Fitbit Hell

I don't remember how long ago I bought my Fitbit Luxe, but it's definitely nowhere near as old as my previous Fitbit which lasted forever. I can't remember the name of that one, but it was the same size and shape as the Luxe.

Anyway, the Luxe has started to become a problem. Instead of charging it twice a week, I need to charge it every other day. That's not as big a problem as how far wrong the battery reading is. I just swiped and it says my Luxe was at 77%. Good, I thought.

And then thing wouldn't come on when I tapped it.

Back on the charger long enough to restart it and now the battery is listed at 1%. Really? A minute earlier it said 77%. Did the restart take 76% of the battery? I doubt it.

I only wear the Fitbit now for sleep information because I have my Apple Watch for steps and works outs, so I thought I'll just buy one of those cheap knock offs and use that.

The cheap knock off is fine. Mostly. Except that it lights up brightly enough to signal the International Space Station every time I move my arm despite the fact that I have it on manual. I also have doubts about how accurate the sleep times are because it will say one thing when I wake up in the morning and then an hour later it says I slept more. I didn't.

That drove me back to the Fitbit. It might be a pain, but at least it doesn't light up unnecessarily. But here I am, blogging nearly half an hour after I wanted to go to bed because the Fitbit is charging from the 1% it claims it was at. It also takes forever to recharge. Grrr.

I'm to the point where I actually debated buying another Fitbit Luxe. Guess what? Unavailable. Double Grrr.

Planner Review: Part 2

Just an FYI, I received no compensation of any kind for this post, and I paid full price for all my planners. My credit card is still unhappy about this fact.

On Tuesday, I talked about my 2025 planners, including the monthly, weekly, and the EveryDay Carry (EDC) planner. I also reviewed how those were working for me. Today, I review my daily planner selection. The winner is at the bottom!

Since I was switching from the planner I'd been in since 2015 to a new planner, I bought a number of different ones because I wasn't sure which one would work.

The Hobonichi Cousin in A5. It's fine. All the other planners I bought are boutique planners, so if worse came to worst and they ceased to be created, I could move into this planner. I'm not a huge fan of the quotes because they squeeze the page, the colors are not my choices, and the timeline on the daily pages is not usable for me, but I found a shop that sells a sticker timeline that goes over it and I can deal with the rest. If I had to.

Hemlock & Oak Dated Daily. Hemlock & Oak makes a really nice, nice planner. I used it as a daily journal in 2024 and loved the hell out of it. This is the only planner I tried for 2025 that didn't have Tomoe River Paper, but a thick, regular paper that doesn't show any bleed through and I also have zero ghosting. I still love this planner for journaling, but I don't think I would want it for my daily planner. It's in an A5 size and is thick and heavy. I don't carry my desk planner with me, so this wasn't a deal breaker for me and there's plenty of room to write. I'll continue this as a journal.

Sterling Ink Daily Planner A5 and B6. I really like Sterling Ink planners. I had a weekly for 2024 that I journaled in, and I enjoyed it immensely. My weekly was a B6, and I like that size, but I wasn't sure it would be big enough. The B6 might be a little small for me because I would have to record my water, vitamins, etc. in here on the daily page. The A5 has more room. The biggest drawback for me is this planner has no weekly pages--only monthly and daily.

Plans by Just Scribble Horizontal in A5. I really, really like this planner, and if it were in one volume, it would be a contender for my winner. Unfortunately, it's in two volumes and that's a deal breaker for me. I'm using it as a secondary everyday planner. As in it's a reminder for me to glance out when I'm on the other side of the house, but it's not my primary planner. I'm hoping that for 2026, there's a single volume option.

What I like about this planner is that instead of being setup with all the months together, then all the weeks, and then all the days, Plans has it setup so that the month comes, then the week, then the 7 daily pages for that week, then the next weekly pages, then the next 7 daily pages, and so on. I like this setup a lot. I also love the horizontal weekly setup with the blank page. This planner is so awesome! But as I said, two volumes are a deal breaker for me. I need/want one book. I'm not looking for portability in my official planner. That's what my EveryDay Carry planner is for.

The winner for me is Nisha Fernando Designs Journey Planner in A5. I found this planner late, after their preorder closed, but as soon as I saw it, I was like, I think this planner would be perfect for me! And I was right.

What I like about this planner: It has an entire section to record meals. It also has space for water and vitamins. I adjusted it slightly because I take medication for my acid reflux with every meal, so I needed AM/Noon/PM and not the single vitamin dose the planner offered. It was a simple fix. There's also a section off to the right (not in the picture) that I was able to adjust to record how much sleep I was getting every night. And there's the little barbell to check off workouts. Win!

All planners have a monthly section, so nothing unusual here.

I decorated my monthly page with washi tape. February was a nice, light month. All the monthly reminders are out of the picture. If you look closely, you can see some ghosting. That's that Tomoe River Paper does, but that doesn't bother me at all. I love the crinkly texture of this paper, and the major win is that I can have the room and pages I need in one book because of how thin the paper is.

This is a vertical weekly planner which I work around with washi tape and stickers. I don't plan in my weekly pages because my brain doesn't process information in this mass of days. I tried weekly planners before switching to daily and it was too easy to ignore everything when it was all lumped together.

Here's a picture I sent a friend to show her what I was doing. I used thin washi tape to divide the page. At the top, I'm keeping track of the temperature, and I have a stamp set for sun or rain or clouds that I use up there as well. The bottom section is for word count. My goal is 1000 words a day. I record what I actually wrote below the goal.

The most important section is the "THIS WEEK" part on the middle right. This is where I record any weekly tasks that need to be done. Since this picture was taken right after I setup the planner, I only have the four tasks I want to do every week.

There wasn't enough space on the side bar of the monthly pages (above) to keep track of my monthly To-Do list, so I needed a work around. The Journey Planner has a blank page at the beginning of each month of daily pages. I found a sticker company, Mandy Lynn Plans (again, no compensation was received by me.) that makes monthly dashboards. Problem solved.

The colors of the stickers are much more vibrant than the picture shows. Apologies for being a horrible photographer.

The sticker kit gives me a variety of options for the headings on each section, but the ones I use every month are "This Month," "Important Dates," "Goals," and "Notes." There are tasks I do every month like my newsletter. Important dates can be things like doctor appointments or holidays. Goals are whatever I want to do that month. The important section for me is "This Month." I put check marks in the circles to the left as I complete an item.

And last, but certainly not least since this is the most important for me. The Daily Pages.

You can see the thinness of the Tomoe River Paper in this picture because the stickers on the other side of the page are clearly silhouetted there. Stickers are from the Scooby Doo collection from Capitol Chic Designs (Again, I received no compensation for this post. I bought my stickers from this shop.)

The timeline is printed on the left side of the page and goes from 6am to midnight. There's space above the 6am, so if I need to write something in earlier, I can. Same with space below midnight. There are small marks to divide the page, but I didn't want it halved, so I took a light marker and drew a line down the page to separate the timeline from my daily To-Do list.

I was going to use a dot marker to create check circles to mark off when I accomplished an item, but I discovered that the ghosting was too much, and I switched to a highlighter with a square nib.

I've done other little things to the planner. I've added tabs to all the sections. I've decorated my pages because the A5 allows me room to do that. There's also a section full of trackers, but I've found that I don't really keep up with trackers, so I'm haphazard on using them.

This planner is amazing for me. It gives me the space to have everything in one place and to organize it in a way that makes sense to me and works with my brain. I found my new everything planner and I'm so grateful it exists.

Planner Review: Part One

This year is the year I changed planners for the first time since 2015. The planner I was using was a daily spiral book with Saturday and Sunday sharing a page. I was pushing against that shared weekend page from literally the first day I got the planner, but it had so many other cool features like a place to track water and meals and vitamins and meditation and things like this that I put up with it.

2024, though, was my breaking point.

This was my first full year after my dad died. He'd lived with me since 2016, after my mom passed away, and while I kept track of daily things, he kept track of longer-term items.

With him gone, I needed to stay on top of everything myself which meant my planner needed to do more and be more because I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I cannot rely on my memory.

I always knew I needed to write things down. I've always created workarounds and systems, but I also always had my parents to remind me of things that fell through the cracks in my brain. Without that, my planner needed to do this. My usual planner suddenly was too small, too unusable for what I needed.

I went to a fine-point pen. I wrote two items per line. I manipulated that thing every way I could think of trying to make it work. By September of 2024, I realized I needed a new solution. This planner would never work for me again.

Just so you know, I paid full price for all the planners I mention here. There is no sponsorship of any kind involved.

In 2025, I ordered a ridiculous number of planners. I thought I would need a monthly, a weekly, and a daily all open at the same time, so I purchased one of each. I also bought an EveryDay Carry (EDC) planner.

My monthly was a Sterling Ink B5. The weekly a Sterling Ink B6, and the EDC was a Sterling Ink N2 (which is the same size as the Hobonichi Weeks). I also bought multiple daily planners, uncertain which one would work for me. My options were: Hobonichi Cousin A5, Sterling Ink Daily Planner A5 and B6, Hemlock & Oak Daily Planner, Plans by Just Scribble, and then I spotted Nisha Fernando Design's Journey Planner. It looked perfect for what I needed, and I ordered it in A5 size.

What I learned: I do not want a separate planner for my monthly and weekly views. Instead of being helpful for me, it was annoying. The planner that's become my everyday planner has monthly and vertical weekly pages and I'm using that instead of the planners I bought.

The EDC is good. It's better for me to make appointments and ensure I'm not double booking myself from a paper planner than from my phone. Yes, I do still add everything to my phone, just in case, but my brain just registers commitments better on paper. With the caveat that I have a weekly task to synchronize that planner to my primary planner so that there are no oopsies.

Next blog post will look at my daily planners.

Why Is This Not a Word?

I use notebooks when I'm writing. I'm on my third book for the Paladin League series because I wrote so many notes.

Before I start writing a book, I make notes on threads I need to remember to incorporate. Notes on the hero and heroine and other characters making appearances. Notes on what I think is going to happen in this book to move the series arc forward.

I'm not a complete seat-of-the-pants writer, but I definitely lean more on that side of the line, so I've usually managed to surprise myself in earlier books. The really cool thing is when those surprises work as plot points in later books because they weren't planned. The plotter writers are probably cringing right now.

Once a book is underway and I'm actually writing it, I write in my notebook scene to scene. What needs to happen here? Why? What does my hero think? What does the heroine think? How is this moving either the plot or the romance or both forward?

I call this notebooking and when I'm messaging with my friends, autocorrect is so unhappy with me.

Notebooking totally should be a word! It completely and succinctly explains exactly what I'm doing. I am notebooking. Even as I'm writing this blog post, the word notebooking is underlined in red because it's not a word. It is to me, and I am going to use it even if those red lines make me insane. Even if I have to fight autocorrect every time I do it. Notebooking, notebooking, notebooking!

It should be a word.

Wheel, Wheel, Wheel

A few months ago, I noticed that I had to be really careful whenever I pulled out the bottom rack of my dishwasher. If I didn't take it slow and easy, one of the wheels would fall off the assembly. Every time it happened, I would pick up the wheel, put it back in place, and pop the peg back in.

Then it started happening more often even when I was careful, and this became annoying. It was just one wheel--the left front, so I assumed it was a problem with that assembly.

Then came the day that I pulled out the rack, the left front wheel fell off, but I couldn't locate the peg anywhere. I searched all over the floor. Maybe it was inside the dishwasher. I pulled the rack out farther.

Wheels from all sides started falling off!

Not all at once. First the one on the right front, and when I went to fix that one, some of the wheels from the back fell off. One of those pegs did go inside the dishwasher and I had to pull the rack out farther to fish it out. More wheels came off.

Now it's a full-fledged issue.

I little online searching turned up a video on YouTube on how to fix the wheels. As part of his demonstration, he mentioned that soap and water cause the plastic wheels to degrade over time. I did a little math and figured out the dishwasher is about seven years old.

As you can see in this closeup of one of the wheels, there is definite pitting on the little peg that holds it in place.

I located the part number, did a search, and found a set of upgraded replacement assemblies. I ordered it and they came on Saturday. I rewatched the video on how to replace them, and then I got to work. Wheels popped off just pulling out the rack and putting it atop the island.

The assemblies are supposed to pop off easily with a little pressure, but I didn't have enough strength in my hands to do it. I ended up using a pair of pliers like a wedge to force them to pop. It worked well and didn't cause any damage to the rack itself.

Here's the first assembly on the rack and the second one removed and ready to have its replacement put into position. I did have a little trouble seating them, but once I figured out how to position them, it didn't take much to force them into place.

And ten minutes later, maybe less, I have all new wheel assemblies on my lower rack.

It's going to be so incredibly nice to not worry about wheels falling off every time I pull out the rack to load dishes. It's even nicer to not pay a repairman to come out and do the replacement for me.

Chalk up another one for Handy Patti