and boiled up enough chopped ginger to make two quarts of ginger-ale (I hope) when my first real batch of water kefir is finished fermenting. That should be Thursday, and then after I mix and bottle it (in reused fizzy-water bottles) it will need a second ferment on the counter for a few days to develop carbon dioxide for fizz. My ginger-water is very VERY spicy so I may dilute it to make three or even four quarts later, but I can’t make it stronger if I dilute it too much so I’ll leave it as-is for now.

I thought my first batch of sauerkraut was finished but after eating some with lunch I’ve decided it needs to ferment for a few more days.

Also I read a lot, and in the afternoon when I started to flag I sat out in the shade again and drank iced fizzy water and listened to my audiobook.

Made something like Spanish rice for dinner: minced onion and diced red bell pepper sautéed in chicken fat from Henry’s good homemade bone broth, then a cup of rice added to pan to toast a bit, then a cup of bone broth and a cup of diced tomatoes in juice to finish cooking. Plus chili-lime seasoning. Very very tasty. Might add cold canned black beans tomorrow and wrap in tortillas.

Oh yeah, my stomach doesn’t hurt so eating is fun!

My right foot is somewhat puffy. I’l keep an eye on it and take my ultra-diuretic sooner than Saturday if necessary.

I had a very enjoyable day of not feeling like I was about to die. So refreshing. I read a lot, ate a lot (well, not a lot but my stomach didn’t hurt so at least I could eat), sat outside in the afternoon… I spent the whole day on 6 liters of oxygen and felt fine, 85% when I checked. I was 80% on 9 liters yesterday. Now I’ve turned it up to 8 for sleep. I always need more oxygen at night.

My spices arrived! I bought several ounces each of dill seed, celery seed, coriander, and caraway seeds. Enough to share with Henry if he wants to PICKLE THINGS too, which I think he does. Also my ph test strips arrived so I can make doubly sure that I’m not poisoning anyone. I’m not worried, but it seems prudent since it’s so easy. A ph under 4.5 and it’s all good. My milk kefir grains seem to have reactivated nicely and I expect to have drinkable homemade kefir in a day or two! Can’t wait for my first smoothie.

I gave up on the clunky federated non-commercial opensource book tracker, bookwyrm, and spent a happy hour manually entering my last 60 or so books into slick commercial functional goodreads. Ah well. I will no longer be irritated by open source jankiness every time I want to put a book into my database. Instead I’ll be assaulted by advertising, but it will Just Work™. You pick your battles.

After four Very Bad days which I had to spend mostly lying down with my eyes closed and trying to breathe, I woke up feeling normal again! New Normal, you know, which isn’t great but I can walk around the house without feeling like I’m about to die. I can sit upright on the sofa with my Switch and my book and my stitching. I decluttered the kitchen for the kitchen cleaner who comes today. I can eat. I sautéed that chard I picked a few days ago right before I went Down and didn’t have the ambition to cook it. I’m gonna have a coffee ice cream cone now and continue reading my very good book, “Bad Summer People” by Emma Rosenblum.

I was really worried that this bad spell would be the end of me. Looks like I’m here for a while longer :)

Ugh.