After a great day yesterday, I’m back to feeling as miserable as I was two days ago. I’m horribly exhausted and brain-dead. If I had to handwrite journals like back in the old days, it would be really hard for me to keep up that way.

My sleep got broken up, and I’m still under the influence of melatonin, but mostly clonazepam. Clonazepam has a long half-life of 30 to 50 hours. I went to bed with nothing, and then four hours later, the hybrid mask started leaking at the side of my nose, blowing air up toward my eye, and making a hissing sound. I also felt like I just wasn’t getting enough air, even though technically one can breathe just fine even with the CPAP turned off, because there are plenty of ventilation holes for exhalation relief. I guess I was just panicky.

So I took 0.5 mg of a melatonin gummy, hoping to fall back asleep, but I couldn’t. I still felt like I was suffocating. So I got up and took half a clonazepam. I might have subconsciously tried to breathe through my fucked up nose in my sleep as my jaw relaxed. The thing is that even though the frame and mask are a size small, they’re still slightly big for me. I may be heavy, but I otherwise have child-size features. I’m barely even 5 ft tall.

So Tom put tape on the nasal part of the mask because I wanted to see if that would force me to breathe out of my mouth more often, as well as stop it from leaking. That didn’t quite feel right, so I removed the tape and tightened the harness, and that seemed to help. By then, I was so fed up that I said fuck it to the CPAP for the moment, took another half of clonazepam, threw a nose strip on my nose, and shoved a nasal dilator as far up my nose as I could get it.

That’s another thing right there. If you look at people wearing nasal dilators, you can’t see the tubes. But if I were to try to shove this thing all the way up my nose, it would practically be in my brain thanks to my kiddy-sized little button nose. So I took my 10-year-old-size body back to bed and slept for another four hours, though I knew I was screwed and destined to be exhausted when I got up. Despite getting a good total of REM sleep and deep sleep between the two sleep sessions, the two-hour break in sleep screwed me, along with the drugs in my system. Things just aren't like they were in my twenties, when I would wake up from those killer asthma attacks and be up for an hour or two until I settled down enough to return to sleep. But when I did, I would get the sleep I needed and would wake up okay. Not anymore! If I’m up more than five or ten minutes, I’m screwed the next day.

So getting on with editing the next of my older stories is going to have to wait, along with other things. I’ve been up and down. I’ll sit at the computer doing whatever for a little while and then have to go lie down. I wish I were lazy by nature, because I would love this shit if I were. I don't know, though. It really makes me feel yucky.

On the bright side, my Temu package came today. I thought I was going to have to wait until tomorrow. The cover sheets are fine, and the pretty new pink floral blanket was exactly what I wanted. This setup is a little lighter than the old one, but this is Florida. If anything, it will allow me not to have to drop the temperature as much when I sleep, although I still tend to hotflash being menopausal, no matter what, and always have to sleep with a fan on. Hopefully, I can at least keep this mattress pad year-round, which is a little warmer because it's not as breathable with its plastic waterproof backing, but it's better for allergies and easier to put on. It stays in place better, too.

We haven’t set up the sheet snuggers we got yet because we were both too tired. The slicer and scissors were a bust. I got these round slicers, and in the video, they showed them slicing potatoes and cucumbers quite easily. However, I couldn’t get them through either. The triple-blade scissors don’t cut green onions into nice, neat little cylinders like another video showed, but almost make them look like they were half-shredded. I’ll keep those, but I don’t see myself using the round slicers. Sometimes my own knifework is best.

The most amazing thing I got was this hair removal thing. For just a couple of bucks, I didn’t think it would work, but it does. It just takes a little longer than regular shaving. They say it’s cut crystal, but it looks like plastic to me. Either way, you rub it in a circular motion, and it removes hair and exfoliates. One reviewer said don’t use it on your privates! Yeah, lol, I’ll pass.

The second part of my Temu order isn’t flying but sailing instead. That will be a plastic holder for my colored pencils and markers. It’s probably not in the country yet.