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Last night I was not sweaty. First time since May 24th. Such a relief.

I followed a big elaborate Procreate tutorial and learned a lot. Not gonna post the result because I’m not super proud of it — I mean, I did a great job, it’s just not a thing I would ordinarily choose to draw. I can’t link the tute here because it’s only up for a week, as an enticement to get people to join the artist’s patreon. Anyway I’m super clear now on why one would choose a clipping mask, alpha lock, or just select.

Henry came over to help Dave finish installing our new enormous mailbox. The crappy old brick pillar is gone, a fine new steel post is set in concrete, and in the morning Dave can affix the mailbox to the top of the post and it’ll be finished!

I think I’ll go get a big dish of frozen peas to snack on while I read for a while. I tried to eat a little more today. Cream o’ wheat and juice for breakfast. Tiny half-size BLT for lunch. A slug of kefir, a little dish of cottage cheese, and another helping of cream o’ wheat spaced out through the afternoon. Oh I’ll grab some cheese to go with my peas, that will help. So damn thirsty.

I drew all day, yay! Look at this mushroom friend:

Based on Calvin’s tutorial here:

I am having a terrible time eating. Two bites and I’m full. I’m so thirsty all the time that I’m filling up on water, I think. I crave juice every minute of the day, and am alternating between grapefruit, cran-apple, and lemonade. So I’m getting vitamin C anyway. I have a dish of strawberries and cream to work on slowly now, and my wonderful green apple and goat cheese for bedtime. Other than that I managed cream o’ wheat and kefir for breakfast, half a bagel with cream cheese and a tomato for lunch, and an Ensure in the afternoon.

Update: strawberries: no flavor, mushy texture. Green apples: no flavor, mushy texture. Time to give up on buying both until they come back into season. Just eating the goat cheese.

Tomorrow I’ll try to remember to set my hourly EAT A BITE OF SOMETHING DAMMIT alarm.

Last night was somewhat better, even tolerable. Yesterday I took my 6pm diuretics at noon instead, so I only needed to get up ONCE in the night to pee. Why didn’t I think of that sooner? Cloudy brain. I only sweated through one towel, and only woke up twice to mop up the sweat. And there was one false pump alarm that almost didn’t count because I barely woke up and went straight back to sleep. If every night could be like that, my sanity would improve immensely.

I’ve had to stop wearing my absolutely magical Manta sleep mask because the synthetic fibers trap puddles of sweat against my head. So now I flip the top end of my Sleeping Towel back over my eyes. Good enough.

I’m going to do some Procreate art now!

Last night was a little better, and today was a little better. I felt just as weak and breathless but my mood was better. Less despondent. Henry came to visit which was so wonderful! We sat together playing Zelda for ages, and he helped with chores and diagnosed my garden problems as lack of nitrogen. He made me some quick fertilizer by soaking grass clippings in a bucket of water. In a few days I’ll water my plants with it and they’ll get a nice dose of nitrogen. Henry is awesome.

Just ate my favorite dinner of green apple, sliced thinly, and goat cheese. I always eat the whole little lump of goat cheese (5 servings ha) which gets me 400 calories and 40 grams of protein. The combo of tart crunchy juicy apple and tart creamy smooth cheese is so perfect.

Watched so much Tasting History today. We have fresh raspberries, bottled peaches, and vanilla ice cream, so if I possibly can I’ll make some simple raspberry sauce tomorrow so we can have something that resembles Peach Melba.

Managed a little bit of drawing/painting today. I saved these as PNGs with transparent backgrounds so they can be used as stickers when iOS 17 comes out in September. Will I still be alive? I hope so! But I dunno. My oxygen is cranked up all the way and I’m only at 80% oxygen saturation, which isn’t super comfortable. (For comparison you are probably at 99-100%). And I wake up gasping for air at night. Besides all the other things that wake me up. *eyeroll*

Woke up to ten minutes of violent dry heaves. For no apparent reason.

It’s like my brain is up here trying to stay functional and alert and interested in things while my body is down there crumbling away like a Roman ruin.

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.