So Gertrude is now on 10 mg of Pepcid.  The people medicine.  From the drugstore.  Yes, here in America, we have stores that sell drugs.  Never the good ones, though.  Drat.  She has upchucked on two different nights now.  Several times each night.  I’m hoping she will stabilize on this dose, without the dog motion sickness med she was also on for one week, when she was not sick at all.  Poor Gertrude.  I just want her to be well and not suffering.

Speaking of which, I am now down to 9mg of Prednisone.  They want me to do one week of this, then down to eight.  They also only gave me enough 5 mg pills for a month.  I don’t know what they’re playing at, but I fully expect to be back in hell after one week on nine, then no time to stabilize before cutting back another whole mg to 8.  I think they just hate me.

I was awake all night for no known reason, it just happens, slept most of the day, and will now be awake all night again.  I had this brilliant idea to make a pot of perked coffee.  I have a lovely little stainless steel stove-top percolater, so I made a pot.  Oh, goooood coffee.  I seem to rotate through all the different methods of coffee-making.  Perked for awhile, pressed for awhile, vacuum-brewed for awhile.  I not longer have an electric coffee maker, or I’d be cycling through that as well.  I have no idea why I do this.  But I did make some excellent coffee tonight.  Already had two cups.  I never have two cups of coffee, just the one, but since I’m going to be up all night anyway, who cares, right?  How do you make perked coffee?  My pot makes about four mugs worth, so I fill it about an inch below the spout hole, 4 scoops of ground coffee, coarse is better, bring it to a perk on high, which takes about 13 minutes, turn it down to med low and perk slowly for five minutes.  Done.  I think a scoop is 2 tablespoons of ground coffee.  Right now I’m using Pete’s Major Dickason’s Blend.  Very nice.  I like Pete’s Coffee.  It’s a good brand.

After summer weather, it has gotten very cold again.  Right now it’s 24 degrees.  Weather app said possible snow, but didn’t happen.  I miss snow.  It is very windy still, though.

I missed getting to go out this week, but my lovely homemaker picked up my two on-hold books from the library for me.  The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert, which is very interesting, explaining the different mass extinctions and how they were discovered, and how people were flummoxed by the finding of massive bones and teeth and how that led to figuring out extinction and evolution.  I love science.  It is always fascinating. ‘Flummoxed.’  Now there’s a word.  LOL

The second book is The Wood for the Trees, by Richard Fortey, which has pictures?  Yay, pictures.  Haven’t started it yet.  The author bought a parcel of land in England and the book is about his discoveries on it over the course on one year.  My kind of book.

Read some fiction and some non-fiction on my Kindle recently, too.  I don’t know if I could survive without having something to read.  My brain craves it. It’s fun having actual hard-copy books to read again.  Holding books can make my hands cramp and hurt, so I tend to read on the Kindle if possible, but I just felt the need for real books now.  I love that I can go online and order them, my library will get them from whichever library in the system has a copy, and hold them til I can get there to pick them up.  Or send someone.  I’m hoping to be able to walk there and back on my own at some point, but I have been inactive for so long due to the pain and fatigue, and anticipating having that hell back again, that the prospect of walking that few blocks is daunting.  What if I manage to get there and then don’t have the wherewithal to walk back?  I’ve been sort of stuck in places before, and believe me, it is a scary experience when you are already exhausted and in pain to not be able to think how you are going to get back home.

Back to scrolling Tumblr.  🙂