December 2022 in 2020s

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2022
As far as the horses go, I have a feeling they’re going to be a black-or-white situation. The end results will either make just a few extra bucks here and there or a ton of money. We won’t be millionaires, but I think if it works out, it’ll make more than when he was working.

I want to eventually get one of my larger dolls this cute little rainbow skirt for newborns I found on Amazon so I can slip the ends of the onesies I’ve got inside it, making them appear like tees.

Dug up some dirt on the honker. He was in Canada from the 18th to the 28th and told me they had no power for two days when we were on our way out to CVS the other day.

They returned with a couple with two kids. The couple was chatting with an old couple that lives halfway down the street in front of us. So even their visitors know people here?

They’ve been quiet. Just a couple of screams and some door slamming. No motorcycle rides but the honker wasted no time getting right back to his cleaning obsession and cleaned his truck.

The honker’s wife left a message in the group saying UPS delivered a package on the 19th but it’s nowhere to be seen. I told her what our camera can/can’t see and said we didn’t spot a recording of a UPS truck then. Too many damn clips to go through. She thanked me for checking.

It was nice to see Toni out and about. She was in her electric wheelchair and from what I could see, she was watering some plants.

Redneck is getting carried away with letting the damn dog bark. I’m just so glad we’re not in the corner house next to his driveway! I don’t know if he and his buddies get drunk or are just loud but they sit out there (playing cards?) and I can hear random shouts and laughter. It’s no biggie, though. I can drown them out almost as easily as I can the planes with air cleaners and fans. I’d rather them than the planes. They’re not out there 18 hours a day. But I’d hate to have that shit right outside the wall of my place!

So the honker got arrested for assault while off duty in 2011. No details were given as to who was involved or what it was about. I’m sure he was only in custody for five minutes and that was it.

It kind of irked me to find that he made 140k a year when he was working. Like Tom was any less deserving and didn’t work as hard? Also, I guess Canada isn’t much more private than the US with people’s personal business as I don’t think people should be able to look up someone’s income. It’s not exactly their business, is it? However, I wasn’t looking for that specifically.

I guess the pigs there are commonly referred to as constables rather than officers. A pig is a pig to me. They’re all the same. Mostly, anyway. Aggressive beings with a job that enables them to feel powerful. I can picture him getting into a fight too. They each got “minor injuries” the article said. Gotta laugh at the thought of creating a fake FB account to tell him, “I told all your neighbors of your arrest, north and south.” But of course, I don’t dare. With my luck, he’ll somehow find out I was behind the account!

Finally saw the Kyle Rittenhouse video, and no wonder he got off. He didn’t do anything but defend himself. I guess where people are pissed is because they think he used the potential riots as an excuse to hunt blacks that he hoped would give him a reason to shoot them. I still think somebody’s gotta take a stand to protect innocent people and businesses when the assholes are fixing to riot.

Although it was totally worth it, I ate so much yesterday that I nearly threw up. Tom was full as hell too.

Carol gave me Kim’s email address. Kim’s only allowed to use her smartphone for emailing a few friends, YouTube, and playing games. No social media or signing up for things. She says she’s okay with that because she mostly did that for Aly and I anyway and didn’t get much attention from anyone else. Gee, I wonder why! I’m sure I’ll be in for the usual long, rambling, repetitious messages, but that’s okay because I can always take my sweet time in replying.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2022
On the road headed for Tampa. It’s so nice to be back in the 70s the way it should be here in the winter. We got as high as 80 degrees today. It was so fucking cold last weekend! Got down to 28 degrees and was only 40 degrees at 2:00 in the afternoon.

The only good in the cold was that I slept better.

The abundance of snowstorms canceled tons of flights. Before we left for Tampa, the skies sounded like things were back to normal with planes every 5-10 minutes.

Yesterday we got a couple of cute electronic whiteboards. They’re geared toward kids since one has a pink frame and the other has a blue one. They also came with a couple of sheets of stickers, one with unicorns, the other with dinosaurs. Having no use for them, I immediately thought of Andy and sent them to him. He likes to decorate homemade cards with them

Anyway, the whiteboards are great for quickly jotting down times, dates, and things we want to do. I’m using mine now for journal notes so I can catch up on the way down and back.

I also got some large clips for sectioning my hair when dyeing it, and cedar blocks that were a complete waste of money. I put them in drawers and closets, but they don’t leave my clothes smelling of cedar. I can only smell the cedar if I hold the blocks to my nose.

A company in China sent a thing via postal mail promising a $25 Amazon GC in exchange for leaving a review on the wireless earbuds we got from them. So we’ll see if they’re for real or not soon enough.

The dill I planted is sprouting! It grows noticeably bigger each day. It’s so cool to see it pop up like that from tiny little seeds. I didn’t think I’d get anything to grow. I’m taking pics of it every day to see its day-by-day growth.

We’re about 20 minutes away, although I don’t expect the test to show anything bad. Just a little worried about the stuff that will be injected into me but at least I’ll be in a medical building.

I still have tummy issues at times, but not like it was in November. Been feeling better physically and emotionally but I’m sure that’s only because I’m on days and hypo again. Doubt I’m over 10 but doubt I’m under 6. Still can’t keep from wondering if something doesn’t want me to have a normal metabolism or if it really is just random chance. If it is by design, why? To keep me from losing weight? Well, whatever the case may be, I’ll never be in the normal range and feel good, therefore, I’ll never lose weight. My body just can’t handle being normal. It’s so fucking frustrating because there’s such a fine line between helpful and hurtful with this drug between the dosage and waiting time. If I only knew the exact dose and waiting time that would get me the lowest number I could stand!

Back a couple of hours later. The HIDA scan was easier than I thought. We got there 20 minutes early. The car went from having 48 miles to 8 miles in its range and this is with no AC. It was 66 degrees out at the time, so all we needed was the fan. We’re now sitting at the charger for a half hour and then it’s off to Red Lobster!

I almost wish I hadn’t put my blog addies in my paper journal cover. Would love to “lose” it in the clubhouse when it’s full and see if it was mentioned in the group. LOL.

Anyway, I was called in right away and Tom was with me. A woman stuck an IV connector in my arm and injected me with the radioactive stuff. Leaving the connector in, she had me wait in a smaller, inner waiting room.

It was freezing in there, so she gave me a blanket. I thought I was going to have to change into a gown but nope. A half-hour later, she came and got me and had me lay on a long, thin bed. She slid the bed down toward a tube-like thing. Then she lowered a large square plate over my stomach. It was almost a foot above it. Then she wheeled these long little trays with pillows up by my sides to rest my arms on. I could breathe normally but had to lay still for about 15 minutes. Then she injected me with a drug to make the gallbladder contract. She hung the bag with the solution on an ivy rod by the bed to slowly drip through. Luckily, I didn’t have any cramps or nausea. This took another 20 minutes.

Someone is now asking Tom about electric cars and chargers.

Back again. Red Lobster was SOOO good! First time we’ve been to one in about a decade or maybe more. I don’t think we went to one while we lived in Citrus Heights. I think our last time was actually when we were in Auburn. It wasn’t the madhouse every single one we went to in California and Arizona was either. The music was a little loud but that’s everywhere.

He’s not a fan of seafood, so he got a burger. I got a lobster tail with perfectly fried shrimp and fries that were just okay. My Caesar salad was delicious, but I didn’t want to eat too much of that or their cheddar biscuits so I would have enough room for my meal. Still ran out of room anyway, so have to take the rest home. Just the shrimp and leftover biscuit, not the fries. I hate old soggy fries.

Tom has been taking more naps lately because his aging bladder has been shorting his sleep, LOL. He can no longer go more than six hours without peeing. So when he gets too backed up, he naps more to make up for the lost sleep. No wonder old folks nap so much! I just miss being able to simply pee and be done with it. Instead, it takes so long when you’re older. They need to come up with a way to extend the bladder’s elasticity later in life.

His essential tremor has been worse too. He used to have good days and bad days, but now they’re all bad days. It hasn’t affected his daily functioning yet and I hope it never does. It’s just a pain in the ass when he’s doing something where he needs to have a steady hand. I’m guessing he may one day have to take medication for it.

Finished watching I Am a Stalker and now I’m watching I Am a Killer when I’m not watching movies.

Not remembering many dreams lately. Had one where we were living in an apartment on the first floor. I could hear a woman talking to someone at the door next to us. I could also hear footsteps overhead. Not knowing if the woman was going door to door and might knock on ours next, I went in search of a pair of shorts since Tom wasn’t home and all I had on was a T-shirt. I went through stuff but came up empty. We’d just moved in and our furniture had been bought from consignment shops. I got the impression from the dream that we didn’t have much money and he was working.

The toilet was in a corner of the bedroom and in full view with no wall or door around it. As I bent down to go through some clothes on the floor, I noticed two small drawers in the side of the toilet’s base. I pulled one out and found a large plastic bottle that I first thought contained pills. But then I wasn’t sure what it was and decided to leave that and the other items for when Tom returned.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2022
Decided to do an entry today, but then I’ll probably stop writing and save it for the long trip down to Tampa on Friday. Had my first video meeting with my new therapist Helen yesterday and it went well. A little confusing meeting her at first because I thought I was going to be able to see her on my desktop like I could with my old doctor. Instead, I was only able to see her on my phone, but that’s fine.

She appears to be in her late 50s to early 60s. She has a good balance between listening and talking. So far I’ve mostly given her a basic timeline of my life events and described how I feel on and off these days. Initially, we’re going to meet once a week for 90 minutes. Meeting and scheduling appointments online makes it so much easier!

I woke up to find she wanted me to fill out a couple of forms on the portal. They’re similar to the ones Galileo has that assess your emotional state over the last two weeks and how much it impacts your day-to-day life.

Didn’t know that the body literally absorbs trauma! There’s a book she recommended called The Body Keeps the Score. I guess traumatic events literally get stored in our muscles, tissues, organs, and pretty much everything. She says she thinks she can help me and I hope she means it because I’d hate to think that I could really be permanently fucked up for life and having these spells on and off for as long as I live. I still think most of it is connected to menopause and medication but who knows for sure? There could be more causes than I realize. But the fact that these particular feelings started when both menopause and medication did makes me think it’s mostly connected to that. Trauma changes you, though, so it might have given me this permanent condition after all. I tell you, July 9th of 2014 was easily the scariest day of my life and I’ve had a lot of scary moments in life. I hate to think of what it must be like for those who have had lives much worse than mine! I’ve heard some pretty cringe-worthy horror stories.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2022
According to politicians, “Democrats say that Black, Latino, gay and Jewish people face prejudice while a majority of Republicans say discrimination is more often aimed at white people and Christians.”

Well, they’re both right…and wrong. Sorry, but I don’t see Black and Latino discrimination nearly as much as Jewish and gay discrimination. And yes, Whites in general don’t matter as much as Blacks and Latinos and are blamed for everything these days. We can’t have our White pageants, White history or White anything without being called racist. We also don’t have the same kinds of protections, and where sentences used to be harsher for Blacks and Latinos, now it’s the other way around. Do two wrongs really make a right?

In general, it still seems the top discriminated groups are gays and Jews. Blacks/Lats have been president, vice president, other forms of politicians, doctors, lawyers, cops, and all kinds of things just like everyone else. What opportunities are supposedly still denied them?

It’s sad that some people choose to ignore facts in the name of political correctness. Black/Latino discrimination is highly exaggerated and oftentimes brought on by their own actions. Treat people like shit, people aren’t gonna like you. It’s just that simple. So maybe they’ll remember this the next time they race-card someone unfairly simply because they pissed them off or get stuck on hypocrisy by bashing Jews. Maybe they’ll think before rioting and looting in the streets when they don’t get their way and quit gang-banging on innocent people.

As for the Christians that feel they’re getting shit on…maybe if they weren’t so controlling and judgmental of others and stopped cramming their beliefs down other people’s throats, they too, wouldn’t have so many problems in life.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2022
If reading about dreams and nightmares isn’t your thing this entry will bore you to tears as not much is going on in real life other than that the honker is experiencing blizzards and has been without power for 12 hours. He is up in Canada too. We first thought he went to Texas where he seems to have relatives. I’m sorry he’s having a miserable time and regrets leaving Florida for 10 days not that we’re not freezing our asses off here even though we have no snow, but why did he and his buddy bother friending me if they’re not going to interact with me? I asked on a different post if he was in Canada and was never answered. Then someone asked the same thing on his latest post and he replied. Other than maybe reacting to one of my posts and peeking in on a few of my stories, I don’t hear from him. I haven’t even gotten that much from his friend.

I’ve always wondered if dreams that are reoccurring and seem at least mostly plausible could be glimpses into other dimensions or a sign of something to come while dreams that seem crazy and senseless are meaningless. I wonder if the nightmare I had could have been a glimpse into another dimension. We would never again get 10 or more acres of land, much less in a snowy climate. I’d stay right here in this community before I ever did that. But in this nightmare, we appeared to have more than 10 acres. It seemed like 20 to 40 acres and possibly in Oregon. I walked down into a basin-like section of the land and it was quite a walk, taking several minutes. You couldn’t see the house from where I was. I wore boots that came to the middle of my calves and a bright-colored ski jacket in red or pink. An old car sat parked in the basin and I wanted to get something from it. After I fumbled around with some things, I stood up and slowly looked around the land, thinking it was a pretty mild day for winter. Then about 300 feet away, up on the crest of a hill, I spotted a mountain lion leaping from right to left on a large rock. In an instant, I began running up the hill and back toward the house screaming, “Help! Help! Help!” even though I knew I was too far from the house for Tom to hear me, even if he could still hear well. I woke up at that point, so I don’t know if the mountain lion came after me or not.

Having this nightmare wake me up and then having to get up to pee has left me tired today. I got a lower sleep score of 81.

The rest of the dreams seem pretty meaningless. It was the year 2025, and we moved into a house that was just built that year. It was laid out a lot like our last one only it was much longer. For some reason, I was getting ready to sleep late that night out on a porch that extended straight out from the front door. Parallel to it was a strip of grass that was next door’s backyard. The porch had windows, but I had them open because the weather was nice. The place didn’t seem to be on the beach or by a lake of any kind. It was just a regular community. I glanced into next door’s yard and was dismayed to see a dog in a little doghouse. It glanced at me for a moment but didn’t bark. Knowing I wouldn’t sleep well out there, I went back inside the house and found Tom writing some programming notes on one of the walls of one of the bedrooms. I muttered something about going to sleep in the other bedroom even though I feared the dog would eventually wake me up. When I turned around with my back facing the room he was in, I could see the wall at the opposite end of the house and thought to myself, wow, that’s so far away.

I had a couple of dreams Doc A was in. It seemed we were neighbors twice. I hoped she wouldn’t think we were following her as it was purely by chance that it happened. The first time seemed to be in houses and the other time was in an apartment building. She had a ground-floor apartment and we were up on the third floor. Also, in one of the dreams, she didn’t have two sons and a daughter but four daughters instead, one of whom was in their 20s.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2022
Some people may wonder why I chose to share so much of my life in public diaries/journals/blogs. Well, I think that in at least some ways we’re a lot more alike than people realize. I think many people can relate to, and maybe even find comfort in some of the things I say and some of the experiences I share. Some certainly wouldn’t agree with or like some of it but no one can please everyone and we’re not all 100% alike either. I don’t aim to please or see journaling as a contest, but if my writings can help inspire or enlighten just a few individuals, why not? Even if it’s just some bored lonely soul with nothing better to do than read about my often mundane but sometimes exciting life, great.

I’ve also been getting more story viewers on Facebook that aren’t friends.

I had a dream that my mother and her father were still alive and Aly too. Aly and I were sitting in the back of my grandfather’s car as he drove us to my mother’s house. He accused me of being distracted and I explained to him that I was having surgery soon. When we pulled up to the house, I pulled out a wad of cash my mother gave me and asked my grandfather if mom paid him for picking me up and he said yes.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
First, it was baby formula and now it’s Adderall they’re short on. I dread the day it ends up being the levo because I have every reason to believe that consistency is everything when it comes to keeping my anxiety at a minimum. Still working on trying to find my “normal” without driving my TSH back up into the double digits. I just don’t think it’s going to be the 3 I’d like but more like the 5 or 6. Hopefully, I’ll find that balance without side effects or hypo symptoms. Especially now that I cleared up a huge misunderstanding with Galileo.

I don’t know if it’s my fault for not telling them, or if I did and they forgot. But either way, it now makes sense why they were so worried about me dropping my dose, saying it could be “dangerous.” My TSH was a 6 the last time I went for a blood draw and I reminded them that was after about a week of cutting my waiting time in half. Plus, I threw in an extra 75.

To further clarify what was going on with me, I backtracked the last couple of years and explained to them how I was anxious at the beginning of 2021, skipping doses regularly, and not realizing that was making me worse. I then told them that after I began taking the 75s consistently, I did OK for a handful of months until my dose was tweaked again late that year. After I began the slow titration of the dose in early 2022, I did OK again for five months until I got to six weeks of all 88s. Knowing that six 88s a week wouldn’t be enough of a cutback to stop me from getting hot and having sleep issues, I requested to switch out another 88. After they thanked me for the info and said it makes it more helpful in understanding my situation, they agreed to cut me back to two 75s a week. They had thought the 6 TSH was with consistent waiting time between doses and food/drink.

Tom mentioned that bad times go in cycles and I think he may be onto something. After I thought about it, I realized that I do have these up, down, and mixed cycles. Here are the cycles of my adult life that span 6-8 years and how they were for me overall. The pattern flows like the Missouri Gateway Arch.

1985-1992 – bad

1992-1999 – mixed, mostly good

1999-2007 – good (if you get jail and losing the house out of the pic)

2007-2014 – mixed, mostly bad

2014-now – bad (although the last year and a half has been a little better)

Slept OK but got up after 6 hours which wasn’t enough so I went down for a nap. I dreamed we moved into a big old house we bought as is that was choc full of stuff. Why do we always move into big old houses? LOL, it was weird because there was a kitchen sink that was not only huge but sunken into the middle of the kitchen floor like a large tub or jacuzzi. I was going to climb down these Styrofoam steps to get the silverware I dropped into it but then Tom came into the room. Not having good lighting anyway, I decided to open a shade. There were two large windows opposite the counter. There was stuff everywhere and not an inch of counter space in the huge kitchen that wasn’t cluttered with stuff left by the previous owners. There were also stacks of things against the exterior wall.

I reached for one of the shades and the entire thing broke off and fell to the floor. Looking out the window, I was surprised to see a little stream running a few feet away. On the other side of it, about 20 feet from the house, was our shed. We were in a wooded area, but the climate didn’t seem cold. We had fans running unless it was just summertime but that’s not the feeling the dream gave me. When I happily commented on the stream, Tom smiled and said, “So we have a water view.”

As Tom was doing something, I realized that hiding underneath a large quilt were a few odd-looking trays with mice. The trays were lined with wood shavings. There were no walls to the “cages.” They were stashed between other things. I said to Tom, “This explains why I’ve been complaining the place smells musty.”

I pointed out that it was amazing the mice were alive and that it was mean for the previous owners to try to hide them. As defensive of others as always, he said that they at least told us we were buying the place “as is.” So there were a few mice, including a newborn pinky, a hamster, and this weird-looking thing that sort of resembled a miniature swan. I picked up a nearby fork and put the handle by its mouth to see how it would react, not knowing if it was aggressive. It didn’t do much of anything but gently put its mouth on the fork handle.

Then everything went dead. Alexa cut out first, then the electricity. Tom went to investigate and I thought of how we needed to get new window blinds or shades.

We requested a refund for the bowling game. I didn’t like it because I found it a bit complex and too cluttered in a way that made the app confusing in general. Also, I’m the worst bowler I know yet you always throw it perfectly with this app, never guttering. How realistic is that?

In watching a stalker documentary, it’s really quite pathetic, and not just for obvious reasons. They listed every horrible offense they committed and they’re definitely offenses that come to mind when I think of stalking. The part that pissed me off is that it took so many offenses before they were made to pay the consequences, and not a single one of them was ever committed by me. Yet I get called a stalker and thrown in jail after one bottle toss and a few harmless pieces of mail?

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2022
Had to stop the St John’s wort because it was having the same effect on my stomach as the B-complex did. Is it me? Or does something really, really not want me to help myself?

Most of the therapists I messaged don’t. I’ve reached out to TWELVE therapists and only two have gotten back to me, one of which has a waitlist. The other that does teletherapy only and is based in Miami had me fill out a dozen intake forms which took forever. Then the owner said she didn’t have anything available but that there were three other therapists available. So I told her which ones I’m most interested in and that I hope I don’t have to go through all the forms again. The idea is to conveniently be able to schedule appointments online. At least I haven’t had to play phone with these people. All our communications have been via text and email.

Galileo said, wow, April is a long time to wait to get into the endo and suggested seeing about getting put on a waitlist. Not a good idea for someone with my sleep issues if they have a slot available when I’m not. Waiting lists don’t always mean you get in sooner anyway.

They also said to schedule the GYN appointment soon because they too will be booked up for weeks. It definitely does seem that the waiting time for specialists and therapists is absolutely ridiculous.

They asked if I was still taking the hydroxyzine and I said yes, as needed. I just have to take half a pill at a time, and sometimes it seems to help, and other times I’m not so sure. I thanked them for the Insight Timer app which I like and also told them I downloaded some mood trackers.

We got a couple more VR apps. Darts and bowling. These apps are a little complex and complicated, but still fun.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2022
Started feeling a little down and then a little anxious (just took half a hydro) then realized that both therapists have blown me off and that that’s utterly fucking ridiculous and I’m getting pissed. So I contacted 10 more under “teletherapists for Florida” of all colors and ages in various parts of the state that are female. If all 10 blow me off, then fuck Psychology Today. I’ll then work on the next link they gave me. They gave me three links.

I didn’t sleep as hot last night but the fucking sound machine cut out twice, and during one of the times, I heard a thump. This is definitely one seriously thumpy place, but with so many houses so close, what can I expect? We just don’t know if the cutouts are on our provider’s end or Amazon’s or the nature sound company itself. I may cancel my subscription and just use the free one along with the portable sound machine. Anything that’s overly loud is going to wake me up anyway. I just need something for the soft and moderate sounds.

I had to give up on Thyself because it failed to prompt me the next time around and I couldn’t update things manually. It just quit working altogether. So I downloaded a couple of mood-tracking apps to my phone to try and made a spreadsheet in Word that I’m also trying. Tom and I were talking about writing a program that I can customize to my liking. I just want to keep it simple. Every few hours I want to note if my mood is poor, fair, neutral, good, or excellent. Then add a brief note about what’s going on if I want. I also want a way to tally up the various moods so I can see what I feel most often.

Ugh, here goes the first plane of the day. Please tell me I’m either going to get used to hearing them every single day once and for all, or I’m not going to have to live with them for the rest of my life. I thought the horrible weather most of the country was having was supposed to ground a lot of flights. I definitely don’t feel like this is Florida. It’s been cold and rainy all day and all night.

One of the biggest things that makes me feel so hopeless and frustrated is my non-24 sleep cycle syndrome. I don’t know why nights tend to be a problem for me emotionally, but for whatever reason, they are. Yet that’s something that’s totally out of my control. I’d love to get out every day even if it was just to sit outside in the sunlight and listen to the planes but this simply isn’t an option for me. I just wonder how much being able to do that might help me but I’ll never know.

All the VR games and apps are on sale now through the New Year. We both got a table tennis game and I got Brink Traveler.

Table tennis is a bit tricky and takes some getting used to. It’s still fun. We can play together or against an AI person.

The traveling thing takes you to explore 17 different locations. It’s cool to see, but there isn’t much to do once you’re there. You explored the places and that’s pretty much it. They still make great environments for meditation. That’s something I definitely have to do after I eat.

I planted the dill seeds but I don’t expect anything to grow as usual. It said to place them a quarter inch below the surface. So I used a diamond drill to poke them into the dirt.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2022
I’m doing a little better today. Not perfect, but better. I don’t know if it’s because the St John’s wort is helping, or if the spell would have broken at this point anyway. When it does break, I just hope it’s for months, and not just days or weeks. I’ll take any time off from it I can get, though.

I felt an underlying feeling of anxiety picking up once I got past the halfway point of my day, as usual. So I took half a hydroxyzine but it didn’t seem to do me much good and I felt the anxiety picking up a little more, so I took the other half. That might have done the trick, even though now I’m a little drowsy. But yeah, I do feel calmer.

Damn, I miss Aly! I miss our chats so much and checking in with her and sharing our feelings and what was going on in our lives and everything.

I found a Chrome extension called Thyself. It’s a mood tracker. The idea is to see a micro view of my overall moods. I wanted something a little more detailed than just slapping a letter or an emoji on a calendar, but not so detailed as my journal entries. Something where I can step back and see the big picture. We already know nights are a factor. But what else might there be along with obvious things like dose tweaking?

Thyself gives you different check-in intervals each day in which to track your mood and I opted for the recommended amount of three hours. They’ll check in with me again at 5:19.

I’m still sleeping hotter than usual and waking up a lot. My guess is that I still have too much medication in me. I don’t know if I could get used to this dose or not, but I’m seriously toying with the idea of dropping to two 75s a week, rather than jumping to every other day. I figured I would start with twice a week as I still think one 75 is too much. I have a few days before I decide. Meanwhile, Jessie brought up a good point when she said that being in the “doghouse” was causing me to overheat since I’m kind of enclosed, although I’m not fully enclosed since the side I get in and out of is open.

She did have a point about the air not being able to cross through, though, so since the honker’s out of town and no one’s next door yet, I thought I would try leaving a back panel out. It has three panels and we’re gonna leave the one at the foot of the bed out. Maybe if I got more of a cross-breeze, it would help, although I doubt it. It’s been so cold and I’m still overheating. I go from hot to cold a lot. I mostly sleep hot and then spend the first few hours of my day hot. Then I’m anywhere from comfortable to cold. If I stay bundled up in my robe for too long, I’ll start hot flashing, especially if I’ve had something hot to eat. There’s just no pleasing my body’s thermostat. I was always sensitive to temperature, especially cold, but I miss the days when I was a lot more oblivious to temperature and had no idea what these horrible feelings were like as far as anxiety and depression go. Never had this kind of anxiety until this medication and menopause came along. Or so much random depression. When I’ve been depressed in the past, it was for a reason. I didn’t always have the solution to my problems, but I knew what the cause was. Now I only have theories.

For now, I’m trying to take the medication experts’ advice. I want to be aware of but not dwell on my emotions and feelings. I’m trying so hard to live in the moment! Yesterday can’t be changed, and tomorrow isn’t here yet. So I need to stop worrying that I’m unfixable and I need to stop thinking about death and dying and my fear of it, and what kind of an afterlife may be in store for me if any, and thoughts of one of us being left alone because the other one died. Ugh! I’ve got to try to think of happier and more positive thoughts even if it’s silly stuff like teddy bears licking chocolate lollipops while floating on colorful rainbow clouds.

I’m just glad I don’t have 50 more years to live even if 20 seems a bit much as it is when you don’t feel well, you haven’t for years, and you don’t know that you ever will again for very long. But there is something positive, believe it or not, and that’s that I’ve only had anxiety/depression for less than a third of the year!

Not at all surprisingly, I can’t get into the endo until April. Endos are always booked up. So many people have thyroid issues and diabetes.

I never heard back from the therapist I reached out to, so I reached out to another one.

I’ll schedule the GYN appointment soon. I wonder if they’re booked up as well. I’m guessing they might be as half the population has pussies.

He updated the schedule predicting program, which makes it much easier for me because I can now scroll through a calendar that has each wake-up time embedded in each date. Obviously, the further out the appointment, the harder it is to predict.

I wish I had hot chocolate for this cold weather. The decaf coffee I got is horrible. Not even gourmet creamer can help it.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2022
Although I’m still tired, I’m starting to perk up emotionally a little bit. It definitely seems to be more of a problem toward the middle of my day. As Galileo knows, I’ve begun cutting the hydroxyzine in half because of the way it makes me drowsy. I told them that children’s melatonin seems to help more with sleep and they said that’s OK to take. Meanwhile, unless it blows up my stomach beforehand, it can take the Saint John’s wort a few weeks to be beneficial.

My biggest fear right now is that I can’t be helped. I just wonder because of all the celebrities that have taken their lives. If they were so fixable, why did Robin Williams, Kate Spade, Naomi Judd, and others kill themselves? I just want my sanity back and not to be so tired all the time!

If this is more on the menopause than the thyroid medication, what if I’m permanently left this way and there’s no medication to fix me? Is it possible that my body can never adjust to the lack of estrogen? I don’t understand why I haven’t gotten used to the medication if that’s it, or why my hormones haven’t settled in yet if that’s it. I’m finding it hard not to think of all the worst possible what-ifs.

At about 6:00 in the evening, they had their Christmas parade and Amazon Prime was blasting the fuck out of its music. I could hear it loud and clear over the air cleaner and the fan as I was lying down. Why oh why are these delivery people allowed to do this??? Why don’t they get more complaints? It’s like they found the parade the perfect chance to get attention for themselves. Or maybe they did it because they were pissed that the parade was holding them up. I still don’t get why they’re not ordered to use headphones if they want to play music that loud. The delivery truck shouldn’t come with stereos that can play that loud, and they shouldn’t be allowed to take their own either. More and more people aren’t allowed to have their cell phones on the job so why can they go around blasting the shit out of people instead?

The honker and Kari have taken off somewhere. I don’t know if they’ve gone back up to Canada or maybe over to Texas where they seem to have relatives. All I know is that it’s been cold as fuck for Florida.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2022
Signing in this evening with a hydroxyzine hangover. I just read that its sedative effects only last a few hours, but it can stay in your system for 60 hours. I’m not surprised because this is the same experience I would have with Benadryl and it’s basically the same stuff. It definitely helps me to fall asleep, but I don’t see it helping the quality of my sleep at all. I still woke up several times.

For those of you who need a quick crash course in my health issues… I have Hashimoto’s and a dead thyroid and I struggle at times with the medication to treat it. I have non-24-hour sleep syndrome, which means I cannot keep a schedule and I tend to stay up later and later each day. My schedule jumps an average of 25 hours and 15 minutes a day. There is no known cure for this at this point. Since going into menopause, I have struggled with anxiety and depression, some of which I think could be on my thyroid med. The rest is minor stuff like TMJ, allergies, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, congenital atresia, etc.

Galileo checked in with me last night and I told them I was the same. They said they understood how frustrating it was to not feel like yourself. But even if my problem was due to menopause, and they’re not saying it is, they would still treat the anxiety.

They said to take the hydroxyzine when I’m going to do something that triggers the anxiety, but that’s just the thing. I’ve never noticed any triggers. It has a mind of its own and it comes on when it wants and it leaves when it wants. However, I noticed that it tends to come on in the middle of my day so I’m gonna see if I can catch it head-on and take it a couple of hours before the middle of my day and see if that helps keep it from coming on. I’m already tired as hell, so it doesn’t matter.

As I told them, I’m kind of stuck in a catch-22 because I need to stay up so I can call the office Monday morning to make the endo appointment and not knock myself out too soon by taking the stuff late in my day. Pushing my schedule ahead too fast will also jeopardize my chances of getting to the HIDA appointment even though that’s the least of my concerns right now.

I still can’t decide if I’m overmedicated or not. I took a 75 tonight, and I’ll decide on Thursday whether or not I want to drop to two 75s a week or not. I definitely do seem warmer than usual. And I wonder if my waking up more often could be connected to the medication. But then I had these problems when I was underdosed. Jessie said she still has problems regulating her body temperature all the time, and that she and David argue in the car about the AC. He’s like, keep it the same temperature! But she turns it up and down. Definitely sounds familiar!

I said that Stacey wasn’t helpful in the end because I’m in the same boat I was in years ago but she did help stop the panic attacks through EMDR. No doubt about that. But I still think that stopping this is going to be impossible because, well, how often was I having panic attacks compared to being anxious or depressed? I would think that would be much trickier because it’s so much more often. I panicked for two or three years. I’ve been getting this shit for longer. Panic attacks don’t last all day either.

I really, truly do believe I’m hopeless and beyond help, but I don’t know that acceptance therapy would be right for me. I think it’s more appropriate for those who lose a loved one, have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, or are told they’re infertile. But I don’t see how anyone can “accept” suffering physically and emotionally most days of their life. This is not something you can simply accept and be okay with. It’s not okay, and I don’t intend to live with it for another 20 years. If it doesn’t back off by the time I hit 60 in a few years, I’m done.

Had to pause this entry to lie down. I took another hydroxyzine shortly after 10. I feel tired, depressed and hopeless, but not anxious at the moment.

I mark the days I feel bad emotionally or feel anxiety in my chest with a frowning emoji on my Windows calendar. I showed it to him and asked what pattern he saw and he said he sees it picking up with more appointments, and of course, what you can’t see is it getting worse when I’m on nights. Being on nights definitely aggravates it. But why in the world would appointments cause me to feel this way all of a sudden when they never used to in the past?

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2022
Written yesterday:

I woke up feeling really warm and couldn’t even finish my coffee because that was making me even warmer, so I told my docs that I wanted to scale my dose back a bit. They told me that while it was my choice, they didn’t agree with it because they felt that cutting my dose back could make me feel worse.

But my TSH has been higher in the past during which I’ve had times I felt better. I get their point, but again, it just doesn’t make sense to me. If a higher TSH means feeling horrible emotionally then I would have been a complete mess before the diagnosis. It’s like this treatment has made me worse. Ever since I started this drug, my problems began and I felt worse for the most part. Yes, I know I went into menopause at the same time, but still. I’m really starting to suspect more and more that the meds have much more to do with what’s been going on with me than menopause. Not saying menopause isn’t a factor, but the fact that I’ve changed so much for the worse shortly after starting this drug kinda tells me something right there. Emotionally, I’ve never been the same. The emotional side effects have been way worse than any physical ones thus far other than in the very beginning when I had a booming heart and was absolutely terrified. I don’t even know that all these hot flashes really are hot flashes anymore. Maybe they’re side effects of the medication. I just don’t know what to think anymore. My gut instinct is on the meds as the main culprit. How I wish to hell I could quit the shit for a year! Then I would have my answer. For now, all I can do is wait a few more years until menopause can’t be a factor anymore. All I know is that a couple of months after starting this drug I have never been the same. I haven’t been the same since, and I don’t know that I ever will be. Instead, I’ve felt worse. Hell, I felt better even when my life was a mess! Really, when I think of my worst times in life, I still didn’t feel this bad. My life has been going well since the recession ended around 2011, yet my physical and emotional state doesn’t reflect it.

Why are the simplest of things in life so hard to ask for? Why can’t I just sleep at night every night and feel human? I just want to feel like myself again!

They pointed out that sleep apnea (after they asked once again if I ever participated in a sleep study) can cause some similar symptoms. I’m aware of this, even though I’m relatively sure I don’t have sleep apnea. But that’s the thing that’s so frustrating. When different things can have the same symptoms, you don’t always know what’s what.

I have never felt more hopeless about my situation than I do now. Each year that passes, I lose more hope. After eight years, I realize my only choices are to live with it or die. Knowing that I’m going to suffer for the rest of my life is a very hard pill to cram down my throat. I try and try, but I just can’t accept it. I know this is the way it will always be with a few scattered breaks in between. But I just can’t accept it. I wish to hell I could, but I don’t think there is a person alive who could accept such misery.

I just miss my old self tremendously! I know I’ve been running around in circles saying the same damn things over and over again, but it doesn’t make them any less true. I just want to get back to myself. I miss so many of my old feelings. But just like I can never get back to my old self physically with a working thyroid, good vision, a thin body, etc, I don’t see how I could possibly ever get back to my old self emotionally. If I could just know what the fuck was causing most of these feelings!!! That right there might help a lot because then it would be easier to know what to do about it. If it’s on the medication or just how the older me has become, I’m pretty fucked.

I made him promise that I would give it till I’m 60, and if that still doesn’t bring me relief, he would help me find a way out that wouldn’t come back on him. It’s just that I hate to desert him and leave him alone for so long and I definitely don’t want him to get in trouble for my own actions. But one can only take so much suffering, and sometimes we really do have to put ourselves first.

I started the St John’s wort supplement today and until that fucks up my stomach, I’ll be taking that daily. Also, they started me on hydroxyzine. It’s pretty much a kickass antihistamine that is supposed to be good for not only sleep issues but acute anxiety too. According to the forms I filled out, I have severe anxiety and moderate depression. I’m not going to lie and say that I haven’t thought how wonderful it would be if I ceased to exist. I really, truly do believe I’m beyond help.

I only took the hydroxyzine once, so it’s really hard to judge the stuff. You take it as needed, but no more than four pills a day which totals 100 milligrams. It seemed to help a little, but the trade-off is that it made me drowsy. Adult Benadryl has always made me drowsy and even sometimes causes me to nap so it’s no surprise. I’d rather nap than feel like shit emotionally, but I’m tired of being forced into this twisted game of Would You Rather? Why can’t I just feel good both physically and emotionally? I had five months earlier in the year of feeling good (I think I might have been mistaken and said it was six months in past entries). I wonder how long it will be before I get to do that again.

As horrible as I’ve been feeling, it serves as a real wake-up call that it really is time to get myself a new endo and a new therapist, even if nothing will ever change. Then I need to see a GYN. It’s just that trying to schedule all this with my type of sleep disorder is very hard. My sleeping pattern has become a little more irregular, and then even more so with the hydroxyzine so that’s going to make my schedule even less predictable.

Not sure a GYN would find me a good candidate for estrogen when breast cancer runs in my family history.

Med or menopause, I did a complete 180 and now I’m cold because we’re having a cold spell. Winter has finally arrived and it’s a lot like our old place out there. We went out walking in the evening and it was 54 degrees out which is freezing for me. Even in a sweatshirt and a hoodie, I was cold. It was cool to see the Christmas lights, though, and we even saw a possum dart across the street.

Tonight it was 62 degrees and I didn’t need my hoodie. Much more pleasant.

Okay, so I know I’m jumping all around here as far as subjects go. I emailed a therapist who does teletherapy, and on Monday, I’ll call the endo that they referred me to in Palm Harbor. If she can’t get me in soon, I’ll try to get someone closer.

They told me to be patient, saying that the new things I’m trying can take a few months to have their full impact, but they expect me to feel better in a few weeks. I feel like it’s going to be a long few weeks. And what if I don’t get better? What do I do then? If I’m not going to kill myself, what do I do to make life more bearable? Hope for a deadly disease?

My biggest fear right now is that more of this than even I realize is on the medication and that there’s no alternative for me. I hope to hell this endo can help me, but I don’t see what more she can do for me that Doc O didn’t already try. Same with the therapist. But it might at least give me some peace of mind to know I’m finally established with them and that they’re there.

Damn, do I miss Aly! I know it’s not like Jessie doesn’t care, but I am hesitant to cry on her shoulder because she’s just not as intelligent and she doesn’t have a good memory. It isn’t that she doesn’t get some of the suffering I’ve gone through, but there are some things she’s experienced that I haven’t and that I’ve experienced that she hasn’t. So it may be tough to fully grasp exactly what I’m feeling.

In other news, there was a woman in Phoenix that Tom and his brother David knew from working at the post office and that they would see at the horse racing track. Well, he was watching a race in Phoenix, and sure enough, he spotted her as one of the spectators!

I had this horrible nightmare where Tom died and I was suddenly at Chris’s place. I had no money and no means of support. On top of that, I was hungry. Chris suddenly left me in his place and took off walking somewhere. I watched through the window as he walked away leisurely, hands in his pockets. I hoped he would be back soon, even though I hated the thought of begging him for something to eat. A sense of hopelessness, loneliness and despair came over me to know that Tom would never be back to save me and be a part of my life ever again.

Written now:

Still hanging in there, but still not feeling good. It’s the weekend, so there isn’t much I can do until I get in to see someone or get a video appointment, even though I still say none of it is going to do me any good. It didn’t do me any good in California. No matter how many coping mechanisms, tricks, tips, and pointers someone gives me for handling this anxiety and depression, no one can make it go away for good and stop it from returning. No one can get me back to my old self where if I felt any negative emotions, it was for a reason and I knew what that reason was. It wasn’t some mystery thing going on inside my body.

I thought of taking the hydroxyzine earlier, but I don’t want to be knocked out or too tired to do anything. I also want to finish my wine first. I wouldn’t have gotten it if I knew I was going to start this stuff. I’m sure the two could mix safely. I would just be even more tired and out of it.

Body temperature is another issue I’m struggling with on the physical side. I just can’t get comfortable for long. I’m either too hot or too cold. Again, I’m racking my brain trying to guess if it could be the medication or menopause or both. I may have always been sensitive to cold, but I miss the days when I was a lot more oblivious to temperature.

I did update Jessie who says she totally understands and has teletherapy as well which she finds very helpful. She’s also backing off on alcohol because her liver enzymes are up.

The thing that’s compounding my negative emotions is that while I know that sooner or later I’m going to get a temporary break, I feel more and more certain I’ll never escape it for good. Each year that passes without resolving this, I lose more hope. It’s a very tough thing to have to face and accept. Some things just aren’t meant to be no matter how much we struggle to make them happen.

I can’t stop asking myself if this is all random or if something up there is doing this to me. If it’s not doing it directly, is it at least sitting back and allowing it to happen? What could possibly hate me so much that it would want me to suffer like this when it could have prevented it? Why won’t it let me help myself? Why won’t it let me find something that will help me? I don’t mean just a temporary solution. I mean something that will change things permanently for the better.

If no one and nothing can help me, I wish to hell I would just get a deadly disease and get it over with that way. But if something up there is actively cursing me, it’s not going to let me die any time soon. I may suffer in the afterlife too for all I know, but something definitely seems to be determined to make me suffer right here. I try to tell myself it’s all happenstance, but I don’t know that. Maybe it is, maybe it is it. I just know that the thought of any unworldly source doing this or letting it happen is pretty damn chilling. I’m no better or worse than the average person. So if there is anything out there making sure that I suffer, what the hell did I do that was so bad to deserve it?

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2022
Finally got caught up on sleep, although it wasn’t without some disturbances. The last couple of days, I was both exhausted and in such a blah mood. Trying to make a point of taking my gummies when I feel that way. The worst they do is make me drowsy and that’s a doable side effect. They don’t make me drowsy in the way lorazepam did. I’m still able to function. After a few good days, I’m continuing to have a mix of anxiety and depression but I knew this spell wasn’t going to let up anytime soon. Unfortunately, they’re not short-lived when I fall into one. I don’t expect to start feeling better until sometime next year. I’m hoping for a month from now, actually.

We walked around a little bit last night looking at all the Christmas lights. Today, we had a huge thunderstorm. Of course, it had to wait until I crashed to get started. When I first got woke up, I thought it was a car door that slammed really hard. Then I thought it was the motorcycle. Then I thought it was the garbage truck. Then I realized what it really was.

So I got up at just after 10, took my meds, and realized I was way too tired to stay up. So I went back to bed. A glimpse out the kitchen window showed that it was really coming down hard. You could barely see across the street, let alone off in the distance.

I got back into bed and turned on the fan and air cleaner and ran nature sounds on volume 3. No portable sound machine at this point, figuring the honker wasn’t about to take the motorcycle out in this shit. When I got up a few hours later, Tom said that he did run the motorcycle for about 30 seconds and even revved it a bit to dry the motor before covering it. Never heard a thing.

OMG, now Alexa’s being a pest with book warnings! There was a section in my book where this psycho kills a dog, and she had to interrupt the story by warning me that it may be disturbing to some readers, so feel free to jump to the next chapter if you’d like.

As opposed to the killing of a human being?

As expected, my Cologuard test came back negative. I’ll do it again in 3 years. Hard to believe I’ll be 60 then! They even wished me happy holidays and reminded me that they’re there for me 24/7. LOL, gotta love these guys.

As fruitless as it will no doubt be, I made one last-ditch attempt to try to get Tampa Airport to shift their 100+ daily planes a bit.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2022
So I’m borderline on Crohn’s and borderline diabetic. The result of my calprotectin test shows I’m in the upper borderline range as far as having Crohn’s or colitis goes, and when I woke up and tested my blood sugar, I was 125, the highest I’ve known myself to be upon waking up. So I’m stepping up my step count. I can prevent myself from becoming diabetic, but I don’t know if I can prevent myself from getting “Crohned” in the future.

It will be a week before I get the Cologuard results but I’m not worried about that. Docs suggested I keep the HIDA appointment. Figures. I just hope I can make this one on the 30th, but worst-case scenario we reschedule and get an appointment in New Port Richey.

I decided that for next year, I’ll mark the calendar whenever I feel off emotionally in any way or any physical symptoms that are connected to it such as when I feel adrenaline in my chest. I’m not going to bother to mark if it’s borderline, if it’s very noticeable, or whether or not it’s anxiety versus depression. If I don’t feel right in the head, I’ll mark it. That way I can get a more precise total throughout the year of just how many days it is and whether or not it’s improving, worsening, or holding steady. I’d say that yes, 2022 was the best year so far. I had roughly 60 to 70 days where I didn’t feel the greatest emotionally. That’s still a bit much but better than more than half the year. Damn, I just miss my old self!

I looked back in my 2014 journal and found that by late June, after being raised from 50 micrograms to 75 micrograms in May, I was starting to get wound up. By July 9th, it all blew up in my face. But I had no problems physically or emotionally before this so I wonder, would I have had it all along if it was medication making me feel bad emotionally? Or was 50 micrograms simply too low to feel those effects? When Doc O dropped me to 50 micrograms when we were doing the liothyronine experiment, I didn’t notice any relief, but these things do take time too. It takes time for the shit to build up in the system and it takes time to get better when it builds up too much. As I said in my last entry, sooner or later, I’ll have my answer as far as how much changing hormones could be involved. Right now, I don’t feel too bad. I don’t feel great, but certainly nothing worth marking on the calendar.

Along with a money jar spell to help with his programming endeavor, I made myself a happiness jar spell. I asked Tom if witchcraft could be simply wishful thinking borne of desperation like the God fantasy but then he pointed out that witchcraft has been around for a long time as well as the concept of prayer so that usually means there’s something about it. Prayer never worked for me and the few times it seemed to could have been a coincidence. It just didn’t work often enough for me to say for sure that there was a connection, so hopefully things will be different with the jar spells. As a new witch of this kind, I don’t want to do too much too fast. So I’ll see how this does before I decide whether or not to create additional jar spells for creativity and things like that.

They say we should take a moment to be grateful for what we have (or luckily don’t) and I’m definitely grateful that Steve isn’t our neighbor! Damn, he and his buddies are loud. I went out into the lanai to eavesdrop, being the nosy, curious person I am, to see if I could make out what they were saying. They were so loud that I could make out a few words. They were talking about politics. I heard words like Trump, Democrats, FBI, and protests.

Poor Karen! That’s the bipolar woman living next to them. The part of the driveway in which they gather is between their place and hers. If I had those loudmouths right outside our place, especially by the bedroom, I would be so fucking pissed! I wonder if Toni finds an annoying since she’s closer.

I can’t wait to move someday, drop my blog link on the group, and let them have fun reading about themselves, haha.

Again, I’m glad the honker got a quieter motorcycle now that he’s gone from riding 2-3 times a month to 2-3 times a week. Yeah, he went out again today for about 5 hours. He still cuts the motor before he gets to the house and coasts into the driveway. The recycling and garbage trucks coming tomorrow and the next day are what I’m most worried about.

The AC inspector came today and everything looks good. I’m glad he came after I got up because he was banging around back there, and he sprayed the blower with some kind of cleaner that smelled a bit.

We really shouldn’t run the AC on the way down to Tampa so we don’t run out of charge. It’s going to be the first time I’ll wish it was like it is in most places…too cold for the AC in the car in December.

In my little pink sleeveless sundress, I just checked the weather for every state I ever lived in except Arizona. LMAO!

I should have registered my phone number on the Do Not Call list much sooner because it’s really slowed down the number of sales calls I’ve been getting.

Andy said I didn’t have to discuss it with him if I didn’t want to, but he’s so fed up with his sister-in-law Jenny. He didn’t get into the details and I didn’t ask, but I guess part of his problem with her is that she bad-mouthed him to others and didn’t stick to the subject at hand, which I’m guessing has to do with the fact that she doesn’t like that he’s a Trump supporter and is probably anti-gay as well.

I told him that I live by a motto I wish I had adopted since the day I turned 18 and that’s to treat everyone the same. Most of us wouldn’t put up with abusive friends or lovers, so why should we put up with mean, degrading, toxic family members? Biology should never be a ticket, reason, or excuse to be an asshole. I kick you out of my life if you’re trouble and I don’t take you back if I’ve had a problem with you in the past.

He wasn’t going to go to the family holiday get-together because he’s so pissed at her. But then he later decided he’s not going to let her ruin things for him, so he’s going to go and will just ignore her.

Speaking of Trump, I am so sick of seeing that fucker’s face everywhere I go online. This has got to be the most talked about former president ever. It was annoying enough when everything was Obama, Obama, Obama, and he wasn’t a bad guy. But when you hear about a sick twist a million times more often, it gets old very fast.

We’re kind of changing the way we get our groceries delivered. Instead of doing larger orders less often, we’re going to do smaller orders every few days. It’s going to take some getting used to but it will be better because fruits and vegetables tend to go bad before frozen and canned things do. This way I only get what I need for the next few days, and not stuff I won’t need for a while.

Tom’s playing around with one of the coloring apps now. I found it so fun and addicting that I paid the $7.00 to get rid of ads and get unlimited hints.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2022
I guess Kim and I are going to keep in touch on Messenger. But if she asked one more time about postal mail, I’m going to scream. I just hope she doesn’t hit me with 20 messages a day. According to her, her sister doesn’t check in there very much anymore. I’m surprised she would let her use Messenger unsupervised like that.

Ended up feeling a little on edge yesterday, but it was mild and didn’t last long. I think it was more emotional than physical this time. It frustrates the hell out of me to know that it would be so easy to find out how much the medication was involved, yet so impossible at the same time. All I would have to do would be to stop the medication for a year or so but I couldn’t stand the severe hypo symptoms I would get. I would be cold and tired as hell, I would gain 100 pounds, and who knows how close I would come to a stroke or heart attack, along with dozens of other symptoms that would plague me.

The good news is that sooner or later, I’m going to reach my 60s and that eliminates one of three possibilities right there. Once my hormones have settled in for sure, then it’s down to the medication or simply the way I’ve become. The latter still seems a little bizarre as much as I know we do change with age.

Unless this was just a joke, there’s a guy here that I kind of want to throttle right now. I mentioned the excessive planes in the group just to see what people said about it. Other than someone saying that we’re in a flight path (gee, you think?) and helicopters going to the nearest hospital, one guy said, “I requested them to adjust their flight path because I enjoy watching them. My apologies to those of you who don’t.”

I hope that’s a joke because I was pretty pissed when I read that. You mean you can request them to fly over you but you can’t ask them to back the hell off?

Took a nap earlier and I swear a car door or some kind of bang woke me up but Tom said he didn’t hear anything. I looked at the camera recordings and I’m guessing it was Sue’s car if not part of a dream I had. I didn’t have nature sounds going. Just the air cleaner and fan.

I had a dream we were living in a house that was laid out similar to this one only the living room didn’t have a slider in it. It was nighttime and I had been lying in bed for a while and listening to the sound of steady rainfall which I found soothing. Then I got up with him still asleep and entered the kitchen. There was a good-sized plastic storage bin bolted to the wall that the previous owners left. I was trying to decide what I wanted to put in it since it was presently empty. I also decided we should stop using napkins and use paper towels which we started doing in real life a long time ago once we were able to get paper towels with smaller sheets.

Next, I headed into the living room. I was a little annoyed to find it in a bit of disarray since I wanted to use my VR headset at the moment. Because he had a little table in the center of the room with a typewriter sitting on it, I knew that something had broken and he was explaining what he had fixed in the note. Only I couldn’t read the note because it wasn’t clear.

Then I noticed he set up a small desk with a shelf above it in the corner of the room and put some of my collectible dolls on it. Some he put upside down, LOL. I figured he did this as a joke.

I went back into the bedroom which had some kind of patio off of it because I looked through a door and saw that the cement beyond it was covered with about a half inch of rainwater. Then I looked down at my feet and realized it was now in the room. I dipped a foot in it and found it wasn’t cold.

Then a split second later, Tom and I were out somewhere and I asked if he thought the water would completely flood the bedroom before the storm passed and he thought it might. I wanted to hurry back to the house to see if we could stop it but he didn’t seem worried about it.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2022
As predicted, the motorcycle returned yesterday. Only I don’t think it’s the same one and it’s a little quieter. As soon as we saw he was going to take off on the thing this morning, I ran into the bedroom and played my favorite nature sound on volume 3 and it’s an iffy volume. It’s my preferred volume to sleep with but it might not be enough, depending on how heavily asleep I am and what position I lay in. But I did have the bedroom and closet doors open at the time, which makes a little difference right there.

Anyway, he’s just annoying along with Happy. The real threat to my sleep are the garbage and recycle trucks and the loud mower. The problem is that the Internet, along with the electricity, cuts out a lot more than it did at our old place so I had to sleep with a portable sound machine yesterday because the air cleaner isn’t enough for even the mail truck which is unusually loud. Luckily, it wasn’t a pick-up day and I wasn’t crashing around 5:00 AM or something like that.

The honker and his wife went kayaking at a state park yesterday and I wished I could be there. If my stomach continues to do better, we should be able to do more things like that and go on nature walks as long as I’m not suffering any nasty effects from the medication. I still hot flash a lot more than I’d like too, and I think that once I know for sure whether or not I’m going to go through with the HIDA test, I may make the GYN appointment to discuss estrogen. I kinda wonder why none of my California docs ever mentioned it.

At the end of the day, Kari returned in the truck, and he on the motorcycle. He went out with it late this morning and returned 4 hours later. He seems to take off a lot without her, but maybe she likes that. Even though it’s a bit softer, it’s still noticeable so I hope he doesn’t start riding more than usual. But yeah, it’s softer for sure because when he came back I didn’t feel the floor rumble beneath my feet. He also cut the motor right before he reached his driveway and coasted onto it like last time.

The redneck let Happy bark for about a minute before we heard him yell at her to shut up. I didn’t hear her yesterday. I just hope he doesn’t start letting her do this multiple times a day all over again.

On my walk this morning I could hear someone toward the clubhouse using a power drill and a circular saw. So even though there haven’t been too many annoying projects we could hear in our place and it isn’t anywhere near as annoying as the old place, it’s still something I hear around here more than I ever did in any other state prior to California.

Before I came back around and headed toward our place, a woman playing country music in her driveway and working on her golf cart greeted me and asked if I was in the park. LOL. Do I still look too young to live in a place like this? I told her where I lived and introduced myself. She said her name was Thelma.

Thelma B? I asked and she said yes. Then I also asked if her birthday was December 4th and she said yes to that as well. I told her that was my birth date as well and that I recognized her name from the group. They share copies of the Hooter there and a list of all the birthdays for the current month. I remember seeing her listed on the same date as mine.

A quick glance at her profile shows she’s a snowbird down from Michigan.

It’s pretty amazing that I ranged from on edge to anxious for only about 10 days for my last spell. Usually, those spells are for weeks or months at a time. If all goes well - and I don’t want to say it will with my shit luck - I will have had only about two months’ worth of anxious days this year when you add it all up. That’s a definite improvement and the best year I’ve had since this shit started in 2014. But I don’t think I’ll ever be fully free of it. I’m still not even sure this is the proper dose of thyroid medication for me.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2022
Happy barked her ass off yesterday for a couple of minutes. Please tell me they’re not going to let the damn thing go back to doing that shit every day!

Went for my quick walk this morning and exchanged hellos with the honker. I briefly entertained the idea of commenting on the motorcycle being gone to see what he might say about it, but I know it’s coming back soon enough. People like that don’t just suddenly up and get sick of riding.

Linda got new windows and now she’s having her yard redone so I wonder if she’s prepping to sell. I’m okay with the hypocrite moving if the new person doesn’t come in with a motorcycle or the dog from hell.

We went to the Treasurer Mart yesterday where people have many booths of items that they’re selling. There were lots of nice things but nothing that was out of this world that I just had to have. But I did buy a pack of butterscotch incense, and it smells absolutely nothing like butterscotch.

Then we hit Burger King and I felt so stuffed afterward.

Except for some upper right cramping in the stomach, my stomach is better overall. I’m still thinking that most of my problem might have been on the fluoride and B-complex but I also wonder…could the spell I cast be working?

I researched more on jar spells, and it seems that there are no set rules and the phase of the moon doesn’t matter. You can include anything you want in the jar. The idea is to add items that pertain to what you want. So I was thinking of doing a happiness jar spell for me and a money jar spell for him. I’ll be adding the herbs and crystals most associated with these things, along with whatever else I can think of.

I hate the scratchy twine the jar set came with so I got multicolored waxed necklace cords on the way. They may not fit through the eye hooks that came with the jars so we also got a set of various-sized eye hooks.

I think it would look cool to do ones with extra diamonds from diamond paintings too. It would be nice if I could try to sell those and some bullet crystal necklaces for the upcoming yard sale event if God forbid I can be awake when it happens in February. I got a set of 44 different colored bullet crystals.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2022
Yesterday turned out to be an okay day but my mood soured a bit at the very end. I started to feel really warm again, and I said, oh no, not this shit again! But I got up and sat under the fan after cranking up the AC and was okay.

Toward the beginning of my day today, I started to feel a little off emotionally, so I took a gummy, went for a walk around the block, and all was fine. It’s important that I get sunshine for at least 5 minutes every day that I can. My stomach has been better the last couple of days, so I’m taking advantage of it and getting out.

This entry is quite short, so I think that rather than post a couple of paragraphs, I’ll wait and add to it tomorrow or the next day.

And now it’s the next day! I felt good overall yesterday, and this is going on the third day of no stomach issues, making me wonder if my problem all along might have been the B-complex and fluoride toothpaste. If I stay better throughout the rest of the month, I’ll have to think about whether or not I want to cancel the Tampa trip for the HIDA and seeing a gastro doc.

I went walking this morning and it was nice, even if I only went around the block and it was a bit chilly. I wasn’t anywhere near needing a jacket, though. If anything, I would need shorter sleeves if I was walking further than just around the block. It’s only been a few days since my stomach has been better, so I didn’t want to venture too far from the house.

Yesterday, I took my new wireless earbud, and as long as I don’t have it in too loosely, it stays put well. Today, I didn’t bother and was surprised not to hear a single plane, even though I expected to hear two or three.

Right now, it’s foggy as hell out there. Tom and I are going to go out and do a little shopping today, but as I told him, I want to wait until it’s less foggy. So he’s doing the laundry now and after I finish this entry, I’ll do some cleaning.

I’m happy for Brittany Griner’s release from Russia’s barbaric jail. I don’t believe she ever should have gone to jail for what she was jailed for, unlike the prisoner who was traded for her release.

I thought the US stepped back into the Dark Ages by illegalizing abortion in some cases, well, Indonesia’s banning of sex before marriage is utterly batshit fucking ridiculous. That ain’t just taking a step back. That’s diving head-first into pure insanity. Yet it also comes as no surprise in a Muslim-dominated country where insanity rules. And no, I’m not going to be “politically correct” by keeping my mouth shut so any sensitive readers don’t feel hurt. Hiding behind a veil of political correctness doesn’t change the facts no matter how much people may wish it did.

Argh, it’s kind of frustrating to have next door be empty for much of the year just to have people park there all the time like it’s a community parking lot.

I had a series of weird dreams last night. First, I was living in a large house with my dad. I was up in an attic bedroom and lying in bed. I leaned over the edge of the bed and looked down toward the floor to see some ants crawling around. I jumped up in search of bug spray when I saw something spewing oil all over the place. I don’t know what that something was, but I also didn’t know if it was dangerous. I ran down two flights of stairs and hoped my dad would still be up since it was around 11 at night. I saw that he was in a bathroom at the bottom of the stairs based on the closed door and the light seeping from underneath it.

“Dad!” I called out, and a moment later he opened the door. I told him about the oil and he followed me back up the stairs. Only I started finding myself getting lost through the large house on the way back up. There was this strange strip of floor that was slanted at a 45-degree angle that I had to run up. Then a level of the house that I had to step up onto. It was about 4 feet and my dad watched as I struggled to pull myself up onto it.

Then it was Tom and I living in a big house somewhere. We just moved in when there was a knock on the door and he was delivered a large TV. One of those fat old fashion kinds, only it didn’t seem that heavy to him.

I told him we should talk about the basement soon and decide how we wanted to section it off and what we wanted to use each section for.

In the last dream, I was riding a scooter down the road and then I was suddenly in someone’s house. It was a long house and there were many people in it as if they were having a party of some kind. I jumped back outside and onto my scooter. It was a hot day and I felt the heat burning my thighs, which were exposed to the sun since I was wearing shorts. My thighs looked funny too, with deep dime-size depressions and jiggled like jello.

I turned the scooter around intending to head home, but then realized I had to go back into the house for some reason. I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I was determined to make it fast. Once inside, the doorbell rang and I saw someone open the door. A policewoman and a policeman stood there and I feared they were there because of me but that was where the dream ended.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2022
I’m loving this Zen Coloring app I downloaded to my phone a couple of days ago. It’s a great way to unwind while also unwinding with my audiobooks before bed.

Tom was right. Cologuard was easier than the other samples I had to collect. I was just glad to have it done and over with as soon as I got up so I wouldn’t have to stress about that much.

I don’t want to get my hopes up, but today I feel the best I’ve felt physically and emotionally in a week. Maybe the emotional part improved faster because I didn’t get as bad from the medication build-up as last time. This time around I was overheated and I couldn’t stay asleep, but my HR was stable. Next blood draw is in 11 weeks from now, which means that since I can’t get past six weeks, I’m going to have to scale back a little regardless of how I feel in early to mid-January for a few days. I want to be able to see exactly where I am after six weeks of waiting at least a half hour before coffee with no extra 75s.

I read more on Crohn’s and UC and while my symptoms are the best match for those, at the same time I’m just not sure because there are usually other things you have along with these that I don’t have. My guess is still on IBD or IBS. If it was cancer, I would be losing weight fast, and it wouldn’t give me a break like it is today. Or at least so far today. Things could head south later. Right now, I’m starting to suspect that resuming the B-complex as well as alcohol is what flared it up.

The doctors said that If I see any blood in the stool or experience signs of dehydration, like dizziness and weakness, I need to go to urgent care or the ER right away. I don’t think I’ll have these problems though.

We’ll see how I react to the Denny’s meal that should be here soon. We tried to order yesterday, but the site was messed up. I’m trying their wild Alaskan salmon with potato soup and French fries.

We’re going to make the HIDA scan appointment today and hopefully, if I just don’t eat much before the trip down to Tampa, I should be OK.

Because yesterday was a bad day, I was hesitant to go out. So he went and dropped off the Cologuard kit and picked up some stuff from the dollar store that we both wanted. He got some treats and I got low-sodium Vienna sausages for when I’m a little hungry and fruits and veggies won’t cut it but I don’t want a whole meal either.

I still see cement trucks going by at times, and what I don’t get is why they have to go by us if they’re working either in the new section or by the clubhouse. I’m just so glad that these projects are on the other side of the park until they do the fence, of course, or go tearing up the roads again. One maddening project in over a year is still pretty good compared to the other place.

Now resuming this entry since my food arrived and I stopped to eat. It was just okay. The food was cold and the fries were anything but crispy. The potato soup was great but a bit salty. It left me feeling very full that I couldn’t finish it all. I had to go afterward but it was normal with no cramps. I’m still full as hell.

I’m on the phone now for God knows how many hours with the imaging place since it wouldn’t let me schedule this type of exam online. It’s ridiculous how hard it’s become to make appointments. If they keep me on hold for more than a few hours, I give up. I have the phone on speaker but can’t use speech to text.

Can’t wait to try my new slicer tomorrow when I make one of my favorite Mediterranean dishes. It’s similar to my old one but has more extras with it as far as sizes go and a better hand guard too. It even has a small potato peeler.

The money tree is already having leaves go yellow and drop off, but I read that this is normal for it to yellow and shed leaves like that. I hope it doesn’t get too bad, though.

We moved to New York of all places in my dreams last night and I was hopeful and excited to get a two-story place and he said that would be no problem.

Had a dream I ran into Holly, so out of curiosity, I checked in on her on FB. No public posts since January. I wonder if her breast cancer returned.

And now I make my third and final attempt to complete this journal entry, LOL. I thought I would be on the phone forever, but I was finally scheduled for the HIDA scan on the 30th.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2022
I’m back to wishing I didn’t have another 20 years to live. Yeah, my anxiety was bad yesterday and so was my stomach. My stomach is still wonky too. I once again put away the B-complex and folic acid in case those things were aggravating it. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is that if those were the problem to begin with, why was my stomach still bad a month later?

It really frustrates me when this shit happens right as I’m about to fall asleep. But it does seem to be a beginning and end-day thing lately. I worry that I’m going to have a hard time getting the HIDA scan done if it doesn’t back off again soon because we have to go all the way down to Tampa as that’s the closest place that does nuclear testing. That means I’m going to spend over 2 hours on the road going back and forth. But they recommend I get that done before I make the appointment with the gastro doc.

Meanwhile two shit samples down, one to go. I still have to do the Cologuard one but this morning I did the one that should determine whether or not it’s IBS or IBD. It’s in the freezer. Yeah, pretty disgusting. I don’t know why it has to be frozen but it does.

We picked up the shit kit from the lab yesterday morning but that’s the only place we went. I’m surprised I was called in practically a second after indicating on the kiosk that I was there to pick up specimen supplies.

I’m starting to suspect IBD because I get so crampy and I’ve lost a little weight. I know it’s not cancer because that would call for rapid weight loss. I had a feeling (still do) it was the worst thing I could get. And, yeah, getting something that you have to really suffer with for the rest of your life is worse than something that just kills you, at least in some ways.

The anxiety was the usual pattern where I had most of it during the middle of my day. It was still way too many hours for comfort. I was bad for about 6 hours. I’m afraid I’m not going to feel better till next year. If this cycle is anything like the last one, then I’m going to suffer for the rest of the year and probably won’t get a break until mid-January or so.

So I talked to Andy yesterday and a part of me regrets it. I love Andy but he really is best kept at a distance. His insane memory issues, stubbornness, judgmental side, as well as lack of intelligence get to me. It was funny because he was kind of hypocritical by telling me that I was one of the ones that taught him that it’s best to go to the source when you have a problem with someone instead of others yet he was telling me how he’s always had a volatile relationship with one of his SILs and shit like that.

When he visited me in Citrus Heights in 2015 he lectured me on being more sociable and how nice it would be to have friends I could count on if I got in a jam or to throw me a party, blah blah blah. Sure enough, as soon as he asked, “What did you actually do for your birthday?” I could sense the judgmental undertone. Even he has admitted that he’s judgmental.

Then, not surprisingly, he turns the conversation on him as usual and goes on about how despite having problems with his family he loves birthday get-togethers, and how nice it is to have people sing happy birthday to him and spoil him with cake and presents and all that. It’s great if he’s into that, but he doesn’t seem to always keep in mind that I’m not him. I didn’t bother to get into it with him because I knew it wouldn’t do me any good but I’m just not a “party girl.” I don’t need anyone to sing to me or to buy me things. Besides, birthdays just aren’t all that exciting at this age and I don’t have the kind of family he has. Maybe if I had a mother like his things would be different. Even his siblings are nothing like mine were.

It’s just kind of funny that he’s always prided himself on being unique yet he expects people to be just like him and he just doesn’t understand why they aren’t. I’m not saying he actually made any derogatory comments against my lifestyle and preferences or that he made any demands but the suggestion was there. Any idiot could pick up on that.

He’s just a very selfish individual. I told him I was battling health issues on my birthday and he didn’t even ask what they were or at least tell me that he hopes I feel better. It’s all about him and again, I love him but there’s only so much I can take of him.

The honker was on his cleaning frenzy again yesterday. He parked his truck in Irma’s driveway and hosed down lawn furniture, one of his lanais, his driveway, garbage bin, window screens, etc. He’s definitely obsessed with cleaning.

There was some hammering and sawing too, even if his saw wasn’t nearly as loud as the guy across the street from us at the old place. I’m not sure what the hell he was building. It almost looked like a small crate or something. Then there was the tree trimming.

I just dread the return of the motorcycle which should be any time now. I’m sure he’ll make up for lost time too and drive me crazy with it a few times a week instead of every week to 10 days like last year. I wonder if he’ll go anywhere for Christmas or have those people from Texas visit.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2022
Love how we can now take pictures with the controllers on our Quests. I just wish we had the Pro so the battery would not only be in back and there wouldn’t be so much weight on my face, but also because the Pro lets you play music in one app while using other apps.

Yesterday was a horrible day. Didn’t really have anxiety, but I had a lot of depression. Most of my Facebook “friends” didn’t wish me a happy birthday. I wasn’t surprised, though, and my depression wasn’t tied to my birthday or anything like that. Not even Twitter wished me a happy birthday. LOL. Usually, balloons go floating across the screen.

Although it’s early in my day and I don’t want to get my hopes up, I’m feeling a little better. A few hours after I got up, I felt waves of adrenaline just below the surface of my chest. I thought oh, fuck. If I’m feeling this bad already, I’m in for a horrible night.

Then I meditated and noticed I felt a little better and even more so when I put the jar spell necklace on. I just put the scratchy twine under my collar. Hopefully, it’s really working and not psychosomatic or another one of those wonderful coincidences as if something has designed things in a way to trick and confuse me. It has a mix of herbs and crystals. Like I said, I went through the booklet and pulled out everything associated with better physical and emotional health. Again, I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much, because I’ve had enough of these spells to know how they work. They don’t typically last for days, but more like weeks. Like a cold that you can’t stop or make run its course any faster.

We’re going to the lab this morning, but I don’t have to call the Cologuard people back after all. Yesterday, I put their number in my phone so I would have it ready to call them this morning. But when I called and expected to get a recorded message saying they were closed at the time, an automated message asked if this was Jodi S instead. All they wanted was to know how they could communicate with me, so I opted into texting and out of emails.

I’m not having the runs as much anymore, but still get crampy at times. I don’t usually get so crampy before I go so I’m not 100% better yet. Galileo sent an automated message asking how I was doing and I chose “better, but not 100%” out of their options. Then it asked if I wanted to speak to anybody and I said no, thanks.

I finished the Casey Anthony interview, and now I see her in a different light. And yes, I even have some flickers of doubt as to her guilt. She still could be guilty as fuck and literally the best actress in the world, but as the interviewer was saying, they talked to different psychologists who confirmed that people that young who experience trauma like sexual abuse often carry on as if nothing is wrong and lie as well.

Casey was very articulate and she did seem like she really missed her daughter and had a lot of regrets. She wished she had stood up to her father a lot sooner.

People asked why her father was never regarded as a suspect and my guess is because he was a former cop. It showed a clip of Caylee’s funeral and the father saying that he missed the smell of her hair and the smell of her sweat after she played outside. Who the hell says that?

In another interview with the father, after he suffered a car accident, he apologized to Casey and his son but didn’t say what for.

People also question why the father testified for their prosecution in a case he knew could get his own daughter killed. Especially if he thought it was an accident as he claimed.

I also wonder if he threw the bag with the kid in it close to the road to make it look less obvious that he did it since a cop would be smart enough not to do that, you would think.

So the interview ends, leaving the viewer to wonder if perhaps the father was abusing Caylee as well and accidentally smothered her with a pillow which Casey said he would do to her when she resisted, until she passed out, but went too far with the little toddler. They said that if George had accidentally injured the child in some other way, then why no 911 call?

I don’t know what to think for sure anymore, but we’ll probably never know exactly what happened.

I had a dream that Andy invited me over for dinner and his friend Michelle was there only she appeared to be young and small. I decided to polish my nails while I was there and spilled polish all over the place. The place was a mess, too. He had empty bottles of dishwashing liquid sitting on the counter that he hadn’t even bothered to throw away.

Michelle asked how long I lived alone when I was young. And I told her for about 8-9 years. She asked if I missed it, and I said no and that being alone for too long wasn’t good for me these days, but that I accepted it for what it was and was OK with it. She said she couldn’t imagine living with anybody. I told her there was nothing wrong with that and neither could I in my early 20s.

A split second later it wasn’t them cooking but a mini restaurant inside his place. An older lady took his and Michelle’s orders. I realized I only had $5 of cash on me but then thought they might not let me pay for my food because it was my birthday. But the waitress never asked me what I wanted so I assumed I wouldn’t eat.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2022
I can already say it’s not a happy birthday for me at all even though I’ve only been 57 for a few hours. I’m going from hot to cold, feeling depressed, and I can just imagine what anxiety is going to come next. I’m still asking myself the same damn question I’ve been asking myself for years… How much is on the meds versus menopause? And what the fuck can I do about it?

Tom is very supportive as always and I honestly don’t know what I would do without the guy. I think I would have cracked up almost a decade ago when this shit first started.

I started off kinda glum, and as I was proofreading parts of 2005, I came across the day we got Tinkerbell on November 13th of that year and that pretty much pushed me over the edge and into a round of tears. I miss those days, despite how cold they were. I miss Tinkerbell and all the winning I did.

I keep going from hot to cold, the brain fog is bad, I’m having trouble concentrating, and I’m bawling my eyes out as if my life is falling apart at the seams when it’s not. So, yeah, I think it’s finally time to seek out a new GYN and talk Estrogen. It kind of makes me wonder why no one in California suggested it.

Tom says he’s always heard that women get healthier and feel better in their 60s, but somehow I doubt there’s a magic number waiting for me. I do wish I was 65 today, though, instead of 57 because then we would be the same age and I would have Medicare. Plus, I could collect retirement and add to our income. I may do that in five years, though.

I had noticeable enough anxiety yesterday to mark it on my calendar, but it wasn’t as bad as the day before. Also, I did sleep better the last couple of times. I’m back to taking my medication as I normally do and doing other forms of self-help like meditation. I think that the fact that I haven’t eaten as healthily lately is also part of why I’m not feeling as good. Too much processed stuff. So I loaded up on fruits, veggies and nuts, and things that promote serotonin levels for our next home delivery.

I’m almost done watching the latest Casey Anthony interview and I’m like, why is she doing this now? She was acquitted so what more does she want? I’m guessing money is motivating her. Or maybe she just likes this twisted kind of attention.

She claims her father and brother molested her and that she was brainwashed by her father to do whatever he told her to do. He supposedly brought the child’s body to her after she died and she was brainwashed into believing she would be okay.

The tears she cried seemed genuinely real but come on! Who does she think she’s kidding? Maybe those were tears of guilt or for herself on account of what her actions have led her life to be, but I otherwise truly believe she’s guilty as fuck. Other people are victims of sexual abuse, assuming she really was, and they don’t all do this shit. If she didn’t intentionally kill the kid, then it was definitely an accident of some kind. She totally knows what happened. The kid wasn’t reported for 31 days, and then there was the partying she did right after the death, and the Bella Vita tattoo. And what about the journal that was conveniently left out with cryptic lines like, “Still no regrets, just a little worried.”

Yes, I know we all handle grief differently. But then there are just some things you simply do not do. The only thing I can’t say is whether or not she intentionally killed the kid or if it was an accident. As the coroner said, however, no child should have duct tape over its face so that should tell any idiot something right there. Plus, there were questionable Google searches on suffocation and chloroform.

She was way too calm and emotionally detached during police interviews. She was cordial and very polite. In this interview, however, she’s pompous, belligerent and arrogant sounding. The only things she has going for her are that she’s attractive and she does seem a bit intelligent. What others thought seemed to mean the world to her 14 years ago, but now she doesn’t give a shit what others think.

She also claims she was raped by an unknown guy and that’s how she had Caylee and I’m like wait a minute…you get raped, you don’t know who the father is, and you’re going to keep it? Who the hell wouldn’t abort in that case or at least give it up for adoption? Hell, even her mother acted like she was guilty. Once I learned that her father was a former cop I wondered if he had a hand in her getting acquitted.

My guess is that the father isn’t involved because as a former pig, you would know not to dump the body just 20 feet from the road and so close to home. You would do a better job of hiding it. I think Casey simply didn’t want to be a mother anymore, and she killed and dumped the kid on her own.

I got another one of those Uneeda dolls from CVS that they have at this time of year. They’re so adorably cute. They also take up very little room as big as they are because they usually stand against the wall somewhere. This is another 27-inch doll with bright blonde hair and blue eyes. Her hair contrasts nicely against her pink leopard long-sleeve top. She wears off-black tights with little white polka dots and has pink shoes.

Fucking blacks and their hypocrisy. These people are nothing but hateful reverse-discriminative bigots. They claim to be discriminated against regularly and therefore should know better if that is really true and now they’re promoting a rise in antisemitism throughout the country. I still don’t understand for the life of me why so many people support them any more than I understand why they support Muslims.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2022
As I was lying in bed yesterday, I couldn’t get comfy in certain positions because it aggravated the cramps in my upper right stomach, especially if I lay on my right side or my stomach. I asked my doctors if I could simply have the benign tumor removed, and they said they would give me a reference to a general surgeon if I wanted but recommended against removing the benign tumor because it was too risky.

So I started to get a little panicky, thinking I may have to live with those cramps on and off for the rest of my life as long as the thing didn’t grow too big that it had to be removed, risky or not. As I always say, anything is better than anxiety, but still.

Then Tom brought up a good point. He reminded me that the kidneys are toward the back. So with the adrenals sitting on top of the kidneys which are toward the back, that would put the pain in my flank if I was really feeling any pain from the tumor, and not just under the surface in front. I’ll ask my docs about this. Since the fatty tumor was found by chance as some of them are, I wonder what other little hidden gems might be lurking in my body.

The Cologuard kit came, and I still have to call them back too. I plan to do that Monday morning after we go to the lab to pick up the supplies needed for the next type of poo test.

I’m definitely done with that kickass fluoride toothpaste, and I’m hoping against hope that that was the problem all along. I decided to use it last night, and sure enough, I had more cramps shortly afterward and during my sleep. Plus I had the runs twice so far today. I flipped over onto my stomach at one point during my sleep and felt fierce cramps across my lower stomach. I had to quickly flop back onto my back.

There is some good news, and that’s that I feel better otherwise. I don’t feel like I’m on fire, and I’m not feeling anxious. At least not yet anyway. Hopefully, I won’t be later on. I did have enough mild anxiety last night to mark it on my anxiety calendar, though. I took an extra 75 this week but waited a full half hour before coffee. If the rest of the day goes well, I’ll be back to taking 88s six days a week and waiting a half hour before coffee. Six weeks from now would be January 13th and that’s when I’ll probably have symptoms again where I’m overly hot and not sleeping well at which time I’ll cut waiting time until the 18th a few days later. Then I’ll let it build up just in time for the lab. I still say I’ll be a three or four, even though he doubts it. We know I can get stabbed with waves of adrenaline no matter what my TSH is, but I really do believe that feeling hot and having trouble staying asleep was connected to a buildup of medication.

Another good thing is that the recycling and garbage trucks didn’t wake me up. It sucks that I have to play the sound machine louder on the days they come around, but at least it works. There was nothing I could do to stop them from waking me up at the old place.

If anything, it’s people at Linda’s place that have woken me up a few times with their damn car doors. She’s two houses down so that ought to tell you how close the houses are here. She’s been having work done on her place, as usual, and has tons of visitors. A couple of vehicles were parked in Irma’s driveway, though.

I have officially gotten my feet wet in witchcraft! I consecrated my amulet. This blesses and cleanses the object, which can be any object of any kind, of positive or negative energy left over unintentionally by anyone else who might have handled it. They say that anything we touch and any place we go has various degrees of negative and positive energy. With all the suffering I did in our last house, I can just imagine what the poor lady who moved into it might be going through on account of it. I can kind of see why some people cleanse and bless new places before moving into them. If we ever do move again, you can bet we’re going to do just that even though my life here has been much better overall!

I hesitate more and more to do evil to others. I don’t mean just casting spells of evil but just trolling them in general or pretty much anything negative. I’ve come to see more and more that the type of vibes we put out really do come back on us and sometimes tenfold. I wonder what kind of karma visited the termites after they got done trolling, threatening, stalking, harassing, and attempting to blackmail me for the few months that they did. Unless something up there might have excused them as it has seemed to protect my perps in the past. Well, I personally can’t get away with anything. I learned that a long time ago. IDK, maybe I wouldn’t have reacted to the fluoride if that’s what aggravated my stomach if I hadn’t left that comment on Mark’s obit that I had removed a month later. So unless someone’s trying to kill me, I’m determined to do good things. I don’t forgive. I don’t allow toxic people to be in my life. Yet I won’t spite anyone that pisses me off either or just for fun.

Tom and I watched the cleansing and charging video, and I performed the spell to bless the amulet. You just never know if the person who packed it into the kit was sad that day because their dog died or if they were angry because their partner dumped them. Now I’m supposed to wear it for five days. I thought of how uncomfortable it may be to sleep with, but I’d say it’s a little more uncomfortable to sleep with stomach cramps than a slightly bulky necklace with some sharpish points, LOL. I could probably take it off and just lay it by my pillow. They don’t say you have to wear it. You can carry it with you.

The spell requires you to write down what you want, face different directions, and have different things on an altar or table with four different objects, representing things like fire, water, salt, and air. So I had to have a white candle lit, a small bowl of salt, a small glass of water, and a stick of incense of my choice. I thought that out of the nearly 100 fragrances I have, Witch Doctor would be the most appropriate, LOL. You hold the amulet to your heart, and then over your head, and then you put it on you or carry it with you however you wish.

I swear this thing was glowing yesterday. I have my jewelry holder on my long dresser at the side of the bed. The thing was dangling from it and the purple gemstone was facing me and almost appeared to have a little speck of light in it, but I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for it. The light shining under the bathroom door probably glinted off of the wall which in turn reflected off the stone. It had to be at the perfect angle to appear as if it had a little pinpoint of light.

The anxiety spell was simpler, with a purple candle and a quick chant. I created a board on Pinterest for spells and a spell playlist in my YouTube library for videos.

It would be so cool to have a psychic blog. I wish I’d kept a separate blog or document for every single premonition and vibe I ever had. Weeding them out of 35 years’ worth of journaling would be a bit of work, though.

I also put some bay leaves by the bed which is supposed to help with sleep and premonitions. It aids in guidance through dreams.

Lastly, I did the spell for anxiety and gathered all the herbs and crystals I have that help with better physical and emotional health. I’ll concentrate on things like money and other things later. The most important thing is our emotional and physical well-being. But these aren’t things you just have sitting around loose or wherever. They’re meant to be put in a jar that you seal and carry with you. So I ordered spell jars. It’s a 44-piece set that has different sizes and comes with a little hook at the end of the cork seal. Plus, it has twine so you can make necklaces out of them.

I glanced at the monthly newsletter and sure enough, they do have plans in the making to replace the wooden perimeter fence. I just hope to hell they do it when I’m on days! Part of it went down in the hurricane so that’s what motivated them to switch it out for one of those pretty bright white fences, along with what was no doubt numerous complaints since it is pretty ugly. I knew they would eventually switch it out. I’m just a little surprised it took this long.

I will have completed the challenge in another day or two which totals a little over 100 miles of riding. I went through Australia, and now I’m in Brazil. I think all I have left is the Japan ride, as well as Iowa.

Kim messaged me to say something about her sister not wanting to do Facebook much anymore and asked if we could be pen pals through postal mail or maybe even email. She said she would create an email account to use with me and another friend, but it would be strictly for that and not to sign up for anything because she doesn’t want to return to social media. I’m OK with being email pen pals just as long as she knows I may not swap messages that often and I’m not going to send or want to read anything too long or too repetitious. But otherwise, sure. I’m OK with that. Just not postal mail. I have absolutely no desire for that in a digital age. Haven’t been into that in so many years now.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2022
Solve one health problem and gain another. Story of my life. They found a fatty tumor on my adrenal gland but don’t think it will amount to much. They’ll do another ultrasound in six months to make sure it isn’t growing. It better not! It’s 3.3cm and on my right adrenal gland.

Meanwhile, after a month of stomach issues, it’s looking like I may have a new autoimmune disorder. I just don’t see what else it could be if it isn’t IBS, which is almost as bad. These are all things that have no cure and that would require medication that I’m unlikely to be able to handle. In addition, I could be grounded at home quite often. Even homebodies like me need to get out every now and then. I’m having the runs again and I’m still warm and having trouble sleeping, although my HR is still good.

I felt a little on edge yesterday and resumed my magnesium and B-complex, as I said, to help keep the anxiety at bay. Again, I cut my waiting time before coffee, this time to 15 minutes. Yesterday, it was 10 minutes. If I do okay today, I’ll go back to waiting half an hour. It’s just hard to know how much of this shit is the medication versus menopause. It’s hard to believe menopause is the culprit only because menopause is supposed to get better with time and not worse. At some point, I’ll ask my docs if menopause symptoms can flare up like this and be more intense this late in the game. In just a couple of months, it will be three years since the last period. Can it really be a coincidence that as soon as I get to six weeks I get so warm like last time?

As for my stomach, I’m guessing the next step is off to a GI doc. I don’t know if I’m going to take their endo and GYN recommendations only because I still don’t see what more they can do for me that hasn’t already been suggested or tried. Plus, I don’t want to go back to the appointment game with doctors’ offices becoming my second home. It may be easier in that Tom doesn’t have a work schedule anymore to have to work around when scheduling these things, but I still have non-24.

With my gut feeling saying that the med is most likely responsible, I’m just going to cut my waiting time when I feel it building up, then as of January 18th, I’ll make sure I wait at least half an hour. I want to be consistent for 6 weeks by the time I get to the lab which should be around March 1st.

I was reading back on some of my last conversations with Aly on Skype. So sad. Her legs were very swollen and she was struggling to breathe. This was before she went into the hospital. She also said that one night her HR never dropped below 93 in her sleep and stayed over 100 during the day.

In better news, I got my incense variety today, which I love. And the new money tree is absolutely beautiful. Nice color vase too, even though I swear turquoise looks like more of a soft mint green. It goes well with the color of the plant. They say all you need to do is fill the reservoir with water once a month.

Just heard back from my doctor. They think I should see a GYN and ask them about estrogen therapy. I didn’t think of that. I’d heard that this increases your risk of cancer, but that’s the least of my concerns right now. I just want to get rid of this internal fire and stop feeling like I’m burning up. As I told them, I don’t have a fever or anything. I still think it’s the med even though they said it’s possible it could be the menopause.

Not surprisingly, they think the next best step is to see a GI doc. They want to do a HIDA scan to rule out gallbladder dysfunction and a fecal calprotectin scan to determine if it’s IBS or something like Crohn’s or colitis.

Gonna hold off on the endo for now, because I have a full plate. At least the fire is starting to die down a bit since cranking up the AC.

Sharing what’s going on with my health on Facebook is a reminder of who my true friends are. Kim and Irma commented, but nothing from Andy, who is stuck on himself and the death of this rock star who never even knew he existed.

Just lit some of my new incense. Ah, Jamaican Sunrise is awesome.

Earlier…

I was pleased yet stunned to find that a bill was passed to protect gay marriage. But then I’ve got to ask myself what the catch may be. I’m sorry, but a bunch of hateful Republicans don’t just up and suddenly support gay marriage. And how long before it’s overturned?

When I saw the headline about Christine McVie dying, I immediately thought of Andy. I knew he would be crushed by the news. And sure enough, he is heartbroken. You could say he’s a little more than an obsessed fan, LOL. He said she’s been a big part of his life since his teens, which is true in a way. He said that the tears will come eventually but maybe he doesn’t want to believe it’s true. Well, he first believed it was a hoax since it was a friend he was angry with who broke the news to him. But that’s typical Andy-nature for you; to think everybody’s lying, LOL. It’s sad that he’s so sad. Even though he never knew or met Christine, he’s taking it like he lost a close personal friend. He did meet Stevie, though, and that’s his number-one idol so it’s going to hit him a lot harder when she goes.

No stomach ultrasound results yet, but I am not having a fun time at all. After four days of doing better, my stomach exploded on me again. Then I woke up after just four hours of sleep feeling like I was on fire and it took me forever to cool down. I noticed I was a little warm the last couple of days as well, and thought, oh no. Next comes the rapid HR and anxiety if I don’t decrease my dose!

But my HR is OK, and I’m not any more anxious than I should be for someone who isn’t feeling well. Since we know my stomach issues weren’t caused by the magnesium or B-Complex (fluoride is ruled out now as well), I started taking them again to ensure I stay on a good note emotionally.

I updated Galileo and they think my thyroid disorder is intensifying my menopause symptoms. I hope that’s all it is! They gave me a link to a site on perimenopause/menopause and asked if I wanted to see an endo for my thyroid or a GYN for the menopause but I’m not sure that either could help any more than anyone else has along with what my own research has taught me.

They acknowledge that it can make you feel like you’re going crazy and can be highly disruptive of sleep. So true! I just can’t regulate my body temperature to save my life. I’m either too hot or too cold and sometimes I feel like I’m both. At least I don’t have a fever and slept through the loud recycling truck.

I’m now down from 161.9 to 157.4 and while that may not be much, it’s a lot for me after being the same for so long. I don’t have much of an appetite today either. I’m hoping that yesterday’s poor eating is all that threw me off and that this won’t escalate into a rise in my HR and anxiety. I know I should be glad for the weight loss because it would make me healthier to lose weight but I worry that a significant loss could affect the way the med affects me.

There’s got to be spells out there for menopause, and with me getting into witchcraft, I should search for one. I’m new to this, so I still have a lot to learn. I know you can’t just cast a spell anytime you want and that it depends on the moon’s cycle and all that.

My cacti never grew.

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Last updated May 30, 2024