March 2018 in 2010s

SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 2018
I slept better than I expected to yet I don’t have the energy or motivation to work out. I’ve done the laundry and soon I will clean the kitchen.

Looking forward to Camp Nano starting at midnight tomorrow night. I’ve been wanting to write but didn’t want to start a story and have two stories going at once. Nor did I want to start my Nano story too soon and be a cheater.

I forgot all my dreams. I hate that. I got up to pee at one point and remembered a dream or two in detail but forgot it once I got up for good.

He and I were talking about how my days have gotten shorter. Where my schedule used to jump about 2 hours a day 20 years ago, now it’s a little over an hour. How awesome it would be if it could shorten enough to hold a schedule! But with my shit luck, if this happens, it won’t be until I’m old and dying. :( It would just make it so much easier to do things in general.

A part of me hesitates to move too close to Tammy, knowing I would have to disappoint her at times by saying “no” to something she may want to do due to either my schedule or other commitments, not that she wouldn’t understand, especially as one with a medical background.

Circadian rhythm disorder wasn’t discovered and documented until 1999 when it was accidentally discovered in blind people. This made them realize that light doesn’t have as much to do with sleep cycles as originally thought. It was at its worst in my 30s. I think it peaks for most people who have it. You’re pretty much born with it as I always had sleep issues all my life, struggling to get to sleep at night and struggling to get up for school in the morning. But it does worsen before it gets better.

The only thing that would suck about my days shortening is that where it used to take me a week to flip my schedule, now it takes closer to two weeks, and well, I would hate to be stuck on nights for a month or so when there were things I needed or wanted to do in the daytime. But seriously, the only thing I would miss about nights is that they’re quieter! Not too much tonight in the way of car stereos or planes. Just the gentle whooshing sound of the freeway but I don’t mind that.

Anyway, the older we get, the more doctors’ appointments we tend to have so it would be nice if I didn’t have to struggle to get to them as I sometimes do now. I just dread the day they drop spouses from insurance. I hope that if they do it isn’t before Tom retires! It’s just that America has become so obsessed with separatism versus teamwork. Everybody wants everybody to take care of their own needs as independently as possible. That’s fine if that’s what you want and you’re able to do so, but this isn’t always so easy for some of us.

FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2018
Poor Aly. She was not only put back on prednisone and given an iron shot, but she’s going to be 37 next month, right around the age that things really start going to hell. She’s up to 134 and 34 pounds and she is struggling hopelessly to change and undo the effects of aging. Acceptance will come as she gets a little older. Meanwhile, she should enjoy the 130s because someday she’s going to look back and wish he could be 134. Hell, I’d settle for being 144! But unless there’s a major medical breakthrough, I get seriously ill, or I become inhuman enough to suffer the effects of going thyrotoxic, which would mean taking my medication every day, even when I’m flaring, it’s not going to happen. I woke up at 156.4, though I am retaining water now as my body tries to decide whether or not to kick off a period.

I once tried to fight it thinking all I had to do was eat right and exercise but that’s like saying that as long as I’m a good person nothing bad will ever happen to me. Diet and exercise may work for those under 30-35, but the reality is that it takes very few calories to maintain the same weight when we get older that once would’ve caused us to lose like crazy.

Even Tom has struggled with his weight. He was 35 when we met and 205 lb. Now he’s almost 61 and 260 lb, maybe a little more. He too, has had no luck with diets. Where my problem is hunger, his is cravings. I have to go down to about 1000 calories or less to lose weight and that’s like starving. If I could do that then I could stand to have nothing at all.

What I think is important to keep in mind is that it’s how we feel and not how we look that matters most. Sometimes we just don’t have as much control over things as we’d like, like our height and eye color and all that. But there’s no reason we can’t keep active and at least keep our joints strong and our bodies healthy.

So sick am I of having to worry about my weight climbing that I am seriously thinking of “maxing” out. This is where I eat “normally” and allow my body to settle into whatever my “forever” weight is going to be. It takes a certain amount of calories for each of us to maintain a certain body weight. Although I try to choke back the calories most days, my comfort zone is about 1600-2000. If I ate that I wouldn’t feel much deprivation if any at all. But if I let myself have that every day, I would gain weight. I don’t know what my max weight for that calorie amount would be, but the reason I’m considering it is that A, I know it’s inevitable that I end up there someday anyway, and B, I figure if I just get it over with and discover my forever size and weight then I’ll no longer have to stress about it every single fucking day and wonder when I’m going to hit the 160s which I’ll probably do this year no matter how hard I try not to.

It’s a daily struggle. Literally. Every day is like trying to hold back the tides and I hate being hungry. Yet there is a lot of hunger that goes with trying to cut hundreds of calories from my daily intake. In my 20s and even most of my 30s, I wasn’t nearly as hungry as I became once I got to be around 40. This way, if I max out, I won’t have to worry about gaining what I suspect will be 20-30 more pounds because I will have already done it. I don’t think I would go over 200 if I kept exercising but ate “naturally.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2018
Space rent has gone from $795 to $865 in the 5 years we’ve lived here. And that’s cheap considering that the average 2-bedroom apartment here goes for $1400.

Since 3 teaspoons equal a tablespoon I decided to put a teaspoon of the apple cider vinegar in three of the 16.9 oz. water bottles I drink, but then Aly said that she put a tablespoon in a 20 oz. bottle of strawberry sparkly water and it was okay. I like this idea so I think I might try it.

Went out walking earlier and even at 9 p.m., the traffic around the front gate was like OMG. It got up to 82 degrees today and we ran the AC for a little while. I waited till it had just slipped under 70 degrees to go out. Hopefully, we won’t need the heat anymore for a while! Anyway, I loved the various cooking smells as well as the smell of Jasmine as I walked around.

I wish we didn’t have such old shitty windows so we could open them at night or anytime we want to without bugs getting in. I just couldn’t sleep with them open because the noise would be horrendous. I might as well go sleep in the middle of the road in that case! I’m tired of living in all places but that’s what I’ve lived in for most of my life. Really hope the next place, wherever it is, is more modern as well as quieter, but I highly doubt I’m going to get the last one. Not too many places these days are quiet. It’s after 11 p.m. and I can hear all kinds of things on the freeway and in the sky. Yet that’s mild compared to when the traffic is heavy in the park, as well as the near-daily landscaping and projects.

I don’t expect to have the energy to work out tomorrow night because I’m on nights right now and I’m sure the trash and recycle pickups are going to wake me up regularly along with whatever other thunderously loud vehicles go through here. I managed to sleep okay today but there was definitely a ton of loud traffic. Tomorrow I will probably just do laundry and maybe clean the kitchen.

This weekend we’re going to have a little meeting and decide when to move. We may not know the exact year but we should have a better idea. Do we do stupid and risky and go sooner? Or do we play it safe and smart and wait another five years or so? We’ll have to lay out all the pros and cons and make a decision. Damn, it’s a tough one, though!

No planes flying overhead now. Right now all I hear is the freeway, but hey, it is nighttime and I’m only about five or six hundred feet away from it. The only thing that sucks about warmer weather at night is that you hear the fucking car stereos blasting down it beginning at around 6 p.m. till around 2 a.m. It’s just fucking ridiculous the way we let so much shit go on in the world that shouldn’t and we don’t let things be that should be left alone. I still can’t believe how often I hear things in the daytime here. Landscaping was only done once a week or less and all the other places I ever lived, and I didn’t hear a fraction of the projects I hear going on here.

For dreams, I remember something about moving from someplace that didn’t look anything like this. I was doing a final walk-through of it and was in a room with a pullstring to a light in the center of it.

The next dream was really weird. I guess he and I were doing something illegal online and he kept telling me, “Shield me.” That meant I had to hold some strange object close to him so he wouldn’t get caught doing whatever he was doing, LOL. Then I was trying to hide some files or destroy them.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2018
Just when I had been sleeping well enough not to remember my dreams, the shitty sleep has returned right along with the nightmares. I actually had one good dream, though, of winning 30k.

Not only did I wake up twice to pee and twice from loud traffic, and then finally get up to the sound of obnoxious sawing as we can’t go one fucking week without a project here (they’re doing something at the house on the other side of Bob and Virginia), my dreams were less than pleasant.

I had just said to him the night before that I missed the “dream people” and hoped they would return as long as they could be nice. Well, they weren’t. In one dream we were at some store buying who knows what. There were three young women behind the service counter when one of them said that it would “push on our ears and make us smile.” :-) Well, Tom wasn’t happy to hear this, naturally, and demanded a refund of $40 for whatever the hell the product was. The girl became angry and said something about leaving her alone for a while and she stormed off. I demanded the other girl closest to us give us our money back. When she refused, I grabbed her by the hair and demanded the money, shaking her viciously. Then I looked at the third girl, and not wanting her to call for the bacon, I let the second girl go and tried to hustle Tom to the car who was walking in slow motion.

The worst dream was being in jail for who knows what when they decided to tell me that they were going to use me as a guinea pig in a weight-loss experiment that required a variety of experimental drugs. I told them that I not only had a medication phobia but refused to let anybody use my body as they pleased without my consent.

My punishment for not “cooperating” was starvation. They wouldn’t feed me unless I agreed to participate. Each day they brought me a tray of food and each day I refused it, determined not to let my body be turned into an experimental specimen. I became so weak that the last thing I remember in the dream was one of the guards throwing a bagged lunch at me. I guess they decided I should eat no matter what but it was too late. I was too weak to sit up and feed myself at that point even if I wanted to. The dream ended before they could either save me or let me starve to death. I think I know which one they chose. Like I said, definitely not happy in Dreamland.

The only other dreams I remember were being in some building with an indoor swimming pool, telling some guy to fuck off, and writing a French address on some envelope for Christiane. It seemed to be something I did periodically for her and for some reason, I came to enjoy it. Like I was oh so honored to do her this favor, LOL. She read the address back to me and I was impressed with her perfect French pronunciation. Then I lost the address and became frustrated because I knew this meant I would no longer be able to write it out for her as apparently, neither of us had it memorized.

TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2018
Looked up the time the sun was to set earlier so I didn’t have any direct sunlight in my eyes. I went out walking for about a half-hour when it set at 7:24, sure to mix in some running along the way.

Not much else going on. For however long it may last, I’ve been feeling good and sleeping well. With CampNano just a few days away, I guess I better start thinking of more ideas. I have the basic plot in mind for the story I want to do but it’s very basic. I haven’t really thought of much detail. I’ve been busy so I haven’t really gotten around to it just yet.

Tom’s shoulder still hurts on and off and it pulls out of the socket at times. Hopefully, he won’t need surgery on it! The sling still helps but it comes and goes. He said it was fine the first 8 hours of his day.

MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2018
The lady with the artificial foot from Oregon is now moving into the house across from Jon & Carolyn. Glad they have quiet vehicles, though I’m not sure how many people/vehicles live there. There’s a red SUV with Oregon plates and there’s a white SUV with California plates. Earlier there was a Budget rental truck. Same company and size we moved down with back in the summer of 2007.

Went out walking but this time the app didn’t do the greatest job of tracking my route. Tom and I were talking about how cool it would be if people were microchipped. I think it would be way cool if I could see not only the location I was in but the room in that location I was in as well. Our guess is that people will be microchipped someday, be it mandatory or not. Right now people are too paranoid. I guess there are that many people up to no good. But if you’re like us with nothing to hide, then you don’t care who knows where you are. :-)

Although I know I’ve been dreaming, my dreams have been too vague to remember them enough to write about them.

Feeling bad for Aly. I’m worried about both her and my sister. Aly’s white blood cell count is way up and her platelets are low. Her doctor told her not to panic and that some kind of treatment plan could be worked out. Let’s hope so! I would hate for her to be sick no matter what but it would be especially shitty if she wasn’t well enough to visit. She gets low on iron or something like that and it leaves her feeling tired, weak and dizzy.

The older I get, the more I realize just how much aging sucks. Other than the wisdom you acquire, it all sucks shit big-time. 20 years ago I mostly had just the allergies and asthma to deal with. Now I also have a dead thyroid, rashes, shitty vision, thinning hair, gray hair, dry skin, TMJ, a deformed ear that is getting uglier by the minute, a hopelessly fat body, crowns and bridges, a dead libido, and joints that have lost a lot of flexibility. It chills me to think what life may be like in 20 more years!

Things aren’t new and exciting like they once were and you tend to have a bleaker outlook on life when you get older as well. Maybe that’s because we’re smarter and so we’re more realistic. When we’re younger, we don’t quite see the world for what it really is and therefore we see all kinds of endless possibilities. We tend to live in the moment and not worry so much about the future, and when we do worry about the future, it isn’t usually in the way we worry about the future when we’re older.

SUNDAY, MARCH 25, 2018
Ended up having a good day today. I was really worried when I took my meds but everything’s fine. There’s still nothing to say that the Monday/Wednesday/Friday skips will be the answer, but I have to keep doing whatever it takes to figure out exactly how much my body can tolerate. It’s always better to take some medication than none.

We went to Rite Aid earlier and I got a really cool athletic top. It’s bright pink and purple with long sleeves that have thumb loops. It’s great for chilly weather.

Went out by myself earlier and it was cool to see Life360 trace my route, time and distance. I went a mile in 27 minutes. Tom watched my progress but just like when he drives home, it doesn’t track very steadily. We’ll appear to be in the same spot for a few minutes and then it will suddenly dart ahead. So it jumps along in spurts rather than consistently.

I decided to leave the second reply to what I’m almost positive is Maliheh’s negative comment spiting me for teasing her about using her name in my story. I called her out by first name and the fact that there were no sales or loans around the time she left the review and that she ought to email me. :) She won’t though, of course. The gutless little coward wouldn’t dare contact me. I know she’s hoping to build a case against me by not contacting me just like the black bitch did. I guess she figures they wouldn’t check her IP to see if she went to any site I was associated with.

I noticed when I checked the reports the other day that the order in which the books were listed had changed. The same thing happened right before Maliheh left her “review” only there are no new reviews. No sales either. It’s been pretty slow and discouraging lately.

Now that I know lichen planus can get you anywhere, including the mouth, I’m paranoid whenever I get a weird feeling in my mouth and that I’m going to get it on other parts of my body. I read around and some guy said that after using turmeric powder and pills for a couple of months his cleared up and he hasn’t had any problems in years.

I’m going to try this stuff for lichen planus the next time we do an order on Amazon but I doubt it will be much help. I’m just afraid to use the steroid much for fear of burning. I would rather itch than burn because it’s easier to do something about that. Today I took a baby Benadryl and I ended up going down for a nap. I love naps. Just not how they sometimes leave me groggy.

I wish I knew what was making my phone lose its mind. Sometimes it will just start retyping stuff I’ve already written. I guess it sent some weird text to Aly, LOL.

Doesn’t look like the new people have moved in yet after all but one of them may have an artificial foot from what Tom said he saw. What we think was the flipper was there hammering today. I could hear the fucking thing all the way down the street as I was returning from my walk. When Tom was out weed whacking he saw the artificial foot lady and some other woman by a red SUV with Oregon plates.

As we were coming in from Rite Aid I saw a woman walking a Chihuahua up the driveway on the other side of Bob and Virginia. Still not sure if it’s that one, Ray’s mutt, or someone else’s that has the obnoxious bark.

We blew 60 bucks at Rite Aid on fun stuff we don’t need. I got a floral t-shirt dress on a black background, the athletic shirt I mentioned, junk food, and a wind chime with a rainbow-colored flower spinner. First time I ever saw a chime/spinner combo.

Since there’s a form in which I can anonymously send a message to Carol, Kim’s sister, via her dojo site, I started to ask if she wanted me to be an anonymous and concerned person but we agreed to hold off for now because we don’t want to get her in any more trouble. Bad idea and I’m sorry I offered because truthfully, I don’t want to get involved. I’m sorry for her but there’s nothing I can do anyway.

SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 2018
Doing more on my phone lately by setting up things like my Pi music player for running and even downloaded these really cool live wallpapers that look like raindrops are running down the screen, and others that have flying butterflies, running streams and fish swimming in ponds.

I began using Google Docs because that way I can access the same doc from any device. It would be nice to have the option of relaxing on the couch or in bed as I speak out either journal entries or stories rather than always sitting at my desk. Nothing can replace the ease of the laptop, though. It’s much easier to edit on the laptop, and of course, graphics look better with a bigger screen.

One of the cool things about Google Docs is that it has an add-on that puts a rainbow effect in the text making it gradually change colors as you can see here. It looks really cool. I can’t use it on all of my blogs but I can use it on Blogger as well as in Word. Then again, it’s a pain to get into Word.

The medication experiment is going well so far. I felt fine on the two days I skipped. I took it today and started to worry at first when my HR spiked to 108. But then I did have a candy bar so that may have been why. I thought I was going to be in for a bad day but after feeling wound up for just a short time, I was okay. Tomorrow is the big test.

Decided it would be okay to use a little bit of the weaker steroid gel down there just to take the edge off the rash which began picking up again about a week ago, as I figured it eventually would. Rather than use it for months, I’ll just use it for a week or two. That won’t be nearly enough to cause me to have burning and inflammation.

Bad news from Tammy. :-( When she was in the hospital with pneumonia in January they discovered some enlarged lymph nodes in her chest and she’ll have to have a biopsy next month. She was referred to a surgeon for that and will have to spend the night in the hospital in case of bleeding. As if she hasn’t already had enough, she’s still recovering from having the nerves in her neck burned due to the fibromyalgia. She said she had horrible pain and I can just imagine! It hurts just thinking about it that I honestly can’t imagine actually having to have done. She is beyond medically cursed. I would have killed myself dozens of procedures ago.

She let me know that I’m in her thoughts and that we’ll talk sometime because it’s easier for her that way. At first, I wondered why it took her so long to give me an update but I can see where one isn’t in the mood to be very sociable when they don’t feel well.

While I certainly hope that the lymph nodes aren’t cancerous, I know they’ve gotten really good at killing most cancers, so I am at least hopeful that she’ll have options if worse comes to worst.

The only thing that bothers me is that bad feeling I’ve had for a few years now about when she’s 62. Well, she’s going to be 61 in August. Despite my accuracy rate, I’m optimistic that it doesn’t mean anything because I’ve been wrong a couple of times before with similar dreams/feelings. It’s just that I did see the weight loss in my dreams, but who knows? Maybe she’s put it back on or at least some of it. Older people don’t usually keep weight off very easily, after all.

The shitty thing about having nerves burned is that it doesn’t always relieve the pain, and when it does it’s temporary since they do grow back.

THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2018
I’m way behind in my writing so now I’m going to try to catch up and hope I don’t forget anything. Yesterday was both shitty and good. It was good in that my appointments went well, but it was shitty in that I was very anxious. As much as I hoped and wished otherwise, as no one wants to be intolerant to medication their body needs, especially when there aren’t any other real options, the experiments I’ve been doing really do point to it as being the main culprit. It’s very frustrating and even depressing. I have no idea what I’m going to do about the problem or even what I can do about it. I just don’t have many options. I either take the medication once in a while or stop it altogether unless I can be switched to something else. I’m just not sure what else I could be switched to other than Armour, which may actually increase the anxiety.

I just feel so helpless and hopeless that my thoughts have been turning pretty dark and I’m once again wondering if life is even worth it. I wish I had the positive optimism that Tom has and could believe that this will one day end. After all, I’ve had other long-term problems and they worked themselves out eventually. But this is very different than any other problem I’ve had before, and after what’s been nearly 4 years, I’m losing hope. Maybe I’m just meant to be hypo just like I was meant to be short. It’s too bad I can’t stand that god-awful anxious feeling in my chest, though, because the anxiety diet is the best damn diet ever. But I just don’t want to live to suffer either.

Today I woke up depressed and tired, and I prayed to a God that probably doesn’t exist to take my life if it’s not going to let me get better. I’ve done everything I can think of to try to help myself and I’m running out of ideas. I just feel like any possible solution isn’t going to be a good one in this case. My other problems were a lot more straightforward. This is a very complex issue, however.

The weather matches my mood but at least it’s quiet.

Still torn between moving and staying but I’m afraid to go with him still working and this anxiety issue unresolved, assuming there’s even a way to resolve it. Each year that I have it, the more doubtful I become.

I’m quite calm so far today, which again points to the medication since I skipped today, but very tired and glum. Not only does rainy weather tend to make me feel this way but I almost feel like I have a slight cold. I had a sore throat last night. I’ve had some lung tightness too, but I think that’s more of a weather thing than a medication thing.

It just seems way too extreme for perimenopause or even flares, though I don’t doubt that these things may affect the medication to a small degree. I seriously have doubts that I’ll ever be able to take the medication consistently without issues. Therefore, I’m not left with much choice other than to deprive myself of the medication if nothing else can be done.

I’ve been taking it every other day and yesterday I took it for the second day in a row. I was surprisingly anxious even with all I had going on to distract me and Tom’s presence. It really sucks to have this going on in what is otherwise a good life that I could be enjoying even more than I do. This anxiety has been keeping me from enjoying life to the fullest and I’m getting sick of it. If this is how I have to live for the rest of my life then I don’t know that I want to go on living. I really think this is the one problem that’s not going to get better.

I got up at 6 a.m. yesterday and we left shortly after 11. I waved to Mrs. Twenties on the way out. We then headed for Folsom and of course we got lost because I fucked up the navigation on his phone. So he pulled over by the prison, got it working again, drove under the Johnny Cash Trail, and made it to the dermatologist on time despite the wet rainy roads.

The office was nice and I loved the decor. Lots of beautiful nature pics on the walls. The PA I saw was friendly, prompt, professional and informative. She didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know but recommended Zyrtec when the irritation is bad. As I suspected, lichen planus never goes away on its own. I try to tell myself with the anxiety that nothing lasts forever but then again some things really do change and never do go back to the way they were. This type of rash is one of those cases. She said that it was okay to use hydrocortisone and keep up with the Aquaphor as needed. She said to let them know if I ever have any open wounds that bleed for no reason or that won’t heal because that can be a sign of skin cancer. I guess the Zyrtec is supposed to keep you from getting as drowsy as Benadryl can make you.

So we had an hour and a half to kill after the dermatologist and I then realized I’d totally forgotten to put my designer nails on. The black matte nails with the silver accents. Not only are my nails gross unpolished cuz I have ridges, but Kathleen always checks my nails for the latest design and we kind of have a little game going. So I ran into Target and grabbed a bottle of pink Insta-Dri polish that’s supposed to dry in 60 seconds. I’d say it’s more like 360 seconds but it’s still good stuff. I only needed one coat. Even so, if I didn’t have to spend so much time feeling anxious and worrying about how to deal with anxiety, maybe I wouldn’t be as forgetful.

We got a bite to eat at Sonic where you sit in the car and eat. So no blasting music or screaming kids. Just a couple of loud car stereos but fortunately that was on the road when we were stopped at a light. I did my nails in the car and by the time we finished, it was time to zoom over to the dentist.

Kathleen was so funny. There wasn’t anyone in the waiting room at the time but she was eagerly leaning over the counter with a wide grin on her face as she saw me approach and said something like, “There’s my favorite patient.”

I zoomed up to the counter and she immediately took my hands, complimented my nails and said my hands were so soft, LOL. Then she asked how I was doing and how my writing was going. I told her it was slow because I hadn’t been feeling well. She talks very softly and there was background noise so I can’t quote her on every word she said but she mentioned something about a women’s convention (or was it a seminar?) and she’s “taking me with her.” She said something about it being where they get together and all that and asked if I wanted to come. I have a feeling it’s probably religious or spiritual-based but I’ll try almost anything at least once.

I kind of saw her in a different light now that I know her real age, and yeah, I can kind of see that she’s older. She still looks remarkable for her age and I can see where it’s easy to think she’s around my age if you don’t know any better.

So Michaela and some young girl that she’s training took me to the back of the place where they did an x-ray they did four years ago. That’s where you bite onto a plate, smile, and a camera kind of goes around your head.

I then expected Holly to clean my teeth but she’s on vacation in New Zealand. Michaela told me she just got back from Thailand. A woman named Dora whom I’d never seen before did my teeth and she cleaned them a little differently, using an electric scaler that almost seemed like a mini drill. She had the suction hose in one hand and the scaler in the other.

Realizing that once again my memory had gone to hell, I ran into the waiting room to get my mouthguard from my purse when Dora was done. I commented to Kathleen about my memory going to hell as I was passing through and she said something like, “You’re great, Jodi.”

Yeah, really great.

Then the doctor did the final exam and said everything looked good and she adjusted the mouthguard to fit better over the new crown. She said she could just cut it off if I wanted but I think she adjusted it well enough.

She liked my rat leggings as did the rest of the staff, LOL.

Didn’t get to say goodbye to Kathleen on the way out because she’d left for lunch. I told Michaela to tell her I said goodbye. Now it will be interesting to see if she contacts me before my September 19th appointment and how she handles the news of my schedule issues and driving phobia, though I think she already knows I don’t drive.

We noticed two modern SUVs at the place that just sold and that the sign was down, too. If those were the new owners then I’m relieved that they have quiet vehicles.

In case I haven’t already said so, our azaleas are starting to flower in front and I noticed a few days ago that the trees are budding their leaves as well.

More to write about, including dreams, but I’ll do it in another entry. I’m just way too tired today.

Later…

Tom’s home and in bed now and I’m definitely feeling better than I did at the start of my day. If I didn’t know any better I would swear I was bipolar, LOL. I woke up to rain and tears, but now it’s sunshine and peace. Well, it is getting dark now.

I got to “spy” on him earlier. I told him yesterday that it would be nice to activate the GPS on our phones so we could always know where each other was in case anything were to ever happen. So we installed Life360 which is an app that will keep track of everywhere you go unless you go somewhere without the phone, of course. That way, if he were ever on his way home and appeared to be in the same spot for too long, this would tell me something was up. The absolute worst-case scenario would be the thing telling me he was in the hospital if he got into an accident but at least I would know.

I don’t take my phone with me when I go running. I take my old phone to play music on but maybe I’ll start taking this one. It would be good to have a phone I could call out on in the event of an emergency, and that way if he wanted to know how close or far I was from home, for example, when he wanted to go to bed or something, he could see if it was worth waiting up for me. It would also be cool to track anywhere I may go with Kathleen.

The dentist and I agreed that if I ever have a problem again, we would just fill it or pull it. Even though we could afford to pay for the crowns ourselves, it’s a bit rough for me to go through anyway. I just wonder what the damn insurance companies are going to drop next! I worry about them dropping spousal coverage with the way America is so independence-obsessed. They want everyone to do everything on their own and so I worry they’re going to be like, if your spouse wants to be insured then they need to get their own job.

I watched him make his way home and at first, I was confused because it looked like he was circling around the same area. I was like, what the hell is he doing? Well, as he’s told me before, he has to walk across a huge parking lot to get to his car. He works in Rocklin and I could see him pass by Kathleen in Roseville and then finally Citrus Heights/Sac.

As I was looking with dismay (not that I haven’t known this for nearly 5 years) at just how close we are to the Eisenhower freeway, the answer to my question as to why I hear so many damn planes was clear when I spotted the Sacramento McClellan airport nearby.

My lungs were tight most of the day but since I do have an inhaler and that’s one of the very few things I can use without side effects, I took a puff and it helped relax my lungs. Love how it has a counter. I’ve only taken one puff so I have 204 left. Would have been nice if they had counters when I was on them regularly in the ‘90s.

Tom’s shoulder is still bothering him so he ordered a sling from Amazon and I got a couple more boxes of Amberen.

The new mugs are nice and I love the new kettle. It not only looks nicer in person but instead of a whistle, it makes a 2-toned horn sound that’s kind of cool. It’s different. You would think someone was leaning on their car horn.

Aly’s not doing well either. While she was told that she may have some bleeding she’s got a kick-ass period going now and is afraid the Novasure didn’t work. Therefore, her hematologist ordered her for a blood test tomorrow. Her lab numbers were better than she thought, though, so that much is good. But she still has skin issues and dizzy spells.

Plus, Kim has been texting and messaging her a million times with the same old shit and I guess Kim got mad at her because she’s not around as much. That’s because she’s been blowing her off as Aly feels she’s not only selfish but she’s frustrated with dealing with someone who can’t remember shit, isn’t as innocent as she lets on, and doesn’t seem to want to do much to help herself. I haven’t heard as much from Kim myself and I’m okay with that for those very reasons. I feel bad for her family situation and I know that she has limitations as well as physical and mental disabilities beyond her control, but some things she could control more if she wanted to. The damn memory issues get annoying. I had enough of that with Andy. Bottom line… I always did warm Aly that Kim never has been and never will be a true friend. She has little to no empathy, intelligence or understanding. She lives in her own fuzzy little bubble of delusion and believes she can do no wrong even though she offhandedly has admitted to lying. She’s very contradicting and hypocritical as well.

Got to admit it’s kind of funny how I would follow their tweets when neither one was in touch with me and I would wonder why Aly would choose Kim over me. Yet now, instead of her bitching to Kim about me, it’s her bitching to me about Kim. Funny how life turns out at times.

Okay, I may still not have remembered everything I wanted to write about, but now I’ll get to the last two nights of dreams and call myself caught up enough.

I was living in a house that seemed to have bedrooms on both ends of the house. I walked out of the living room which was in the center of the house and down a short hallway to a bedroom at the end of it. I noticed a shoe in the hallway and that the closet door in the bedroom was open. This told me that a burglar was present and I doubled back through the living room and into another bedroom to look for shoes to run outside in. But none of the shoes that were in a small pile on the floor seemed to fit. Then Tom entered from a door leading to a basement. The dream ended as I stepped back into the living room and saw him. I swear someone else was standing at the end of the hallway, too. Sure hope this wasn’t a glimpse into a parallel life!

The worst dream that woke me up was the giant spider that didn’t look like a spider. Its body was elongated and it was covered in this grayish-white fir. I was outdoors on the ground playing with a cat when I glanced over and saw the thing nearby. I thought that I better spray the bastard because that was the second time I’d seen it. Then it crawled right over to me and the cat. Instead of jumping up and running, I was literally frozen in fear and that’s when I woke up.

Then Tom and I were invited to Bob and Virginia’s for dinner in the last dream I remember having the night before the dentist. I went to say something and it started to come out a little too loud at the same instant I accidentally bumped the edge of my plate which caused one side of it to bounce an inch or two on the table. This left me a bit embarrassed, haha.

In last night’s dream, I was hanging out by myself in some old trailer. The trailer was parked near water and when I looked outside one of the windows I could see the moonlight reflecting on the water.

Then I was looking out the window of this place at someone’s mutt barking at 1:30 in the morning. That better not ever fucking happen!

Lastly, I was in the backseat of a car that some guy was driving. Next to him was a large woman who was in her 30s or 40s. She had blonde hair pulled up in a bun. The guy was driving her to work and I was to accompany her that day and I guess help her out or something. He parked by a river or stream and he jokingly made like he was going to zoom right into it before he hit the brakes and brought the car to a stop. I asked if the water was cold and he said, “Hell, yeah.”

TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2018
Being that I love to learn things, I browse educational videos at times on YouTube, and one of the most interesting videos I watched recently was one on how to spot liars by their body language, the way they say things, etc. I’ve known of several of these tactics for a while now but it was cool to learn even more. We all lie so I don’t mind white lies every now and then as long as they aren’t too often. But yeah, when someone asks me how I’m doing, I will sometimes say “fine” even if I may be feeling anxious or pissed off about something. So everybody lies to a degree. Once a person gets to the gray lies, however, I seriously start re-evaluating my friendship with them. Let’s just say that they better have a good excuse for going gray on me! Once they go black on me, though, forget it. I’m gone.

Doing loud projects during the daytime is annoying. Doing them into the evening is rude. Yes, sometimes I get sick of certain things, including chasing after those who obviously don’t want to keep in touch. I’ve waited on Tammy long enough and now I’m wondering how long it will take her to admit she doesn’t want me in her life.

10 minutes Bowflexing, 15 minutes walking outdoors, 20 minutes treadmilling. Why can’t I always be this consistent? Well, I was yesterday but today I’m deliberately taking a break. I was up 18 hours and unable to fall asleep until after 10 PM. Then I didn’t quite sleep 8 hours so I’m a little tired today. Exercise gives you energy and I would prefer to keep at least somewhat non-energetic so that I can sleep better tonight, get caught up, and feel rested for my two appointments tomorrow.

It’s supposed to rain for the rest of the week so the guys working on Geri’s place until nearly 7 PM should be giving me a break from the hammering and sawing for a while.

I talked to the “Twenties” yesterday while they were quietly working out front. I joked about having the rats dig up and loosen their soil for them. They don’t know who bought the house across from them, they liked my sparkly shoes, and they’re having weekend company from Delmar for a wedding. I’m sure I’ll hear every single car door slam, too. I just hope the hell they’re not staying in an RV on the street!

I now have 170 followers on Pinterest and another royalty payment coming. :-)

I still get random PMS symptoms but no periods or spotting, so maybe the dream I had a while back did mean something. But sometimes I’ll get really bitchy for no reason or start retaining enough water to fill the Sacramento River until my bladder throws a piss party like it did last night…at the very end of my day of course.

I took the baby Benadryl when I was anxious over the weekend and it didn’t seem to calm me down or make me drowsy. Took one last night when Sleepytime tea wouldn’t even knock me out and then I did fall asleep. I don’t know if I would have fallen asleep anyway or the Benadryl knocked me out because I was tired.

I took my meds today and was worried that I wouldn’t be anxious, but 3.5 hours later I’m still calm. If I can get to around noon, I’m golden. :-) 75 mcg a day comes to 525 a week. 50 mcg is 350 a week. Skipping every other day, which is about 37 mcg a week, is 260 a week. My new medication plan is to skip every Monday and Thursday, which will be 375 a week. I’m hoping to hell this will FINALLY stop the anxiety from biting in the first place when I go flaring.

Aly said her hematologist dropped her and wouldn’t return her calls and she doesn’t know why, so she had to get a new one. I wonder if A will drop me in June but a part of me hopes she will because then I have an excuse to get someone that not only may be more helpful and willing to work with me instead of against me, but that’s closer as well.

My hairline is noticeably thinner no doubt due to age and my thyroid, but when I read that Rogaine can cause chest pain, swelling, and a rapid heartbeat, I decided I’d rather go bald. I don’t have any bald spots but the hair is very thin. It seems to have thinned more after dying it so that probably has a role in it as well.

Last night I dreamed that Bob, who pulled an old charger from a shelf in his kitchen that had old albums on it, handed it to me and said not to be surprised if it didn’t work. Then it was as if I was inside his place in the living room where I could hear him snoring from his bedroom. I wondered where Virginia was and then I realized she was probably in bed with him.

Then I dreamed that Tom and I were getting into a car on a steep grassy mountain. Some car whose parking breaks failed started to roll erratically down the hill. I was urging Tom to hurry up and beat it down the hill before it had a chance to crash into us rather than wait and see where it ended up first.

Then I was walking on a street at night. I just turned the corner when I heard a loud vehicle approaching and hoped it wouldn’t turn down the street I was on because it was so loud. A split second later I was indoors at Aly’s place. She spotted me with no pants or underwear on and I was embarrassed at the thought of her thinking I shave my pubes, for some reason, when it only looks that way because body hair thins with age. Tom and I were getting ready to move there.

Then I picked up a voice message from Andy who was wondering why I hadn’t returned his calls. Realizing I been so busy with the upcoming move to Nebraska, I made a mental note to call him right away.

MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2018
Skipped my meds today and am starting to feel better. Sadly, my anxiety issues still point to either a direct connection to the meds or an indirect connection fueled by flare-ups. This means I may be worse tomorrow when I take my meds. Just because I feel okay now (not great but okay) doesn’t mean I may not feel worse later, however. I still want my thyroid removed, my dose lowered, or both. I just worry that A isn’t going to be willing to work with me and help me, thus forcing me into the pain in the ass of having to get another doctor. If worse comes to worst maybe I’ll see Tom’s doctor. He’s a guy, but being both male and Muslim, there’s never any waiting time. He’s also closer.

A guy who follows me on PB said a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar a day can help regulate cholesterol levels. I looked this up and that is listed as one of the health benefits of apple cider vinegar, but since I can’t drink the stuff straight up, I’ve added a tablespoon to my bottled water.

Aly had a shitty weekend between eczema, anemia, and an allergic reaction to something. She said she has to use a medicated body wash and is on what’s called a broad-spectrum antibiotic.

Tammy still hasn’t called and I’m through chasing after those who obviously don’t want to keep in touch. I don’t know if she’s fucking with me or if she’s got some seriously heavy-duty shit going on in her life, but as Tom pointed out, Tammy always thinks there’s drama going on. That’s just how she is. Oh, well. She isn’t going to die anytime soon. She would have told me if she was.

I wonder if, whenever she dies, it will hit the girls nearly a fraction of how hard their bastard father hit them when he died. Sure enough, I decided to check Becky’s wall to see if maybe she’s finally been able to move on at least a little, but sure enough, there’s a picture of her forearm with her new daddy tat. Would there be a mommy tat if Tammy died? Somehow I doubt it.

Tom is thinking of taking a week off in May. He may get his appointment moved up to the same week I have my ENT appointment and take that whole week off. That way we can do the second mural we want to do in the living room, maybe have the oven delivered then, and decide what to do about the roof.

Yesterday was surprisingly quiet but today I expect it to be pretty noisy as people get as much landscaping done in what may be the only day they can do it this week. It’s going to be raining from Tuesday on.

Last night I dreamed I was dragging a cardboard box with something wet in it that was leaking out of it towards the front door of Stacey’s house, only Stacey’s house was a big two-story house. When I opened the front door there were several wide cement steps leading up to the place and a fairly busy street about 50’ away. Some guy in a pickup slowed down and called something out to me.

Then there was something about Kathleen and my dentist but I’m not sure what.

Then I was asking Tom to evaluate my various body parts and he said he could see the muscle in my shoulders and abs but my legs looked flabby.

Now I’m going to go catch up on Bubbly before it gets noisy. Not sure if I’m going to keep copying links from there because it’s not like I’m ever going to want to go back and listen to what I said way back when. At least I don’t think I would.

SUNDAY, MARCH 18, 2018
We had to cancel the flower tea kettle because FedEx damaged it en route and then the seller, a drop shipper, ran out of them. Instead, I’m getting this cute pink flamingo kettle. It’s safe for gas stoves and I like whistling kettles, which is what it is.

I also couldn’t resist this adorable set of rainbow mugs I got a great deal on in which the rims are a different color on each one. There’s purple, blue, orange, red, green and yellow.

Finished Law & Order’s 18th year and now I’m watching the pilot of Seven Seconds. I’m liking it despite the fact that as usual, race has to be involved.

Yesterday we dyed my hair. It’s now long enough that it takes two kits, but would probably only need one if it was women’s dye. It’s a little darker than I’d like but better than gray.

Went to Walmart early yesterday morning and got black gemstone flip-flops with a slight heel, plus he got some black canvas shoes for himself. I’ve been wearing the same flip-flops for a few years now so variety is nice and black goes with everything.

Recently, I had been bitching about all the projects around here and said that next, Lawrence will die or sell his place. Well, the paramedics were there yesterday. They were there for several minutes but I didn’t actually see anyone get taken out, so I don’t know what happened. I just know it would really suck for that place to turn over while we were still here being so close to the bedroom. It wouldn’t be as bad as Bob and Virginia but more worrisome than the Twenties and Trisha.

Started copying my Bubbly voice post links into a Word doc file and backing them up on PB as well. This way I can quickly access the older ones if I wanted to, instead of having to scroll and scroll forever.

Skipped yesterday’s dose and I’m starting to feel better. I had caffeinated tea instead of caffeinated coffee when I got up, too.

Still nothing from Tammy. She’s either playing with me or she’s got something really serious going on with her or maybe it’s on Mark. I don’t know until she decides to take the time she takes to check in to Facebook to check in with me. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s not good. She rarely has any good news. That’s just how she’s always been. And when she does have good news it tends to be exaggerated just like her bad news is.

Tom’s bad news is his shoulder injury. He thought it was his elbow at first but then he Googled his symptoms and found that it actually stems from his shoulder and is similar to the sciatic nerve injury he had. Icing it helps but it’s otherwise “so painful you could cut my arm off and I wouldn’t even notice,” he says.

Last night I dreamed I was lying on a gurney or table in an exam room somewhere. A woman I assume was a nurse, placed a hand in the center of my chest and said she felt clogged arteries in that area. Although I’m sure the dream meant nothing, it’s still not a thrilling dream for a dream premonitioner to have.

Then Tom and I were country-living again in the next dream in a house that we seemed to own, but first, I was at a buffet with someone loading up on all kinds of stuff. A guy behind the counter was talking about alcoholic drinks with the word rainbow in its name, so of course I was suddenly interested even though I almost never drink, LOL. But instead of getting the rainbow drink, I was home a split second later. It seemed to be a long ranch-style house I was in and I was looking out the front window for the pizza delivery I was expecting. I guess I was really hungry that night. The land around us seemed deserty with clumps of sage and a landscape that sort of slanted upwards as the sun was just about to dip below the horizon off in the distance.

When I looked out front I saw two cars had arrived and knew one was the pizza and the other was Tom. I had Alexa turn off the music I had playing before running to pull cash for the food out of my purse. I thought I was grabbing tens but instead, I grabbed single dollar bills in frustration just as Tom entered the place.

FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2018
Here we go again with the woodpecker that ONLY we hear. Yeah, I knew it would be starting up anytime now. This is the time of year they get more active. So now I’ll have to listen to this shit regularly for months.

Tom thinks the Amberen nurse is lying about me possibly being sensitive to the synthetic version of my medication because it’s her job to sell Amberen and therefore she would blame other things for my symptoms. I’m still going to bring up the possibility to my doctor, but if that’s the case, it should be illegal for people to have what’s supposed to be real nurses lying to people.

After taking my meds, sure enough, I got anxious and I’ve been having waves of anxiety on and off for the last 9 hours. So since Tom was home I took a Benadryl and that did help, but like most things, it only helped for a while. It made me really drowsy and caused me to nap for about an hour. I’m getting baby Benadryl to see if that will still help, even if it’s only a temporary fix, but without knocking me out.

Words can’t express how hopeless I feel right now. I really don’t think I’m ever going to return to me as I’d always known me to be before 2014 when this shit started. I just can’t believe that the problem will ever go away no matter what I do. I’m totally losing hope. This is the new me for life just like I got fat and that was the new me for life and I got farsighted and that was the new me, and so on and so forth. But there’s no fucking way I can live with this for another 20-30 years. Just no fucking way.

I am totally tempted to have Doc A refill my lorazepam and drink down the whole bottle and be done with this suffering forever, even if there may be an afterlife that’s a million times worse. It’s just that I’m a seriously gutless person either way. I don’t have the guts to go on and I don’t think I could ever muster up the guts to kill myself unless I lost Tom, and even then, who knows? Maybe I would be such a chickenshit that I would allow myself to starve in the streets or commit a crime so I could have food and shelter in jail. But yeah, this shit is really zapping my will to live. And instead of adapting, it just drives me crazier the longer I suffer. I don’t understand why I can adapt easily to some things while other things I can never get used to. I can’t get used to noise, I can’t get used to sleeping through noise, and I sure as hell can’t get used to feeling anxious. And I thought dwelling on us growing old and dying was the worst of my problems. I wish it was! I wish my TMJ, teeth, skin, noise or money were my worst problems. Even the fucking shitsters down in Arizona didn’t have me feeling so bad. When I would become overwhelmed with “anxiety” from having to stay in the 4-man cell; that still didn’t compare to this.

It would make it a whole lot easier on me if I could know for sure that this shit would stop upon reaching full-blown menopause. But you know what? I have a bad feeling it’s not going to be that easy. Especially since I would think I should be awfully close by now with only one period in nine months, even if the last one was only a few months ago. Even if there’s a connection, I still think the problem lies within the medication and or flares. Well, I can’t stop the medication and I can’t stop flaring. So where does that leave me? Trapped. That’s where.

I finally heard from Tammy who said she’ll be calling to let me know what’s going on, but you know what? I don’t want to hear it. I know it’s going to be the same old negative stuff about her health, and it’s not like I don’t care or empathize, but our chats are always about her health. It’s very hard for me to get a word in edgewise. If I didn’t say anything about my own life, she would ask little to no questions about me. It’s like how Aly gets frustrated with Kim. It’s all about her suffering.

It rained all night which kept the planes out of the sky. It’s not raining at the moment but it’s very wet out there.

I only remember a couple of quick dreams last night. Glimpses into parallel lives? Again, I wonder about this. I was walking along a snowy street in one dream. It wasn’t snowing at the moment but there were several inches on the ground. I glanced to my left and passed a few people hanging out talking but what may’ve been apartments. I got the impression I wasn’t in a great neighborhood with great people either.

I also dreamed that I was pulling some old dolls out of a box and setting them up somewhere.

THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2018
Written Wednesday morning:

Even though I’m tired I want to document my discussion with a nurse at the makers of Amberen while it’s still fresh in my mind. I had mild anxiety throughout most of my day and then it got really bad. Sleepytime tea, Ibuprofen, emotional tapping… nothing was helping. Nothing. It would start to seem like it was backing off but then I would have waves of anxiety going through my chest. No racing heart, though.

I was sitting at my desk when I casually glanced at the box of Amberen sitting on it and the toll-free number written on the box. So I called and pressed the option for speaking to a nurse and told her that Amberen has relieved all my perimenopausal symptoms except for anxiety. She was surprised, saying that that’s usually the first symptom people find relief from. Then she said she suspected the cause of my anxiety may not be the hormonal fluctuations. This is when I told her that I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and put on Levothyroxine 4 years ago. She asked me if my thyroid levels could be off and I told her they were a little high because if I take enough medication to get my numbers normal, I have epic levels of anxiety. She then said I could be sensitive to the medication. I told her that’s exactly what my gut feeling has always told me and that I never had a problem with anxiety until I was put on anything above 50 mcg. I told her that my doctor told me it was the same stuff our bodies made anyway and she didn’t think it was the medication. At that point, she laughed and said they love to say that because that’s what they’re advocating; that medication. Also, she admitted that she wasn’t a doctor and was sure my doctor would disagree with her but that my doctor was welcome to call them anytime. She also pointed out that while it may be the same stuff our bodies make, it’s still a synthetic version and so the body can react to it differently. The more I thought about this the more it made sense because no matter what great kinds of chemicals we may come up with, nothing can replace the real thing. It’s like baby formula. It can’t quite duplicate breast milk, can it?

She said I should really advocate for myself and get the issue addressed once and for all if I think the medication could be the problem. Oh, I definitely plan to advocate, all right. I’ve had enough of this fucking bullshit cycle year after year. Not saying I don’t have flareups or peri, but I think if I never had to go on this medication in the first place, I would find that I had little to no anxiety from the peri. Just the timing and the intensity of this shit is enough to indicate it’s tied to the medication. It wasn’t until they raised my dose that I started having these problems and it just seems way too intense to be on the peri. I need to be cut back or put on something else. I wasn’t on 50 mcgs for long and while it’s possible I could still have a problem on that after a while if I’m that sensitive to the synthetic version, I don’t think I would. Yes, my TSH will be in the teens on 50s, but before I was diagnosed and medicated it was in the 30s and I didn’t have anxiety. I tell you, it’s the meds. Another thing that points to the meds is that in the summer of 2016, the doctor told me I still had good estrogen. Well, if perimenopausal anxiety is caused by falling estrogen levels, then why have I been anxious since 2014? I was showing some symptoms then like some hot flashes, sleep disturbances, and periods that were becoming irregular. Tom says there are more hormones involved than just estrogen and I know this is true, so maybe I did really go into peri while I still had good estrogen. Sure felt like it started coming on around 2014.

Then she asked if I was waiting 4 hours to take the Amberen, which confirmed that she really knew what she was talking about because most people don’t know that you should wait 4 hours after the medication before you take even something like Amberen. Nothing should ever be taken with Levothyroxine except for painkillers and only if necessary.

I’m definitely going to start skipping doses more often to ward off the anxiety from setting in in the first place. I think the only reason I was doing better last fall was that I had gotten so fed up with the anxiety last summer that I started skipping every other day for two or three weeks and it took a while for my levels to build back up when I started taking it more often. I don’t want to do anything extreme and quit the medication altogether because my body still needs this hormone. There’s no need to be so black-and-white about it. All I’m saying is that I can’t take 75 or more anymore. It’s simply too much for my body no matter what anyone says and no matter what their fucking numbers say. Furthermore, the only way to find out for sure if I’m right is to actually lower the damn dose for a good 6 months or so and see how I do. If I’m still anxious then I’ll have no problem with admitting and accepting that I was wrong, and then take it from there. I can’t keep suffering like this year after year. It’s too much for me. Sooner or later it’s going to drive me to do something stupid if it doesn’t let up and I don’t want that either. It is a horrible, HORRIBLE way to live. It’s scary as hell. They say our gut feeling is usually correct. If my gut feeling says it’s on the medication, then it probably is, with or without flare-ups and perimenopause in the picture. Maybe in a few years I can tolerate this dose without issue, but I don’t think so. I just want to worry about right now anyway, not what might be the case in a few years. And right now I can’t tolerate this dose and it needs to be lowered or some other alternative needs to be implemented.

There is absolutely nothing going on in my life that should make me even remotely stressed out let alone anxious as hell. I may be annoyed by noise and other little nuisances like that in life, but there is absolutely no reason I should feel this way. Well, I’ve had enough! When my life was shitty prior to 2012 and I was stressing over money and our day-to-day survival, I STILL didn’t feel this way. Go into my pre-2014 journals and see how often you can find the word “anxiety.”

I forgot that I got Benadryl to act as the new Lorazepam but I might not have had the guts to take it had I remembered it. That’s the thing about anxiety… Everything becomes scary.

Tom thinks the peri is causing flareups because I still had anxiety the other day after a couple of skips, but that’s the thing about Levothyroxine… It takes months to leave the body. The shit’s still in my system. But I do get better overall when I back off.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother living. I could ask my doctor for a Lorazepam refill, down it all, and never wake up again just to have to deal with one long-term crisis after another for the rest of my life as I’ve always done. Believe me, it’s a tempting idea at times. I don’t need this shit and Tom doesn’t need it either. I almost wish I could ditch doctors altogether. I went to them 4 years ago and all they’ve done is make me worse. The foot doctor did get rid of my ingrown toenail, and my GYN helped me if only a little, but otherwise they made me worse, not better.

IDK, maybe there is something up there and this is its way of saying hey, I made you hypo for a reason, and this is the way it’s forcing me to be the hypo I was meant to be. But then why can others tolerate this drug without any issues? Why is it always me that has to have the problems? Being hypo is very annoying but it didn’t kill me, and if worst comes to worst and that’s what I have to be again, it won’t kill me this time around either. But you know what? I’d rather something - anything - kill me than let me live to suffer. Can’t take thyroid meds, can’t take statins… I get it, God. You want me to suffer. But it’s my life and my body and I say no more! I’m done with this shit and if death is the only way to stop the suffering, so be it. First I’m going to start with hoping a lower dosage is the answer. If not, I’ll decide what to do then. But I’m not going to keep suffering on and off year after year from what ranges from a horrible sense of irrational unease to downright terror. Hell, I even called Tom and told him about my chat with the nurse.

My own sister and nieces have been ghosting me and I wonder why. They’ve been pulling a Maliheh on me more and more. I’ve asked Tammy several times what the tests were for and what the results were when she told me on the 25th of last month that she was having a bunch of tests done, and she’s completely blown off my Facebook messages as well as the email I sent and the message I tagged her in on my wall. So what’s up? Because I’m not a God fan? Won’t forgive certain family members? Wish they would either tell me to fuck off or just tell me what the hell’s really going on.

Anyway, the rain kept it quiet yesterday but then we had a little bit of a dry spell in which the planes promptly began to make up for lost time. We’ve got to be in a flight path.

Took the 6 citrus teas over to next-door, and later slept shittily. Yes, something is always determined to fuck with my sleep. If it isn’t traffic, it’s something else. This time around it was ferociously loud thunder and then Alexa rebooting.

Aly had that Novasure procedure done yesterday and there were issues with her blood pressure, so she had to go to the hospital for a while. She said she was so sorry she wasn’t there for me after seeing my tweet about the anxiety, but I told her I know she’s there for me even when she can’t be.

Going through journals reminded me to check jail inmates again for the first time in a while, as I think I recently mentioned. When I found that Jailhouse Kim was in yet again for what’s got to be at least the fourth time, I couldn’t resist fucking with her so I sent her a letter saying that her friend contacted me on Facebook and asked that I send her a little “inspiration.” Yeah, go ahead, God, if you exist, and punish me. You make me suffer when I behave so why not for sending someone a letter that is no doubt going to shock them and make them wonder who the hell I am, even if she may have a good idea. I reminded her that she chose crime over her kids because I know it will really get to her, and while I appreciated the help she gave me to break me into jail life, I always resented her as well. She would be correct if she said I wouldn’t have the guts to say that to her face in person. Not with commissary and visitation to lose I wouldn’t. I also asked her what life with Jodi Arias was like, pointed out how much she must love prison if she keeps going back to it, mentioned some inmates I used to know (some of whom are there), and said a few weird things to keep her guessing and wondering. I wish I had an invisible camera embedded in the letter so I could see and hear her reaction when she gets and reads it. LOL

Even though I didn’t do anything illegal, I didn’t put a return address on and I didn’t leave any physical evidence, although I did address it by hand. I wonder if she got and saved my first letter? That way she can compare handwriting if she wants to. Kim may be a loser who would rather be in prison than deal with the real world, but she is intelligent. I wonder if she wonders if I’ll write her every time she’s hauled into prison. Yeah, maybe, haha.

I also wonder if she sees Rosa but I doubt it. I think Rosa is in something called the Santa Cruz Unit. The beggar is in the Lumley Unit. Pretty sure that’s where Jodi is.

Last night I dreamed I pierced my nose six times with these little tiny studded earrings, LOL. I did a group of three on the right lower side of my nose and then I somehow managed to do another group of three on the upper left side of my nose toward my eye. As I studied all the little studs in the mirror, I wondered if I should mention it to Tom when he got home or see how long it would take him to notice. Then I thought he might be worried that some were “too close to my brain.”

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2018
It’s a rainy night tonight as I begin to enjoy the awesome and huge variety of tea I got today. Half are decaf, half aren’t. I’m having eggnog tea now. I’ve got every flavor imaginable. I like black tea but I don’t know if I’m going to like the green tea. Green tea can make me nauseous.

I read on my box of Sleepytime tea that it has 25 mg of valerian root, and when I looked up valerian root pills online, I found that the average dose is 500 mg. I was shocked because I would think that if 25 mg can relax me as it does then 500 might send me right into a coma. A couple of people said the opposite, though, and that it made their hearts race. No way I’m messing with pills unnecessarily.

Not impressed with the honey sticks I got. I thought you stirred them into the tea and that they dissolved as you stirred them but apparently not. They’re like little straws and you have to snip the ends and pour the honey out.

My new sweatpants fit better being a smaller size and now all I’m waiting on is my beautiful tea kettle.

That strange vibration in my head is back again and a quick check said it’s menopause or Parkinson’s. I think I can guess which one it is.

I have what I believe are three different types of dreams. Reflection dreams based on what’s going on in my life, glimpses into possible parallel lives, and messages/dream premonitions. I don’t know if the right word is psychic, intuitive, or whatever. I just really wish the bad dreams/vibes would stop. Tammy’s giving me horrible vibes and then I dreamed something about feeling the need to get out of the state while I still could, like I would get sick or something bad would happen to me if I didn’t get out as soon as I could. I don’t know if someone was telling me this, or I just had this feeling, or I had a dream that I dreamed this.

At least Irene got to visit in my dreams. :-) I entered the kitchen as she was doing something by the sink and in German, she said there wasn’t any more milk. I replied in German saying that there would be more in the morning.

TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2018
Aly thanked me a million times for telling her about emotional tapping, saying that it helped her a lot when she felt like she was going to panic. The poor thing sleeps shitty and has to take a medication that makes her nauseous even with another medication to help combat that. Next week she’ll return to the lab to see if it helped. I hope so. I know she doesn’t want to have to have a transplant.

I also hope that the dream I had last night doesn’t mean anything. It really sucked! Tom and I lived in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment that was in the middle of a strip of apartments all on one floor. The place was smallish and I could see it in vivid detail. There was only one entry door. You walked into the kitchen and then you stepped through a doorway to the right and into the living room. Then down the hallway at the opposite end of the living room was a bathroom to the left, then a bedroom, and then a larger bedroom straight ahead at the end of the hall.

There was a storm going on or something because all of a sudden I was standing in the living room and it was dark like the lights had gone out or something. There may have been a small dog in the room as I made my way to the door to look for Tom, whose voice I thought I just heard. When I opened the door and glanced outside, the wind was gushing unlike anything I’d ever felt before and I was now worried about him. It was very dark out and I couldn’t see anything or anyone anywhere. I was tempted to step out and look for him but I knew that our door would lock behind me if I did, plus I was barefoot. I woke up as I went to get my shoes on.

And then I also had snippets of dreams that only lasted a second or two. Something about Linda Ronstadt having medication on her bed for a yeast infection when we were in her house.

Next, I was hanging out with a few black people and one of them wanted me to call someone on a young black girl’s behalf. I was afraid to make the call in front of others, though, who were coming and going because I didn’t want them to think I was trying to get her in any kind of trouble.

Then I was watching a group of adults remove seatbelts from some kids that had arrived nearby in a small bus, suggesting they may have been disabled or something.

I loved having Tom working at home on the conference call last night. Sometimes I wonder if I would feel better if he worked at home during the night, slept during the morning, and maybe went in in the afternoon for a few hours like he did today. But then anxiety is anxiety and I can have flareups anytime, anywhere, with anyone around… or not. Felt great yesterday and so far today but I’m having my precautionary Sleepytime tea to see if that helps keep the anxiety from setting in in the first place.

I’m trying a new cleaning schedule to see if that helps me be more thorough. I hate dusting so much that I tend to cut corners, go too fast, and blow off dusting certain sections. This way, instead of going through the whole house in four days every other week, I clean something every day but just a small section at a time, ending up with the same sections every other week.

Andy has always been into multiple accounts much like Kim and Aly, so if he really wanted to see what he could see of my Facebook account, all he has to do is look in from another account… and find my link to Curious Cat. Well, someone anonymously slipped me a video of a black man giving another black man a verbal beating. Instinctively, I thought of Andy right away. It came at a time when I knew he would be up, too. When I jumped on the main feed, though, I could see that someone else got the same video, which bumped my doubt up a notch. Still might’ve been him, but if it was, why now? Plus, he’d probably be more likely to choose a video of whites defending blacks or blacks picking on whites to make a point. Oh, I remember those little “statement” pics. He was such a black lover and defender.

It’s raining today so I’m hoping that that will keep things quiet until I go to bed which should be around noon. It got up to 72 degrees again yesterday but I still slept well. In fact, I slept better than I did on Sunday because I didn’t wake up as much. I just had that shitty dream.

I feel totally ghosted by Tammy and the girls and I feel like they don’t really want me in their lives. I don’t know what the hell’s going through their minds for sure or what’s going on in their daily lives. I only know how I feel. I know Tammy’s got to be getting my messages. The question is… if she can take the time to check in, why not the time to make a quick reply more often? It’s almost like she gets off on having me wait on her like Maliheh did more and more before she ghosted me altogether. Not saying that they’re going to do that to me, but it’s like they’re trying to keep me at arm’s length. I know I should be okay with that and see the good in it because that way there’s less risk for potential conflict as opposed to if we were always around each other and in touch more often, but I feel like something’s going on that they’re not telling me. Sometimes I wonder if Tammy’s health is a lot worse than she wants to admit but I don’t think so. She loves to whine to others about her health. She’s also quick to let someone know when she has a problem with them, so that’s why neither theory makes sense. She’s playing with me or there’s something else up that I don’t know about.

I think I’m going to stay off Facebook altogether (I’m not into it anyway) and see how she reacts. Hello if someone messages me because I get notifications by phone. Like I would try to get myself to do with Nane and Maliheh, it’s time to make her wait on me.

MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2018
I’m actually typing this instead of using speech-to-text so I don’t disturb Tom’s meeting. Yeah, this is kinda fun, LOL. He’s being paid hundreds of dollars just to sit in on a business meeting via Skype. The original plan was for him to go in and work for about 4 hours. This is the first time he’s ever gone in on a Sunday that I can remember. When I got up to find he still wasn’t home at almost 7:00, I was a bit worried, though not alarmed. I figured there was some trouble with the system upgrade they’ve been implementing at work. So I logged into Skype and sure enough, that’s what was up. He didn’t get in till 10:00 and an hour later he’s still working on his business laptop and on Skype with half a dozen others trying to fix their problems. I guess no one’s going to bed tonight, LOL.

So with the combination of valerian root, his presence, and a peaceful night other than the planes, I’m in a much better mood than yesterday. Yeah, sorry about that but everything was getting to me yesterday and sometimes you just need to pitch a fit, be it verbally, in print, or whatever. With nothing to say there’s a lifespan to Hashimoto’s flareups like perimenopause has a lifespan, it can really give me a bleak outlook on things at times. I had been doing so much better with the anxiety, too.

It’s one of those things that when I feel good, that’s just it… I feel good. But when I don’t, things can often seem hopeless, leaving me feeling stuck and helpless. When I think of those who say that God helps those that help themselves I want to shove this wad of gum I’m chewing up their noses as that’s just a total crock, if there even is a God. I’ve been trying to figure this out for nearly 4 years now. However, I think I should pay more attention to the Ibuprofen/valerian thing. They do seem to help a bit. Maybe not as much as I’d like but I guess some help is better than none. I haven’t felt bad enough to reach for Ibuprofen the last couple of days, but Sleepytime tea is a real blessing. I was “bad” yesterday too, by indulging in sugary treats and an extra cup of coffee. I had just one cup today and am avoiding sugar and cholesterol as much as possible. My “un-statined” body doesn’t need the extra cholesterol anyway.

Anyway, when I don’t feel so well I try to remind myself that I thought we’d be broke all our lives and I was wrong. Nothing lasts forever. So hopefully the anxiety won’t either. It’s just getting hard to believe this mantra with each year that this shit continues to go on. Also, I’d rather be broke again than suffer.

Tom just said it’s no problem if I use speech to text because he can shut his door. The beauty of not having an open floor plan in this house is that sound doesn’t travel as easily throughout the place. Anyway, using speech-to-text has spoiled me. I pretty much hate to type these days but it’s still better than writing by hand like I used to many years ago.

He’ll be losing a lot of sleep tonight but making a shitload of money. Hey, this is Cali, where everything pays a fortune and then costs you a fortune. Apparently, I’m far from the only one on a wacky schedule here too, even if it’s not by choice in my case. When Tom retires he’s going to just sleep whenever he needs to sleep whether or not it’s at the same time every night (or day). We don’t believe in schedules even if I still wish I could keep one at times. He can adjust his for appointments in a day, though, if he has to. It takes me over a week to do that.

We went out at 4 AM yesterday to Walgreens where we got a few treats and another really cool set of designer stick-on nails. Metallic bluish-green with silver glitter accents.

On the way back we saw at least half a dozen rule-breakers, which didn’t surprise us in the least. You’re not supposed to park in the street overnight yet despite the park actually attempting to do something about this particular problem, people just don’t care. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do.

Ordered some stuff from Amazon last night. Got another pair of purple sweatpants only in size medium this time because the large was too big for me.

Plus, I got a 100-pack of honey sticks that you use like coffee stirs in tea. They can be used as snacks or in tea actually. They even have chocolate sticks to stir into milk. Along with the honey sticks, I got a Bigelow’s tea sampler with 54 tea bags for just $13. That’s a damn good deal! There are only a couple I won’t like such as the orange and lemon zinger. You know I hate citrus.

Lastly, I got this absolutely GORGEOUS floral tea kettle with tulips, daisies, poppies and lilies. I figure I’ll just use regular tap water and save on bottled water which I prefer to put through the Keurig. This also gives me the option of making a pot of tea if I want to. Hell, if my Sleepytime tea keeps making me feel calmer then I’m going to practically drown myself in the stuff.

Slept better than I thought I would yesterday. I still woke up several times, but except for the time I got up to pee, I fell right back to sleep. Not once did I wake up from the motorcycles I expected to wake up from.

I have declared my CampNaNo project along with my bestie and will be looking forward to having fun with Reunion of Innocents, but will probably do that one just for fun and not for future publication. This will be the Palma reunion story.

Kim has done nothing but rant about her SIL to both Aly and I, and Aly feels she’s gotten very selfish in that all she wants to do is whine about her problems without bothering to care or ask about Aly’s. On top of that, there’s nothing more we can do other than what we’ve already suggested. I feel bad for her, but as Aly and I both agree, it’s unlikely that she’s as innocent as she’s claiming to be. Like it or not, Kim has always been a pathological liar and probably always will be. I don’t know how aware of her actions she is, but she’s incredibly contradicting at times. She’s told us that her mother is just as scared of her SIL, but then she said her mother squealed on Kim for not using soap or something like that, after using the bathroom.

She got fired from work for her attitude, but since the boss is a friend of the SILs, I guess something is going to be worked out. Also, I guess she and her sister want her and her mother to lose more weight but since they haven’t, they don’t get to go on their upcoming road trip to Georgia or some shit like that. It’s a strange family indeed.

SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 2018
Waking up to the tune of power saws and hammering 4 days in a row is not a thrilling thing to have to wake up to. I am SO totally beyond sick of this shit and having to listen to one project after another here! You would think that getting up at 5 p.m. would spare you from the bulk of the noise, but now they’re working into the evening and daylight savings isn’t helping with that either as it only enables them to work later as it stays lighter later. The thing is that as long as it’s between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., we can be as noisy as we want. :-(

I managed to sleep well today since they’re working on the other side of the house, but tomorrow, the motorcycle gangs are going to be waking me up like crazy. Despite spending hundreds of dollars on soundproofing material, extra windows, and sleeping with sound machines and earplugs, I STILL get woken up. So many vehicles are just so ferociously loud these days that one would need to be hundreds of feet away from the road.

I’m also kind of irritated with myself for not adapting and getting used to it after all these years. I’ve never lived in a quiet place yet. At least not as an adult. Auburn would have been quiet if it hadn’t been for Jesse and his damn dogs, but the world is never going to sound like it did in the 70s and even the 80s, so you would think I would have adjusted to this shit by now.

I’ve lived in many places yet never have I heard landscaping nearly every day or so many fucking projects being done. Not even the apartments I had in Arizona had this much shit going on and they definitely had more going on than when I lived back east. Plus, there is the insane amount of loud vehicles and all the plane activity here.

I thought they were working on the house behind Geri’s but they’re actually replacing Geri’s eaves. They just started on the other side and now they’re on the side closest to us. I can tell this is something that’s going to take weeks or at least several days.

Tom said that when he came back with the groceries after 10 a.m. there were half a dozen cars down the street just past Bob and Virginia so I guess there was something going on down there as well.

The house in back has sold so now it’s only a matter of time before I find out how loud their vehicle is. Hopefully, they won’t be parking by the bedrooms as they’re getting moved in and having their little housewarming party and all that shit.

So far, it’s been a peaceful evening. Can’t hear much of the freeway tonight which is only about 600 feet away. Not too many car stereos either, or planes. Wait. I take that last part back. I can hear some planes now.

I got an email from Maliheh even though it wasn’t really from her from some other country. It ended with ‘br’ and I’m guessing that’s Brazil. There was some link that I wouldn’t click on, of course, knowing it was either some type of spyware or a link to spam. I don’t understand how this particular scam works. I know one of her email accounts was hacked but this doesn’t appear to be from that account. Why not just make up a bogus name? Why use a real person’s name? I would have thought she would have recovered control of her email that was hacked by now but maybe not. Like I said, I don’t understand how this scam works. Lying bitch or not, I don’t think she did anything wrong. I think she really was/is a victim.

I went out running earlier with Tom and I ran both fast and long because I was pissed. Pissed at all the noise and pissed that the research Tom did on flares and thyroidectomies didn’t exactly tell me anything I wanted to hear. I’m really worried that I’m going to suffer on and off from anxiety for the rest of my life even though Tom says he doesn’t think so and still thinks that the perimenopause is the root cause from everything he’s read.

Supposedly, if I got my thyroid removed, it may not be able to spit out bursts of T3 anymore but I would still have Hashimoto’s and so I may not necessarily feel better. Also, there’s a whole long list of things that can actually cause autoimmune flare-ups like cold weather and various forms of inflammation. That’s why they recommend Ibuprofen when you have a flare but it’s not something you want to take every day, of course, because it can cause bleeding in the stomach. If I weren’t in good shape and then I suddenly did something strenuous that left me sore, that could cause a flareup right there. But because I’m active and use my muscles regularly, I lower the risk of inflammation, even though there are other things that can cause flares.

I feel like such a hypocrite tonight. I have been bitching about seeing nothing but an endless stream of negativity online pertaining to the same old subjects, yet all I want to do right now is bitch, moan, rant, complain, cry and basically beat my head in the fucking wall, knowing that if there is a God up there this is all the more reason to hate its fucking guts for allowing me to suffer like this year after year when I’ve already had more than enough shit in life to have to deal with.

I’m just so fucking frustrated right now because I don’t see any real change in the near future, if ever. It would be bad, of course, to stop my thyroid medication altogether as that would only make things worse in many ways and the autoimmune disease may attack other organs and might even kill me, even if I didn’t have as much anxiety that way. But a few skips here and there definitely does help reduce some of the anxiety. My PCP knows I do this at times but I still want to discuss different options with her as far as handling flares when I see her in June.

Quitting smoking while I was young helps too, but I just feel like there’s a potential threat in everything. I can’t enjoy an occasional sugary treat without there being a risk of that triggering anxiety and the whole thing just really sucks shit. They now recognize asthma as an autoimmune disease even though mine’s been dormant most of the time since quitting smoking. But technically I have two AI diseases with a whole shitload of things that can make them worse and I might not even know what some of them are or realize that I could be doing something not very beneficial to myself. It’s a no-brainer that too much incense can make my lungs tight, but almost anything I do or eat could trigger flare-ups.

One of the many things he read that can cause flareups is hormonal imbalances so I’m still slightly hopeful that once I’m postmenopausal, the anxiety will lessen if it doesn’t go away altogether, but only slightly. After four years of this shit, it’s hard to hold out much hope of this ever going away. Like I said in a recent entry, I think this is the new me now and how I’m going to be for the rest of my life just like I one day got fat and I’m always going to be fat as well as farsighted and other things. Things change with age and they don’t always go back to what they used to be. Another thing that makes me doubtful that I’ll ever get better is that I actually feel like I’m through the worst of the peri because other symptoms have backed off. If my heart quit racing me awake, and other sleep disturbances (except for rude assholes on motorcycles) have eased up as well as the hot flashes, then why wouldn’t the anxiety have eased up by now as well?

UPDATE: Feeling better after a cup of Sleepytime tea. Valerian root really is a good thing. Something hit me after my last entry. You know how I said that most of my perimenopause symptoms have backed off except for the anxiety? Well, it hit me that I read that someone said that Amberen helped with all her symptoms except for anxiety. Maybe the same applies to me since I’ve been taking Amberen since last summer and everything but that has improved. In response to them saying this (on a doctor’s blog that wrote a book about menopause and such), the doctor recommended magnesium supplements to help combat the anxiety. Hmm…

FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 2018
Great news. I’m now 99% sure I know what’s been causing my anxiety on and off these last four years. Is it my medication? Perimenopause? Yes, but no. The question is whether or not I can get someone to actually help me with it and that would be getting me a thyroidectomy, but first, let me get other things out of the way before I get into that.

Sure enough, I was woken up four or five times today but I’m not tired, strangely enough. According to the weather forecast, the motorcycles are going to be waking me up like crazy this weekend. :-(

I’ve woken up to sawing and hammering for three days now. First, they’re doing a project behind Geri and now Geri is getting a new hatch to her crawl space. I’m sure it will take weeks too. But as much as I bitch about it, I realize it might have been worse. I would have had to deal with it longer had I gotten up earlier. But then I would just escape to the bedroom. I’m thinking of making that my permanent office because I’m tired of noise running me out of the living room. I would hear less of the freeway in the bedroom, including the fucking car stereos that can be heard mostly from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. in warmer weather.

Right after I removed Campus Games because it didn’t seem to shake Maliheh’s negative review (unless I just didn’t give it enough time to reflect the changes), someone bought a copy of Evil. Hopefully, not Maliheh or a friend of hers to show they can leave a negative review on something they actually buy. Not unless she has a friend in the UK anyway because that’s where the sale came from. Either way, if I’m going to keep making sales, then I guess I may as well leave my books up, even if I never make much money from it.

Last night I dreamed I was gazing out at either a large lake or an ocean I seemed to live by. The water was bedecked with many sailboats.

Then I dreamed I was in a bathroom in a place that might have been very close to if not right on the beach. For some reason, I didn’t close the bathroom door and Tom entered the room in which the bathroom was off of. I told him I was peeing and he said, “Oh, I’m not even looking,” and went about doing something in what might’ve been a kitchen.

Okay, on with the flareups that I’m virtually certain are what’s been causing me to have intermittent anxiety ever since I began this damn thyroid medication. It’s known as an autoimmune flareup. The more research I did last night, the more it explains a lot of things. I always forget that it wasn’t the medication itself because it’s simply the same stuff our bodies make anyway, but I knew it was awfully extreme for perimenopause. Not saying the peri isn’t to blame at all. I’m just saying I know my body and what’s normal for me and it’s been obvious to me that there has been something going on that hasn’t been properly addressed and dealt with. But as I read on, things started making more sense. For example, just the way skipping doses can help. If the problem was mostly on the peri, cutting the medication back wouldn’t give me such noticeable relief. I tell you, the symptoms are too severe to be simply a case of “bad” or “rough” perimenopause which would just keep getting worse and worse like when I didn’t cut back the first couple of years hoping I would simply “get used to it.” The severe arrhythmia and palpitations, fear and anxiety I never had before in my life, severe constipation, losing 10 pounds in a week… perimenopause alone doesn’t do this. The more I would let the flareups go on without cutting back, the longer it would take to get relief after finally cutting back. When I was at my worst the last time which was in the fall of 2015, it took me three months to recover.

Flareups involve a sudden burst of T3 which can cause you to have symptoms of thyrotoxicity without the numbers showing up on your tests. This is why I never appear to be overmedicated when they test my TSH and T4. From what I read, the burst of T3 doesn’t last long enough to show up in the types of tests that they typically do on thyroid patients. But still, when the article I read described the symptoms, I had them all. A racing heart, feeling flushed in a way that isn’t quite the same as when you have a hot flash, feeling jittery, feeling like you have “too much energy.” It was me. It was all me.

Lowering my dose would prevent the flareups from making me so anxious but it would also lower the amount of thyroid in my system more than it should. Well, I don’t want to be low on thyroid but I don’t want to suffer from this bullshit cycle anymore either. I really think my best option would be a thyroidectomy and eliminating the root cause of the problem is what should be done for me. The problem is that so many doctors want to take the easy way out and do what’s easiest for them instead of what’s best for the patient. If I can’t get A to help me, I might have to drop her until I can find someone who will, even if we have to pay for it ourselves. A thyroidectomy usually costs 5 to 7 grand. I’ve definitely had more than enough of this shit but if worse comes to absolute worse and no one wants to address and deal with the real culprit or even lower my dosage, I will skip doses when I have a flareup like I’m doing right now. Sometimes an occasional skip isn’t enough and I have to skip two or three days in a row.

I’ve read good things about thyroidectomies and never heard anyone say they regretted having it done. I think even Tammy knows someone who had it done and felt much better afterward, but again, because it’s not life-threatening, even though you sure feel like you’re going to die if it gets bad enough, I don’t know if I can get anyone to help me.

Dr. O actually told me what it was and she was the only one that brought up the flares. Not sure they ever go away, though, like perimenopause eventually goes away but I haven’t yet found anything that suggests they have any kind of set lifespan. As much as my Dr. O was a stern bitch at times that reminded me a little too much of my mother, she was a genius. Most knowledgeable and helpful doctor I ever had and I almost wish she was my PCP as well. I don’t understand why A hasn’t taken my complaints of anxiety more seriously and looked into other causes other than just perimenopause. I get that she hasn’t known me all my life and that she doesn’t live in my mind and body to know what’s normal for me and what’s not, but still. So many doctors want to take the easy way out and mask the problem rather than get rid of it altogether. I’m tired of this roller coaster and I don’t want to try to manage or mask it with things like Lorazepam and other things that could have side effects when I can simply remove the problem altogether. I know it would mean having to double my dose because I would be going from a 50% output to a 0% output, but this way I might actually be able to take the medication more consistently if I don’t have the damn flareups making me so miserable. Even the psychiatrist herself said you can sometimes still feel anxious even with psych drugs and these drugs can stop working after a while, too. So let’s prevent it from happening in the first place by going directly to the source and getting rid of the problem!

I ran and downed a couple of ibuprofen after reading an article about that helping with flares since it’s a form of inflammation, and psychological or not, it did seem to take some of the edge off the anxiety. I feel better today because I didn’t take my meds today and I’m not taking them tomorrow either so as to lower the amount of medication in my bloodstream while I’m flaring. I’ll take it on Sunday, though.

THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2018
I unpublished and then republished Campus Games. We’ll see if that shakes what I’m fairly certain is Maliheh’s comment for teasing her about using her name. LOL, it was still worth it. Maybe I can tease her about making her Socio, then she can leave a negative review on another book and I’ll do the same thing.

Maliheh never responds to the occasional email I send reminding her of my existence but I have no reason to think she doesn’t at least read them, hoping I’ll be dumb enough to say something she can hang my ass with.

Actually, it doesn’t look like it got rid of the review. Maybe because I didn’t change anything after unpublishing it. Either way, I’m torn between leaving what’s there, deleting some books, and deleting all of them. I just don’t see the point of turning something that’s fun into all this work if the profit isn’t going to be big enough to make it worth the effort. For the most part, there’s only money in writing if you’re famous or infamous and I definitely don’t want to be either one of those. It’s been a fun and interesting journey but I think for the most part, if not for the whole part, it should be what it’s always been meant to be… just a fun hobby.

I also admit I’m a touch embarrassed at the thought of some people I know reading them like Kathleen, just like I came to feel that way about my journals and became pickier about who I share them with. Between the explicit scenes and some of my older stories and the fact that I’m not the greatest storyteller, I’m a little self-conscious when it comes to the idea of certain people reading them. I should never have told just anyone that I’m an author, just like I should never have told anyone I know that I keep a journal online.

Unless people really can buy my books without me knowing it, Kathleen hasn’t bought anything, and since she hasn’t thus far, she likely never will. I think she’s more conservative than I ever realized she could be, no matter how much I may be “in her heart.”

The noise continues to be obnoxious most of the time. Loud vehicles, projects, landscaping, freeway traffic, car stereos (usually from outside the park) and plenty of plane activity. Even the nights aren’t always quiet. It’s after dark now and while I don’t usually mind the whoosh of freeway traffic, I hear the annoying buzz of planes and the occasional thumping of bass. Tonight I even get to listen to a catfight. I thought it was a couple of little kids screaming at first.

Anyway, despite the technology we have today to make things quieter, this is life in most places. Nothing I can do about it. Hell, most vehicles weren’t even this loud 50 years ago, and in some ways, this place is noisier than Phoenix was and that place was rocking. There I didn’t hear freeway traffic and car stereos throughout the night, oodles of projects or daily landscaping. Sometimes I even hear construction on the freeway being conducted in the middle of the night. I don’t think I even heard trains at night in Phoenix. I hate to think of what the world will sound like in another decade or two! I would think that by then people would have had enough and would do something about it but that’s what I thought years ago regarding car stereos. I think most people either don’t mind or don’t notice noise. The only thing I’m able to tune out at times is the whooshing of the freeway traffic because it’s a fairly consistent sound. Like I said to Tom, though, no sense in even trying to get a quieter place at this point whenever and wherever we move to. We should just focus on price and climate. Noise will be a part of my regular life for the rest of my life just like anxiety, obesity and shitty vision will be.

I was reading back on some old journal entries where Molly and her mother stalked and harassed the shit out of me online for years, following me from one site to another. You would think by now I would just laugh at some of those old memories and their immature silliness, but I actually felt a surge of anger. They’re lucky I didn’t go after them. It’s only that we were flat broke at the time that saved them from me. However, spells have long since been cast as I’ve done both consciously and not with those that have crossed me over the last couple of decades and irreversible consequences have befallen them because of it. I regret some of this and these days I definitely do prefer to simply ignore those I dislike, but sometimes we can’t call off what negative energy we may put out there.

I do take some of the responsibility, however, for using sites that didn’t have a block feature and that basically provided pathways of opportunities for them. I guess I felt that by dumping those sites altogether, I would be letting them control me and therefore they would win. I think I also wanted to provide them with a chance to really incriminate themselves at times. But these days I wouldn’t give a shit if you wrote that I was a mass murderer using my full name or even if you directly threatened me because words are just words and I’m not one to run to the cops, not that I trust them much, over stuff people say or write. Also, most sites have block features nowadays and the few that don’t, well, no site is so valuable to me that I would have to put up with anyone’s shit in order to keep using it. Unless someone were to physically force their presence on me by kicking my door down, all trolls are easy enough to avoid on almost any site, including email and phone services. So…as quickly as you unzip your mouth, I can zip it right back up for you in a heartbeat. :-)

I had a nightmare in which I’m certain something bad happened to me but I don’t remember what. It was bad enough to wake me up and it’s too bad I don’t remember so I can have a sense of what shit I might be in for that would almost certainly be some physical problem.

I do remember a dream where Bob and Virginia were supposedly in jail for many years but “jail” looked just like their house does. I don’t know what they got in trouble for but they were allowed to take their house to jail, haha.

Then there was some dream about the three of us running our hands over some bundles of yarn and marveling at how soft they were.

For now, I should quit being lazy and try to coax myself into working out because chances are I’m going to be too tired to work out tomorrow after having my sleep disturbed numerous times. I wish they would come early at 8 o’clock like they did a couple of weeks ago but I’m sure that was a fluke.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2018
I love my cousin Norma. She’s a very sweet lady and all that but damn does she drive me crazy with all the negativity! All her posts are negative and the more I get to know her, the more I’m surprised at just how judgemental she truly is. She’s just as judgemental as I can be but in a different way. She has this bleeding heart for blacks and Muslims that most “politically correct” people have these days and it just gets old. I get tired of these troublemaking groups getting so much praise and pity that most of them simply don’t deserve. I almost felt a little offended when I confided in her how I was legally discriminated against by blacks (oh, it wasn’t just in retaliation for the city complaint), and she couldn’t seem to accept that yes, whites really do sometimes get discriminated against by blacks. The media just doesn’t focus on those cases nearly as much as when it’s the other way around. I kind of get that if you haven’t experienced something firsthand it may be harder to fathom, but that doesn’t mean that these things don’t happen or that I wasn’t just as much of a victim as some of them are even though the media won’t tell you that and you might not get how that’s possible in a world that believes blacks can do no wrong… Ever.

I “snoozed” Norma for 30 days. Again, I love the woman but the constant negativity, regardless of the subject matter, has a way of bringing just about anyone down. She’s got to be pretty miserable herself. How can she not be? I realize she lost her husband which doesn’t exactly put one in a great frame of mind but she was like this before Milt died. As I learned a long time ago, the more we focus on negative things or things we can’t change, the more depressed, angry and frustrated we feel. She’s in her late 80s. I would want to spend whatever time I had left surrounding myself with goodness and positivity. But it’s her life and she has to live it as she sees fit. Meanwhile, I don’t have to hear it every day. :-) That’s what the ‘unfollow’ and ‘snooze’ buttons are for. I get that it’s human nature and that we all get a little repetitious at times, but I would still rather avoid regular negativity as much as possible.

I’m only sharing this with Tammy because I trust that she’ll keep it between us. No need to hurt anyone’s feelings when it’s easy enough to ignore people, just like some people may want to ignore me and all my rats. :-)

Aly DM’d me to say that Jase thinks she should get the transplant done but is worried she would be in the hospital for three weeks.

But if it’s going to help her in the long run, it may be a good idea. I’m not an expert and I don’t know all the details but she said that transfusions are time-consuming as well. Maybe the transplants will lessen her likelihood of having to have transfusions and other medications with nasty side effects as well.

Anyway, I’m still looking forward to meeting the highly creative, intelligent and androgynous “Agent P” come September!

TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2018
We’ve all gotten scams from phishers pretending to be from companies we’re familiar with like banks, major websites, and other things like that saying we need to log in to “verify” and update our information, but I was surprised to get what I’m pretty sure is a scam in the guise of my medical group. I was smart enough not to click the link and give out any information. Besides, this thing actually wanted me to create a new account and the link wasn’t the same as for their site. The only thing that was different about this scam was that there weren’t the usual misspellings and poor punctuation and grammar that you usually find with most scams. I’m not going to do anything about it, though. All my info is up-to-date and if it’s really them and they really want to verify my info, they can call me.

The question is why anybody would want medical info if it is a scam? That’s all that would be there. Not any credit card info but just health info. I also wonder how they knew this was my medical group. Did they just send the same thing to tons of people or is it aimed at me personally? I don’t think it’s just me but if anyone out there is that curious, I’m relatively healthy. I have Hashimoto’s, a little anxiety from perimenopause that’s getting closer to menopause, and sometimes my BP is a little high. Same with my white blood cells and cholesterol. Oh, and I’m a little heavy too, but not much right now. I’m pretty fit for one in her 50s and I rarely get colds and almost never get the flu. I’ve only puked once this millennium and had just one infection this millennium (dental). Happy now? :-)

Nothing from Amazon today. Gee, what a surprise. I’ll have to decide whether or not to temporarily unpublish the book which will delete the negative review or just leave it there since no one likes everything and it doesn’t seem to be affecting sales. No one in the arts and entertainment can please everyone so yeah, it can stay.

Something from FedEx came today although it wasn’t for us. When we Googled the address it showed our house but Google doesn’t always get it right. I took the package next door and asked if they knew who the person could be and they had no idea. Being an even number we knew it was the inner circle. Virginia asked if it was flowers or Sees Candy, saying it would be worth keeping in that case. LOL, nope. Just a car part.

Their place looked beautiful and immaculate as always, and Bob had a rifle by the door. I don’t know much about guns so it could’ve been a pellet gun or a shotgun (but then aren’t those the same thing?) Or something else. I can only say that it was long and definitely not a handgun. Or an assault rifle for that matter. Hmm… Does he have it for protection or is he a hunter? This is one of the unlikeliest places you would need to protect yourself from a home invasion and it seems too big for protection, so I’m guessing the latter.

Tom contacted FedEx who said they would pick the package up but they haven’t yet. If it’s still here late tomorrow then I’ll do their damn job for them and give it to the proper house. It’s just beyond Geri.

Wanting to see exactly whose house is up for sale down the street, we decided to walk around the circle. It is Ray’s. Yay, if he’s the one with the loud mutt that’s been annoying for years every time it’s walked. Never cared for the guy either.

Oh, the rules people love to break here. Someone further down the street has three dogs when you’re only supposed to have two here. They’re very tiny and I don’t think they’ve ever been annoying, so people can break all the rules they want as long as it doesn’t affect me. Maybe someone was visiting with one of them though I doubt it.

Again my dreams were too vague to really know what to make of them. A quick flash of me looking at a picture of feet on pointe with bright pink ballet slippers that were hanging on Tammy’s wall. Me touching an exterior wall in some living room and noticing it was warm because it was hot out.

I feel a bit wound up tonight. My heart was racing earlier, though I’m not actually being “stabbed” in the chest with anxiety. I thought part of it may have been because I was running around, lifting heavy stuff, and then it got a little warm in here as well. Or maybe it’s still the peri. The fact that my heart hasn’t raced me awake for a while and the fact that I’m sleeping better (along with how long it’s been) tells me I’m getting close to menopause. But then why do I still have some anxiety? That can’t be a good sign. I still worry that my meds are part of the problem.

Aly, who had a bone marrow biopsy a couple of years ago which she says is very painful, is hoping to avoid having to have another one. Where my white blood cell count numbers range from 11-13, hers range from 19-21. I know she’s had transfusions as well as some medication called cyclosporine. She says a bone marrow transplant is the absolute last resort as it probably wouldn’t be covered. I just hope to hell that whatever the bad things are in her blood they don’t turn into leukemia. Unfortunately, I think I read that it usually does. If that’s the case then hopefully that’s many, many years away. The hematologist I saw said that it’s something that starts up slowly then quickly escalates. But I’m 14 years older and my numbers are lower. Mine aren’t likely to get any higher. My dreams haven’t hinted at anything worth worrying about either.

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2018
Nothing like sipping a cup of Butterscotch Blondie tea while dealing with a bunch of incompetent idiots at Amazon Publishing. Yeah, the perfect way to spend the day. eye roll They replied to the message I sent asking how someone could leave a review, negative or not, on an item that didn’t yet seem to be purchased or borrowed and what do I get? A reply saying they’re forwarding my information about having the review taken down.

I didn’t ask for it to be taken down. I asked why people can review things they didn’t buy. This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten nowhere with them and left feeling frustrated. Funny too, because the whole idea of self-publishing through them was so that I wouldn’t have to deal with headaches like this. I didn’t want the pressures of contracts or someone else to do my editing for me and pick out my book covers. I wanted to go at my own pace and have more say in things without the deadlines and other bullshit. But apparently, you can’t get straight, helpful, sensible answers this way.

I finished watching the latest season of Bates Motel. It was fantastic. I try to imagine a real-life person with MPD and I just can’t do it. I don’t see how it’s possible to suddenly believe you’re all these different people while “yourself” isn’t even aware of it. To me, it seems like little more than just one big act either for fun, sympathy, or to try to get out of a bad situation like some people do that conveniently claim amnesia when questioned by the police. Amnesia is an easy scapegoat and I can see where MPD would be as well. Like blaming something on an evil twin, it just seems like a bunch of hogwash. Like I could have been someone else - anyone else - a half hour ago and not know it. Yeah, right! Really, the shrinks who fall for this shit and suggest it as a possibility are just as bad as the patients putting on these acts for whatever reason they’re putting them on for.

Now that I’m caught up on Bates Motel, I’m watching the 18th year of Law & Order SVU. The cast is getting up there in years but still looking good.

Last night I had another dream that again made me question the possibility of parallel lives, but unfortunately, I can’t remember it.

I know we sometimes have reflection dreams that are influenced by life events reflected in our dreams. Like if we worry about money, we’re likely to dream about money. But why have I had so many dream premonitions? I wonder what that’s all about and what causes these things to happen. And why are some of us more prone to them than others?

Aly and I decided to tell Kim about Curious Cat and she joined earlier. Maybe she’ll liven it up a bit even though we know she’ll ask the same old questions that she already knows the answers to. But will she send the same nasty questions she did on Ask? My guess is no. Not at this point.

I don’t know if Aly is a hypochondriac or just cursed in the health department. I’m guessing maybe both, but either way, she’s hoping not to have to have a bone marrow biopsy. It’s both painful and not likely to be covered by her insurance. Again, I can’t believe this world we live in. If you get in trouble, you get a free lawyer (a joke of one or not) but if you can’t afford life-saving medical treatment, you die. Makes me wonder… What if I’d gotten cancer when we were uninsured? Would I be dead now?

SUNDAY, MARCH 4, 2018
Got some air freshener, a round decorative rock with gold paint and sequins, and a pink gemstone-tipped pen at the dollar store. I could use the rock for hot plates and pots as well as for decoration.

We stopped at McDonald’s before the dollar store where he got a burger and I got chicken nuggets. It was good even though it was a bit of a wait.

When we came home we hemmed my new purple sweatpants with fabric glue, and other than some sawing and engine gunning, it’s been a pretty quiet day. Still a lot of loud vehicles, though. I still don’t get why there are so many. It’s so unnecessary with today’s technology yet Tom said they passed some ordinances against vehicles that are too quiet in some places for pedestrians’ safety. rolls eyes If you’re dumb enough to cross the street without looking first then you’re kind of asking to be hit.

Remember how I said several entries ago that a few people attempted to leave good reviews on my books and they wouldn’t go through? Well, apparently I’m only allowed visible reviews as long as they’re only one star. Yeah, “Written in a very elementary manner,” someone going by M wrote on Campus Games. Funny too, because when I read the half a dozen other reviews they’ve left, most of which are also one star, they weren’t exactly a very good writer themselves given their lack of punctuation and caps.

Kind of wonder if it’s Maliheh or someone connected to her. She wasn’t a reader but that’s the thing; you don’t have to actually purchase the item in order to review it.

Either way, I get that everyone gets negative reviews at times and I’m okay with that because I don’t think negative feedback is going to affect my sales one way or the other any more than positive feedback because I’m not famous…or infamous.

I replied with: I’m sorry you didn’t like the book. No one’s ever said (at least to me) that I write in an elementary manner, and I’m pretty sure Amazon wouldn’t publish me if they felt that I did, but I understand that one style doesn’t fit all and that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. Still, I thank you very much for giving it a try!

I got to thinking about the negative book review and then it hit me… How does someone leave a review on a book that hasn’t had any purchases or borrows yet, according to my book reports? Campus Games is a newly released book. Maybe if it’s lent to someone the buyer knows it can escape my reports or something like that? I don’t know, but out of curiosity, I sent a message to Amazon asking if it’s possible that not every borrow or lend shows up on my report.

I’m really starting to suspect it could be Maliheh. They go by just “M,” they have no profile picture, and the few things that have been reviewed by them do seem like things she may get. The poor writing style fits in with her as well. The first review goes back to last August.

But if it’s her, why that book and not the one she inspired? Maybe the idea was to “punish” me with negative feedback for the email I sent her teasing her about using her real name in Evil, and to throw me off her scent by leaving the review on a different book. It’s not important either way but being the naturally curious person that I am, I can’t help but wonder if it’s someone I know. The biggest mystery is how the hell they reviewed something that’s not showing up on my reports. I wish Amazon wouldn’t allow anything to be reviewed without a verified purchase.

Anyway, if this was an honest-to-god review and not just someone messing with me, I will admit that I first wrote this particular story in 2004 when I wasn’t as experienced as a writer as I am now. But I thought I did some pretty serious editing on it before submitting it.

Anyway, it’s been absolutely freezing. I feel like I’ve been freezing my ass off for many months. I wish it would hurry the fuck up and warm up already! It is going to be warm enough for motorcycles next weekend which sucks because I’m going to be sleeping in at that time as I flip my schedule for my appointments. Chances are I’m going to be woken up that day and probably Friday too when the trash and green waste trucks make their way in. I swear I’m never again going to have a bedroom so close to a busy street or any street for that matter! As I was telling Tammy, forget trying to find quiet. Quiet just wasn’t meant to be for me. But I can definitely do better than this and no possible friendship with Kathleen is worth sticking around for. I don’t even know what “let’s keep in touch” means. Does it mean “let’s get together once or twice a month” or “send me a Christmas card every year to let me know how the year was for you?” Tom thinks it’s the latter. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m fine with whatever she wants. I’m just tired of being cold so much of the time!

But not as tired as I am of the anxiety. I started to feel it well up in my chest earlier, but a cup of Sleepytime seemed to help it. Tom thinks it’s simply because it’s Sunday night and I wish he were right, but if it’s anxiety over anything that’s going on, then why didn’t I have this feeling when we were struggling financially? I know it’s tied in with either the medication or the perimenopause, I just don’t know which one is most responsible for this shitty feeling. Maybe all those articles really have a point too, when they talk about how fast food and sugary treats induce anxiety. I’ve had two candy bars these last two days, plus I went to McDonald’s.

Now I’m going through the dilemma of whether or not I should skip tomorrow or just see if I can tough it out and see how bad it ends up getting. If I could just tough it out, I could lose an easy 5 to 10 lb. But there is no reasoning with myself once it gets to the point where my heart is racing and I’m terrified. Once it goes from a shitty feeling to a scary one, I’m pretty much fucked and it’s no way to live. I’d rather gain weight than go through that. So I guess I might skip tomorrow or at least cut my waiting time in half.

Another dilemma I’ll be facing in June is whether or not to tell A that I’m going to skip weekly to prevent this from happening in the first place or ask that she lower my dose.

If I can make it to the end of the month without a period then that will mean I’ve had just one in 9 months. Really wish I could get to November without any periods because then I’ll know for sure if it’s the meds or not making me anxious. It will be interesting to see what my estrogen levels are when I’m tested in June. I keep going back and forth in my mind between the causes. Both the meds and the peri make sense but they also don’t.

While I’m on the subject of life’s little mysteries, how about peeling back in time to 1996? Pretty sure they said in court it was something like 1996 or 7 that I sent the freeloaders the threatening letter but that they didn’t have enough evidence to go after me then. Then how does sending journal excerpts suddenly turn an incident that’s lacking in evidence into an incident that has sufficient evidence???

I’ve been feeling more and more alienated by Tammy even though I know I shouldn’t. For all I know she doesn’t contact many others any more than she does me, and with us not having much in common and her not being the greatest writer and therefore easy to understand, it’s probably better this way. But how much does she really want me around? As in near where she lives? Maybe the fact that she doesn’t pester me online shows that she wouldn’t do that in person either. It’s just that she can’t get from me online what she could get from me in person. She had me babysit for her, for example, those few months I lived in Connecticut. Had the Internet existed then, she couldn’t have used me to babysit online. The only way to know what she’s going to do is to live close to her if we do.

When Alexa told me that Ocala was 40° last night, that pretty much got that place off the table of possibilities. That’s almost as cold as it is here. It was 55° in Cape Canaveral and 59° where Tammy lives as well as in Fort Lauderdale. Now that’s more like it! It really would be best to get as close to the coast as we can afford and not go too far north.

I was quick to say we probably couldn’t afford the high-rise apartments on the beach my parents lived near while we were looking for a place and deciding exactly what town/city to settle in, but maybe we could if it included utilities.

I also wonder… Is Tammy’s place really that much quieter than this place or does she just not notice noise as easily as I do? I’m very hyper-aware of sounds. I didn’t hear anything the times I was visiting but I was only there for a tiny fraction of the time she is. Maybe we just have different definitions of what’s noisy and what’s not because she said there were some trucks that use diesel but because they’re going so slow they’re not that loud. Well, they sure are loud enough here even when they’re sitting there idling. I realize that everybody has their own tolerance levels when it comes to noise. Obviously, most people don’t mind loud car stereos otherwise they wouldn’t still exist after all these years. But when I hear them booming down the freeway, I most certainly do notice them, deaf in one ear or not, and I definitely consider it noisy. Most people might have considered all the frogs in Auburn ribbiting up a storm after a rainstorm to be a noise nuisance, and while they were definitely just as loud as Jesse’s mutts, they didn’t bother me in the least.

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2018
Got some new flavored teas I’m looking forward to trying like chocolate, butterscotch, and Vermont maple ginger.

Right now I’m waiting till my vegan spinach pizza is ready and totally agree with Tom that it will be nice to have Amazon deliver groceries once that becomes available in Citrus Heights. Walmart is constantly going out of stock and there are always issues with their system. You would think they would be able to afford to be more functional and consistent but I guess they just don’t care to be. For now, we may check into Raley’s home delivery service even though Raley’s is more expensive.

Again I mulled over in my mind all the pros and cons of moving while he still working versus waiting until he’s retired. The smart thing to do would definitely be to wait until he’s retired, but like most people, we don’t always do what’s smart.

I have two dilemmas I’m facing. To do smart or stupid, and to do close to Tammy versus not so close. This may be a horrible thing to say, but a part of me wishes she would die now so she would not only stop suffering but also so that I wouldn’t have such a hard decision to make.

Haven’t heard much from Tammy since she last picked up my messages about a week ago. She usually only picks them up once a week. I still wonder if she gets them all to begin with because I asked her about her test before the last time she picked up my messages and still haven’t gotten a response. Oh well. She will update me when she’s ready. The dreams I had a while back about her really don’t surprise me much. People don’t just suddenly up and lose their appetite for shits and giggles. I’m guessing it’s a side effect of some medication she’s on, and she’s practically on a whole pharmacy’s worth. Plus there was that dream even further back where she was really frail. I know I told her about it, too. At 60, she’ll likely live for another 20-25 years, so hopefully they’ve been able to find something to lessen her pain so she can be more active. The weight loss should help with that.

That loud car has been coming around more after not being around for weeks. I hope it isn’t thinking of returning anytime soon.

Alexa lost her mind yesterday and wouldn’t listen when I commanded her to turn the lights on in certain rooms and then I found her trending on Facebook, so I knew they were having issues. They fixed it soon enough, but in the meantime, Tom said he was considering turning lights on and off from his phone when he was at work as a prank on me. LOL, I thought only I considered pranks like that.

Texted with my bestie yesterday and noticed it didn’t even feel like there had been a nearly two-year gap in our friendship. We carried on as usual and it was nice. I definitely missed her and would look at my phone with a sense of loneliness during that gap.

Was running journals through Grammarly when I came across the time I surprised Kim from jail with a letter. Remembering that she was released in January of 2017, I ran her name out of curiosity, and sure enough, she went back in last fall for another 3-year stint and won’t be out until 2021, 2022 at the latest. Same shit… narcotics. She’s lost weight and looks horrible as do most druggies.

Now, this is someone who genuinely wants to be in prison. This is her third time in that I know of and she’s now 40 years old. She’s got to have spent around half of her adult years locked up. It’s sad but true that many people prefer the prison life where they don’t have to worry about bills and where everything is done for them despite their loss of freedom and options. She probably found it very hard to make her own decisions when she was last out being so used to having them made for her and struggling to survive on her own. After all, as a career criminal, you can’t exactly get a decent job anywhere. I feel bad for the two kids she said she had (probably has more by now) because she basically chose crime over them.

Last night I dreamed that it was late at night and Maliheh was driving me home. Andy was with us. We were all sitting in the front seat with her at the wheel and Andy between us. I had an apartment somewhere and when I got to my building, I had to punch in a four-digit code in order to activate the elevator that would bring me to my apartment. But once I got to the keypad I realized I’d forgotten the code. I was pissed because it was too late for the office to be open that was on the ground floor.

Strangely enough, when I woke up in real life, Tom was asking me what the four-digit code was for one of our tablets.

In the second dream, I also didn’t seem to know Tom but my parents were still alive. I was telling Andy over the phone that I won 33 million dollars and that the dream house I always wanted was going to happen. I just didn’t know where or when. I was to meet with my parents in some building that night to pick up the money which was to be in bundles of cash. At that time I planned to surprise each family member with a million bucks of their own.

Gia’s (I have the Gia head on this month) make-up remover arrived today and I am totally amazed by how well it works! Really thought the stain on her leg from the lipstick I put on her nails would be permanent. With Tom’s help, we removed most of it from her nails focusing mainly around the cuticle area, and then I applied gorgeous bright neon falsies. The ring fingers have colorful fractals swirl accents, and the rest are bright orange like those cones they put in the street when they’re going to do road construction or something. They really show up well, even in dim lighting. These look much better on her than the black matte nails with the silvery accents. Those are what I’m going to be wearing to my appointments in a few weeks.

Kim is still ranting about her bossy sister-in-law and spineless sister and what a pain in the ass it is to watch their new dog and her two-year-old niece. Her niece’s mother just had a baby boy, so the girl is staying with them for a few days and Kim’s not too happy about it. I don’t know if she just doesn’t like kids or if she’s jealous of the attention it takes away from her or what. I would think she would want the attention taken away from her, especially since the sister-in-law threatened to break her computer if she breaks any of the collectibles in the hutch. She went on quite a long angry rant in her journal and Aly sometimes gets sick of hearing the same shit from her and how she never contacts her just to say hi. Kim seems to be hounded for everything… Her noises, whatever those may be. Going up and down stairs on one leg, however possible that may be. Being clumsy. Lying. Not cleaning properly…

Aly has various health issues, mainly eczema-related, but is otherwise doing okay.

Kathleen is still a bit of a mystery to me. I still wonder what the catch is. Why am I suddenly “allowed” to have someone like her in my life? She’s either going to change her mind or we’re going to move when and if she really does mean it when she says she wants to keep in touch and that I’m “in her heart,” LOL. If she’s waiting until she’s officially retired so that there is no longer any business connection between us, then that may very well be close to when we’re moving. I always thought it an odd coincidence that anyone I really like seems to move if we don’t. Well, if there is anything up there controlling how close I get to any of these people, then she’s either going to pull away from me or not contact me for nonbusiness reasons until we’re gone or close to it. Since we’re probably going to choose stupid over smart, we could be out of here in 2019, the year she retires.

Tammy is also a mystery. She’s healthy enough to log in almost every day on Facebook and sometimes she sounds perfectly normal when we talk. I guess I have no reason to assume she can’t make it well into her 70s and maybe even her 80s. Unless a heart attack sneaks up on her anytime soon, which isn’t likely since they’re monitoring her closely, or she gets aggressive cancer that takes off quickly, I would think she still has many years ahead, painful or not.

Tom is also doing his best to cut his sugar intake back and he is once again back on the Bowflex.

Been sampling my new flavored teas today. I’d give the Vermont maple ginger about a 5 or 6. The chocolate is about a 7, and the butterscotch is a definite 9, almost 10.

We didn’t do too much today because it’s good for us to take a day off on weekends when we can. Tomorrow we need to go out and pick some things up that Walmart didn’t have, plus the rats need more treats. We’ll probably eat out along the way, too.

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2018
Be it for ethical or dietary reasons, when I think of vegans I think of them not eating meat, but then I realize it’s more than just that. They also don’t have cheese, milk or eggs. Anything from animals is forbidden. I think I’m too metabolically fucked for a vegan diet to cause me to lose weight but I’m definitely interested in giving it a try for a while for its overall health benefits. If it can improve my cholesterol and reduce anxiety when I have it, why not? I won’t do it forever because I couldn’t give up meat for the rest of my life any more than I could give up sugar for the rest of my life, but I’ll try most things once at least for a while. The only thing I won’t eliminate is my coffee creamer.

So I guess I will be making this my last non-vegan week and will continue to do research and get recipe ideas. The thing is that I hate to cook. However, vegan recipes may be a little less complicated and not as time-consuming. Chai pancakes? Hmm… Sounds interesting!

Except for yogurt, I’ve never been big on dairy, especially milk, because it makes my stomach gassy. I may have to take Beano in order to handle the beans and roughage better if I’m going to be having more of that kind of thing. Either way, I will be looking for plant-based ideas and thinking beans, seeds, nuts, fruits, veggies and tofu.

During yesterday’s wind-driven rain, I heard a loud crash but when I ran outside and checked around the house, I didn’t see anything. Nothing seemed to have fallen inside the house either.

Although still cloudy and cool, it cleared up enough today that I could walk down to the lake. A small tree got taken out in the storm down there because someone was cutting it up. They’re also trimming the palm tree in back by the house that’s for sale. There’s always something going on around here when it’s not storming, but the air cleaner that’s sitting on the desk helps to drown some of it out.

It could rain anytime until midnight and it’s supposed to be rainy tomorrow, too.

My incense and color-changing nail polish arrived. Not all that impressed with the polish but I got an awesome selection of incense and she threw in some extras just like she did last time. The only ones I don’t care for are Yucca and Sage. Their version of Opium and Wet Kisses are to die for. Witch Doctor, Strawberry Fields, Egyptian Musk and so many others are awesome. Someone asked what Obama smells like, and it’s got a very rich woodsy smell.

Last night I dreamed that Stacey bought me a bedroom furniture set. I don’t know why but it was supposedly a gift for doing her some kind of favor. There was a tall dresser, a long dresser, and then a nightstand that we chose to put in an office somewhere. I was looking for my camera to take pictures of the furniture setup that I wanted to show her on Facebook, but couldn’t seem to find my camera.

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2018
Woke up to lots of rain and wind today. I can hear the wind howling at times but this is just what our drought-stricken state desperately needs. I love how quiet things are because of it, too. Even the traffic is quiet.

I pushed my potted cactus into the rain for a while.

As much as we may need the rain and as much as I like the quiet it brings, I really do miss the heat and swimming and all that stuff. I miss running around barefoot in shorts and tank tops. I hate being confined to long sleeves, robes, slippers, and hoodies. The less I have to wear, the better.

The only dream I remember from last night was Tom waiting for me in a parked car out in a rural area. It looked like he was parked alongside a cornfield or a wheat field of some kind. I was walking through a narrow path between the tall grasses and heading to the paved road that the car was sitting on. As I stepped out of the clearing, I glanced to the right and saw a brown bear about 30 feet away. By some miracle, I managed not to freak out as I casually but quickly made my way to the car which was on my left about 20 feet away. I was able to get into the car without the bear giving chase. Once I shut the door I shouted for him to go, and he looked up from something he had been reading and asked why. I looked out the windshield and saw that the bear was gone.