New Mexico in 2020s

Written late last night…

I was woken up by thunder for the second time and it’s not even June yet! Doesn’t look like I’m gonna get much sleep on Sunday either. I have a bad feeling it’s going to be a bad storm season. This is getting to be too much like the old place only there it was traffic waking me up. When I got up at 8:00 in the morning to use the bathroom I noticed it was pretty dark out. I’d only been asleep for 3 or 4 hours. I got back in bed and right after I fell asleep - boom! No storm was even predicted so most of the time they don’t know shit. It took me a couple of hours to get back to sleep and even though I slept well for 5 or 6 more hours and got a good sleep score, I was exhausted. My body just can’t handle broken-up sleep anymore. As tired as I was, we ran out to Walgreens for treats. I managed to do some cooking for us too but that’s about it.

So Tom and I talked about moving to a “quieter” climate that wasn’t expensive like Cali or overly cold, and I talked to Becky in New Mexico since quieter usually means drier. I told her everything we like and don’t like about Florida. She lives in a tiny rural town near Las Cruces and about 40 miles north of Mexico. El Paso is an hour away where they have every specialist in the world, she says, and of course Las Cruces is closer. They’re only about 15 minutes away from stores and stuff like that, so it wouldn’t be anything like Maricopa or up on the mountain in Oregon.

She gave me a link to a realtor that helped her and her husband Kevin find their place. She’s got a 1660-square-foot manufactured home but I don’t see us being able to afford anything as big as what we used to have. It would probably have to be a dumpy old single-wide around the size of this place but to own both the house and the land and have someone around I know and have breathing space around us and not have to drive an hour to get to civilization might be a sweet deal. I don’t know her as well as I knew Aly but I know her well enough to say that she’s smart, reliable, and trustworthy. I would trust Becky alone in a room with my purse, the same as I would Andy or Jessie. Ah, Jessie. If we move, she’ll be disappointed but maybe we could shoot over and see her before we go. I just have to hope I can get up the energy to do all this!

She says the healthcare system there is good and the cost of living there is low. It’s quiet, easy living, she also says. It’s a liberal state and she says nobody cares about anyone’s “position” in life or shoves their religion down people’s throats and no one is interested in robbery.

Just an occasional LifeStar helicopter overhead, some barking when the javelinas are out, and a train that goes through the area. Boom car stereos are rare, there are no motorcycles close by, or anything extreme. She said outside they can hear donkeys and horses. I wouldn’t mind that or the train as long as the train didn’t shake the place or was louder than the sound machines I sleep with. That’s not the impression I get, though.

January until mid-February is cold, she said, which is how it is here. June, July and August are scorchers. The monsoon season is June 15 to Sept 30. I remember the monsoon seasons when we lived in Arizona. Those storms woke me up too but not nearly as much as the storms here do and the storm season here is a lot longer than monsoon season there.

No sonic booms but they do see “weird shit” in the sky. White Sands Missile Range is 40 minutes away and they do aircraft testing, but they don’t hear it.

They have trash and mail service so we wouldn’t have to get a PO Box like we did in Maricopa or burn our trash.

I told her that I don’t regret coming here and experiencing what it’s like to live here just like I don’t regret Oregon and California despite the rough times we had there, and I do like that it’s warmer here more than it’s not. But when you struggle with fatigue and you have two sleep disorders and you throw these kick-ass storms on me, it’s really throwing fuel on the fire.

Although I would expect some barking and maybe even some projects on some of the neighboring properties, I would love to be able to go to bed during the daytime not worrying about what neighbors 50 ft away or less might be up to that day.

I told her about the crazy drivers here and that the people in general aren’t very friendly.

If we ever do move it’s not going to be tomorrow or the next day. It might take a year or two. We’ve only got so much money to work with.

My only other concern would be its effect on my TMJ. It’s almost as high in elevation as K-Falls and that could make it worse, though I’d be willing to take a chance. I think the extreme cold affected it more than elevation.

I won’t miss this carpet but I’ll miss having furniture like this. The living room chairs may not be the greatest but it’s still nice having a complete household set of furniture. I’ll miss the bedroom set, the couch, and the kitchen set the most. I don’t see how we could take it with us but we’d eventually get new stuff.

Again, every place has its pros and cons. I just prefer to avoid those with major cons. Stealing my sleep is a big no-no. I’ll miss the warmer weather but the thought of moving back out west and adding another state to the list excites me a bit.

Another thing I wouldn’t miss is the mowers. No problem when I’m awake but when I’m asleep… there’s that stress of wondering and worrying if they’re going to wake me up or not. It’s especially stressful when I have appointments looming which is pretty much most of the time. I still don’t see us ever being able to afford to move but I’m definitely thinking about it and the idea kind of appeals to me. If we did move I’m going to wish I still had Galileo if we do move because they can be my doctors anywhere. Rhonda can’t.

Written today…

No storms disrupted my sleep last time around but next time around I’m not going to be so lucky. If that’s the case that will be three times in less than two weeks. However, there’s no way we can move. If we ever can it will be years from now so I might as well enjoy the many good aspects of Florida. At least the storm season isn’t year-round. The heavy traffic at the old place was. Also, this place may be small but it’s not a dump.

Becky gave me her address and I checked her place out in a VR app. I could see her dog sitting on the porch but I couldn’t see her sitting next to it because the railing was in the way. The area reminds me of Maricopa. Some well-kept homes but trashy in general. There are a lot of Mexicans there and even though it’s not politically correct of me to say so despite how true it is since it’s not what people want to hear, they’re not exactly big on neatness. I’ve lived with them enough to know this and it’s something I’ve seen with my own eyes.

Anyway, I think barking would be a definite problem there. She’s at the end of a culdesac and there isn’t much beyond it but that would be an issue no doubt if you were surrounded by homes. Becky treats her dog as a pet and part of the family because that’s what you typically do being from the East but in the West, most of them aren’t allowed indoors and the neighbors are the ones who have to deal with it.

I’ve been lucky tonight and last night. No helicopters and very few planes. The night before last I heard more helicopters than I usually hear in a month.

The cramping in the upper right stomach is still noticeable and earlier I had mild nausea. Thinking about what I’ve been eating lately, Tom and I suspect it’s because I don’t have a gallbladder. They did warn me that if I ate too many greasy foods, that could aggravate it, and I made us burgers earlier. Time to keep track of what I eat. I gotta be careful with chips too, because after having Tostitos a while back, I was nauseous. The Cheetos I got yesterday also made me nauseous. So the fucking gallbastard is still giving me shit from beyond the grave.

He’s given up vegetarianism because he says he feels better if he has some meat. He just hasn’t gone back to hot dogs which I guess is a good thing. I don’t know that he was necessarily eating healthier when he was avoiding meat because everything he ate was processed except for potatoes.

I’ve been wanting to see the Vicky White movie and the Lifetime people were kind enough to put it on LMN. I emailed them about a week ago and said I knew it was on the original channel and wondered when it would be on LMN. They said they would pass the word along that I wanted to see it and there it was when I logged in today! So I’ve got that to enjoy along with a suspense movie on Netflix. It’s a great movie so far even though it doesn’t have any dialogue. It’s called Monster.

I’m also watching the Ashley Madison docuseries. When the creators talk about why they created such a service I can’t help but think they’re so wrong but so right at the same time. Unless you agree to an open marriage up front, cheating is definitely wrong. No doubt about it. However, they’re totally correct whether we like it or not when they say that love and sex are two different things and no one’s attracted to the same person all their lives. You can love the hell out of someone and be totally devoted to them in your heart and your mind but as human nature has shown, you’re going to be attracted to different people throughout your life. Especially if you’re under 50, LOL.

I have decent energy today even though I did get up at one point thinking it was already Sunday and told Tom we forgot to do the laundry yesterday. When he reminded me it was Saturday and he was just waiting for me to get up, I told him to go ahead and do it because I didn’t expect to get back to sleep even though I got back into bed. Just beyond the back bedroom wall is the storeroom where the washer and dryer are and for some reason, this washer makes a loud bang when it changes cycles. However, I not only did fall back asleep but I never heard a thing either.

I’m scrambling to get as much done as I can today because I know I’m not going to have energy tomorrow. Not if the forecast is correct. So we changed Tinkerbella’s cage, I did some cooking, I folded the laundry after he washed it, I changed sheets, and I’ll run the dishwasher in a little while. So, typical household stuff.

Gotta hit the road tonight because I don’t expect to have the energy to do it tomorrow. I went through Silver Creek, NY and now I’m in Irving.

After I fell back asleep which didn’t take too long thanks to my comfortable bed, I had a lot of dreams. There was a dream about “Nervous” and him not liking me trying to dump him. I kept trying to push him out of an apartment I had but he kept opening the door and screaming at me. Finally, after slamming the door on him three times, he stayed away. A sense of loneliness and isolation then came over me but I knew I did the right thing.

Then I was in a large apartment building somewhere and I knew Tom in this dream. The old lady above us died and I was more bummed out about it for fear of what we may end up with above us since she had been so quiet than I was sad for her.

Then it was back to not knowing Tom. My parents were alive and I was at some kind of hotel. Outdoors, I watched these flying buses that would take off and land in the parking lot. When I went back into the building, I realized my purse was missing and I was relieved when I finally found it somewhere. However, it had been emptied out completely. A sense of panic came over me when I realized I didn’t have my parents’ number memorized to contact them because I always tapped their name when calling them without paying attention to the number. Then they suddenly appeared and I went running to my mother in tears like a child all over again telling her the contents of my purse had been stolen.