February 2018 in 2010s

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2018
Still feeling okay and sleeping well though my heart goes aflutter at times. It’s different than when I first started getting palpitations. At first, the palpitations were just my heart beating a little harder and more obvious yet my HR seemed the same as usual. This, however, feels like a cross between a flutter and a vibration. I also felt a strange pulsing sensation on the left side of my neck just above my collarbone but after all the tests I’ve had and not having any other symptoms, I doubt anything is wrong.

Had partial runs today but I think that’s due to diet changes. So I’m definitely going back to what I had last week which will consist of less meat and sodium. Still doing pretty well with cutting back on the sugar and soda.

Tom stopped by the dentist on the way home from work yesterday, paid what the joke of an insurance company declined to pay, and rescheduled my cleaning and checkup for the same day I see the dermatologist which was also rescheduled due to Tom’s busy work week the week before. So on the 21st, I will have two appointments in Folsom and Roseville. It’s always better not to have to have them, but when I do it’s great to shoot two birds with one stone. Plus, I always look forward to seeing Kathleen. :-)

Last night’s dreams were too vague to really be worth noting so I’ll skip that and just say that my Lorazepam has expired and for now I’m not going to request a refill. So I better not have any major anxiety attacks! I haven’t since Stacey EMDR’d me so I should be okay. I sure hope so, anyway. I still have scattered, random bouts of anxiety but not at the epic levels I used to have. There’s still a chance I might have to have my medication adjusted.

So Aly gave me her take on Kathleen and while I know she couldn’t see the way she’d look at me or hear the things she’d say, and even though she also thinks she’s the type that’s friendly to everyone based on the promo video I shared with her, she agrees there might be something there. She said it’s one thing to say you’re in someone’s prayers but another to say you’re in their heart.

I agree. As soon as she added her heart in her note, that made me wonder. While there is more to suggest she sees a little more in me than usual, there are still a few things that suggest otherwise, so unless she bluntly says so either way, only she knows what she really feels. Between my age and being with Tom for so long and loving him more and more each year, it’s nice to be considered special to someone as pleasant as her, but I can’t actually imagine myself going any further with her than hugs and maybe a quick kiss here and there, no matter what’s on her mind.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2018
Yesterday I looked online to see what we were expecting in the mail that day and recognized Kathleen’s handwriting on one of the envelopes. Remembering that she was to be sending us a bill, I found a part of me wishing, almost hoping, that she would enclose something with it. Something nice that would make me smile, even though I wasn’t sure what. Well, sometimes our wishes come true because there was a note at the bottom of the summary saying it was great talking to me and that I was in her prayers and heart. A nonbeliever in prayer or not, that put an instant smile on my face. I had felt run down all morning, almost as if another cold was trying to set in, but between that and a second cup of coffee, I definitely perked up. This was no doubt the only bill that ever made me smile, LOL.

LOL, should I disappoint her, though, and tell her I’ve tested it and that prayer doesn’t work? Seriously, this was very nice and really made me smile. She’s so sweet. I just wonder if there’s something about me or if she’s like this with everyone.

I also still think experience is what makes you a believer… or not. Okay, I don’t have to have experienced France to know it exists, but had I not had so many dream premonitions I probably wouldn’t believe in that either. It’s a matter of percentages for me. I did a prayer experiment several months ago and only one of the things came to fruition… Not enough to convince me. But hey, if it works for others, more power to them!

The only weird thing was that this form didn’t have a place to insert a credit card number. Tom said that before there was always a box present for that. Hmm… A simple error, or a means of getting me to call her again. If she wants to chat again all she has to do is call or email me. Either way, Tom’s going to stop by sometime on his way home from work since they’re right on the way.

For a fleeting moment, but only a fleeting moment, I wished I were in touch with Andy so he could give me his take on Kathleen and whether or not he thought she likes me. As in REALLY likes me. I think I know what he would say, though, and I’m waiting for Aly, who always seems to have issues keeping up regularly with everything but texting, to check out her note which I took a picture of. I’ll always cherish it unless Kathleen turns out to be crazy or a real asshole. Really, though, I’ve never known anyone else to have such issues with being able to get online and keep up on Twitter and other sites regularly. Even with the shitty connection we had in Auburn, we were still able to do things like that.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a catch to Kathleen. I mean I’m still not 100% sure she really does want to be my friend or is really all that into me simply because of the details she doesn’t always remember, like that time she asked when I was coming in and didn’t even remember my name. Then there’s the fact that she didn’t have any response to my telling her that I let my liberal sideshow in my books, and of course, no book sales since either. I told her months ago she could look me up and haven’t received any email or anything from her since our chat, even if that wasn’t long ago, so I’m not really sure what to think. When I go to the office or she needs to call me about something, she’s pretty obvious with the way she feels, but then she doesn’t take the initiative to reach out to me in between these times, so who knows what’s really on her mind? If she’s all that involved in the church and really into God and prayer and all that stuff she may be a lot more closed-minded than I thought. Plus, she was saying how cute a couple Tom and I made and things like that. Those who are truly conservative aren’t usually keen on the idea of being friends with people like me, so we’ll see. She mostly acts like she’s attracted to me and wants to be my friend but then there’s this part of her that suggests otherwise. Lastly, there’s a possibility I have her all wrong and I’m mistaking someone who’s extremely friendly and complimentary for being attracted to me. As they say, there’s a first time for everything, and even though I haven’t been wrong with these kinds of things yet, maybe this time I am. Only time will tell.

I have to see if I can bump the dermatologist up a week because there’s a big update going on the week of the 12th at work. I have a feeling it’s not going to be that easy in which case I will probably just forget it and then reschedule my dental cleaning. This rash hasn’t killed me yet and it’s just a minor annoyance as opposed to anything serious or debilitating in any way. I just can’t believe I’m going to be able to get anything before May because they always seem to be booked up a few months in advance. I can probably get in sooner with a foreign male doctor, but it’s not that important unless it gets worse and I think it would have by now if it was going to.

Actually, I just jumped online and checked for OTC treatments for lichen planus and found something that might be worth trying. However, they were able to bump me up a week for an appointment with the physician’s assistant so Tom can reschedule me when he goes to pay the dentist. Especially since I don’t think there will be a follow-up or anything. I think the PA will be able to give me a list of the best possible remedies for what I have. My teeth are more important than my skin right now. I just think the word cavity and I get them.

The sun was warm while the air was cool when I was out jogging earlier. Only a 25% chance of rain tomorrow and a 70% chance the next day.

Last night in my dreams I ran into Adonis somewhere and gave him a big hug.

Then in another dream, I was running through a building in the late afternoon holding a camera in one hand. I’m not sure what I was looking for or expected to see, but when I didn’t find anything suspicious, I headed to a mini cafeteria or restaurant of some kind and found Mitch working behind the counter. I asked to try a sample of some fancy dessert that was really sweet and chocolatey. It was delicious. He told me it was really good and I should get a piece. I said, “Yeah, I’ll have a piece.” Then I was looking toward the window and noticing the darkening sky. I then remembered I left a friend waiting for me outside and hoped she wasn’t getting too impatient and that the buses were still running.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2018
Signing in on this rainy morning as the turkeys gobble away and of course there are the “off-key trumpets.” It’s better than landscaping sounds and motorcycles. Someone was hammering early yesterday morning but it didn’t last long. Oh, how nice it is to be able to concentrate on what I’m doing without having to crank up some music or sound machines to drown out the loud equipment, traffic, etc. I still miss the summer heat, though. Saturday morning we asked Alexa for a weather report and she mentioned snow flurries.

“I did NOT just hear that!” I said as Tom laughed his ass off. It was too clear and then too warm to snow, though.

But again I almost feel like I’ve got a cold coming on. My throat is a little scratchy, my head feels heavy, and I feel a bit rundown, too.

I skipped my meds today because I felt a little on edge yesterday.

Eliminating sugar has dropped me a couple of pounds but I doubt I’ll lose much more if anything at all. Tammy has lost 76 pounds which means she’s about 188 pounds. OMG, that’s less than a 40-pound difference between us! Can’t believe she suddenly just up and lost her appetite, though. I’m guessing she started a medication that suppressed her appetite.

My book Campus Games was released yesterday!

I was pleased to see that the new season of Bates Motel is on Netflix so I’ve been watching that.

Went to Walgreens yesterday and got some Fantasy Coconut perfume, Heiress perfume by Paris Hilton in a pretty pink glittery bottle, and this interesting 4D Barbie coloring book. When you use that app she appears to be dancing on the page of the coloring book and you can still see whatever’s in the background. For someone that’s into high-tech stuff, it’s pretty cool.

We also went to Sam’s where he got gas and we got some food, too. I just got a big box of Chinese chicken fried rice.

I ordered some incense yesterday but not oils to make my own with. I’ll get that in a few months or so. For now, I got some ready-made fragrances like:

Drakkar Noir
Driven
Egyptian Musk
Escape
Eternity
Fierce
Halo
Issey Miyake
Jasmine Flower
Jamaican Sunrise
Lavender Sage
Mango Madness
Money Blessing
Obama
Paradise
Patchouli Flower
Rain
Raspberry Crystal
Rose
Secret Crush
Strawberry Fields
Style in Play
Tommy Girl
Vanilla Musk
Wet Kisses
Warm and Sensual

An ad led me to Babbel where you can take a sample language learning lesson in a few different languages, so I learned some basic Indonesian phrases, even though I’ve never had a desire to learn Indonesian in particular. The cool thing is that you speak what you’ve learned and it only lets you pass if you speak it well enough. If I didn’t have a knack for languages and if I hadn’t already learned others, I’m sure it would’ve laughed at me big time.

I’m using some questions I’ve been asked as writing prompts. I will answer one of them today quickly. “If I’m sure the afterlife doesn’t exist, then why do so many people think it does?”

First of all, I’m not 100% sure of anything. I just think it’s too hard for most people to accept that death could be the end and therefore telling themselves they “live on” is their way of holding onto their loved ones. I think a lot of beliefs are what we want them to be. God is what people want Him to be. If you want to believe there’s something up there that’s good, that loves you, that’s got your back, that will never give you more than you can handle (even though something’s going to kill us all someday), and that’s given you “free will” even if that basically means it won’t intervene in most cases when bad things happen to you, then that’s probably what you’ll believe.

Me? I don’t have all the answers but I do tend to go by science unless I see something that suggests otherwise. With so much good and so much bad in the world and then with myself having gone through so much good and bad in life, I really don’t know what to think. My gut instinct says there probably isn’t a God or an afterlife. Humans are basically made up of the same cells, bacteria, water and other substances that you’ll find in bugs and weeds. But they don’t go on to an afterlife, do they?

Last night I dreamed I was staying with Tammy and I had my colorful rainbow slippers with the pink glitter-eyed Beanie Babies on the tops of them sitting on the floor. Someone came over and Tammy wanted to run out and tell them something, but she couldn’t find her slippers. My slippers were by the door and she didn’t want to go out barefoot. She mumbled something about how my slippers would never fit her but I told her they would because they were wide but might be a bit short. Sure enough, she was able to step into them, joking about whether or not I owned anything grown-up and devoid of color.

Kathleen was insisting in another dream that a ghost was playing with my hair yet she was sitting there swatting it with a ruler which definitely didn’t have me very convinced it was a ghost, LOL. Speaking of her, I hope I hear from her soon. She’s such a sweet lady. Probably one of the best-looking retirees you’ll ever see as well, but she isn’t quite retired yet.

Then I had a dream where Tom and I separated even though we didn’t appear to be fighting. I was to meet him for a sex date the following day at lunchtime and he came up behind my chair where I sat at some desk just beyond a sidewalk somewhere. He literally went to lift me up though not completely off my feet and asked if that was okay. I nodded and then we began walking down the sidewalk that ran along some street that was who knows where. I contemplated whether or not I should tell him I was in a “screwing” mood because I was sweaty and worried I might stink down there if he wanted to go down on me.

Then I was in his place and was surprised at how clean his bathroom was. It was done in rich shades of turquoise and was very detailed. There was a shower stall and toilet to the left of the door and the sink was on the right.

I also contemplated whether or not I should ask if he was going to be moving back in, only some older woman had moved in and was sleeping in his bed, so I wasn’t so sure he would be keen on the idea of moving back just to have to sleep with her.

Then there was some dream about Bob leaving for work and me thinking that he had something like six or seven years left to work.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2018
Tom is still recovering from his cold and we will be going to Walgreens in a few hours or so. Yesterday we took a nice relaxing day to just veg out. He watched TV and I listened to audiobooks. Tom doesn’t have a fever but every time we check me, I’m always about 97. I wonder if that’s part of why I get cold easily.

Haven’t been spending much time on Facebook as it just gets more and more depressing every time I check in. What little I check of the newsfeed is always so full of negativity and repetition that I don’t see how it wouldn’t drive pretty much anyone crazy. Yes, I agree that we need to ban assault rifles. They’re totally 100% unnecessary. But do I need to hear about it a million times? Dwelling on things isn’t always better than under-addressing them.

Been hearing the geese more often which almost sounds like these demented trumpets but I don’t mind hearing them as opposed to this one dog in particular that has a fierce and annoying bark every time the rude owner that won’t put a muzzle on it walks it.

I noticed another house for sale down the street and wondered if it could be Ray’s. That would be nice but I can’t tell from this angle and I’m not curious enough to walk down and see. The big mouth is well into his 80s but doesn’t seem disabled and in need of assisted living, and his wife is the park’s newsletter editor, so I can’t see them moving.

I was looking at the high-rise apartments by where my parents used to live, thinking it would be nice to have a nice view for the first year since we would probably have to rent for a while before we found a place but they’re a little expensive. Tammy said there are lots of affordable places in her area. But as Tom said, what is her definition of affordable compared to mine? Well, I guess that depends on what we’re going to get for retirement, but it’s too soon to know this. He won’t be able to get much of an idea until he’s 62. If he retired at 62 he’d probably still need to work part-time.

When I was watching a documentary about a crime committed in the Ocala Forest, I decided to look up the area, impressed with the seclusion and all that. Because it’s further north I thought it might be cold, but it’s not. We definitely don’t get in the mid-eighties at this time of year here. So I did some research and was impressed with how cheap it is. Space rent, trash and sewer and all that shit comes to $1200 a month here. That’s actually pretty damn cheap for CA. But I can’t deny the fact that having a space rent of about five or six hundred dollars is appealing. That way, if we end up with less than what we expect, we would still have plenty of money. The only catch is that cheaper may mean older places that aren’t as nice. I would really love to have something built in this millennium for once.

I looked at some mobile homes in adult communities and was impressed with the amount of space around some of the houses. We did see a motorcycle in the driveway of one of the places, though, so some adult communities do allow them. Like I said, I’m no longer looking for a quiet place because I know quiet doesn’t exist for me. It simply wasn’t meant to be any more than I was meant to be tall. The best I can hope for is a place that’s at least quieter than this, and since I have lived in places where I was woken up less often, I know it’s possible to obtain. Not being just a few feet from a busy street would really help. In looking at the Ocala area I saw pros and cons. Originally I thought it might be a good idea to rent near Tammy and see if she pesters us or not. If she did, we could settle elsewhere. I like the space around the houses, though, I like the climate, and I like that being further inland is a little safer from hurricanes.

I know I said I’d like to be on the coast, but the thing about the beach is that unless you’re right smack-dab on the beach or within walking distance or at least bike-riding distance from it, it really doesn’t matter if you’re a 10-minute drive or an hour’s drive, at least in my opinion. Especially since I was never one to enjoy sitting on the beach all day doing nothing. Not only would I burn to a crisp, but it’s totally boring to me. I suppose I could take my laptop, but that can be done just as easily sitting on a lanai or by a pool. I’ve never been overly outdoorsy, especially in a place with lots of bugs and humidity. I would spend most of my time outdoors there swimming or bike riding.

The negatives to Ocala would be that I probably wouldn’t have any kind of a spectacular view, like lakes and stuff like that, there are a lot of blacks, the utilities may be less reliable, and we might not be able to order groceries online. It really sucks that you can’t know all the pros and cons of a place without actually living there, but of course, those are always subject to change at any time. The only thing that might worry me a bit about having a more spacious and private yard would be that this might tempt people to leave their dogs outdoors, if not round-the-clock, then during the daytime. Great place for grandkids to scream up a storm, too.

Tom said it might be kind of cool to live near Cape Canaveral so we could watch the rockets launch, but there’s no saying at this time where we’ll end up.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2018
Cutting back on sugar, meat and soda really has made a difference on the scale. I’m not losing, of course, but there’s no longer this fierce battle to keep from gaining. But now I’ve gotten some meats, fried/battered foods and some sugary treats for this week for variety. It will be interesting to see how it affects me. While it might be expensive, Amy’s frozen dinners and soups may be the way to go if I want to stay 30 pounds overweight instead of 300.

It just hit me, though, that canned soup is listed as an anxiety-triggering food along with sugar. Funny too, as I was having quite a bit of soup as I tend to do in the winter when I got hit with another round of anxiety. Next time I get hit with it I’ll have to pay attention to what I’ve been eating.

This rainbow of colorful washcloths is harder to grip and they’re a little too smooth to really scrape off the dead skin so I’m going back to my gloves. I’ll just wash them more often.

Noticed that my upper right gut pain has been better these last few days. Other than a few scattered bouts of anxiety, I’ve been doing quite well and even sleeping better when the damn motorcycles and trash collectors aren’t waking me up.

I don’t know about Tammy, though. She said something about having a bunch of tests done but didn’t elaborate. Either way, I’m totally not picking up a vibe from her saying that she really wants to be part of my life and I’m definitely not picking it up from her kids either, especially Sarah. This is both good and bad. I feel a bit shunned but at the same time, I hesitate to get that close to people who are so different and with such mean streaks.

Tom is getting over the worst of the cold his wife didn’t get. ;) He’s just got a bad cough as everything starts draining.

Still having torturously cold temps and still dreaming of a warmer climate. Someday. I just don’t know if that someday is sooner than planned or not. It totally figures that I may very well have a damn good friend towards the end of my time here rather than the beginning. I still don’t know what to make of her either. I almost feel like there’s got to be some catch. Kathleen may be far from the most attractive woman I’ve longed to be connected to but if these types of women have been forbidden thus far, even as just friends, then why now? Even if she were ugly; she has a very bubbly, upbeat and soothing personality and seems very bright.

The only things that suggest she may not be physically attracted to me are how she didn’t seem very interested when I hinted at being liberal, and the way she said Tom and I make a cute couple. She also hasn’t bought any of my books.

I don’t know what to think yet. There’s a lot more that says she is attracted to me than not. It was all there just like with Stacey only much more obvious. Since Tom was right there the whole time it’s a little hard to believe he didn’t pick up on it as well, but he’s not as observant as I am and would often have his eyes on his phone or paperwork as opposed to her. But it was all there… The things she would say, the body language, etc. I literally saw it in her eyes as the eyes really are the windows to the soul.

What’s interesting is that unless she’s playing games with me and never does contact me, one of my three prayers has been granted. It’s totally a coincidence, though, since anxiety is still an issue and I’m still fat.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2018
My anxiety dissipated early yesterday morning and I couldn’t help but wonder how I would be feeling at the moment had I not skipped my meds. Still trying not to worry that my problem could lie within the medication, but I suppose if worse comes to worst and I’m still having problems a year after not having a period, I will have my dose lowered or skip once a week. Really hope it doesn’t come to that.

Today I’m kind of in the middle where I’m not the calmest I could be but I’m not anxious either.

The park gave notes to all the homeowners with four complaints/requests.

“At least they’re trying to enforce some rules,” Tom said.

Yeah, but in the meantime, we can still be as noisy as we want. rolls eyes

They complained about people parking on the street overnight which should be left for emergency vehicles, people not including their space number on their rent checks, and people dumping gardening debris as well as dog shit in places they shouldn’t be dumped. Gardening debris has been ending up in creeks, greenbelts and neighboring yards. This doesn’t surprise me at all knowing how selfish and inconsiderate so many people are. There was shit one time on the corner of our place but it could’ve been from one of the turkeys. If we ever do start noticing regular shit, we’ll catch them on camera and then I’ll bring their dog shit to them and stuff it down their throats. I totally feel for my sister when she got “shit on” in her park and I would have spoken up too, even if it meant making enemies since most people take complaints, no matter how legit they may be, as if you just said the most insulting, cruel, unreasonable, unfair and meanest thing anyone ever said to them. They act like these little victims that you’re bullying.

Aly misunderstood me and thought my dermatologist appointment was yesterday when it’s really in March. She asked how it went and I thought wow, that’s really nice. She cares enough to ask when I don’t have appointments yet Andy didn’t give a shit enough to ask when I did have appointments. It would sometimes hurt when I would mention that I had an appointment that day or the next day and not a word was said about it unless I brought it up first. All I know is that the less people care about me, the less I care about them. I try to give “equal” attention, too. If I don’t hear from you that often, you won’t hear from me that often. I don’t want to try to weasel my way into someone’s life that doesn’t really want me there, at least not full-time, any more than I would want someone trying to weasel their way into my life that I either didn’t like or felt indifferent to.

Yesterday I finished Socio and it’s just under 16K words. I will begin the editing soon but I don’t know when. I’m not in any hurry. I will be publishing Campus Games this weekend. While it’s gotten tons of views on the UK Authors site, no one has commented yet. I don’t know if that’s because they haven’t found any glaring mistakes or if they’re just too lazy to comment. It’s being submitted to my publishers this weekend no matter what.

I’ve been missing meat so I got a little more this week even though I try to avoid it as much as I can stand to do so. I know I’ll never get my cholesterol numbers good but I can get them close with exercise and a proper diet. I no longer bother to try to lose weight because I know that after all these years, the extra pounds aren’t going anywhere no matter what, LOL. Maybe there will be a breakthrough someday where they’ll figure out how to suck the calories out of food or there will be something we can take without killer side effects, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

Not sure what my next writing project is going to be. I had a couple of story ideas in mind but I’m not sure of anything yet.

Last night I dreamed I was locking a tiny studio or room with a combination lock then began walking down the street. It was a fairly busy urban street. There was some traffic and some pedestrians walking along with me. It was a warm sunny day and I looked at a nearby woman and thought she was dressed a bit warm for the weather.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2018
Last night I had a surprisingly anxious night and where I used to love spending most of my time alone, the older I get, the more I hate it. Yet when he left for work I could still feel the anxiety stabbing in and out of my chest. My heart was a bit racy, too. The question is if I didn’t skip my meds occasionally like I’m doing today, how much worse would it get while I’m still in perimenopause? Probably bad enough. I don’t know this for sure but I’m guessing my heart would race more and I would end up with the runs regularly.

Another question will be what to do if once I hit menopause it turns out that the meds have been the main culprit all along even though we don’t think so. I guess if worse comes to worst I will skip doses once a week or ask to be lowered to 62 mcgs. Funny too, because 75 is a bit of a low dose as it is. Pretty sure 100-125 is the norm.

As always, it’s several factors fighting with each other. If Tom were suddenly retired we don’t doubt that I would feel better regardless of the physiological aspect of what’s going on with me. If he were home every day I would be tempted not to skip and see how I did and whether or not I would get as bad as I was last June when I didn’t skip right away. As I’ve been saying, I wish to hell I could stand the more severe anxiety because it’s just about the best damn diet one could ever be on, LOL.

But yeah, last night I was doing Stacey’s emotional tapping, drinking chamomile and sipping Sleepytime tea as well, but I could still feel the anxiety sitting in my chest.

Poor Aly was in a car accident but she’s okay. That makes both her and her boyfriend. Someone T-boned her by misjudging the yellow light but she wasn’t hit hard enough to activate the airbag. Her car will be fixed this weekend but the insurance is only going to cover 85%.

Tom was saying how he didn’t think he would be able to retire at 62.

“Then why are we discussing moving to Florida before then? Wouldn’t it be stupid to move if you still need to work?” I asked him.

He shrugged and said, “We’ll always be doing stupid.”

LOL, this is so true for us adventurers, and at 28° I’m definitely ready to do stupid again for the first time in 11 years! Even so, it’s going to take some time and planning. We still have to think about where we want to go, how we want to get there, and what we want to do when we do get there. Having to scramble to get doctors with pre-existing conditions is a little scary, but luckily, we’re not on meds which are an immediate matter of life and death. If we were, I wouldn’t skip my meds every now and then. But still, you know how hard it is to get insurance in this country, and with him being both older and white, it could not only take several months for him to find work, but the insurance could take half a year to kick in as well.

Now for my most interesting news of the day but that didn’t come with some bad news. As suspected, Kathleen was calling about an insurance issue. The insurance company declined to pay for any of my partial crowns so now we have to pay an additional $411. :-(

Really worried about my shittily enameled teeth as insurance companies keep dropping more and more procedures. We can afford crowns now but what happens if we’re broke again? I’m bound to end up needing most if not all of my teeth crowned throughout the rest of my life. So what happens when we can’t afford it? Do I go back to the county quack? In that case, I would rather Tom just pull my damn teeth with a pair of pliers! In this country, I knew they would always prevent everyone from being covered. What I didn’t know was that they would fight to get covered people uncovered. WTF is wrong with this country these days? Should we just go to Spain or Portugal instead of Florida? South America? Hell, I can read both Spanish and Portuguese so maybe we should consider it. I don’t want to keep being told that such and such a procedure is covered just to later find out that it’s not. There should be a law against that shit.

Okay, let me try to check my frustration so I can focus on Kathleen. We ended up chatting for a surprising half an hour! Yes, you read correctly. It was funny, surprising, interesting, and just a very nice conversation overall. She really wiped my anxiety out which meant a lot to me since Tom was at work. I was being stabbed in the chest with anxiety when I returned her call and I hung up smiling happily and feeling calmer. I really appreciated it, too.

I’m going to jump on the skier while I finish this entry. There’s something about being on nights that make me lazier and I don’t want to get diabetes. Tom laughed at that one and said that at this point in my life, he doubts I’ll get it and that I couldn’t be inactive if someone paid me to be for more than a few days at a time. Haha, that’s true. I hate sitting still for long.

Definitely going FO on this one and will drop Tammy a private copy on Facebook. I rarely hear from her and I don’t know if she’ll see it but it will be there. Kathleen is one reason I’ve gotten to be a little more private with my journal. The more friends I make, the more neighbors I meet, the more recognition I gain from writing, the more cautious I am with personal info. Not because I’m shy or care what people think in general, but more out of respect for those I care for. To me, a journal is supposed to be about our lives, including those that affect them. Well, Kathleen has been a little part of my life and probably will become a bigger part of it, and I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable stumbling upon my blog and then reading about herself, even if it’s all good stuff. :-)

When Kathleen came to work for my dentist in the fall of 2015, I knew instantly that she liked me whereas I didn’t know right away with Stacey. I don’t think Stacey liked me right away, though. At first, we were so focused on my anxiety, but the more she got to know me and I improved with EMDR therapy, the more she came to see me in a different light. My point is that my intuition has always been right on. There have been those that I assumed didn’t like me that I later found out actually did, but never have I thought someone liked me that I later learned I got wrong. As they say, trust your gut instinct. It’s usually correct.

Now don’t get me wrong. I trust Kathleen and I don’t expect her to ever do anything I wouldn’t want her to do, and it’s not like I’m looking to do things I shouldn’t be doing. If we were single, sure, why not? Just to make that clear upfront, well, it’s different with women than with guys. It’s harder for a lot of guys to be just friends, but remember, she and I are older. We’re not in our 20s. In fact, she’s a lot older than I thought! Really, I was dumbfounded to learn she’s damn near old enough to be my mother.

At the beginning of the conversation, I thought I was doing a fine job of sounding chipper and you know, just “normal.” But then I told her I had to cancel my checkup for now because I have other appointments which may spawn other appointments and there was only so much I could juggle at once.

Then she comes out and asks if I’m okay. Caught off guard by her amazing perceptiveness, I said that I was but I wasn’t but would still be okay, LOL. Then she asked if it was female-related stuff. For a minute I wondered if she’d been reading around since I do have some content on Blogger and resumed the daily updates there in case of another PB outage. But then I did make jokes with the dentist about wishing the hot flashes would occur when I needed them since she keeps her place as cold as a freezer. So when she came out and told me that her daughter was going through the same thing, I started doing the math in my head and was like, okay, how can a woman who’s about 50 have a daughter around the same age that’s going through this? I then asked her how old she was and she astonished me by saying she was 65 and was going to retire next year! I was like, OMG, OMG, OMG! She told me I didn’t look my age either and looked 32 years old, haha. Well, I don’t know about that, but I’ve always looked younger than I am and lighter than I weigh as well.

So we talked about a lot of things. She told me her daughter is into aromatherapy as I am and recommended that and she also asked if I was on Prozac. As I told her, the stuff made me want to kill myself, so no. I told her I’ve only needed one lorazepam since last July so I am improving but in the meantime, I do what I can to get by whether it’s aromatherapy, tea, breathing techniques, etc. It would be nice if there was a pill I could swallow that would take it all away in just a matter of minutes like an ibuprofen can with pain and without the side effects, but that’s just not a reality for me. Anti-anxiety drugs leave me drowsy, and as Stacey said, they don’t always keep on masking the symptoms as you get used to them. My lorazepam is about to expire and I’m probably not going to request a refill either but we’ll see. My doctor is always just a message away if I feel I need it.

We got to talking about places we’ve lived and she’s originally from Idaho and she even lived in Phoenix for a few years back in the 70s.

She’s had anxiety before too, she said, like when she would have to speak in church and teach and all that. That was the one negative word I did hear from her, LOL. Church. As a liberal agnostic, I’m definitely not eager to hang with the religious/God believers, though Kathleen doesn’t seem like the pushy type.

She and her husband sold their house in Folsom and got one in Roseville so she could be closer to where she works.

When I told her that we were thinking of moving to Florida and that may happen sooner than originally planned, she said she definitely “didn’t want to lose me” and “let’s keep in touch.” So this was when I told her that I had been hoping these last few months that she would contact me on Facebook but figured there was some kind of policy preventing her from doing that since she does kind of work for me even if it’s not the same way the dentist does. Then she told me she didn’t do Facebook which may or may not be true. No problem either way. If she has a Facebook account she wants to keep private for just family and friends, that’s fine. The reason I thought she could be lying about the Facebook account was because of the way I once told her to feel free to look me up on Facebook and she said she would. Why would you say that if you didn’t have a Facebook account? On the other hand, I never could find her on Holly or Shannan’s friend list. Either way, she has my number and email and I would actually prefer that to Facebook these days.

It was funny because she was asking me about my books and telling me how she was just amazed by me and all that. Not sure I consider myself all that accomplished or amazing, LOL, but I appreciate the compliment.

We also talked a little about exercise and she said something about how we tend to walk stiffer with age but that she can tell I take care of myself and that I move with fluid movements. Didn’t know she was studying my movements, LOL, but yeah I get around okay for one who’s getting up there in years.

When I thanked her for making me feel better since Tom was at work, she said she could tell how supportive he was and that he adores me, etc. Very true!

What I don’t get is how did she have a half-hour to chat with me. I’ve been there enough times. That phone is always ringing up a storm.

It was hard to read her when I mentioned my books and being liberal and trying to have a diverse set of characters. When she asked me about what my last book was about, I warned her that some of them contain violence as well as explicit scenes, but she didn’t press for more info and I’m not sure if that’s because she didn’t mind reading that sort of thing or because she doesn’t agree with/like that sort of thing. A part of me hopes she’s not curious enough to buy any, especially the ones with characters based on her physical appearance lest she figures that out. Maybe she would have been flattered if she knew beforehand that I was going to base some characters on her but after the fact?

Then again, she’s not the only tall blue-eyed blonde, and maybe she’s the first one I have all wrong. Maybe the fact that she didn’t have much to say about my liberalness and diverse characters is because she’s actually against that and not for it, much less attracted to me. After all, she did mention the church and the vast majority of churchgoers seem to be pretty prejudiced.

Nonetheless, I think I’m going to pull Kinky Katrina even though people say they’re interested in my books a lot more often than they buy them and Kathleen will likely never buy any. Hell, Stacey knows a character was based on her yet she’s still not interested, so I doubt Kathleen would be curious enough to buy anything. “Flora” in Stepping into Psycho has more of a physical description that’s closer to Kathleen’s, but “Katrina’s” story bears more of a resemblance to reality (town names, working for a doctor with a private practice).

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2018
Kathleen left a message while I was sleeping at 1:15… Dammit. So I’ve heard from Palma, Stacey and now Kathleen. Life’s getting interesting for sure. I doubt she’s calling just to say hi, though. However…it’s awfully far in advance of my next appointment to be calling for the only reason she could be calling and that’s to reschedule me. I only beat the clock by 20 minutes and got up at 7:40, But I can stay up until 8:00 and call her then.

Maybe she’s calling to tell me the dentist retired. But then why not just send everybody letters like the joke of an endo I had did when she moved?

My second guess would be that she’s calling about something pertaining to billing or insurance. She didn’t sound any different. She got right to the point and sounded businesslike but not urgent or anything like that. Well, I’ll find out in 10 hours.

I remember quite a bit from last night’s dreams. I entered a large basement that had a few rooms and realized it was so quiet because I had blown a fuse while cooking earlier. Then I realized I didn’t have some air cleaner or fan running in the middle of the place that I usually had running. So I went and turned it on and then I got some kind of a card from my dead uncle Marty. I drafted a reply in my mind beginning with a simple thank you to something a bit more elaborate.

Then I dreamed that I was asleep in some summer vacation rental with Andy and his friend Michelle. This was after I dreamed of cleaning Andy’s place. A vibration woke me up. I then remembered that Andy walked like an elephant. So I got up and walked out of the bedroom I was staying in to where they sat playing cards at a table between the kitchen and living room.

I went to open a cabinet to get coffee and there was some of Andy’s dirty laundry. I said that I would find a place for our dirty laundry so that it didn’t have to sit on my coffee. I decided to throw it on a closet floor. Then he said something about whether or not I would be okay with the “holes” in some of his clothes which I knew he created to make his clothes roomier because he was heavy. I said I didn’t care.

Then I went to ask Alexa what the date was, afraid it wasn’t even mid-August and already wanting to go home even though it seemed we had plans to stay there all summer. Instead of getting an answer from her, though, a male voice spoke instead and said something that had nothing to do with my question.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2018
Just signing in on this torturously cold night. We’re going to be getting down to 28° tonight. I swear I can’t get out of the state fast enough! At least I was able to sleep okay on Sunday and Monday. This was probably only because it was too cold for motorcycles and there was no trash collection.

I sent the office an email giving them a piece of my mind about the insanely loud motorcycle situation, but not surprisingly, I never heard back from them. I don’t know that I’d want to anyway. All they would tell me was that there was “nothing they could do about it because it’s a form of transportation” which really means we don’t give a shit and we don’t want to do anything about it, even though it’s our park and they weren’t allowed in the past and there are certainly less intrusive means of transportation.

The anxiety has continued to get less frequent and I feel confident that I’m through the worst of the perimenopause. I didn’t skip my meds the last time I felt anxious yet it went away on its own so that’s a good sign right there pointing away from the meds. I sometimes feel a bit PMSy, like my body is trying and then stopping, trying and stopping to kick off a period.

Someone asked me what I thought of the gun situation here in the US, and personally, I think guns should only be available to women unless you’re in law enforcement. I know men could still get a hold of them but given the fact that women are in need of protection more than men, and men are almost always the ones responsible for the massacres, I feel men should be banned from guns altogether. I don’t think guns should be banned entirely because when you take the guns away from the bad guys, then the innocent women out there can’t protect themselves or their children if they have any. If I were a mother with children to protect, I would want to be able to get a gun and not have that right taken away just because some people abuse them. If we take away everything that was ever abused in any way, we would be left with nothing.

We haven’t been sick in years yet Tom now has a head cold. It’s been pretty mild so far. I thought I woke up with a scratchy throat but after I had some hot tea, it was fine. I do feel very rundown now, though, despite sleeping better but I don’t know if that’s because my body is trying to generate a period or a cold. I have an autoimmune disease, though, so my body will likely kill it if it is a cold or at least most of it.

We ordered his cold medicine really early yesterday morning before he left for work through Amazon’s same-day delivery. He also got some vitamin C and I splurged on some candy and blueberry K-Cups.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2018
Okay, here’s the latest shit going on here and what we hope to do about it. Beware of lots of swearing in this long rant! My husband is the heaviest sleeper and the most noise-tolerant guy I know yet the fucking motorcycles even woke him up on Saturday when he was taking a nap.

At that point I said, okay, we definitely have to seriously start thinking about moving. After 4.5 years of this shit, I’ve had enough! I’m too old for all these sleep disturbances. Damn the fucking park for allowing these things in here! But do they care that some of us have sleep disorders that cause us to sleep during the daytime? No, of course not. That’s not the whole point, though. Even if I were on days every day… daily motorcycles and landscaping is NO excuse and UNnecessary! It’s no place for a writer whose concentration is easily broken.

I wish to hell I had telekinetic powers! I swear I’d possess and send every single fucking motorcycle flying at 100 MPH right into the office that allows these damn things in here! Tom said he thinks it was a group of four or five motorcycles that came tearing through here and that it still would have been too loud and woken me up even if it had been a block away.

Okay, my sleep has been cursed basically all my life. I get that. That much was obvious decades ago. But, I have slept better in other places. Years ago, had you given me a list of all the places Tom and I would live in and asked me to guess which one I would sleep the worst in, a retirement community would be my absolute last guess. These places are almost not worth it. The only things you don’t have here are screaming kids and barking dogs.

Thinking back to other places I’ve lived in and the vehicles that would pass by the places, some sat there idling loudly for a while, some would be annoying because they would gun the engines, and then there were the car stereos, of course, but I honestly can’t think of any vehicles that were so damn loud that they stand out in my mind. Conveniently, the loud vehicle trend must have started right before we moved in here, almost as if something knew I would be sleeping barely 10 feet from the street and that this would be a great way to fuck with my sleep. I do remember that after Jesse got drunk and totaled a quiet pickup he had (although he claimed a deer ran out in front of him), he got a truck that was surprisingly loud. I was surprised because it didn’t seem that old. Plus he had a friend that visited and they also had a loud vehicle. So I guess that became a thing during our trailer years.

So we looked around at various options… apartments, condos, houses, manufactured homes, houseboats, and high-rises, even though those are more of an LA thing and not common in the West. The problem is that if we stay in the state there is very little we could afford because of the way it is so damn expensive here, yet we can’t afford to take off without a job lined up while he’s under 62. Your average 2-bedroom apartment here starts at $1,600. There’s a 2-bedroom, 1-bath house that’s only 784 square feet yet it’s $110,000. It’s just fucking ridiculous here. Your average home starts at a quarter million. Just because you may make more money here doesn’t mean it’s easy to afford to live here. Even something half this size that’s much older and dumpier in a scummy park would be more than we paid for this place because the economy isn’t as shitty as it was in 2013. Also, if they’re going to allow motorcycles to roar in and out of a luxury community, those that aren’t as nice are certainly going to have the same problem.

Anyway, we thought of staying here, going to Hawaii, going to Nebraska where Aly is, and going to Florida where I have family, and each place has its pros and cons. The only cons I can think of to Florida are that they too, have tons of loud motorcycles, and of course there’s the humidity. Nebraska is cold and snowy, California is expensive, and Hawaii is even more expensive. If money was no object and it came down to strictly climate, I would go to Hawaii. But the most feasible place with the best climate is Florida. Plus, there’s the fact that I not only have family there but also that Aly may very well end up there someday herself.

The thing is… If my sleep is going to be cursed anyway no matter where I go, let’s have it be cursed in a warmer climate, and perhaps not quite as cursed if we can get our bedroom out of the damn street.

So we decided that he’s going to retire when he’s 62 and we’re going to get the fuck out of here probably in 2020. Here’s the catch, though I can assure you it’s totally worth it. We would struggle financially and he would have to get a part-time job once we got to what I’m guessing right now is going to be Fort Lauderdale. I don’t think we’re going to be able to afford Tammy’s area, but after all the shit I’ve been through, money isn’t anywhere near as important as it used to be to me. I’d rather be poor and live well than have money and not be able to sleep so much of the time. As long as we’re healthy and I’m not suffering from the severe anxiety I was suffering from, I’ve had my “rich” days, I’ve gone on my shopping sprees, I’ve had my vacations, and basically, I’ve collected a whole lot of junk I would rather not have to dust. So as long as we can pay for the necessities, I don’t care if we don’t have extra money. As long as we’ve got each other, our health, and I can get some decent sleep most of the time, I don’t need to have the fancy wind chime I might spot in the store or the beautiful dress I may see online or anything like that. The most important thing is being healthy and able to sleep. Being woken up two to three times a week is very hard on the body and it can take its toll on a person after a while, especially if they’re older.

I don’t want anyone reading this to get their hopes up. This is not a definite, 100%-for-sure plan. It’s just something we’re seriously considering right now because the thought of staying here another 5 to 10 years makes me want to beat my head into the wall. If the sounds were more consistent, I would probably be able to adapt to sleeping through them. If I knew that something was going to come blasting through every half hour or so that may actually make it easier than when it’s at random times, with weekends being worse.

I know it won’t do me any good or change the rules, but I do intend to give the office a piece of my mind. The noise levels here are just way out of control. Never have I lived where there was such loud landscaping equipment that could be heard nearly every day, and I’ve lived in plenty of other places where there were trees, shrubs, grass and similar vegetation. There’s just no need, reason or excuse for this shit. I never expected to live in complete silence but it really is too bad that retirement communities aren’t about what I thought they’d be about. I really thought they were for having a quiet, peaceful place to live but apparently, they’re more about being with others your own age. At least here it is.

I know Bob, Virginia and the Twenties aren’t going to be happy about us leaving in a couple of years, but hopefully, we’ll have neighbors as nice as them wherever we end up. Since I’m not expecting that we can go straight to a home, I’m hoping we can find a rental in a high-rise so I can at least enjoy the view while we’re waiting. I think Fort Lauderdale will be the closest we can get to the coast that we can afford. I don’t want to go to Miami because it’s further from Tammy and I’ve heard bad things about the place. I think Fort Lauderdale would be a little safer. Tammy will no doubt be happy to guide us when the time comes, though I don’t know how familiar she is with Fort Lauderdale.

Another thing that makes Fort Lauderdale appealing is that I still hesitate to get that close to Tammy and the girls. Not just because of a potential fallout but because I don’t know that I could trust Tammy enough not to come barging in on us unannounced. She may find it easier to pressure us to do more things with her if we were that close, and while it will certainly be nice to be closer to family, we don’t want to be pestered either. I could be totally wrong about her. Maybe she wouldn’t do any of these things. I just don’t want to have to find out the hard way. It’s kind of too bad, though, because I really liked Stuart and there would be fewer people there, even if it wouldn’t be quite as warm. There are only 15,000 people in Stuart and the median age is 45. There are 83,000 people here and the median age is 35. It’s a few years older in Fort Lauderdale but with a population of 173,000. Springfield now has 153,000 people, and of course, there are over 1 million in Phoenix and over 3 million in Los Angeles. Ugh, I can just imagine the plane activity over LA, since the bigger the city, the more they tend to fly. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be as bad in Fort Lauderdale being on the coast which would mean that half of the place would be water and therefore nothing to fly over. This may actually prevent them from circling round and round as much, and I think “them” are pigs.

I swear it’s almost as noisy here as in Phoenix! I was only able to sleep better there because the bedroom was farther from the road and the place had brick walls and a concrete foundation. But instead of kids and dogs, you hear landscaping and vehicles here. Both places have loud car stereos but that was definitely more of an issue in other places. Sometimes a part of me wishes we were still crammed into Jesse’s tiny trailer even though his mutts would bark for hours and hours at a time. At least they could be drowned out by sound machines. No matter how loud I blast the sound machine when I go to sleep, the loud engines still manage to override it. I was able to get caught up on my sleep, however, because we’re having a cool spell. Tom said there were no motorcycles but just one loud truck that kind of crashed into the speed bump.

If something is cursing my sleep, how convenient that it happens to hit 70° on a Saturday when the motorcycles are more likely to be an issue, huh?

So now we have some thinking to do. Do we do the roof before we go? Do we get a new oven? I’m thinking we’ll probably get the oven but we’re not sure about the roof. We’ve got a couple of months to decide because we’re still in the rainy season. It’s almost over, though. I wish I knew if I was right about suspecting that the drought is going to continue for many years to come. If it is, then it’s not worth doing the roof. But all it takes is one wet and windy winter like what we had last winter and we could have a problem.

The next two years may be the last two years that we have decent money, so we need to spend it wisely. I’m thinking we might still go ahead and add two of the murals we wanted to add because we’ll still be here long enough to enjoy them. Besides, this way I get to experiment with a few different types of scenes so I have a better idea of what to get in our next home.

Again, I could be totally wrong, so please don’t take this literally or get your hopes up too high, but yes, I am officially considering this the beginning of the end and now looking at this house as a place we’re staying temporarily and no longer a “home” in the traditional sense. To be honest, I knew we were making a mistake when we moved in here as soon as I looked at the map and saw the streets wrapping around it and so closely, but we were desperate to get out of the trailer. We wanted more space, we wanted something newer, and I wanted to get away from the dogs. We knew the economy wasn’t going to stay shitty forever so we wanted to take advantage of it while we could and the deal we got on this place. But less than a week or two in this place I knew we’d made a mistake and that we wouldn’t be here forever. It’s just way too noisy for what it is. We would eventually move even if it was quiet here because tropical is one climate we haven’t lived in yet and that I would definitely like to be in, but in that case, we may have waited for another 5 to 10 years.

In other news, I was a little surprised but definitely pleased to hear from Stacey on Facebook. She thanked me for letting her know what’s been going on in my life and said she wasn’t sure if I got her previous message and wished me the best. Has she sent other messages that I didn’t get? It wouldn’t surprise me if she had. There have been many times when I’ve wondered if people have gotten my messages and if they’ve sent anything I didn’t get because I know how screwed up Facebook can be at times. I replied letting her know that that was the only message I’ve gotten from her, that I was glad she got my message, and wished her the best as well.

Writers Cafe has proven to be rather dead and inactive, so I will be publishing with the UK Authors site again so people can look for any errors or discrepancies that need fixing before my stories are submitted for publication on Amazon. I broke Campus Games into 4 parts and 2 just published. On Friday, the other 2 parts will be published. They only publish on Mondays and Fridays.

Tom went out yesterday morning and tightened some circuit breakers and that seems to have helped the flickering a lot. It’s not perfect but it’s much better than it was.

A couple of nights ago I had hip pain that was bad enough to need ibuprofen, but that seems to be doing better. My upper stomach pain comes and goes and I still have rashes here and there but nothing critical.

Having fun exchanging messages with Aly who went on a weekend trip to Boone, Iowa. We don’t know why, but Kim’s lying to her by saying she’s not on Prosebox. I think Kim is just a born liar. Anyway, Aly wants to join again and do some writing projects. Hopefully, it won’t be all about food as she seems almost as obsessed with it as Andy was.

Curious Cat is pretty dead. Oh, they have no problem whatsoever with answering questions, alright, but they sure don’t want to have to ask any in return.

I’m way behind on Bubbly so I will catch up with tons of posts ranting about this and that sometime soon.

The night before last I dreamed of Jesse who was talking to some other guy. Missing the seclusion of country living (but not the hassles, inconveniences, and sluggish internet), I’m not surprised he showed up in my dreams.

Then I was riding in a car with three other people. I was in the back seat behind the driver when the entire side of the car suddenly disappeared and we were driving through some entrance in which I could reach out and touch the wall. Then I was suddenly on a gurney and being wheeled into a place that had indoor “homes” that were set up side by side inside this giant room. I was placed in a section of the room that had a row of gurneys, all empty at the moment. I sat up, hopped off of the gurney, and began to walk through the place before I realized I had left my hot pink purse on the gurney and doubled back for it.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018
Okay, now that the laundry is done and Aly has stopped blowing up my phone, I can start writing. I created a new blog separate from other things on Blogger which I’ve scheduled journals to post 100 years after I was born. Not sure anyone will see it or that the blog will even exist in 2065, but it’s still cool to do anyway.

Busy tonight doing several different things.

My new purple sweatpants came and they’re actually a bit loose on me. Very comfortable but in need of hemming. Thinking of hemming them with fabric glue instead of sewing because I hate to sew. Tom offered to do it but I would really like to try the glue.

The house across in back is officially for sale. So now it’s just a matter of dealing with the door slamming as they show and tell and then the traffic for the housewarming party. The only thing that sucks about that particular corner is that visitors would be a little more likely to park on the bedrooms than anyone going to see the Twenties.

So, what will be next around here? I suppose in a few months Lawrence may die or move and then I’ll have to deal with that place turning over, too.

Last night it was quiet in the sky and I didn’t even hear the freeway much. Not much plane activity tonight yet, but I can hear the freeway. We’re having a cold spell so I’m not going to go out running tonight. I don’t even know if I’ll work out indoors because I’m still having that upper stomach pain. I’m having it every day and I’m not sure why but I still don’t think it’s anything to worry about. It’s just annoying. If it gets that bad I can just take an ibuprofen and then it’s gone. Anything is better than anxiety but if I still have it in June when I see my doctor, I’ll ask her about it. It’s definitely too high to be my appendix. If it was lower, then I would be worried.

I stopped spotting for now and lost some of the water I was gaining. I’m sure that sooner or later I’ll accumulate enough estrogen to trigger a period.

I was thinking about how my dad said that they couldn’t eat as much as they used to in their final years and how he went from 220 lbs to 188 lbs. But I think that even if I couldn’t eat as much that still wouldn’t be enough for me to lose any damn weight. Not unless it was an extreme amount. Yet I can’t believe I would ever not be able to have more than 1000 calories a day. That would be wonderful if that was the case but I just don’t see that happening.

I slept better than I thought I would the last couple of days. Yes, the trash collectors did wake me up for a split second today but I was able to fall back asleep relatively quickly.

I’m glad to say that the UK Authors site now lets me submit stories. The site was experiencing difficulties, the administrator told me. I’ve come to like the site and it’s way better than Writers Cafe. Writers Cafe is pretty dead. I’ve gotten absolutely no feedback there whatsoever. But I think I’ll just leave things as is rather than delete that account.

Kim gets stranger by the minute with the things she says she gets yelled at and threatened with having her computer taken away. First, she baffles the hell out of me with going up and down the stairs on one leg and getting bitched out for that, but now they threatened her for not turning the light on when she goes to the bathroom, accusing her of peeing all over the seat that way. Gross! Doesn’t she sit on the seat? I mean, unless you’re sitting on the very edge of the seat you shouldn’t have any issues with aiming your pee if you’re a woman.

Last night I dreamed that I got in some heated argument with Tom and stormed off and up to some attic somewhere. I locked myself in a small dark room in the attic and I guess I wasn’t supposed to be there or I didn’t want the two guys I heard entering the attic to know I was there. That dream was really too vague to elaborate much more on.

Then I dreamed I was walking outdoors on a moonlit night. I was walking through some grassy field on a little narrow path and at first I was enjoying myself until I realized that I could happen upon a big cat along the way. Realizing this, I quickly turned and headed back. As I was coming up the crest of a hill I could see the top curly part of a tail and began to panic at the thought of it being a big cat but then I saw that it was actually a skunk. Not wanting to turn back around, I sort of scooted around it and then made it safely to the house I lived in. I then pulled myself out of this strange kind of wheelchair that I hadn’t been in until that second. Then I punched a code into a coded lock, entered the house and realized I felt much better.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2018
With yet another borrow of Evil Amongst the Evergreens, this time with 368 pages read, I feel even more inspired to write. I always write no matter what because it’s fun and what I like to do, but just when I was considering quitting and thinking it might not be worth the work to submit stuff for publication on Amazon, the rise in sales inspired me to keep on plugging away. I still doubt I’ll ever make much doing it, but it’s nice to get royalty checks that can buy more than a loaf of bread.

I set up house at Writers Cafe because I had issues submitting the first part of Campus Games on the UK site. Hopefully, if I have any errors someone will point them out.

We still have intermittent flickering of our lights in parts of the house and Tom got a tool that beeps when placed within the magnetic field of live wires. This will add extra assurance that he doesn’t go electrocuting himself when he goes to fix it.

There’s talk about them having electric cars and even electric motorcycles. It would be so nice to have quieter vehicles out there, but by the time they get everything changed over, I’ll probably be an old lady if not dead.

Unfortunately, not even the nights are quiet a lot of the time. They’re certainly quieter than the daytime but at night I hear plenty of planes and freeway traffic. That kind of background noise isn’t nearly as annoying as traffic roaring by the bedroom or loud landscaping equipment, but sometimes I just want to hear nothing at all. Yet you almost never hear silence here.

I changed the extensions of my documents to docx so I can use them in both word processors. They both have their pros and cons. The new one is less crashy but I can’t figure out how to stop it from putting a blank character at the start of every paragraph.

So far so good today, but last night I got anxious enough that I started getting frustrated and almost cried. I still worry this is mostly on the pills. Tom says so just skip, and yeah, I can do that but not without suffering first since it’s not like I can know in advance when it’s going to strike. To think I might have to deal with this the rest of my life is pretty damn overwhelming since I can’t exactly quit my meds if it really is on that. I’ve still got quite a ways to go before I find out for sure, too. Still think I have a minimum of 2-3 years before I hit menopause. My body tried and made another botched attempt to generate a period. It will try again and keep trying until It succeeds.

Kind of funny how I have a dream a week or two ago about Aly visiting and cooking us dinner and then she tells me she’s thinking of coming out here.

Last night I dreamed I was rearranging furniture and beds somewhere and it was nighttime. The place was pitch dark. I didn’t have any lights on inside and I was scared that there was an intruder inside the place with me. I went out on the front stoop to wait for Tom and it was also very dark out there.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2018
If PB doesn’t get up and running again soon I’m going to think that he conveniently shut it down because OD has resurrected itself. He’s mentioned having little time and money to manage the site, and this would be a convenient time to get rid of it when I think about it. He may figure that now that people have OD to run to, why not? Not me, though. I’ll stick with Blogger.

I have been busier than ever but it’s all good. I just don’t get why I’m sleeping shitty all over again, waking up at times even when traffic isn’t waking me up. After just a few hours of sleep, I had trouble falling back asleep so I got up and made some Sleepytime tea. Half a cup later I was back out again.

Still spotting and putting on some water, but my boobs aren’t sore yet. My next period is probably still a few weeks away but I would rather just get them if I’m not going to hit menopause anytime soon. Being stuck in the middle is the worst place to be.

I’ll never figure out why some people take so long to blow leaves and shit around their place that you would think they had a whole acre or something. Still don’t get why people park alongside the houses they’re not visiting or working on either.

One of the cool things about editing old stories that I wrote over a decade ago is that it’s been long enough for me to forget many details, so it’s like being surprised by my own stories. Wanted to finish Socio a couple of weeks ago but my busy schedule has delayed this. It seems that more really is better, too. The more books you have, the more you sell. But I don’t want to go too fast and mess things up.

Tom has a late meeting at work but on his way home, he’ll be stopping at Walmart. We made a small grocery order to get the free Valentine’s gift, whatever it is. But by then they may be out of supplies because it’s only while supplies last, of course.

Last night we made an Amazon order and I got another explicit coloring book, purple sweatpants, a pale pink sweatshirt, and a set of 12 colorful washcloths after reading an article about sponges and bath gloves being a breeding ground for bacteria. With lichen planus, my skin would appreciate fresh washcloths, no doubt, for every shower I take. I’ll still keep my back brush that’s on a stick. I’ll use my old bath gloves for cleaning and whatnot.

I recently deleted journals that were scheduled to post when I’m 95 and almost certainly dead, but I decided I might create a separate blog Just for future posts I’ll schedule to start posting 100 years after I was born. I don’t know if it will work or if people will see it but it’s still a neat idea.

I’ve begun backing up journal copies by the day on MD and my private Blogger blog while doing it by the month on Tumblr and then PB, assuming it’s ever coming back. The thing is that it’s a lot more work than I thought it would be. It takes about an hour and a half to post on the same day of every year that I wrote. So all the February 13th’s and February 14th’s took about 3 hours to post. Not sure I want to work that hard.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2018
Great. Just great. Now we’ve got vehicles parking on the bedrooms. Can’t swear to it but I think I might have woken up by a thump at one point. All I know for sure is that I slept okay from about 3 AM to 9 AM, but between 9 AM and noon, I slept like I was in the worst of my peri.

I know the SUV that’s parked back there right now is connected to the house that’s being flipped. The question is how many more fucking weeks are they going to take to prep the place? It’s like, come on already! Just sell the fucking thing so we can get all the door slamming from the open house and then the visitors from the housewarming party over with. Meanwhile, if they keep parking back there I’m going to have to tell them hey, park by your own damn place. There wasn’t a single vehicle in front or alongside their place when I peeked out there. Instead, they were parked on us and Jon and Carolyn. I will never understand why people don’t park by those they are visiting or working on.

Trying to sleep during the daytime here is a huge challenge without people making it worse. It was even easier to sleep in the Phoenix house, for God’s sake! I haven’t been surrounded by so much activity since the NHA. It’s unbelievably noisy here with all the landscaping and traffic. I hope the next place will be quieter! I just want a fucking bedroom that isn’t right smack dab in the middle of so much damn activity! Between nine and noon I heard so many fucking loud vehicles. Just so, so many.

The curtains are going to have to go back up in the bedroom due to light issues. Too much light is seeping through the sides of the back window and it’s very hard to control that with the way the second window sticks into the room. I swear someone either walked across the patio or maybe the sun glinted off a car or something because a flash woke me up. The kind of flash where something passes by something that shines brightly for a split second. The sun hits the bedroom windows in the morning. If someone passed by and momentarily blacked out the bedroom, I would have noticed this through my light and thin eyelids and just being the light sleeper that I am who is a lot more aware of what’s going on while I sleep than most people.

To make matters worse, I started spotting last night. So I guess I’ll do this for a week or two until I get a real period, even though I don’t feel very PMSy other than some fatigue.

Life is so fucking unfair! I’m tired of hearing about so many people who have hit menopause sooner than I have, and wishing I could be like those who can sleep through anything without any sound machine going in the background. The stress of having to struggle to sleep through all this traffic when I’m on days for another 5-10 years does not sit well with me at all.

It’s kind of strange knowing that Curious Cat is just a secret between Aly and me. I used to watch her and Kim drop hints about their secret interactions with one another on various sites and remember how left out I used to feel. Now Kim is the one that’s being left out but she’s not smart enough to know it.

Evil Amongst the Evergreens got downloaded from the KOLL but they’ve only read 32 pages so far.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2018
I decided to delete the posts I had scheduled on Blogger for after I die. I guess I just decided I don’t care if my journals live on or not. I’m sure most of what I put on it while I’m alive will, though, and who knows? Maybe they’ll prove to be a fascinating glimpse into the past for some future generations. For now, I don’t care who reads this whether I’m dead or alive. :-)

It was a chilly and windy day but I briefly chatted with the neighbors and went down to the lake to give the ducks some old bread. I swear I’ve never seen so many ducks and geese down there at once!

Aly finally joined Bubbly and I listened to her first post. She sounded a bit shy. She said she might use it for doing karaoke.

She texted me about a site called Curious Cat which is similar to Ask and Formspring only it has a much better and less complicated layout. Still can’t change the background like Andy and I used to do on Ask. But we can change cover and profile pictures. She’s with her nanny family tonight and said she’s going to join tomorrow, and while she hates to be secretive, we agreed not to tell Kim about it because she has a way of hitting us with the same old shit and kind of ruining the fun. I already got one anonymous question asking me if I ever had a crush on a teacher. As with Ask and Form, Cat seems to be dominated by kids.

Last night I had this dream that circumstances beyond our control led us to live in New York. I’m not sure what those circumstances were that got us stuck there, but I told Tom that one way I consoled myself with having to be in such a shitty climate was knowing that I wouldn’t be living in New York forever. I knew we would get out someday. Then I said that had I known we would end up in New York of all places, I would have thought it would be due to somebody framing me for a crime that happened in that state.

So I went out in the cold and snow, heading to wherever. It wasn’t snowing at the moment and was actually sunny. But there were a few inches of snow packed on the ground that crunched under my feet as I walked. Then I was sort of skiing down a road with a slight slope though I don’t know what I was skiing on. It almost seemed like I might have been standing on a mini sled or I had some kind of special shoes on. I passed by a woman who was tall, slender, blonde and maybe in her late thirties. I stopped and asked her if she called to me and she said no. I was then sorry that I stopped because I hadn’t wanted to break my stride.

Then I was at the end of the road in some kind of shed or something, reaching down for a couple of cats that I hoped would get lost because they were a pain in the ass. Then I scratched their heads and felt bad for wishing they would disappear, so I said “Come on,” and started back to the house expecting them to follow me.

In another dream, I was in this room and was afraid of this large dog that was outside trying to break into the room. It was trying to wedge its way between where a window by the door split. Worried it was going to manage to get through, I bravely opened the door a crack to distract it. In this room was a heater that made a bit of a scary spark every time it started and I was afraid it would start a fire.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2018
Yesterday I “accidentally” published my 7th book, Kinky Katrina! I was going to offer it for free but that wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be any less than $0.99. So it’s now available for $0.99!

I forget that Tammy doesn’t always check her email regularly anymore than she checks her Facebook messages regularly. So when I sent a couple of pictures of the doll on Facebook, I assumed that by then she had picked up her email but just didn’t reply. In reply to my Facebook pictures, she said, “What the hell is that?”

LOL, I told her to go check her email. She did and said that I oughta put her in the neighbor’s yard. Haha, Tom and I did joke about her sitting on our bench swing. That would really give Bob and Virginia a real WTF? moment.

I’ve noticed that Palma is on FB regularly, more than she led me to believe. Now that I know this, I wonder if she actually read my message soon after I sent it and just chose to wait to reply so as to make me think she wasn’t on very often. She never replied to the second one.

I was saying to Tom recently that one of the negatives to getting older is that you’ve experienced so much that not much seems new and exciting anymore, and you don’t really expect many more surprises. Well, I guess I need to bitch about that more often because right after I did, I not only heard from Palma, but I may get to meet my cyber bestie!

Yes, my most exciting news is that I may actually be meeting Aly in the fall! She and Jase are thinking about coming out and meeting up with some others as well that are in the Bay Area and they may actually swing up here along the way. I am so excited about that prospect! I would LOVE to meet her, and knowing how well she knows me, I would feel very comfortable with her. In many ways, she knows me better than Tammy and Andy ever did. She’s also very intelligent and she remembers things better than they ever did. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about hiding the doll, haha. But as we also said, we could meet her halfway and save them some mileage if they wanted to as well. If not, I’d love to see her try to lift this doll.

They plan to fly out and then rent a car. She just told me, though, that two of the people they wanted to see would be in Japan at the time, and one of her Fitbit friends is a bit flaky. So they may spend more time closer to us as well as the airport.

We decided not to tell Kim for now because we know she would be jealous and feel left out. It’s just that, as Aly said, she can’t really see herself visiting Kim due to her family situation and since Kim doesn’t drive, so she may not even bother. I can’t see her going to visit Kim even if she wasn’t in the situation she’s in because I can’t believe she’d ever want to go to Connecticut or that she knows many people in the area besides Kim. At least I haven’t heard her mention any before.

This may be stretching it a bit, but a part of me still hopes that we can all meet up in Florida someday. I would love to have a local female friend, and him being retired would be a good time for that. With him working, the weekends are more special and we want to spend it together. But if he’s off 7 days a week, then we wouldn’t lose time together like we would if I had run off to go clothes shopping with Kathleen.

Ah, Kathleen. I’m still both surprised and not surprised that she never contacted me.

There are three levels of the Internet. 6% is the surface web where you can Google things and you don’t need to sign in anywhere to access whatever. Then there’s the deep web which houses things like people’s medical records and stuff they have to sign in for that only they should see. Then 4% of the Internet is the dark web where people either do illegal things or are so paranoid that they want their privacy.

So we downloaded a browser called Tor to see what it was like. It’s super agonizingly slow because of the way it bounces you from router to router to hide your IP. Not worth it to us. We don’t mind who knows what we buy, anyway. We’re not paranoid about being spied on or anything like that and I don’t care who knows my online activity because if you’re not doing anything wrong then you don’t have anything to hide. I wouldn’t even care if the government was snooping into my emails. As long as they didn’t fuck with me, they can look, see, listen, stalk and watch all they want.

I continue to have that light cramping sensation in my upper right stomach but it’s mostly when I first get up. I still think it’s some kind of gas pocket in my intestines.

Where yesterday was rather noisy with freeway traffic and landscaping, today was oddly quiet. Didn’t hear the freeway, didn’t hear landscaping, didn’t really hear much of anything other than some loud car stereos. I wish it could always be like this. The planes got on my nerves Friday night and Saturday morning, too. While they don’t have a set schedule, they definitely do seem more active on weekends. So I set up an air cleaner on my desk like Tom has on his to help drown them out when they get going.

Starting to feel slightly anxious which is really disappointing since it hasn’t even quite been two weeks since my last pill skip. Really hope it doesn’t get worse, but it usually does until I start skipping doses.

My friend Becky was hacked on Facebook so I’ve gone private again because of the way people tend to use your friends to hack you. They made it look like a friend sent her a video that they asked her to log in to view. She stupidly did so and got hacked even though she was able to recover her account quickly. I always try to keep my friend list hidden and things like that. I don’t know why, but it seems like Facebook is what people try to hack the most. I figure the more obscure me and my friends are, the safer we’ll be.

Where it was getting very spring-like weather-wise, the last couple of days have been pretty chilly and cold at night. Yesterday was windy.

I switched the dining room curtains from the Swamp Girl to the Night City and it looks great there. When the light is at a certain level it almost looks like the sunlight is what’s lighting up the windows of the buildings.

Last night I vaguely remember a dream about some guy who may’ve been related to me somehow, having spaghetti sauce all over his face and hands. At least I think that’s what it was. I locked myself in the bathroom, worried about what he might do. I guess he was kinda crazy.

I also dreamed about someone owning a cemetery and suggesting they name it Y’all Come Back, Ya Hear? Then I was staying with my dentist and her husband and writing them stories that they paid me for.

Tom got the oil changed on the car and we went to Rite-Aid where I got pink-red lipstick, blue liquid eyeshadow, gum, a couple of brightly colored dishtowels, and two boxes of fake nails. One of the nails is matte black with gorgeous silvery holographic accents, and the other is bright neon pink-orange with colorful fractal swirl accents.

The lipstick is a cool color but a bit dark for me. It’s the kind you brush on. I decided to pop Suki’s boring nails off and brush some of the lipstick onto her sculpted nails, letting the color stain the “skin.” So now she has her own nail and lip color. Originally I was going to apply a set of fake nails on her, but surprisingly enough, they don’t stick well.

In the book I’m listening to, a girl gets murdered who was selling her used panties online. That’s totally gross but you would think it would be a good way to make extra money. Tom doesn’t think so, though, LOL.

The two things I’ve learned from social media are that most people really don’t have a problem with blacks, whether they favor them or not, and most people seem to think it’s A-OK to come enter the US illegally and stay here. If you haven’t been race-carded and the victim of reverse discrimination, I might be okay with blacks despite their overall behavior, but I don’t get the last one. Not at all.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2018
Yesterday the flippers were annoying on and off by pounding on something and someone was sawing in the opposite direction. The flipper house now has not a for-sale sign but a sign that says “coming soon,” as I saw when I was out walking (it’s almost too warm for walking with a sweatshirt). Good, because I was wondering how many more months they would be working on the place. Since having them here is only delaying the inevitable, let’s get it over with and find out what we’re in for as far as new neighbors go. I’m mostly worried about what kind of vehicle they’re going to have what with how loud so many of them are these days, and of course, California is obsessed with motorcycles.

The apple trees are already beginning to bloom because we’ve had such a mild winter. They don’t usually bloom until March.

No flickering lights today or yesterday, so I don’t know what that was all about or how it managed to fix itself.

Since Kinky Kathleen got over 300 views on the UK Authors site and positive feedback on a few different sites, I was thinking of offering it for free. A lot of people, like me, go looking for freebies in their preferred genres. Well, maybe if they liked it that would entice them to buy my other books. I would just like to change the name Kathleen to something else. That character’s physical appearance is based on someone I know, even though I don’t ever expect them to read it.

Yesterday and today I experienced some lightheadedness. I wonder if it’s because I waited so long to have breakfast. I would feel like this buzzing sensation in my head and then I would feel weak and lightheaded. I’m not diabetic so I’m guessing it’s just getting used to going longer before eating. The thing is I’ve already eaten and I feel a little lightheaded still. Not as much as before, though.

My message to Stacey now says it’s been delivered instead of just sent. So that means the server piped it into her device when she logged in. Even though it doesn’t say it’s been seen, it probably has been.

Same with Palma. She’s been on a few times since I sent my second message, though it’s not appearing as read. She may no longer wish to communicate, but that’s fine. I found her, I thanked her for being a support way back when, and that’s it. I wouldn’t want to be buddies with her even if she lived next door because I don’t think we have much in common. Never expected friends to have everything and anything in common with me, but too much uncommon ground can often call for a serious conflict of interest. As it is, even though Norma hasn’t said as much, at least to me, I can tell she’s coming to dislike me since we’re on different political pages. That’s fine too. I would rather be disliked for who I am than liked for who I’m not.

Many of my messages on Facebook appear to be seen that I don’t get replies to. Are they sending replies that I’m not getting or are they blowing me off?

Like when I asked Marie how things were going with her girlfriend. I noticed the picture of them disappeared from her wall, so maybe this one is already over. No big surprise. With the way Marie is, she’s really doomed when it comes to love. People tend to seek out those that are like them yet two screwed-up people only screw each other up more. Yet she can’t get anyone stable because they’re usually not willing to put up with those who aren’t.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2018
I really, REALLY need to do my best not to eat today. If I can’t starve the entire day away then I need to come as close as I can now that I hit yet another record by waking up at 157. This has got to stop! I’m too short to handle all this weight. It’s really hindering my range of mobility and I can barely sit in the position I would sit in to rock to music anymore. I just hope everything is okay. Tom thinks it is and that I’m just having too much candy. I agree that I still need to cut back on sweets but it still seems a bit extreme that one would gain this much this fast, older or not, dead thyroid or not.

I just need to remind myself that it’s my body. MY body. What size it is, is up to me. Nobody is sitting here forcing food down my throat. The only one that’s doing this to me is ME. The only one that can take control of the situation is me and I need to jump on it or the scale will continue to climb.

Aly was too tired to join Facebook last night under a bogus name as she planned to as she doesn’t want Kim to know about it and because it’s only an account to connect with a few people and follow some groups she likes.

Really hoping she doesn’t join Bubbly and am a little sorry I told her about it because I really like having a place where I can verbally rant without anyone I know hearing it. I think we all need a private playground here and there, even if we’re not doing anything wrong. She said something about issues with the app so I’m hoping she’ll change her mind in the end and not bother, especially since the site is dead and isn’t maintained regularly.

When I got up at 4:30, I saw that Palma had been on 9 hours earlier. I wonder if she’s looking for and perhaps even hoping for another message from me. Well, she’s got one because I decided to send her a second message, this one getting into more detail about how I found her. I told her about Johnson too, hoping she’ll divulge more information about her just out of sheer curiosity, but even if I knew her first name, Johnson is incredibly common like Smith, so I doubt I would find her. Not sure I would want to either as what would I say to her? That I was pissed and hurt that she blew me off but that it turned out to be a good thing in the end?

Last night I dreamed I was in the kitchen with Tom and I was saying how the life I had when we met seems like a separate life from the one I have now as I’ve changed, evolved and grown over the years.

“The lives you had back east were separate from each other as well,” he said, meaning that each place I lived back east was a separate life.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2018
Created an Imgur account to share pics to PB with.

“Hi, Virginia!” I called out to Virginia just as she stepped out of her front door to get her mail, startling her. Yeah, I’m too loud at times, I guess.

She said hello and that they’d been wondering where I was. “Have you seen Jodi?” Virginia said she and Bob asked each other just the other day.

Haha, hiding from the cold, I told her, but now that we’re having very spring-like weather (it’s supposed to reach 72° today) I’m out and about more often, so we’ll catch each other around more. Nice to know they were thinking of me, though, and even a bit concerned.

Some of the lights in the house have been flickering, particularly in the master bedroom, master bath and kitchen. It doesn’t do it all the time, though. The house is getting old so one of the breakers is probably crapping out.

Over the weekend we replaced one of the kitchen plugs that was loose and probably the real cause of the K-Cup coffee maker going out and not the coffee maker itself. So I got a new one for no reason other than that it ended up being a better coffee maker. It was still worth it and it’s still good to have a backup in case one of them breaks for real.

He also turned the front porch light into a smart light. We’ve got it set to white instead of color-changing because most of the time we use it will be if we’re looking for a package after dark.

The toe rings came yesterday and I put two of them on the doll which looks really nice. I’m not impressed with the elastic flower toe rings but the elastic gemstone toe rings are nice. The thing is that they’re a little small for my fingers while probably too big for my toes. I’ll find out later when I take off my running shoes and try one on.

Today I’m expecting my new Turbie Twist towels and some hair accessories.

The flippers are still working on the house but they’ve been doing it quietly. The trellis fence that they put up alongside the carport has solar lights attached to the top of its post that looks nice at night.

I love how I can see how often Palma checks in now that we’re connected. Silly, pointless information but still kind of neat just the same.

Last night I dreamed that while we were still living in an adult community and the Twenties were our neighbors, the layout of the park looked different. Instead of the Twenties being across the street, they were a few houses down. It was only 7:30 in the morning when I heard something loud running, and annoyed, I got up to see what it was. I saw some weird piece of equipment that almost looked like a little tractor parked in front of the Twenties and figured that whatever it was had to be important for them to be running it so early. I walked up to the thing to read the writing on it to get a sense of what it was and what was going on. On the side of the machine, it said Man-Eating Testicles. LOL

In another dream, I remember riding in a car and feeling very cold, and then there was something about Tammy calling me to say something bad about Lisa. It was either something bad that Lisa did or something bad she said about me. I quickly assured Tammy I wanted nothing to do with her.

Hell, I wish Lisa would dump Tammy or at least do something bad enough to drive Tammy away! In this day and age, I just don’t see that happening, though.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2018
Got some surprising news! But first I want to go in order of events.

When Sarah left a message on Tammy’s wall thanking both her and Becky for being there for her during hard times, she concluded with, “It’s nice to know who’s there for me and who’s not.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if that was aimed at anyone in particular. Why else would you say that in a case like that? And could she have been referring to me? I wondered this but only briefly before I dismissed the possibility. After all, I’m the one who tried to interact more with them, but understandably, they don’t want an aunt who’s much older than them and that they don’t know well on the other side of the country being that involved in their lives. So no, I’d say it has nothing to do with me.

Yesterday morning we went to the IHOP and while the music wasn’t as loud, somebody just had to bring their brat. It was there when we arrived and I thought to myself, I’m sure it will be there the entire time. It was, too. It was still there when we left. It let out a few shrieks and screams but it could have been worse.

The food was okay. Not as good as I remember it to be the last time because the meat was kind of tough and the french fries were a little dry and overdone. But it was still good.

Today I’m feeling okay but yesterday I was light-headed for some reason. This time a week ago I was pretty anxious so I’m glad I’m not… Until it gets me again in what? A couple of months? A couple of weeks? Maybe even a couple of days? Well, we’ll find out. Again, I hate to think I’ll have to live with it on and off for the rest of my life since it creeps up on me without warning, but I realize that’s a very real possibility.

A few days ago I had a scratchy throat when I woke up, but sure enough, my body fought it off in about 4 hours and kept it from manifesting into a cold.

My next book for publication is likely going to be College Romance, but I want to change the title. The title is lame, and it implies that it’s a romance when it’s actually more suspense than romance. I was thinking I might go with something like Campus Games since Campus Killer or Campus Nightmare seems a little too common sounding.

I’m amazed and pleased with the rise in book sales lately. Maybe more really is better even though I still have no reviews. The fact that there are 3 copies of Evil Amongst the Evergreens being checked out via the lending library, makes me wonder if any of the readers could be connected to Maliheh.

Okay, so here’s my surprising news. I got up, checked my phone, and even though I was still tired, what I saw made me run for my computer. It was a message from Palma! I was surprised alright, but I’m sure she was too, to get a message from a former inmate, framed and vindicated or not. I was also surprised that she didn’t remember me because I not only don’t have many look-alikes, but I wasn’t there for the typical reasons. Most charges are for drugs and prostitution. She may remember me in time just like it suddenly hit me that her first two initials were JM, not JA.

Anyway, it was a nice message. I was definitely surprised when she said it was good to hear from me after all these years, LOL. I don’t expect to exchange messages very often as she is one who tends to keep to herself and is a very busy person, but she said I could remain on her friend page, even though she doesn’t appear to have actually accepted the friend request. She also pointed out that we may not agree on everything, but that’s okay. I know that we’re different in a lot of ways and that’s fine. Her message was very nice and unexpected. She said she left the sheriff’s office as part of a career move she felt she needed to make. She congratulated me on the digital books and said she was glad that I was doing well, thanked me for keeping her in my thoughts all these years, and was glad that she could help make an impression for the better on me during those hard times and how we can achieve things in the face of adversary and things like that. She said she hopes God continues to bless me, LOL. For some reason, I would roll my eyes at just about anyone who said that but it’s okay coming from her.

Tom was a little surprised that I heard from her as well. When I asked him to guess if I heard from her, Stacey or Kathleen, his guess was Stacey. That’s exactly what my guess would have been too, even though I did tell Stacey she didn’t have to get back to me.

Because I was still tired, I took a nap for a little while really early before Tom left for work.

Last night I dreamed Aly flew out to visit us for a weekend and she cooked us dinner. I don’t remember what she cooked, though.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2018
Kim says her SIL is back to threatening to take her things away if she keeps making these grunting sounds she supposedly makes. Okaaayy… the SIL is either crazier than Kim or those are some grunting sounds she’s making!

I touched up Suki’s lips again and they look great. The color may fade over time but it’s easy to apply lipstick on these heads because if I press down on the chin, the mouth opens a bit and makes it easier to apply it.

Ordered a bunch of colorful toe rings and hair accessories, and he got some electronics-related stuff. I also grabbed a pack of Turbie Twist towels, something I really like to have now that I’m growing my hair.

I wonder how many more years the reality TV craze is going to go on. I miss having a variety of shows, but everything is either reality or foreign. If I don’t want to deal with foreign accents I have to choose between murder cases, sex cases, drug cases or prison life if I want to watch something while I eat, something I’ve been in the habit of doing. I just finished the murderous affairs, so I guess maybe the hookers can now entertain me while I eat.

The lack of variety is frustrating. Have people really lost their creativity? Even the different Law & Order series are pretty much the same old, same old. They just happen in different places.

Last night I dreamed I was on a small boat on the ocean with a couple of other people. We were far from the shore and it was nighttime. When we cut the lights on the boat there was pitch blackness all around us and the lights coming from the shore seemed like nothing little specs.

It got up to 70° yesterday and it’s definitely showing signs of spring now that I have to sleep with the fan on when sleeping during the daytime. Except for last winter, we’ve been in a drought for something like half a decade or more. I think this is how it’s going to be most years, though. November was kind of wet, but we barely got a five-minute sprinkle in December and just a few days of rain in January.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2018
RIP Max. He was Tammy’s dog which she adopted from our parents after they died. He was 14, though. Not 16-17 like I thought. She posted the news on Facebook and several people, including myself, commented. She thanked everyone but me for their comments.

Last night I dreamed we were living in an adult community that looked different than this one and I was kind of bummed out that the house next to us of all houses was a rental. I looked out our living room window and saw a stout black woman gazing at one of our plants at the front corner of our yard. There seemed to be more space between the house and the road. I figured she rented the house next door. Then I saw a turquoise pickup leave the front of that house that I knew was driven by a park worker.

Then I dreamed that this guy moved into a house a few houses away and I introduced myself to him and went through this long detailed spiel about where we lived and all that. He then politely smiled and said “Okay” in a tone that suggested that was quite a load of info for him to digest all at once.

I walked away wondering why I couldn’t have kept it short and simple and why I needed to describe something in three or four sentences that could have taken just one. LOL

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2018
Wow, congrats to me! I’m now the heaviest I’ve ever woken up at, 156.0. I really need to stop fighting this losing battle and just eat when I’m hungry. I should still try to avoid cholesterol and sugar as much as I can for my health’s sake, but other than that, trying to keep from gaining weight over the years is going to be impossible.

I dreamed I had rats and a guinea pig. I called the rats home by shaking their food container. The guinea pig, not as intelligent, didn’t come when it heard the sound. I called out, “Gabera,” or something like that.

Then I had a dream I was on probation and my slim (dark-haired/eyed?) female probation officer showed up one morning. Tom made a comment about her not coming around so early and when I looked at the clock I realized it was only 6:30 in the morning. The fact that it was light at that time makes me think it was summer. Anyway, the PO seemed completely out of it like she was drunk or high on something. She was unsteady on her feet and could barely speak clearly.

In the last dream, I was at a diner or restaurant of some kind where I was supposed to meet Tammy and the girls. Having mixed emotions about associating with them, I decided to leave an insulting note regarding their weight and said something about them being a bad influence on my own weight. But as I started to walk away, I felt bad for it so I turned and retrieved the note before they could arrive and read it.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2018
Rather than skip a second dose today I decided to cut off my waiting time at 15 minutes instead of 30. Feeling good so far. I was actually back to normal yesterday. Calm and not the least bit nervous about being left alone. My only complaint right now is that stomach pain. It’s mild but just enough to be noticeable and annoying.

Still wondering the same thing I’ve been wondering for years since I started the medication at the same time I went into perimenopause… Is it the medication? Is my thyroid having pocket flares? Is it perimenopause?

Tom thinks it’s a combination and so do I. The fact that backing off the medication as soon as the anxiety kicks in makes it better shows that the pills do indeed have a hand in it. When I used to keep taking the medication when the anxiety would rear up, the anxiety would get worse and worse to the point that I would have a racing heart, the runs, and weight loss. And we know this medication can make me feel beyond horrible without my TSH going below 0. Trying 88 mcg and hitting a 3 proved that. I don’t know how much of the peri is responsible but I definitely suspect pocket flares. When my TSH is high I’m about a 10 but when my numbers are low they’re not much higher than 3, and I think it’s when they get there that I start to feel anxious. The only thing that points away from the pills/gland as the root cause is the lack of lung tightness and mind fuckers as I call them. Right before I would have severe anxiety attacks I would have lung tightness, flashes of dread going through my mind, as well as jitteriness.

Although my heart hasn’t raced or pounded lately, it sometimes does weird things. It doesn’t scare me because I now know that it’s harmless but I still don’t like it when it flutters. I don’t mean for just three or four beats either. Sometimes it flutters for several seconds and the fluttering is quite quick, almost more like a vibration.

I got my banana cream K-cups today and the outside light we ordered for the front arrived today, too. It looks stylish at the same time it looks a bit old-fashioned. It’s square-shaped with frosted glass. The wooden box has some kind of leafy vine carved out of it. It looks like something you might have seen in the 70s yet it’s modern and stylish at the same time.

The clip-on earrings are actually for pierced ears but the dolls can still wear them. Maybe I’ll pierce their ears sometime. They’re not light blue like they said they were either, but they match the blue eyes perfectly so maybe I’ll just leave Gia’s eyes blue. They’re going to stay the way they are at least for a while as I don’t want to mess with the eyes too much and risk damaging the “skin” around the eyes or ruining the eyelashes. The earrings are perfect. They’re exactly what I wanted for them. I didn’t want anything small like a stud that would be hard to see nor did I want anything too long that could get tangled in the hair. I just wish I could move this bitch!

The new bra is weird. You don’t get much support from it and it’s a little uncomfortable pulling on the back of the neck, but I can see where it would do a good job absorbing sweat. It’s going to be a treadmill accessory.

What may be a PBer bought one of my books, and someone’s reading the one I republished through the Kindle lending library. I can tell they’re all in the US but not where in the US. What’s cool about it is that I can track their page-reading progress. They were on page 55 before I went to bed. When I got up they were on page 72. When I checked a little while ago they were on page 85. So 45 more pages to go!

A PBer said that every time she goes a year without a period, she then gets one. This has been happening for 4 years and she’s now 53. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if I had more periods to come even though I don’t feel the least bit PMSy at the moment. Just fat. But even so, food really is one of the greatest pleasures in life. So much so that I gave into my sugar withdrawal last night and went to Walgreens to get a sugar fix.

As we were pulling up to the store, the pigs were in the parking lot focused on this one car. At first, I thought they were arresting someone. But then, as I was inside spraying on perfume testers and picking out what sugary naughties to stuff myself with, a cop who barely looked fresh out of high school let alone the police academy asked us if the turquoise Toyota was ours. Tom told him the gray Caddy was ours. Gotta admit the skinny cop seemed so kind and innocent of any kind of corruption but perhaps he just hasn’t been on the force long enough to acquire some of the hardened machoism so many of them end up with.

On the way out, the bacon decided the best place to stop and gab was right smack dab in the middle of the main entrance to the parking lot so we had to make a small detour.

I got a text from Aly saying she didn’t feel well. I guess she and her boyfriend are coming down with colds. She was telling me that Kim had mocked her for being in a poly relationship like she once was and even though we agree she doesn’t mean anything bad by it, the jokes do get old. She doesn’t tell her much anymore because she either doesn’t get it or overdoes the teasing. I’m getting a taste of that on account of the doll, haha. “Does she cook for you? Does she clean for you? Can she make you coffee?”

Last night I dreamed that my teeth fell out. It seemed to be mostly my upper teeth.

Then there was something about some household having a $200 TV package. I think that’s $200 a month they were paying and it might have included music as well.

Then I was in a rectangular shape bedroom and some house with two full-size beds in it. Tom was in one of them and what I think might have been Mary (Miss Perfect) was in the other one.

Sensing that Tom was asleep but Mary was awake and not caring, I told Alexa to turn on the lamp that sat on a tall dresser by the door. When she failed to respond I went out of the room and into the kitchen. A few minutes later I returned to the bedroom and found the light was now on which I assumed Mary had turned on.

Then I started sorting through these clothes that were piled up in the corner of the room between the wall and the bed Mary was lying in. I looked at her as she lay on her side with her back facing me, thinking that there wasn’t much room for me to sleep on my side, though why I wasn’t sleeping in Tom’s bed instead is beyond me.

I knelt down to go through the clothes and noticed something long and skinny that was similar in size to a match. When I touched it I realized it was a bug and it fluttered away.

Later…

Decided to get another pair of brown eyes for the doll heads so I don’t have to change them so often since I’m just not a fan of the blue eyes as realistic and as pretty as they are. As I may have mentioned before, the more I change the eyes, the more likely I am to disturb the eyelashes and tear the “skin.”

My pink vibe broke as I think I also mentioned, so I’m going to be getting a light blue one in place of it sometime. It’s also a USB charging one like the other one.

I went through and picked out a bunch of toe rings for the doll and myself.

I’m new to this ForeverDita diary site. Every now and then I do a search to see what comes up for online diaries and journals and I came across it that way. It’s pretty dead but I’m giving it a try just for fun. This one allows you to insert images easier to decorate the entries with.

The bad news is that in the middle of my day, the anxiety kicked up a bit. Usually, if I’m going to feel anxious, it starts within the first hour or two of my day. Fortunately, I was able to fight it relatively quickly. It started after Tom and I went for a walk. I could feel it in my chest and once again I began to worry that it could be the new me as of 2014 and a permanent problem for the rest of my life with the only question being whether or not I would get it every few days, every few weeks, or every few months. I really really hope it’s the perimenopause and that it’s not a forever thing but I have nothing to really say otherwise until I see what happens. But I did Stacey’s emotional tapping, drank some chamomile tea, ranted on Bubbly, and put lavender oil in my diffuser.

I also got rid of a couple of perfumes I had that I was into when the initial trauma struck. I think most people who go through a traumatic event have some kind of trigger, be it a particular smell, food, song, place, object, etc.