Super sleepy, can’t stop yawning. Made soup, ate soup. Cozy Grove was released for Nintendo Switch last night! I had pre-ordered because I’ve had so much fun playing on my phone. I SUPER recommend Cozy Grove. It’s calm and sweet, with a focus on, you guessed it, being helpful. The game is doled out in small doses, and is meant to be played for maybe half-an-hour to an hour per day. Can’t say enough good things about it, seriously. Beautiful artwork, lovely storyline.
When I was in the hospital just before Christmas (another terrifying bout of atrial fibrillation) my mom got on FaceTime so she could play Christmas carols on the piano for me. Next day, when I was home, we FaceTimed again but switched to Bach (ahhhhhh Bach). Ever since then, we Facetime for about an hour almost every afternoon and she practices Bach and I listen while I read or play on my Switch or just rest. So nice to be able to spend time together sharing music that way, and I don’t need to do conversation.
Today is my little sister’s birthday (I live with her, her husband, and their daughter) so I pried myself up out of bed and bravely made choux buns! They turned out so pretty, especially the second batch, which are the ones I remembered to egg wash :D
I don’t have a piping bag and didn’t want to fool with plastic bags so I just put spoonfuls of batter on the parchment paper and smoothed them out with fingers dipped in water.
For the filling, I simmered a cup of heavy cream with a scoop of coffee beans and a spoonful of sugar. Strained, chilled, whipped. Then I sliced open the buns and spooned in the filling. Half were coffee cream, and for the other half I whipped a cup of heavy cream with a spoonful of Nutella.
They’re waiting in the fridge to be eaten after dinner. I hope they taste as good as they look!
All worn out now so watching Mister Rogers with Niece <3
First, I want to thank everyone for the heartwarming comments, texts, and emails! Wow. A lot of people check on me and hope I’m ok, and a lot of people love my audiobook recordings. Wow. Just… wow. Thank you, everyone! <3
If I write something every day, instead of, like, once every 6 weeks, I can tell you about the small Good Things that I discover.
Today’s Good Thing is my current favorite bedtime snack. I always get really hungry just after I turn out my light to go to sleep, so I fix myself a snack ahead of time. My Snack of Choice lately is a sliced green apple and a lump of goat cheese. The tart crunchy apple, the creamy cheese… oh man, my mouth started watering as I typed this!
Since I have no income except my government SSI benefits that are just enough to cover my rent, I also get food stamps, which are not actually stamps anymore, but a handy debit card that is automatically refilled each month, with leftover funds carrying across from month to month. I can buy any kind of food or beverage, but not booze or vitamins. My benefits are nearly $200/month which is more than enough for a single vegetarian-type person who shops are Trader Joe’s. I have enough, after basics, that I can buy myself delicious treats, such as fresh pineapple and the aforementioned goat cheese. Yummy!
Look at me, writing another post so soon! Thank you, Trevor, for leaving me such a nice comment on yesterday’s post. Glad you enjoyed Gatsby!
Beverly Cleary died a few days ago. She was 104! One of those cases of “wow, she was still alive??” I wish I had written her a thank-you note 40 years ago. I never cared much for Ramona, though I know she is loved by nearly everyone. The Ramona books stressed me out. I was happier reading about Beezus and Henry. And I LOVED the teenage books. I must have read “Sister of the Bride” and “The Luckiest Girl” a hundred times. Our library didn’t have “Jean and Johnny” or “Fifteen” when I was a kid, but I read them in my twenties and loved them too. When I head about Beverly’s death I downloaded allll the Henry Huggins books and all four teenage books so I can do a big re-read. I started with The Luckiest Girl, which is just as great as I remembered, and then Fifteen which is also very enjoyable. I love how the heroine’s thoughts spin out of control with every turn of events. So real, so relatable.
Is anyone reading this? Probably not, it’s been months since I last published a post. Well I’m still alive. This year has been weird. I had a couple of months of pretty bad depression which it turns out was caused mostly by hypothyroidism because of a dose change. Right now my dose of thyroid replacement hormone is back where it should be and I’m feeling better.
Every day feels the same as every other day. It’s really weird. We’ve been in lockdown for so long now. And it’s not like there’s anywhere I particularly want to go (except for visiting family) but it would be nice to have the option I guess.
I had my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine two weeks ago so my second dose will be next Saturday and I’m super excited about that! Just about everyone in my family has had either one or two doses already. We are still all incredibly careful but some of the worry has lifted of course! Such a relief! Our local libraries will be opening up soon with limited hours and lots of safety precautions so that’s super exciting!
My PAH is progressing, unfortunately. I’m on 7 liters of oxygen per minute 24 hours a day now and I have almost no energy to do anything, ever. There are so many things I want to do but it’s hard to get the energy to sit up and sew or record audio books or bake or do anything really. Ugh. So I lie in bed and listen to audiobooks and watch Netflix and BBC and Channel4.com. And I play a lot of video games :-)
Right now I love Cozy Grove for iOS. So sweet. And Henry buys me a subscription to classic World of Warcraft which is just like it was in the olden days before any expansions and that is super fun! We play together sometimes, just like we did 16 years ago when he was a little fellow.
I’m writing this by dictating to my phone and it’s working pretty well. I need to clean up a few typos here amd there, but it’s no work at all so maybe I can get into the habit of writing more often, if anyone still wants to read my random thoughts!
It has been a whole year since I had that brain surgery, yuck! It took months and months to recover from that but I think I’m myself again.
OK I’m gonna go back to watching my current Scandinavian Murder Show on Channel 4 which is called “All the Sins” . It’s a Finnish one this time but there’s no snow — it takes place in summer, for a change. A woman just walked outside in what looked like broad daylight to find her husband and said “it’s 3 AM come to bed” LOL.
Which reminds me my brain is not doing so great. My thoughts are kind of cloudy, it’s hard to focus, my memory is shot, and I’m having trouble with vocabulary. Crossword puzzles are much much harder than they used to be. But I’m still trying to keep my brain active so I’m learning Finnish very slowly on Duolingo, as well as reviewing German. Finnish is super fun because it is not an Indo European language and so it’s completely unrelated to English and German. No cognates!
I recorded this family favorite as a Christmas gift for my friend Elli (the same Elli who proof-listened my Gatsby) and her little boy <3
In other news, my pulmonologist recently increased my dose of sildenafil from 40 to 60mg, 3x/day. We increased my dose of Lasix (a diuretic to help control the fluid retention common with heart failure) at the same time. And within a few days I felt so much better! Like I wake up with some ambition and enough energy to do more than one thing in a day. I don’t get tired immediately and need a nap by noon; I don’t need to just lie in bed all day.
I’ve been sewing again! I got super inspired by the historical costuming videos and posts of Morgan Donner and others, and got the notion to make myself some modified Early Medieval clothing for daily wear. No corsetry required! My corset/stays days are behind me, lol. I’ve already sewn two cream linen shifts (under-dresses) and I absolutely LIVE in them. They’re even more comfy than sweats and tees. And linen is astonishing. I don’t overheat in it. It doesn’t seem to get smelly as fast as cotton, so I can wear a shift for multiple days between washes.
Right now I’m working on a pine green linen bliaut, which is an overdress that can fit fairly loosely but has lacing at the sides for a more form-fitted look. Traditionally they are floor length and have long dangling sleeves but I’m making mine shin-length with more practical sleeves. I’m planning lace-on long-sleeve extensions (but not dangling).
Today I hand-sewed for hours, and watched a lot of Ok GO videos with Em, and gave her a German lesson, AND made a pot of soup! I’m tired now but that’s a lot of things in one day for me.
Now we’re going to increase my sildenafil to 80mg 3x/day (that’s 12 tablets a day hahaha) and see what happens. Maybe I’ll have even more energy! Or, maybe my energy level will stay the same as it is now but won’t decrease as quickly over time. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe the side effects will be unbearable. But I’m hoping for good things. We shall see!
When we started LibriVox in 2005, the book I most wanted to record was The Great Gatsby — but it wasn’t to enter the Public Domain until 2021 and I thought for sure I’d be dead by then. (I have survived Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension much longer than anyone expected, yay!)
I started recording Gatsby on January 3rd and finished yesterday, January 16th. I’ve never recorded a book so quickly! It helped that it was only 9 chapters, and that it’s one of my favorite books in the whole world. Fitzgerald’s use of language dazzles me. Elli proof-listened for me, and I pretended I was reading aloud to her as I recorded :)
Here it is! The LibriVox book cover team even used the original “eyes” book jacket, which is exactly what I was wishing for :)
Ok I’m a little late — sorry ’bout that. I’m still alive. Looks like I’ll live to see the Orange Clown booted out of the White House and sane, compassionate, experienced adults take over. Hooray! Just 4 more days!
Here’s a picture book I recorded as a present to my dearest friend Elli in Austria and her little boy :) Another family favorite.
And right now I’m finishing up a solo recording of The Great Gatsby for librivox so watch this space!
I had a bout of SVT on Monday and it was terrifying. I thought I was about to die. Seriously. I was too breathless and weak to get into my brother-in-law’s car to go to hospital so he called an ambulance. Lovely EMT Katie held my hand on way to the local hospital, where they gave me the magical adenosine and fixed me right up. Like, within an hour I was absolutely fine again. It’s wild. I begged to go home but they wanted to send my to MY hospital, UCSF, for observation by my cardiology team, but there are no beds anywhere so at ten pm they gave up waiting and let me go HOME. :)
This morning I spatchcocked our Christmas Turkey and began its buttermilk bath and also mixed up a batch of mincemeat while listening to my own recording of The Dark is Rising, as I do every year at Christmas, and it made me think — I have a lot of really great Christmastime recordings. I will put links to everything right here!
Happy Halloween y’all. I hope you can make it special for your kids even if you can’t do proper trick-or-treating this year. Sigh.
Yesterday my therapist and I discussed self-care strategies for Tuesday. I am DREADING election day. I don’t dare hope… and yet I can’t help hoping a little bit. I know I will make myself sick if I sit there refreshing twitter all day. So anyway Suzanne suggested I let myself check twitter/read the news only every four hours, and do some serious distraction the rest of the day. So I am thinking of either starting my Animal Crossing island over from the beginning, or doing a big redesign of my current island (if I can think of a big project). And maybe binge-watching something excellent like Succession. Wish I could play WoW all day. I miss WoW so much.
I have already voted, of course, and dropped my ballot into a secure dropbox, and tracked it to make sure it was received. Everyone in my family did the same. I cannot imagine that there is anyone who hasn’t voted yet — why wait, when it’s so easy and safe to vote ahead of time? So I worry that maybe all the sane people have already voted and that’s why it looks like Biden is ahead and maybe it’s only Tr*mp supporters who will wait till the last minute and he’ll win or it will be a close race and he’ll dig his heels in and everything will be horrible for EVEN LONGER.
As you can see, I have some ***ANXIETY*** about election day. Lol.
Also, this morning I made ratatouille again. I’ve been making it weekly — it’s so good over polenta or pasta or just on its own, and so incredibly nutritious, and vegetarian so it’s earth-friendly. I’ll jot down my recipe here. It’s easy but a bit time consuming so I sit on the seat of my walker while I chop veggies.
Kara’s Big Pot of Ratatouille
2 big eggplants
2 red bell peppers
1 lb zucchini
1 lb tomatoes
1 onion
a few cloves of garlic, minced
thyme
salt
olive oil
red pepper flakes (optional)
a few bay leaves (optional)
You’ll need a big heavy-bottomed stock pot! Chop all your veggies into big dice. I do one eggplant first and get it started cooking while I chop the next, etc. So when you’ve chopped your first eggplant, put a couple glugs of olive oil in your pot and put it on med. high to high (depending on your stove) and, when the oil is hot, drop in your first batch of eggplant. You’re aiming to brown a few surfaces of the eggplant, not cook it all the way through, so stir frequently while you chop the next eggplant. When the eggplant has some brown edges, dump it into a huge bowl, glug some more oil into the pot, and get the next batch of eggplant started while you chop the zucchini. Repeat with the zucchini and peppers. (you will have burned crud on the bottom of your pan. Don’t worry about it. A soak and a scrub will clean it all.)
Now that the eggplant, zucchini, and peppers are a bit browned and waiting all together in that huge bowl, cook your onion in some more oil over a lower heat until it begins to get soft and translucent. Dump in your minced garlic and chopped tomatoes, some thyme, some salt, a couple bay leaves if you have them, and some red pepper flakes for kick. Cook this for a little while, till it starts to smell amazing, then dump that big bowl of slightly browned veggies in, stir it all around, cover, and cook on low until it’s done. The longer you cook, the more homogenous it will be. Stir, taste, and adjust seasonings now and then. When cooked to your liking, eat it all up!
Hi! I’m still alive. Yesterday and today I had enough energy to set up podcast feeds for some more of my “Kayray Reads” audiobooks. I haven’t tested these feeds, so I’ll list them here and perhaps you can test them for me. (copy and past the .xml link into the RSS field in your favorite podcast app)
