onacliffbythesea

SICK AGAIN

When I picked up Miyu from daycare yesterday, she complained that she was cold and showed me goosebumps on her legs. I kind of shrugged it off thinking maybe it was just the weird, fluctuating weather. I also noticed she was a bit mentally sluggish—with her telltale stuttering. I know she’s super tired when she starts to stutter. When we got home, I noticed that she was hot to the touch. I immediately took her temperature and it was 38.9°C (102°F) and rising! This is her THIRD fever since March. FML. Naturally, I was freaking out. It had risen all the way up to 39.6°C (103°F) and by that time, I had put a cold pack on her forehead, and persuaded her to “take a nap since she is sick.” She dozed off on the couch watching Super Wings on Netflix and slept for about 30~40 minutes before she woke up again. By that time I was updating Ken every 2 minutes and I was talking to my mom around 8pm. Miyu had fallen asleep on our bed after I convinced her it was better than the couch. My mom advised me to give her Children’s Tylenol and stick the cooling pads under her armpits so I did. Luckily I had just purchased a new bottle last week because I wanted it on hand just in case and I had a boxful of the cooling pads. My mom actually called me and we ended up talking for a bit on Messenger and what do you know, Miyu was wide awake since I had to wake her up in order for her to take her meds. She was video chatting with my cousin’s daughter, Princess.

CLEANING WOES

With Summer on the way, I’ve been diligent about keeping the house as clean as possible. I have a long way to go, but some improvements I made were in the purchase of a large air purifier and lots of charcoal bags. I’m getting our new purifier later this evening and I’ll most likely get the charcoal bags in about a week or so. I’m really excited to put them in each closet and in my car. Ever since I stopped smoking, my sense of smell has vastly improved so I noticed that whenever we step inside our house, I can smell funkiness coming from the kitchen. So not only am I taking the trash out 2-3 times a week now (sometimes even more), I basically am focusing on keeping the kitchen area as clean as possible because I know it’s gonna get rough in the coming months. I’m also working on getting rid of old shoes. No sense in keeping old shoes that I’ll never wear. I’ve come to realize as I’ve gotten older that I am simply happier if I’m comfortable—especially my feet. I recently purchased a new pair of Crocs that I love so much. Not only are they super comfy, but they look good enough to wear to work and for everyday wear.

WEIGHT-LOSS

I’ve been on and off with keto. Sometimes it’s just not possible for me to magically find keto-friendly foods every single meal time. I’ve been doing good with breakfast. I no longer stop by Burger King! Hah. I pretty much cook myself sausages, make boiled eggs, and throw a small pack of salad into my bag. I eat that at work pretty much every morning. I don’t eat rice at all now, except maybe sometimes on the weekend because we’re still giving Miyu rice and I share with her since she never finishes her own rice. Oh, and I hardly ever snack now. I am no longer stuffing my face every other hour at work. And for some reason, it’s very hard for us to find cauliflower out in town. We always have bad timing it seems. They’re all gone by the evening. For now I’m buying cauliflower at the Commissary. I bought a food processor and steamer so I definitely love eating cauliflower rice instead of regular rice. I haven’t even used the steamer yet but I did use the processor and it was so convenient. I’ve lost a few pounds since last month and I’ve begun to notice that my pants are fitting a bit looser. *Happy Dance*

SLEEP

I bought a new pillow recently and it’s helping a little bit with my stiff shoulder and neck situation. I can’t say for sure if it’s totally fixing the problem but I do see some minor improvements. The biggest problem I face right now is getting an adequate amount of sleep during weeknights. On average,  I’m getting 5-6 hours which is super bad for me. I need at the very least 7. A good nightly amount would be 7~8. I noticed that I actually lost 2 lbs one morning over the weekend after I slept for 10 hours. Crazy. But anyway, I can usually get by off 5-6 but whenever my neck/shoulders flare up, I’m just extremely miserable in general. My goal right now is to be in bed by 9pm everynight. We get home at 6:30pm so that gives us roughly 2.5 hours to eat dinner, relax, and wind down for sleep. It’s been hard. I do a decent job of sending Miyu to bed as early as I can, but I seem to have some trouble winding down. It takes me about an hour or two for my mind to just….slow its gears and stop dwelling on stressful things. Not only that but I also like to wait for Ken to come home. I don’t know, it’s just some sort of instinctual need to see him come home that eases my mind and I can finally rest easy and go to sleep. I hope to make another post soon about my new pillow and sleep in general. Oh, and incense!

GAMING

Ken and I (more so the former) have been playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild. We love it so much. Ken even bought some Amiibos recently and he’s super stoked about getting more, LOL. We feel like little kids again, but that’s certainly okay in my book. Miyu continues to play Mario Kart, Kirby, and Yoshi every weekend as well but not so much since we’re hogging the Switch with Zelda. She loves to watch us play anyway. 🙂

READING, WRITING, SCHOOL

I’ve been reading some random stuff lately. I’m using this digital library where I can check out ebooks for free which is definitely nice. It helps fix my awful habit of buying books and then not reading them. I’ve been reading some paranormal romance, sci-fi, and fantasy as usual. I’m desperately waiting for Kresley Cole to hurry up and release her next installment of the IAD series. I need to finish The Farseer Trilogy. I’m on the last book, Assassin’s Quest but man, the last portion is a bit of a drag. Lots of repetitive stuff going on with Fitz, the main character. I’m ready for some closure. I have to say though, I really enjoyed this series altogether, even though it has that GOT misery vibes where there seems to be a never-ending torture suffered by the main characters. I have my eyes set on The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells next, but the waiting period in the library is super long and I don’t want to spend the money on $10 novellas. So up next it looks like I’ll be reading A Promise of Fire by Amanda Bouchet, and then after that Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. *Excited face*

I haven’t touched my writing for a while because of school. Right now I’m taking two classes but they’re in my major so I’m doing really well in them so far. I’m learning new tips and tricks in Photoshop so I’m super excited. I actually cancelled my premium subscription for Scribophile so I’m sad about that but it didn’t make any sense to pay while I wasn’t even using the site at all. So because I cancelled that, I ended up getting a much-needed upgrade to my Dropbox account, which I use all the time.