I’ve got a whole new addiction.

In Sunday’s post I wrote briefly about my surreal life as a bedridden senior citizen. While it’s definitely bizarre to watch a Sandra Dee movie and eat canned tomatoes — with habanero peppers! — at 5 o’clock in the morning, “surreal” certainly doesn’t stop there.

I’ve been confined to a hospital bed in the family room for the last 15 months of my life … lying on my back and facing the same direction day in and day out. Even so, I dream frequently about waking up from a nap and getting out of bed. As a matter of fact, I vividly remember how it felt to roll onto my right side, use my right elbow for leverage and sit up … and I’ve even caught myself trying to do exactly that, more than once. (Jesus.)

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You’ll be pleased to note that I’ve got a whole new addiction … LAYERED FONTS. Especially bold scripts that include an extrude (deep background shadow) style like several of the fonts pictured below, such as “Raelynn,” “Stayhill,” “Hadsut,” “Retrofunk,” “My Bread” and “Mumbai Sticker.” I’m especially wild about “Stayhill,” “Retrofunk” and “My Bread.” Other new fonts are on my list today, too. “Las Palmas” has an aged vintage look, “Brigherdz” includes its own grungy ink splatters and dozens of fancy swashes, and “Marydale” is almost a perfect match for my own casual printing style. Hot damn!

By the way, from now on I’ll designate the number of included styles — if there’s more than one — with a numeral inside a tiny red box to the right of the font name. Lucky you … nearly all of today’s fonts come with multiple styles! Download links will appear below the font list in case you want any of them.

Raelynn • Stayhill • Hadsut • Las Palmas • Brigherdz
Marydale • Retrofunk • My Bread • Mumbai Sticker • Mangotea

Here are five more layered script fonts (see below) that I added to my own collection during the last few months. As a bonus, “Brazilian Script” and “Simplisicky” are part of the Darwinoo Font Bundle, which contains a lot of additional fonts that may appeal to you. “Brazilian Script” and “Simpisicky” were the only two that I installed on my iMac, though, because I thought the others in that bundle were mostly unattractive or hard to read. (No point installing a font if you know from the get-go that you’ll never use the damn thing.)

Darwinoo Font Bundle • Virmana • Cowboy Burt • Scotland Stories

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I snagged a couple of cute (and free!) clipart packages yesterday from Creative Market. Both will give me some fresh design ideas for new greeting cards for The Howdygram Store. I especially love the “Doggos” clipart, which includes four different breeds of dogs, all kinds of accessories (bones, bowls, collars, bags of poop) and several seamless background patterns. (Seamless patterns are very cool.)

FYI, the “Summer Vibes” collection is a classic example of Siberian-style artwork featuring animals with stupid facial expressions and clothes. Even though I can’t stand animals in clothes, there are other elements of this collection (plants, tropical greenery, summer accessories, pool toys) that I’ll be able to use for various creative projects. Since I’ve been able to use other Siberian critters from different clipart collections for funny holiday and birthday cards, I suppose they do have a little merit after all …

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Where do I begin? I’m feeling rather blecchy overall and generally unwell this week. Here are some of my primary complaints.

• My BLOOD PRESSURE is rather low right now, averaging about 88/58. This almost makes me sorry that we bought a wrist blood pressure monitor last week. Shit.
• I’m having DIETARY ISSUES, such as: 1) difficulty swallowing food; and 2) just about everything I eat tastes like total crap. Frankly, all I want to eat are frozen peas, Otter Pops and the hot and sour soup from China City.
• I’ve been having some serious NEUROPATHY PAIN in my feet and thighs in the form of electric shocks, which hurt and sting like hell and make my legs jerk around involuntarily. And intense movement like that leads to some really awful KNEE PAIN as well. It’s horrible right now, even as I write this post.
• Oy, my goddamn ALLERGY SYMPTOMS are driving me fucking nuts! I’ve got watery eyes, a runny nose and a nasal drip that won’t stop even though I’ve been using FloNase for three months already. THREE MONTHS!
• I have a very LOW BODY TEMPERATURE that’s hovering around 95°. I’m cold, I’m shivering, and muscles are aching all over my body. I feel nasty.
• The BURNING BLADDER SPASMS are back, and I’m suffering through six or seven “events” every day. When I can’t stand it any more I’ll take one Tolterodyne tablet (an anti-spasmodic drug) and pray that it doesn’t trigger a migraine. I stopped taking Tolterodyne a couple of months ago after a five-day migraine headache (a well-documented side effect) that made me want to end it all. So I had to make a choice … would I rather have burning bladder spasms from an incurable urinary tract infection or days-long migraine headaches? (You already have the answer.)
• I’m having my monthly CATHETER CHANGE tomorrow morning. The hospice’s Director of Nursing (Martha) and my new R.N. (Rachel) will be here at 9:30 for the festivities. Let’s hope this turns out better than last time, when it took four different nurses five attempts in a 24-hour period. (Seriously.) I’ll probably have nightmares about this for the rest of my life.

I can’t think of anything else right now, but this should be more than enough.

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It’s 7:30 p.m. and time to move along. I need some food, my dinner-time pills, and a chance to catch up on Robert Mueller’s testimony today in Congress. We recorded the entire hoo-hah on MSNBC because we were expecting visits from: 1) the hospice social worker this morning at 9 for our monthly “welfare check” appointment; 2) my hospice C.N.A. for a bathing and hygiene session; and 3) our maid, who shows up every other Wednesday at noon.

Thank you for reading this.