April 2018 in 2010s

MONDAY, APRIL 30, 2018
I’m deeply disturbed by the caravan of immigrants in Mexico trying to seek asylum in the US. Again, why must it always fall on us to pick up the pieces when some other country has a crisis? I could be politically correct or I could be realistic, and well, I know most people are politically correct and therefore would consider me heartless, and while I do realize that there are some totally innocent victims caught up in this mess, our country doesn’t need to take on any more responsibility. We have enough responsibility taking care of our own and we don’t need outsiders draining our resources even more, many of which will simply laze around on welfare while getting into who knows what kind of criminal activity. It would be my husband’s hard-earned tax dollars that will help pay for that, free medical care, and all kinds of other freebies. And your tax dollars. So for both economic and safety reasons, we need to just look out for ourselves for once.

Yesterday we glue-hemmed a couple of pairs of my pants. The purple sweatpants that I got in size medium and my jeans.

I know this is life in 98% of the country and if you’re not in that 2% you’re lucky, but I’m tired of hearing car stereos thumping in this house. Most of them aren’t from inside the park, but it just gets old year after year and seeing no laws enacted to control it.

Went to Dairy Queen yesterday after deciding we would simply order the oven online that we want from Best Buy even though it won’t be here until early June, and splurged on Blizzards. Today I have been paying dearly for that mistake but I think my stomach is finally over it, LOL. I’ve always been sensitive to dairy and even a small Blizzard has quite a bit in it and I ate the whole thing.

Ironically, however, changing the time of day I take my meds is causing me to lose weight because it takes 4 hours to empty out the stomach, then I have to wait another half hour after taking my pill before I can eat. So that 4.5-hour haul without food is a long one. In the final hour last night, my stomach was growling like crazy.

Still treating my ear and still lightheaded. I’ve only done a few treatments so far, though, and anything is better than anxiety. Since switching back to my old brand I haven’t been anxious, but I’m sure it will be back to torture me sooner or later. Let’s just hope that this time it’s later instead of sooner.

By the middle of next month, I will make a decision as to whether or not I want to switch doctors. I like the idea of a doctor that’s closer but I don’t know if they would help me any more than mine has, and I kind of didn’t want to have to start over with a new doctor until we moved.

Gotta order groceries at the end of the week. We find that different stores are good for getting different things. Stores like Sam’s Club and Amazon are good for bulk items, Walmart is cheaper, and Raley’s is most convenient.

I resurrected my old Ask account just for fun and got asked a question about some comedian being accused of racist comments, as is everyone’s obsession these days. It’s just fucking ridiculous but rather than go on a rant about it, I immediately thought of Andy because that’s something he would ask me, knowing it would bother me. But when I Googled his question I found it was asked of others as well, so now I’m thinking it probably wasn’t him because last I knew, he never had any interest in using Ask to keep in touch with others. It was just our playground like my main Twitter account is just to keep in touch with Aly and Kim.

The only thing I remember from dreams last night was that I made an appointment with Dr. O for some reason and then I was trying to take a dump in a toilet stall that was less than private as the door was too small.

SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2018
LOL, my neighbors are so funny at times. I stepped out yesterday to bring in the recycle bin after it was dumped. Jon and Carolyn were leaving at the time and Jon goes, “Can’t you wheel that thing any quieter?”

LMAO!

Got him back this morning when the four of us were leaving. I don’t know where they were going but we were going to Walmart, and I called across the street to him, “Can’t you close those car doors any quieter?”

Haha. :-)

We grabbed a few things from Walmart that Raley’s didn’t have or that I forgot to get from them and Tom’s out whacking weeds now.

He pulled the oven out a bit because we needed to know if it was plugged into an outlet or if it was hardwired. There’s an outlet. Now we need to find out if we have to buy a new gas hose or if the installer’s going to have one. We still haven’t picked the oven out yet. We’re going to Best Buy tomorrow to look at ovens but the one we want may not be in stock. That’s fine, though. The thing has been here for 35 years. Another month won’t matter.

It seems I’ve traded in anxiety for lightheadedness upon returning to my old brand. Anything is better than anxiety but can’t I just have nothing for a while? Just a little while?

Tried acupuncture for it which is basically pressing what they call the third eye for a couple of minutes but it didn’t help.

Last night I dreamed I was swimming in the ocean in Hawaii. Now that’s a dream waiting to become a reality! :-) Yes, next year or the year after we will be returning to Hawaii for what will probably be the last time.

I also dreamed that I happened to walk into Andy’s place. In the dream, he moved to the area and lived in an apartment on the ground floor of a large building. I was in the neighborhood, saw his door wide open, and walked into his place. He glanced up at me from the desk chair he sat in by his computer and said, “You’re making my dream come true.”

I took this to mean he had been hoping I would re-enter his life because he missed me. I told him we had plans to move to SoCal and then we began walking somewhere and chatting as if no time had passed since our last chat.

In reality, I’d leave the country before I moved to SoCal. Also, while I do miss Andy, I don’t miss the problems we had.

FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2018
I got the cool idea to add a touch of color with some old fake flowers in a large pot outdoors that contains my cactus plant (as well as tons of weeds) and it looks kind of cool.

Yesterday I exchanged hello’s with Bob while I was at it. He said he hasn’t seen much of me. With the weather warming up, he should see more of me as I’ll be out and about more often.

Then I was invited over for a while this morning when I took a post-it over with the answer to Bob’s question. He was dumping some trash when I spotted him and said hello to him yesterday. He walked over and we started talking and then he asked me what kind of tree was one of the ones growing towards the middle of that side of our property. I had no idea, so this morning I took a picture of it, uploaded it to Google so I could hunt for similar images, and I’m pretty sure it’s a Lauraceae from the Laurel family. Sometimes it has berries on it and other times it has these tiny little white flowers.

Bob is pretty quiet but Virginia is a very chatty person. We were talking about health issues and she said that she has a daughter-in-law with some kind of colitis problem (I don’t remember the word she used in front of colitis) and she too, had way more problems when they switched brands on her. She said until then they would never have thought brands would make a difference. Yeah, neither would I until all hell broke loose a week after the new thyroid pill brand.

Virginia cracks me up. When I said the anxiety, yes, but I wasn’t sure that the lightheadedness and going from hot to cold was connected to my medication, she goes, “You’re going through menopause.”

OMG, really? LOL

We were talking about how I prefer to resort to natural remedies for anxiety since prescription drugs have side effects, stop working, or make you want to kill yourself. She laughed when I told her, “Don’t take Prozac unless you want to kill yourself four days later.” It may sound funny, but true even though it typically doesn’t do this to adults. Prozac thought I was a kid. ;-|

We talked about some of the neighbors and they said this is the third or fourth time the “Twenties” have had work done on their roof. Yeah, I think they’re project junkies of sorts, but the roofing project turned out to be a lot quieter than I expected. If anything, I heard loud vehicles a lot more than I heard anything else. The automated ramp they use to haul up the equipment was kind of cool, and I was remembering what a disaster it was when Tom did our roof down in Arizona in 1999. I wondered if a new garage was next, but like ours, their carport is too narrow.

So I described them as a bit conservative but with a great sense of humor, and Virginia was remembering when they had their Trump sign up and all that (she wanted Hillary, too) and then, not wanting to stay too long and keep them from whatever, I teased her about visiting the rats and said I was going to do laundry.

Then Bob looks at her and goes, “Have you figured out what we’re going to do today yet?”

Haha.

Virginia said they’ll be planting tomatoes on the corner again and to help myself if I want any. That’s nice of her but I prefer cherry or grape tomatoes that I don’t have to cut up.

I had a hilarious dream involving Aly and Kim. It was a refreshing change from nightmares and a mishmash of senseless mumbo-jumbo. Aly got a kick out of it but I haven’t checked in yet today with Kim.

I went to visit Kim and then Aly arrived a little later. We were all to have one big slumber party and sleep in Kim’s bed in her bedroom. The only negative thing was that Aly didn’t seem too happy to see me. There was someone else present that she was chatting to and she seemed annoyed by my presence. I wondered if it had something to do with my appearance, even though I know she wouldn’t judge a friendship in real life based on someone’s looks. But I was self-conscious as I realized I had my hair pulled up in a high ponytail which made my face look fatter and showed off my ugly ear. I also forgot to put any makeup on.

When bedtime came I found Kim in the middle of the bed and Aly to the left. I was a little dismayed because I would have preferred to sleep next to Aly instead of Kim. Having barely half a foot of space on the bed, I wondered if I should sleep on the floor. Better yet I wondered if I would get any sleep at all because they said they were getting up in just a few hours. A woman appeared (Kim’s sister?) and said she was going to the airport and would be happy to bring me there so I could see about going home early if I wanted to. I agreed to go but then Tom was suddenly there and he fell asleep on their couch.

Then it was back to quick snippets of senseless dreams. Me leaning back on a public toilet and putting my feet up on toilet paper holders and sanitary boxes so I could masturbate, me running at night in an upper-story apartment to the edge of it (it had a slider but no balcony) to watch a helicopter land.

Then I held a piece of paper up over my head and lost my grip on it. Instead of the paper falling to the floor it got swept up in the breeze from the ceiling fan and then thrown down behind a dresser. Tom went to move the dresser and I was worried and then relieved Joy, who was standing on it, didn’t fall and break. I picked the doll up and held it on my lap as I sat watching him fetch the paper and then replace the dresser.

Then I was walking into what I guess was my bedroom as some people who were in their 20s were leaving. As they exited, one of them placed a few pieces of scrap paper with gibberish scribbled on them on my bed.

“These are yours,” I said as I picked them up.

“No, yours,” some guy said.

Sarcastically I said, “Oh, yes, I need these.”

Another day of whiny blacks who see racism in everything like this statue that suddenly has to go after 100+ years. When blacks say jump, we do. Isn’t it time to put our foot down and say enough is enough already? What do we do when they cry racism over the oceans? Run and suck them up with giant straws? Enough is enough of this bullshit!

It’s about time someone black and famous was convicted of the crimes they were guilty of, quite unlike O.J. Simpson, Chris Brown, Michael Jackson and others. Hopefully, this will send a message letting famous black criminals know that the courts aren’t going to give them a break simply because their ancestors were discriminated against years ago. But will he do a day’s time? I doubt it. This is still a start, though. I’m tired of blacks being favored!

THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2018
I’m back on the Sandoz brand that has the oblong pills. It says it’s generic for Levoxyl. I took it before bed yesterday and right now I feel what I would describe as borderline.

I had trouble falling asleep yesterday because I had so many unanswered questions running through my mind. What other drug can I take to treat my condition without making me anxious? How much of it is the medication as opposed to perimenopause? Should I get a new doctor? Should I ask about having the gland removed so it can’t throw T3 parties on me? Is there ever an end to this shit either way? I totally cannot take another 4 years of this shit. I just can’t! Sometimes I’m feeling great and other times I’m being stabbed in the chest with waves of anxiety. There are other things I don’t understand, too. Why did some of the side effects of this drug stop while others started so late in the game? Why did the booming heart stop and then why did I start getting waves of anxiety in the chest a year and a half ago? Even the “butterflies” in the stomach stopped after a while, and when I’m anxious these days, my heart isn’t usually racing, believe it or not.

I think if worse comes to absolute worse, and it might, I’m simply going to have to stop the medication altogether. This is no way to live. The hypo symptoms themselves were much more tolerable than the anxiety. I may gain a million pounds and shorten my life, but I would rather a shorter more comfortable life than a longer life of suffering. The only way to end this may be to stop the medication altogether if there isn’t any other alternative that will work for me. All I know is that I’m very susceptible to side effects and I usually get most of whatever side effects a drug has to offer. As Stacey said, you can still have feelings of anxiety with psych meds, and as the shrink said, many of them stop working after a while. So I still don’t see any point in adding additional side effects for a temporary calm. I would still rather get rid of whatever is causing my anxiety in the first place. If I’m wrong and it’s mostly on the perimenopause, obviously I can’t just “get rid of” my hormones, but I can get rid of the medication if need be. For some of us, medication isn’t always the best answer. That’s why I’m not on the cholesterol medication I need and the blood pressure medicine I might need.

Although it was with much distraction because of how shitty I’ve felt on and off, I managed to win CampNano but not by much. I just busted over the word count but once I get it fleshed out and edited it will probably add more to the word count. If I had decent publishers I doubt I would submit it to them because I’m not sure I like how it came out.

Oh wow. Just wow! All of a sudden the anxiety released its grip like someone hanging from a rope that snapped and I feel a wonderful calm now. Please let it last for more than five minutes! Taking proactive steps anyway with a cup of chamomile. :)

I had a dream that Paula called and I seemed to be talking to her while sitting in a parked car that might have been abandoned or simply not used. It was very windy out and leaves were blowing against the windows of the car.

Then I had a dream I was walking down a street where a guy was working on a car in the middle of the street. Then a large van or truck came by and ran over his foot. Ouch!

I was running some of the Oregon journals through Grammarly when I burst out crying at one point. We may have lived in a shitty climate, rented shitty places, and our lives may not have been perfect, but I do miss some aspects of our lives there and the perspective I had on life back then. Some things were still a bit new and exciting, I didn’t need any medication, I wasn’t so fucking fat (even though most still describe me as “tiny”), I had so much fun winning things before social media came and ruined it all, I wasn’t as blind, I couldn’t keep a schedule but could sleep a little better, I didn’t know what real suffering was, I didn’t have the fears and insecurities I have now, I had a libido, I had hope and could see more possibilities for the future, etc.

It just seemed that life was a bit simpler back then. The town was so small you could walk or take the bus everywhere and we didn’t bother registering the truck we had. Tom had just a six-minute walk to work even if he would fall on the ice and nearly kill himself with his shitty balance, LOL.

Well, I would never want to go back there because things wouldn’t be the same and I still hate extreme cold and snow, but in some ways, those may always be some of the best years of our lives.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2018
Yesterday I ended up feeling wonderfully normal after a few shaky hours at the beginning of my day, mostly because I was afraid of what I might be in for.

Today I’m doing okay with very faint traces of anxiety so far. As funny as it may sound I almost wish I would get hit with it hard so it may help convince me that maybe Tom’s theory is right and that it really is mostly on the perimenopause. But I can’t make it be caused by what I want it to be caused by. It is what it is, and I totally believe the bulk of it is on the meds. What I’m feeling is residual traces of it because it’s not a short-acting drug. It doesn’t leave the system in 12 to 24 hours. That’s why it took a few months for me to recover when I got really bad.

The only thing that doesn’t make sense is the changing symptoms. Why did this particular type of anxiety not start until a year and a half ago? What made the booming heart stop?

The racing, booming heart stopped, the butterflies in the stomach stopped, and I would like to think this will stop too, but it’s been going on too long to be very hopeful.

The frequency of high BP readings isn’t good but oh well.

The bulk of my problems yesterday was all the fucking noise. I still can’t believe that a retirement community could be this fucking noisy! Noisiest place I ever lived in the West. Well, it’s about as noisy as the apartments but in some ways, it’s noisier than the house in Phoenix. The dogs, brats and car stereos there weren’t as consistent as the steady stream of daytime noise here is. I think it really helped to be on concrete and have brick walls too. Being elevated and having wooden walls really allows the loud vehicles to rumble and vibrate throughout the place. At least the last time around I was only woken up once instead of twice but still…

So the Twenties, who are regular little project junkies (they just hire people to do their projects for them), are redoing half of their roof. I don’t know why the last lady would only do half of it, but only half of it is newer. So they’re redoing it before they get leaks. It’s a company called Thompson Roofing that has a good reputation. We’ll keep them in mind if we decide to do our roof. What’s weird is that they only worked during the morning yesterday. They have another day or two of work to do, though.

I didn’t know this but after I mentioned us possibly going to Hawaii next January, Carolyn said she was a travel agent and to let her know if we need brochures.

I was actually more annoyed by the cable company than by the Twenties. If they stayed up the hill doing whatever it was they were doing there, it wouldn’t be so bad. But they had this thunderously loud truck going back and forth like crazy and it’s totally annoying as fuck. Didn’t see any evidence of what they were working on during our walk, but I’m sure they’ll be back for many days to come. There is always, always something going on here. Projects in the street, projects by the park, home renovations, landscaping galore. God, it gets old! It’s so distracting and some days I just want to hear nothing at all and to live my life in peace without all the damn annoyances. But I know that we’re just going to get the same shit no matter where we go and I just have to remind myself that like it or not, this is how it’s going to be for the rest of my 20 to 30 years.

Tom didn’t get a chance to pick out an oven because he had to work super late and today he’s going to be stopping at Walmart to pick up our prescriptions. Not sure if I’ll be back on my old brand today or tomorrow because I don’t know if I’ll be up when he gets in. Maybe he’ll get a chance to look on Thursday since Friday we’ll be getting groceries delivered.

I think I’ll go make a board on Pinterest dedicated to Keisha Castle-Hughes. She’s between boring and hot. She actually reminds me of one of the fictitious characters in one of my books.

With less than 1000 words to go, I should win CampNano today.

TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2018
In doing more and more research on Levothyroxine, I’m learning two things. One is that my being led to believe it’s a very safe drug with no side effects is total BS since it DOES indeed have very real side effects. The other thing is how blind the doctors are. Or at least how blind they pretend to be. I still don’t understand their ignorance and refusal to address these side effects when every single site that lists the side effects of drugs says the same things, some even more than others. Do they think these things are there for decoration? The fact that thyroid medication is the number one prescription dispensed is another indication that all these doctors can’t be that stupid.

Some of the side effects I read up on are ones I didn’t even know were side effects, and now it makes me wonder. I’ve noticed I’ve become more heat intolerant, for example, but wrote it off as just being fatter, older, and no longer used to the blazing desert heat. But now I don’t know. This is listed as a side effect along with vision issues and even lightheadedness. So now I’m even more confused as to what could be causing what, and I also realize that this drug may be messing me up more than I realized. It may be doing a lot more to me than just making me anxious.

I love how it says that if you think you’re having any of these side effects, tell your doctor. Why? So they can say it’s not the medication? What’s the point of reaching out to doctors for help if they’re not going to help you? The only so-called help you may get in this case is a referral to a shrink so they can give you drugs to mask the side effects rather than deal with tackling the problem at the source. Yet psych pills can only make things worse if they don’t stop working altogether at some point.

Tom and I both agree that the JSP brand they switched me to has been making things worse. It’s too coincidental that a week after I start the shit, things go to hell after I had been doing the best I’d done in a long time and was about to break records with the anxiety. I went back and combed through last year’s journal and found that I only made 3 skips since the end of August. Tomorrow I will have my old brand back, Sandoz. I will still have some problems on it, just not as ferocious as I have been having. God, I sure hope not anyway!

I appreciate the person who recommended I ask my doctor about Liothyronine, another form of this drug that I’ve never heard of that comes in pills or injections, on an entry I made a few days ago. I see it has some similar but fewer side effects.

I will definitely mention it to whatever doctor I see, and I still don’t know if I’m going to see a new one or not. A part of me thinks it would be a waste of time to keep my old one since I’m not getting anywhere with her, but I figure a new one would just pull the same shit on me. Especially if I’m right about them having this little protocol and it does seem like that’s the case. Therefore, why bother breaking in a new doctor? I would prefer not to do that until I leave the state if I can help it.

I was surprised but glad to hear that Tom’s coworker is doing better. So she may have been anxious for other reasons.

I doubt it but I sometimes wonder if the occasional headaches I get and my rash might also be caused by my meds. Lichen planus is likely a separate thing though, and it actually began before I was even diagnosed.

But do I get light-headed because of my ears or the perimenopause or is it something else? We know my carotid artery isn’t blocked so I don’t know what to think anymore. I just know that this medication has turned my life inside out and upside down and made it a living hell given the physical and psychological torture I’ve endured on and off for the last 4 years, and yes, that’s along with real perimenopause symptoms as well.

Yesterday I had my first obvious hot flash in a while. What’s weird was that I hadn’t had my medication yet I still became anxious for 4 hours after I’d been up 8 hours. If that trend continues I’ve got about 45 minutes of calm left. Going to take some preventive measures by downing a cup of Sleepytime tea. So as I was saying, I had a few hours of anxiety yesterday, took my pill at the end of the day, and then I slept shittily. Not because of the pill but because fucking traffic woke me up twice, and then the neck knockers woke me up because I forgot to do my ear so I had to get up and do that. Initially, I had trouble falling back asleep after the first vehicle woke me up and I took a baby Benadryl to help me sleep better.

The speed bumps are part of the reason traffic is such a nightmare here besides the fact that I’m so close to such a busy road in such a massive park. Fucking UPS crashes right into the speed bumps without even bothering to slow down. But the world is a noisy place. Not going to sleep much better anywhere else.

Today I was afraid to wake up not knowing what kind of torture awaited me. But I dragged myself out of bed and was borderline until Tom got up. We enjoyed pork chops together which has tryptophan in them. Then I had a cup of Sleepytime tea and I’ve felt good ever since. But like I said, I’m about to hit that 8-hour marker. The meat situation sucks because I want it for the calming tryptophan that’s in it, but the cholesterol isn’t good for me. If it’s going to help keep me calmer then I don’t give a shit if my cholesterol goes through the roof.

Before bed yesterday I took a whole pill. It would be strange (though wonderful) not to get anxious after a whole pill after getting anxious from half a pill, but the anxiety can be a bit unpredictable at times.

I read that recent studies show that taking the medication before bed reduces side effects. I have my doubts about that but if anything, it will keep me from eating as much because I have to stop eating a few hours before I take it to empty out my stomach. I’m not going to bother taking one more from this brand since my regular brand will be back tomorrow. Now that I know there are about half a dozen brands of this medication and that some may be worse than others, I can’t help but wonder… What brand, if any, might make me feel even better and less prone to side effects than my usual brand?

I’m really getting as pissed as I am frustrated with this situation. I want to strangle any possible God that may exist and is either making this happen to me or at least allowing it to happen. I see a very scary pattern when I look back in my journals. For years I went on and on about not being able to have this baby I thought I once wanted. Then for years, I went on and on about how broke we were. Now it’s all about how anxious I am with no light at the end of the tunnel for me. Like I said, if this ever does end someday, my next long-term problem is either going to seem like nothing in comparison or it’s going to kill me if it’s any worse than this. When can I go back to my worst problems being noise and shitty sleep? I’d even struggle financially before I continued to feel so bad so much of the time.

Tom will be stopping to look at ovens on the way home from work. Because we don’t cook much and we’re not going to be here forever, we decided to get the cheapest self-cleaning oven we could find. We’re looking at one that does have a fan in it to blow the heat around so that the food cooks evenly like it does in our air fryer. White, silver or tan are my first color choices. Dust shows up on black too easily even when you keep up on things as I do, and colors like brown or olive are ugly.

Last night I dreamed I got a video call from my father who was playing bocce in this really nice-looking park or resort somewhere. I never saw him, just the park.

Then I dreamed we were staying at Miss Perfect’s place and I could sense that she wasn’t too happy to have me around though I pretended not to notice. She walked into the guest room I was changing in while I was topless and I was embarrassed at first until I realized she could have fun being jealous of my full and perky tits, LOL.

MONDAY, APRIL 23, 2018
I ended up blocking Palma yesterday. She just started to get a little too weird for my comfort. I checked her page for the first time in a while out of curiosity to see what she was up to and saw that it was her 16th anniversary. So I sent her a message congratulating her and asked how she was doing, not expecting a reply since she didn’t reply to the message I sent last month, which was my second message. I doubt I would have ever looked in on her or sent her any additional messages if she blew me off again.

Then I noticed I missed a call from her on Messenger. So I sent a message asking if she meant to call or if she just hit the call icon by accident, letting her know I was now by my phone.

Then she takes 20+ minutes to write a reply. Before she could hit ‘send’ I noticed that she downvoted the message I sent last month but didn’t react to my congratulations message. I didn’t even know Messenger had these message reactions until then.

Figuring that if she could give a thumbs down to my message from over a month ago, then she probably didn’t have anything nice to say, assuming she actually meant to call and was really typing this long drawn-out novel to me. That’s when I decided to block her, not wanting to risk giving her a chance to provoke me into a reaction I may regret, as much as I’d like to think she wouldn’t be worth it. But you know how it is. When I get a reaction from someone that may not be good, it’s okay. When I react to someone’s shit, it’s not okay. Again, I’m not saying she would have said anything nasty or made any kind of threats or ultimatums since I wasn’t even remotely close to doing anything wrong, but I guess I will always have some traces of paranoia when it comes to anyone connected to the legal vendetta committed against me, however indirect a connection it may be, that’s in a state that shit on me in a very big way.

I have no idea why she would downvote my message and why she waited over a month to do it. Or why she may have tried to call me and what she may have wanted to tell me. I mean, why not just ignore or block me if she didn’t want to hear from me or didn’t like my message?

I went through it a few times and the only thing I can think of is that maybe she didn’t like me mentioning names of former inmates and DOs that I knew. Nothing I can think of makes sense. Sharing how I found her on Zabasearch? Remembering a joke I once told her? Saying that I felt hated by God and later became more agnostic?

Maybe she thought it was too long or maybe it’s her that’s paranoid. Maybe she thinks I’ve got some deep dark hidden ulterior motive.

Gotta laugh at how frustrating it must have been when she went to send the message and found she couldn’t reply. I looked in from Tom’s account since it’s been a while since I’ve checked his account anyway, to see if she might have left a note on her wall and she didn’t. What I found weird was that I still appear as “liking” her anniversary cake picture even though I blocked her. I thought blocking undid that but maybe not.

If she’s checked out my blog, she’s doing it in hiding. I’m very careful what I say anyway. But yeah, no clue why she would do that and I didn’t want to find out either since while she may have left the sheriff’s department, she still has connections. I have more important things to do. Like cleaning the house, winning Nano, and hoping not to be anxious.

Good news and bad news where that’s concerned. The bad news is that 8 hours after the first half of yesterday’s pill, I had three or four hours of anxiety. Nothing after my second half, though.

The good news is that Tom found out that the Walmart Pharmacy carries a few brands of my medication, including the oblong pill brand. They’re out of stock and won’t have them until Wednesday, but I still have some evil round ones. Coincidence or connection? I may never know for sure. I just know that I’ve had way more anxiety since starting the round ones. I’m mixing things up a bit and today I’m not taking my pill until the end of my day. I’m going to take the whole thing at once. As of yet, I’ve never become anxious 8 hours after taking my pill, so if I take it a couple of hours before bed and then I sleep for 8 hours, maybe I’ll be okay the next day. That’s what I’m about to find out. The oblongs are plenty capable of causing me anxiety as well; they just don’t seem to do it nearly as much as the round ones. At least not in the way of waves of anxiety moving in and out of my chest.

He can’t get his blood pressure meds refilled until the 25th.

Spam, spam, and more spam! These people just don’t give up no matter how obvious they are. It’s that fucking Nigerian crap as usual. I still don’t understand why there isn’t a block button like there is on Facebook and most sites. It should be a simple one-click ordeal to block any email address just like I can block any user on Facebook. Instead, I have to go through several steps to apply “rules.”

The weather is nice in the daytime now but slightly chilly in the mornings. Not chilly enough to put the heat on, though.

On Saturday Tom saw what he thinks was the cable company digging with a shovel on the corner of Jon and Carolyn’s place. They had cables in hand, he said. Fortunately, I didn’t hear anything, but I’m sure they’ll be digging up the road with loud obnoxious jackhammers and or tractors soon enough.

The fire truck was here again in the middle of last night and I think it went to Lawrence’s house. Really, really hope that house doesn’t sell while we’re still here! Even though it’s just across the street it’s higher than our place because of the hill. There’s a retaining wall and most of the front yard is fenced in, possibly enticing anyone who might move in with a mutt. The “footless” lady who just moved in doesn’t seem to have any dogs, so I guess this is the good part of Western culture and the belief that dogs shouldn’t be pets.

Tammy said she was doing better and still regaining her strength but didn’t go into detail. Still get the feeling that she and my nieces are pushing me away and would rather have little to do with me. It’s probably better that way anyway as we don’t seem to have much in common.

We didn’t do much this weekend since I didn’t feel well on and off. We did go to Walmart together early in the morning yesterday and I got a couple of cute new bamboo plants. One is in an O-shaped lavender vase with a clear tube in the center of it which the stalks of the plant are in. Another is in a green ceramic pot in the shape of a watering can. The one in the purple vase has purple orchids. Fake, of course, but they add a nice touch of color. The other one has a ladybug.

SATURDAY, APRIL 21, 2018
Doing another entry but I’m doing it for myself. I like to keep the darker stuff private.

Good news and bad news on the first day of breaking up the pills. I had anxiety for the first 4 hours after taking the first half. It probably would have been closer to 10 hours had I taken the whole thing. Taking the last half after being up for 12 hours. So at about 7am.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s any truth to those who believe living close to a cemetery brings bad luck. I researched it a bit and came up with mixed opinions. I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure but if I move away from here and suddenly feel better more often, it might make me wonder. A lot.

I tortured myself during yesterday’s misery. Yes, I was worse yesterday than today after taking a whole pill. I didn’t think I would be that anxious since I didn’t take anything the day before but I was for quite a while. And then I tortured myself some more by watching a horribly botched execution on YouTube done in Arizona 4 years ago by lethal injection. When I saw that man suffer all I could think was wow, I really hope this guy, someone I never heard of before that I guess killed his ex and her father, really deserved the suffering he got in the end. I hope he was an abusive asshole that totally deserved to be tortured to death as he was.

Even though I’m all for the death penalty, I’m appalled at how executions are handled with regular prison staff carrying the sentences out. This should be done by trained medical doctors and they should simply be put to sleep in the way a person is put to sleep for surgery, or animals are put to sleep. There’s no reason to make it such a long drawn-out ordeal unless it’s meant to be that way because torturing the condemned prisoners is the primary goal. Well, torture this guy they did. I guess they missed his vein and shot the stuff into his tissue instead and at that point, he was mostly paralyzed but still able to shout out in agony.

I couldn’t believe it when one of the guys patted him and said, “You’re going to be okay, Joe.”

Yeah, you’ll be okay as soon as we figure out how to kill you successfully.

Anyway, what should have taken minutes took 2 hours. The only good thing is that 2 hours of suffering is better than days, weeks, months or years, and the guy certainly won’t have to live with the PTSD that something that traumatic would certainly bring.

Saw that I had a bottle of grapefruit oil in one of the drawers for the diffuser. Yuck. I’ll sic it on Kathleen in September since I don’t expect to see her before then. Oh, the games women love to play with me.

Thyroid pill experiment update: after taking the first half of my pill yesterday, I felt anxious for about 4 hours. That was better than 10, but still a bit disappointing. When I took the second half at the end of the day, however, I was fine.

At this point, I would have to go over 6 months, preferably a year, without anxiety before and if I ever felt confident enough to say I’ve beaten it. Personally, I don’t think I ever will. After 4 years of dealing with this shit, I have no reason to think it will ever go away unless I stop the medication altogether yet I can’t do that. It sucks being a slave to something that can cause so much misery but until and if I ever find an alternative, I don’t think things will ever go back to the way they were before 4 years ago. For me, it’s going to be a case of finding a way to take as much of the drug as I can stand and basically adapt or die. That saying about nothing lasting forever isn’t quite true. Sometimes things really do change and never go back to the way they were before. One day I got fat and I’ve remained that way and I will continue to remain that way. One day I became farsighted and I always will be. One day my thyroid crapped out on me and it’s never coming back. It’s always going to require the only medication available for it, anxiety-inducing or not. There really isn’t any getting around it.

The only other things I have are fatigue, lightheadedness, and that vibrating sensation in my head. My blood pressure and pulse numbers were amazing yesterday, though. BP was 129/80 and my pulse was only 79. That’s definitely a low HR for me, LOL. BP was the lowest I’ve seen it in a while, too.

Definitely not as awake as I was yesterday even though I slept okay. I didn’t quite sleep eight hours, though, and was up almost 18 hours.

Enjoying the weather in the low 80s. With May right around the corner, this should be it. The rain should be done until the fall and we shouldn’t have any more cold spells.

I have three reminders set. One for Amberen, one to stop eating, and one to take the other half of today’s pill. They’re at midnight, six and eight.

FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2018
First they turn the water off for half a day and now they want to turn it off again for 4 hours on Monday? Argh! Yeah, I’d love for them to lay him off, even though I don’t want to leave with unresolved health issues. Then again, I’ve lost hope that this is fixable. I’m anxious for life just like I’m fat and blind for life. I get that. I’ll have some good days but for the most part, I’ve got a rough life ahead of me no matter what. And besides, I’m not going to sleep any better no matter where we go. Some weird smell woke me up at 12:30 (I fell asleep after 10) but I don’t know what it was. Was able to get back to sleep quickly, though.

There may be a new loud car on the circle but I knew there would be sooner or later. This one’s white.

Overall I’m a little more alive and “normal” feeling today so far. Took half a pill and was slightly anxious but feeling calmer now. I tapped while I was waiting for the timer to go off. Will make myself stick to this regimen as long as I can absolutely stand to even though I don’t think this is anything I’ll ever “get used” to. I just can’t believe anyone takes this drug, gets anxious from it, keeps taking it, and then one day finds they’re no longer anxious. If side effects don’t dissipate within a couple of weeks, they’re likely never going to. But I’m going to tough it out the best I can.

I actually started feeling better when Tom got up yesterday. I know I said I wasn’t going to bother working out since I can only do it part-time, but we walked down to the lake just so I could stretch my legs and get out of the house. He’s sleeping now and I just went down to the lake myself. Now I’m doing laundry.

And missing my old life. I totally miss the days of not having any clue of what it’s like to truly feel anxious. I still have every reason to believe that as long as I’m on this medication I’m going to have some here and there and that it’s not just a bad case of peri or anything else. Come on, no one has it this bad when they’re going through peri, do they?

As much as I don’t miss being a kid, one of the things I do miss is believing everything people tell me. When the grownups told me I would be okay and that everything was fine, I believed them. Now, no matter how many times I try to tell myself these things, I don’t believe a word I say.

If there is a God out there, first it took my dreams. Now it’s taken my health. Sometimes I swear it’s going to take my life. Like before I hit 60.

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2018
And yet again traffic wakes me up, and again I am feeling shitty. Tomorrow will be no different because the loud trash and green waste trucks are coming. Since I took my pill today I’m not as fatigued, but I’m definitely not bursting with energy either. Heart raced a bit too, but that was probably cuz I ate a lot.

I’m still very stressed out about what to do about my situation. Tomorrow I will begin the pills splitting experiment, but I don’t hold out much hope of ever being able to fully treat my disease in a way I can tolerate. Not if I’m still going through this shit after nearly 4 years. What I don’t get is why I’m so up and down. Why has it been such a roller coaster ride for me all these years? Just when I’m doing well and I think I might finally stay that way, it’s like something up there reaches down with a bat and knocks me right off course.

If there is a God up there and if it does pick and choose what happens to us, why the hell would it give me a disease it knew damn well I couldn’t treat? Really, why would it do that? I mean how hateful is that?

A part of me wishes he would get laid off so we would have an excuse to get out of here, but I’m just going to sleep shitty elsewhere, too. The world is a noisy place and each decade it only gets noisier as the population climbs and people get less considerate of others. If it isn’t landscaping, it’s brats. If it isn’t traffic, it’s mutts. If it isn’t planes, it’s more car stereos than I hear here. Florida has more storms so thunder would probably wake me up there more than the traffic does here. I would only gain in that I would be in a warmer climate that was cheaper. I’m still ready to go, but now that he’s been at this job for over 5 years, I’m beginning to have my doubts that he’ll be laid off before he retires.

Oh, how I wish to hell he was retired! I’m tired of having to be alone so much and having to put so many things on hold due to his job. While I doubt it will kill me, as much as I sometimes wish something would, I worry that waiting until June to see a new PCP and my ENT may be a bit long as I don’t want my ear to get infected and I’m tired of suffering in general, but that’s the tentative plan is to hit those two appointments, plus his own PCP appointment during the week of June he’s taking off.

I can’t believe how much I’ve suffered when I could be and should be enjoying life with my worst problem being the noise and sleep disturbances. Instead, I go back and forth between fatigue and anxiety with no end in sight, and when I think I see one, it turns out to be a joke.

Sometimes side effects go away in time, but I don’t think the anxiety is a side effect so much as something I’m very sensitive to that’s put into the synthetic drug itself. Still, I wish I knew if it would ever go away if I forced myself to take it every day, not that I could stand to, and not that I would try when he was still working. No way to know how bad it might get. I’m learning that we can’t believe everything we’re told, even if it’s from a doctor.

The 30 chokers I ordered for the doll came today. Good variety and quality for the price. Yet another thing I would have loved 20 years ago. So many things are available today that would’ve better suited me back then and that I could have used then.

I was worried yesterday that we had a new loud car in the neighborhood, but hopefully the bastard was just visiting.

I am now officially an unpublished author. Some things just weren’t meant to be no matter how good you may be at them.

When traffic wasn’t waking me up, and I wasn’t waking up for no reason, nightmares were waking me up. I had all kinds of horrible dreams, one of which Tammy may have been in but I can’t swear to that.

Something about a stuffed panther coming to life, and then I was looking out the window of an apartment that wasn’t on the ground floor but I don’t know that it was a high-rise either.

There were so many other dreams I can’t remember. The night before last, I dreamt I was inside the house I grew up in at night. I was curious to snoop around and see what it looked like while the owners were out. After I used the bathroom, which was on the wrong side of the house, I went to explore but this tremendous wind soon drove me out of the house. It was a wind so fierce that my hair stood straight up.

So I went out of the house and began walking up the street. A woman was watching me from the house across the street, trying to get a good look at me as I walked up the street, hoping no one would notice me.

Then I was locked up somewhere in this strange kind of jail that didn’t actually have cells but these partitions with these double doors that parted in the middle and “roofs.” I was with some girl and as much as we seemed to get along and I liked her, I wished I could remember people’s phone numbers so I could call and let them know where I was.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2018
Too tired to live? Yeah, I think I might be. Every other day I have horrible fatigue and I want to scream with frustration. I feel so stuck and helpless. Just totally caught in a hopeless situation. If I can’t ever find a way to take enough of this medication to keep me functioning and the alternatives aren’t suitable for me, then what does that leave me with? If there is a solution out there I’m afraid it’s going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Furthermore, traffic woke me up today… Again. Well, I’m never going to be a heavy sleeper, vehicles aren’t going to get quieter in my lifetime, and I very well may never be able to fully treat my disease. So again, what does that leave me with? Half a life spent bedridden because I’m too tired to live that life? Seriously, my mind and body are at such odds! My mind thinks of all the things I would really like to do, but my body is simply too tired to carry these tasks out. What do I do then? Take the meds and suffer the anxiety they bring and that could escalate to epic levels too scary to imagine? Or only take it sometimes and be drained? Drained to the point that I can’t work out more than once or twice a week any more than I can win NaNo with a word count as low as I’ve got mine set to once I finally get ideas as I have.

No wonder I’m losing my motivation to work out. I hate doing things part-time. I either like to do them regularly and consistently or not bother, especially things like working out. Why bother if I can only do it some of the time? Every time I get back on track something leaves me too tired to work out. So when I have the energy to work out I’m probably not going to, knowing that the next day I likely won’t have the energy and therefore I’m not going to benefit much from such a half-assed workout routine.

Each question leads to another question. This fatigue seems a bit extreme for disrupted sleep and I’ve even had it when I’ve slept well. I don’t think it’s all on the traffic waking me up but it doesn’t make sense to be low thyroid either because I once lived with zero medication and wasn’t nearly this tired. Yet as far as I know, my thyroid shouldn’t be any deader than it was to begin with, and if it is, it certainly isn’t by much. This makes me wonder if there’s anything else going on with me I don’t know about like maybe low iron or something that could be making me so fatigued. I haven’t stopped my vitamins or the Amberen, so I don’t know what the fuck is going on. All I know is that I’ve struggled with my health for almost 4 years now and have had more problems in that time than in the entire time I’ve known Tom.

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2018
Did a small Amazon order. Getting a bunch of chokers for my Asian buddy, a pill cutter, and ointment for my lichen planus.

I don’t know if the ointment will help but I think the chokers will look nice on Suki/Gia.

The pill cutter is for the idea I got that probably won’t work, but hey, I’m running out of options and ideas to try. The plan is to cut my pills in half and take half in the morning and the other half at the end of my day after I let my stomach empty out.

I’ve noticed that on days that it makes me anxious it has a timeline of sorts where the anxiety kicks in within an hour or two of taking the pill, sometimes a little later. I also noticed that it tends to stop about 10 hours after taking it. Well, if I stop eating after I’ve been up for 8 or 9 hours and then I take it a couple of hours later, maybe this will prevent me from getting as anxious. Remember, I’ve got two problems. One is whatever’s in the synthetic version of the stuff that makes me anxious, and then when I go flaring. This may help with the anxiety caused by the medication itself but I don’t know if it will do me any good when I’m flaring because I’m eventually going to have the same amount in my bloodstream if that makes any sense. Again, I highly doubt it will help but I’ve got to try whatever I can think of otherwise I’m looking at going through life only being able to treat my thyroid in a half-assed way. I really would like to give my body as much of the hormone as it thinks it needs or close enough to it. I’m just glad my T4 has always been normal no matter what. Hope it stays that way! It’s the fucking TSH that’s the problem. If my pit gland keeps screaming at my thyroid it’s going to possibly cause it to enlarge.

Treated both ears and am less lightheaded today and I have more energy today as well. These symptoms may not just be a matter of low thyroid but I could be lacking in potassium. One of the side effects of the ACV shots is that they can lower your potassium levels. I’ll have bananas delivered with our next grocery order. It might have been my ears too, so I’m treating them more often.

The only pisser was that the water was off for 6 hours and that’s only that I know of. It was off when I got up at 3 so it might have been off longer. Didn’t come back on till 9. I asked Carolyn if hers was off just to make sure there was nothing wrong with our water, which Tom also went out and double-checked, and she confirmed their water was off, too. Tom also drove around the park to see if he could spot them working because I was a little worried they forgot to turn it back on after they worked on it, but he saw them working on one of the mains at the other side of the park.

I left the kitchen and master bath sinks on so I could hear it when it came back on, and right after my chat with Carolyn, we both notified each other at the same time that it was back on, LOL. So the shower I took felt good and we won’t have to go to a hotel tomorrow after he gets off work, which I would have deducted from the rent for damn sure.

Someday we’ll live where this doesn’t happen and where there isn’t such busy traffic so close to the bedroom. Someday. Still may hear lots of other shit, but that much is going to change. Been a quiet night so far, though. Not much freeway noise or planes.

Even though I know it’s not going to do me any good, I gave Amazon a final piece of my mind once again on their official Facebook page, even though it will just have to be flagged in my friends’ feed as if it’s any of their business what I said to them. Oh well. It’s part of why I seldom use Facebook other than to share links and check for messages. I just told them like it is. I’m not getting credit for my work and I’m not getting help when I reach out to support. Therefore, I’ll be pulling my books off their shelf and will find a more reliable publisher that actually cares about its authors. I’m in no hurry, though.

MONDAY, APRIL 16, 2018
Last night I was pretty anxious. OMG, I’ve had enough!!! I’ve so totally had enough! Something needs to change. Something. But what? I don’t have many alternatives and the few I know of seem pretty shitty. Do I stop the meds altogether, change brands and or doses, or switch to another drug? Get a thyroidectomy?

The tentative plan is for me to go back to taking my meds every other day and change PCPs. Don’t know that a new one will help me, but at least they’ll be closer to home, whoever they are. Might have Tom make me an appointment with his doctor when he goes to reschedule his own appointment for the week in June that he’s taking off. This is the week I see my ENT and I was going to see Dr. A. If he can help me then I don’t care that he’s male and Muslim.

Amour and Cytomel don’t seem like very good alternatives. Therefore, the question is what brand and what dose can my body best tolerate of Levothyroxine so I don’t have to deprive it altogether? I am SO stressed out and SO frustrated with this same old shit year after year after year. When oh when will it ever end? When will there ever be a solution to this problem and what will it be?

Tried reaching out to Amazon Kindle on Twitter but they’re ignoring me, not surprisingly, while they’ve replied to other tweets. Books are still KUable, too. Definitely “firing” these so-called publishers. I’m not going to write to make THEM money. Therefore, soon I will be an unpublished author. Maybe someday I’ll find a better publisher but for now, at least I’ll have the freedom to write more freely with less censorship and editing.

As far as what to do about the roof, the answer hit me like a punch in the gut the other day. It’s simple. I wish all things could be as simple like how to give my body the medication it needs without suffering from side effects that are worse than the hypo symptoms themselves. Every single fucking site that lists the drug’s side effects lists anxiety as one of them, yet the doctors want to try to tell me it’s not the meds when I know my body best and don’t have a history of anxiety? And there ARE some suspected deaths from this drug as well. I don’t know if I would blame the medication on the 300-pound guy who had a stroke, but the woman who killed herself? Maybe. Trust me, when I get that anxious my thoughts do tend to get dark. It’s not as safe as the doctors lead you to think it is. It may be safer than some drugs out there but I don’t think anything is ever perfectly safe.

I was surprised that some of the other side effects I saw listed when I did some research last night mentioned fever, fatigue and sweating. I thought I sweat easily because I’m fat and older but maybe not. It also mentioned rashes but I doubt there’s any connection between my lichen planus and the medication because it started before I was diagnosed. I’ve definitely been having a lot of fatigue lately and that could be due to anything from low thyroid, the meds, stress, or going into menopause. It’s rainy today and rainy days make me feel kind of groggy, so I don’t know.

Back to the roof, we’re not going to bother unless we need to. We’re just going to keep money set aside for an emergency patch if it leaks in the winter and money to have it redone in the summer. Hopefully, this will mean getting out of having to deal with it and leaving it to the next owner(s).

Tom said I never told him how Tammy was recovering. That’s because she never told me. She takes weeks to pick up messages so I don’t like to send much. It seems I hear less and less from her but I know she has a lot going on.

Tomorrow Aly turns 37. She’s suffering too, just in a different way.

SUNDAY, APRIL 15, 2018
I’m seriously considering pulling my books off of Amazon and hanging up that adventure altogether. I took off the lending function yet they’re STILL available for KU. Fucking Amazon! I’ll give it a few days but if my book page doesn’t reflect the changes by then, then these so-called “publishers” can go to hell. I’ll just pull my books off their site at that point. Thank God I didn’t sign any contracts! But that’s part of why I went with them in the first place.

I’m tired of their shit and how worthless they are when I try to reach out to them for help. If they think they’re going to make money at my expense and continue to get paid for my hard work, they’re in for a surprise.

I was meant to be a homemaker and a hobbyist. Nothing else. I can still write for fun whenever I get ideas and I can still edit old stuff. If I write just for myself, though, I don’t have to be as picky.

Feeling a little anxious, Sunday night or not, and again I question the medication and whether or not I can really handle 5 doses a week instead of 4. There’s definitely something about the drug itself, especially this brand. It just sucks knowing I may never be able to find someone who can help me. I mean really help me. I’ve got a doctor working against me and no other real alternative, which is probably part of why she’s working against me. If I can’t take the only drug available for my disease, then how can I treat myself? And if things happen for a reason, why would whatever’s up there want me to be unable to take the medication my body needs? To keep me fat? I don’t know about that because there have been numerous people who have no problem with it, get their numbers normal, but still can’t lose weight. I’m sure the weight is just an age thing.

Started watching Manhunt on Netflix. I see Chris Noth is in it. I loved him on the original Law & Order.

Had some weird dreams after sleeping a long time for the second time in less than a week. I slept 10 hours. After I got up we went to McDonald’s.

I’m also trying another cleaning schedule where I do bathrooms and the kitchen every week, bedrooms bi-weekly along with light dusting, and then a very thorough dusting once a month.

Okay, so in one dream Tom was driving super fast to get around some erratic driver and I was worried about crashing into speed bumps but he went over them as if they weren’t even there.

Then I was walking a bike with just one handlebar and finally, I decided I could ride it okay after adjusting some kind of strange music player and its memory card.

In another dream, I was on a “potty chair.” This was a plush chair that was also a toilet of some bizarre kind.

Next, I dreamed that my dentist was looking to replace Kathleen. Or was it herself?

In the last dream, there were these 150-foot-tall stone doors between the US and Mexico. It was decided that since they couldn’t curb the immigration problem they would simply say fuck it and just let people come and go between the two countries as they pleased.

SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 2018
As I’m being told by one person and then another and another that they downloaded my book via KU, I’m sitting here wondering why nothing is showing up on my sales reports. Doubting that all these people were lying, I started to suspect Amazon may be ripping me off. Well, in a sense my hunch is right, thanks to new devices.

It’s no wonder! This really pisses me off, too. It’s like I’m literally writing stories and then paying Amazon to sell them. I always did feel like something put me here to be an asset and a profit to others and all at my expense. Well, no more! Amazon gets most of my book sale money as it is and so I edited the pricing of each book and disallowed for lending. Now people will have to buy my books. I still may not be paid fairly for what few sales I make but at least I’ll get something. I thought of jacking the price up to where I’m pocketing more of the sales than Amazon but wonder if that may lower my chances of making any sales. Everyone wants stuff for free or close to it. I almost never pay for the books I read. I’ll keep it at $.99 and see how I do without allowing for lending for a while and then I’ll try jacking up the price to maybe $4.99. If that doesn’t do me any good I may hang it up altogether. If I’m going to work this hard for virtually nothing then I may as well do it just for fun only rather than have to be so overly picky about editing and things like that. I really don’t think it was meant to be. It would’ve taken off by now if it was but I certainly can’t say I didn’t try. It’s like with the weight; if your body doesn’t respond to diet and exercise then the extra weight was probably meant to be there.

This explains why the order of books listed on my reports has changed a few times yet no sales or reviews appeared. Maybe “M” really wasn’t Maliheh, though that’s not what my gut tells me. Guess I’ll never know for sure, but like I said, it really pisses me off even though I probably only lost a few dollars. Wonder if Kathleen was any of those borrowers?

Despite not getting paid for my work, a very special thanks to my new beta reader, Aly, for acting as a secondary editor! At first, I didn’t want to bother her by asking if she’d read for me, but she said she’d gladly do it during her downtime and I assured her it wasn’t like I’d be emailing her a manuscript every week or anything like that. Even editing novellas is a HUGE job that takes time.

Tom and I chatted with the Twenties yesterday. They verified that it was the Internet company that was out but they don’t know what or if they’re going to do anything at all.

I was discussing heart rates with other people and I realize that everyone has their own normal HR. It’s no real cause for alarm for me if my HR goes a little over 100, but I can see where even the 80s would be a concern for some people with HRs much lower than mine.

Although I’m still not as used to the heat as I used to be when I was younger, skinny and living in the desert, I noticed I was more tolerant of it when out walking yesterday, again suggesting I could be very close to menopause and through the worst of the peri. It’s going to cool down and rain a little again, though.

Told the McClellan Sacramento airport on Google+, for whatever good it may do, that if they’re the ones flying around so much of the time, especially at night, it’s annoying as hell. Really hope we don’t live next to a small airstrip ever again. I’d rather commercial planes even though they’re louder. Small planes have an annoying buzz to them like a mosquito or a fly buzzing in your ear.

After four or five hours of crashing, something loud drove by and woke me up at 8 AM. I lay there for a half-hour and then I got up and made coffee. Still tired, I took a baby Benadryl to relax me enough to fall back asleep. Got back up at 1 PM and have been a little groggy ever since. I started off feeling like I felt Wednesday. I’m tired of this up-and-down with the energy. Lately, it’s hit or miss as to whether or not I’ll have the energy to work out. Hopefully, going up to five doses a week instead of four as I plan to do in a week will give me more energy without making me anxious.

FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2018
I’m really coming to distrust doctors as much as I distrust the police. Tom’s Indian co-worker who was put on Levothyroxine a few months ago is now having the same symptoms I had with a booming heart. And of course, her doctor dismissed it and said she’s “just anxious,” even though we know what’s normal for us and what’s not and the fact that our intuition is almost always accurate. God, I want to slap some of these doctors!

I feel so bad for her even though we never met. Next comes the psych drugs and then the suggested trips to the shrink and therapist which will end up costing her hundreds of dollars and tons of wasted time because these damn doctors don’t want to deal with the root cause. From my own personal experience and what I’ve heard from others, these doctors obviously have a protocol and are obviously instructed to automatically shift the blame away from the meds despite its known issues for some people. Even the nurse I talked to said so without me bringing it up first.

Goes to show that doctors are often more interested in doing what’s easiest for them instead of what’s best for the patient. The question is why they do this. My only guess is that it’s because there are no other real alternatives and it would be bad for the patient not to take the medication at all.

I don’t think Tom mentioned what happened to me so as not to scare her since most people don’t have any problems with this medication, but someone’s got to tell her the truth. If they don’t, she’ll likely suffer needlessly before realizing that no matter what her gut tells her and regardless of the fact that she doesn’t have a history of anxiety, she needs to lower her dose. She’s only on 50s because she went from a TSH of 4 to 2. Why they would even bother medicating her at 4 is beyond me because that’s so close to normal, and 50 seems way too much to drop just 2 points. She’s likely to minus as the drug accumulates.

Hopefully, Tom will tell her that yes, it really is the medication and yes she really does need to cut back when no one else gives her any straight answers. If she’s smart enough she’ll do her own research as well and find enough complaints online that prove she’s not just “anxious” or imagining it. Meanwhile, until she realizes all this and is better informed, she’s just going to continue to get the runaround from the doctors.

I totally resent the hell out of the doctors that cost me so much time and money when it all could have been prevented! I knew that very little of my problem was due to perimenopause, and this woman is only around 30. I think the only thing I would have experienced from the peri was hot flashes, a slightly elevated heart rate, and my heart racing me awake like it used to when I would overheat in my sleep. Not an HR that was often 130+, feeling like I was going to die, and being terrified out of my mind.

I may not like the woman because she’s pretty religious and they tend to be rather hypocritical but no one deserves to suffer like that. No one. Its symptoms are the worst feeling in the world. I totally believed that without a doubt. Nothing I could ever experience could be that bad. If I knew I had to go through it all over again and there would be nothing I could do to stop it, I would probably kill myself.

Good news for me, though. It’s not looking like those “neck knockers” I’ve been complaining about and the other symptoms are due to my bad ear being clogged. I have the fake ear canal cleaned regularly. This is the first time I’ve gone a year instead of 6 months and when Tom looked in there with a flashlight he could see all kinds of build-up since it can’t shed dead skin like a normal ear canal. It’s easy to see into it, too. It was created with a laser drill. Normal ear canals are wavy so you can’t see straight into them. But they drill artificial canals straight through, of course, haha. I started oiling it which I admit I’ve been slacking off on and that seems to be helping. I really should throw baby oil in it a couple of times a week regardless.

The neck knockers have to do with conductive hearing. When the ear gets blocked you hear the pulse easier. I still have high blood pressure, mind you, but the lightheadedness and other symptoms are most likely from build-up.

I’m still cutting back on sodium and a byproduct of that is that I definitely shouldn’t gain weight on the 1000 to 1200 calories I’ve been having. I won’t lose in my case since I am still older and I do still have thyroid issues but I definitely won’t gain. Good enough for me!

Because I still felt a little off yesterday, we started planning our next vacation and that was a wonderful distraction. We’re thinking of going back to Hawaii one last time before we leave the West for good. We looked at first-class flights to other countries and while the prices aren’t that much more expensive, the flying time is insane. I love to fly but don’t want to be stuck on a plane for 15 to 24 hours. Maybe when we’re retired and living in Florida we’ll shoot on over to Europe and hit a lot of the countries there.

Not sure if we’re going to go next year or the year after, but we’ll probably rent a condo for a week in Maui because it’s actually cheaper than a hotel. We’re thinking of possibly going parasailing but we’re definitely going to do our share of snorkeling. I don’t expect to do everything we did the last time. The luau wasn’t that impressive anyway, and we’ve already been down in a submarine. Catamaran sailing and snorkeling were the best part of the trip, actually, and we must return to Lulu’s at least once for their fabulous steak and eggs. Then there’s the Whalers Village, of course. Damn, do I wish we could live there!

Been rearranging my picture files and backing everything up on Amazon Prime so I can kick some off my computer even though I still have a lot of space.

Tom gave me a little scare yesterday when I was watching him follow his route home and he appeared to get stuck at a busy intersection for a while. Traffic was heavy so he was 10 minutes late.

An older lady who’s a friend on both PB and FB and seems pretty honest said she got one of my books through KU but nothing shows up on my reports. Mitch, who says he doesn’t share or borrow any of his books, says it should show up. Is someone working for Amazon that has a grudge against me or are they just that fucked up? Either Kindle isn’t crediting me for everything or some people are liars. Maybe Maliheh isn’t really Maliheh and whoever it is really did buy Campus Games and I never got credit for it. Either way, maybe I oughta disallow for sharing and lending in the future and see if that brings more sales.

THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2018
If I was psychic in a way that was actually useful for once I would know how many more years the roof would hold up before it actually began leaking water down into the house. If it were to take another 10 years then we wouldn’t need to do it at all. Instead, I get to have a series of worthless dream premonitions and the mood-influencing thing I’m not even going to get into.

Because I felt so crappy I didn’t finish writing about the day I talked to the workers. I still don’t know what’s going on and when because the Twenties haven’t replied to my message. I saw Jon talking to Ray and as always Ray turned away as if to avoid me. He later looked right at me and although I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, his mouth was set in a firm tight line of both hate and anger. I still don’t know what his problem with me is and I don’t give a fuck but I really wish just the same that his house would hurry up and sell and that he would get the fuck out of here. It’s really too bad he didn’t have the balls to tell me to my face what his problem with me is instead of going to the Twenties about it instead. I fucking hate gossipers! Oh, the Twenties never said anything, of course. He gave himself away when he explained to Jon instead of me that he accidentally sent me the messenger invite and his little thumbs-up emoji.

I will be the one avoiding him as much as possible until he’s out of here so he doesn’t go saying the wrong thing and cause me to lose my temper. If you’re that rude to me, I don’t care how damn old you are. But of course, if I were provoked, even though we live in a time where we’re responsible for everyone’s behavior but our own, I’m the one who would take the fall.

Back to the main point; I talked to one of the workers who had a map with different colors for different roads and he said something about seeing if they could do it in the first place. Oh, I’m sure they can. If I can hear it, they can do it. The project is going to take months but he said they would only be working close to the house for a day. Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m sure I’ll be tortured for a week or so. And then a week to 10 days later there will be something else. Some kind of home improvement or something the utility company or park will do.

Anyway, instead of working out outdoors yesterday, I stuck to the treadmill. The weather may have had a hand in how tired I felt. Cloudy, wet weather can make me feel sluggish, though it didn’t rain until the evening.

Today they picked up the bulk trash as they do every few months.

I may drop CampNano as I’m simply out of ideas for the story I’m working on.

I have a little more energy today but started off a bit shaky. Today my blood pressure is 155/84 if I can believe the reading. Only went out walking for five minutes and in that five-minute walk, I saw two or three houses for sale. Again, I’ve never lived where so many houses are sold so often around me.

Aly was in the hospital as I suspected when I didn’t hear from her yesterday with an eczema flare-up. The doctor thinks she may even be low on thyroid. I’m honestly not surprised at all. She’s been exhibiting symptoms of that and it seems those cursed with AI’s don’t get just one. I said I know I’ve told her some pretty scary stories about Levothyroxine but don’t let it scare her because most people don’t have problems. She said she isn’t worried because she knows three others on it who have never had a problem.

Yeah, if anyone has to have a problem with meds it’s me. That’s why I am afraid to go on BP meds, but if it’s responsible for some of the lightheadedness, worsening vision, and fatigue like I read it may be, I may not have much choice. The worse I feel, the more I might be tempted to try meds. The neck knockers alone are annoying and a bit scary. I’m not going to decide until Doc A’s nurse tells me what my numbers are because I can’t believe they would happen to be normal there if I’m really having regular problems like I seem to be. Sometimes I feel almost weak and my head vibrates, too.

Beginning on the week of the 23rd, which will put me six weeks away from labs, I’ll skip two doses a week instead of three and see how I do.

I just wish I could stop worrying about things so much! It seems I spend more time worrying than anything else and that does a number on my body and mind, especially my mind. I don’t want to suffer until I’m actually dying but I seem to do an awful lot of that these last few years. If only I could know how much more suffering I have to do in my life, what dying will be like, and what the afterlife is like if there is one, as that may take a whole lot of stress off me… Or not. I hate not knowing what I’m in for during the rest of my life and then possibly afterward, but again, I’m just not psychic in a useful way.

I have thousands of pictures on my computer, most of which I’ve collected over the years around the net, and think I might get rid of most of them, particularly the ones I can’t use as avatars or backgrounds. I still sometimes like to decorate blogs with them and I use them on Bubbly, too. I’ll also keep some for wallpaper. After storing them on Amazon Prime, I’ll delete some picture files. Or maybe I’ll use them to decorate Tom’s emails and on Skype before I delete them.

I almost wish voice blogging was the norm because it’s definitely easier to talk than to write but then that’s harder to search and edit. I still think it will become the norm at some point.

Not remembering much in the way of dreams. Something about watching a music video and thinking that the guy singing looked like he was wearing a wig.

Then I was being “punished” for some reason (the black freeloaders) by being made to stand in something that looked as small as a phone booth. I got fed up at one point when I realized I had no incentive to behave and cooperate since they weren’t giving me time off for good behavior or anything.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2018
I’m not feeling too well now despite feeling great the last few days and continuing to sleep well. I’m just lightheaded and fatigued for some reason. I Debroxed my ear but that didn’t help. Maybe I just lost weight too fast even though it was only a few pounds. But yes, even Miss Hashimoto can lose a few pounds when she turns 80% of her diet into veggies.

I’m now starting to get a little concerned about my blood pressure. I know they call it the silent killer and that it doesn’t usually have symptoms, but sometimes it does, such as noticing your pulse in your neck, fatigue, and lightheadedness. I could be tired and lightheaded for a number of reasons but is it really normal to hear and feel my pulse in my neck like this every time I lay down? This is the first time it’s really started to worry me but with my medication phobia, I’m kind of stuck. I guess I will just wait and see what the numbers are on a more accurate device in June. Wrist and thumb cuffs aren’t as accurate as the arm cuffs. He has an electronic arm cuff but I hate those things and I won’t use it. I would have thought my upper number was in the 140s and my lower was pretty normal, but I don’t know about that or if cutting back on sodium is going to help as much as I hoped.

I’m very relieved to learn that Tammy is cancer-free! I figured as much and I’m not really surprised because of the lack of dreams. I almost always have bad dreams about someone when they’re headed for trouble, and like I was telling my nieces when we were chatting on Facebook, sometimes it’s what I don’t see that’s most important.

Mark called and we spoke briefly and he told me they were able to verify that there was no cancer by looking at the sample under a microscope but they’re still going to send it to the lab, of course. They’re thinking infection.

Now, maybe she can get on with her life once and for all. She’ll never be problem-free as is the case with most of us when we get older, but I think she’s had more than enough.

My worries are now on a friend. I get that sometimes we get busy or we’re just not in the mood to socialize but I must admit it’s a bit weird not to wake up to a text from her. We chat pretty much every day, and sometimes we leave each other voice clips and pics, along with texts.

I sent a message to Christiane because I was worried about her being in Leipzig with all the shit she’s got going on there. She said she’s okay but she’s worried about her granddaughter. I don’t know where her granddaughter is but despite the savage beasts running around her country, she’s unharmed.

Yesterday was one of those days where I almost wished we decided to get the hell out as soon as we could or that they’d lay him off and give us an excuse to go. That would be a real incentive, all right. Funny too, seeing that for years we worried they would lay him off and now a part of me wishes they would. Most jobs will lay you off eventually, so I’m surprised he’s still there. Especially since the company has laid off several others in the past and has been struggling for some time now.

It was noisy here from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. with landscaping racket on and off all day. First it was the park doing one section, then it was one house, then it was another house, then it was the park doing another section, then it was another house…

To make matters worse we can’t even go a week without some distracting project here that’s totally annoying as hell. Now they want to tear up the roads to add more fiber optics to speed up the internet. I’m actually not sure if it’s the cable or the phone company that’s going to be doing this because I didn’t see the vehicle the workers were in. Just about half a dozen workers themselves. It would suck for us if it was a phone company because it would be difficult to switch phones and all that. I swear, as soon as you get an ideal setup, someone goes and fucks it all up for you. I’m tired of listening to shit around here, and of course, my sleep is always threatened depending on my schedule.

Not sure if a faster Internet connection would even help us. It’s fast enough as it is and having a fast connection wouldn’t do us any good if you go to a site with slow settings.

Never before have I lived anywhere where landscaping was done more than once a week or less or where I heard so many projects and saw so many houses sell. I realize that the constant selling of houses has to do with being where old people live since the people that come here don’t stay here for 40 or 50 years.

TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2018
They recommend no more than 20g of sugar a day for women and 36g a day for men. Not sure if this means natural sugars only as opposed to refined or if it’s counting all sugars.

Also, no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol and no more than 1500 of sodium.

Ironically enough, foods higher in sodium and cholesterol seem to be higher in calories, so if you lower your sodium and cholesterol intake that should take care of the calories. In my case, it should keep me from gaining but most people might lose this way. Even so, where I used to count calories now I will be counting cholesterol and definitely sodium to get my blood pressure down. It’s improving but still needs work. Won’t know about the cholesterol until June.

It could be just a coincidence but it seems that adding a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to my diet as I have for about a week now may be helping my lichen planus. This rash affects moist areas. I realized I hadn’t been itching as much and when I checked one of my armpits I couldn’t see any redness.

Unless the person with the laptop in Austin was Molly using Marbridge’s computer, none of the iPhones are Molly after all. Aly says her carrier is Sprint but other carriers like T-Mobile visited me with iPhones in Texas. At this point, I’m getting hopeful that Molly isn’t going to be a problem. If she is, though, I’ll be a problem for her when I contact Marbridge.

Hmm… just read that T-Mobile and Sprint are merging.

MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2018
Okay, I’m going to attempt to use Google Docs while on my treadmill. So far it seems to do a great job of hearing what I’m saying and understanding me. My skier is quiet but the treadmill isn’t. The faster you run on the treadmill, the louder it is. Gotta go at a leisurely pace of 2.3 MPH or else it won’t understand me as well.

I was so pissed off yesterday because while we were discussing the home Improvement plans we want to make in what time we have left here, I looked at a really pretty 3D decorative plate with flowers and hummingbirds hanging on the living room wall and thought that Tammy would love it. I went to reach for it and what did I do? Smashed the fucking thing to smithereens when it slipped out of my grip. I was so pissed!

Her surgery is tomorrow. Still no dreams so I’m guessing no news is good news? I hope that’s the case but I don’t see every single thing that happens in my dreams nor can I control what I do see. I don’t always know that they mean anything until and if they come to fruition. Sometimes I get a feeling right away that a certain dream is a sign of something to come or a warning but sometimes I don’t. I’m hoping that it doesn’t turn out to be any big deal because as Tom reminded me, the doctors were once pretty sure that Mary had cancer all throughout her body yet she didn’t.

I can’t remember every single thing she and I discussed during our phone chat but I misunderstood her about the motorcycles. They are allowed where she lives but like here, if they go joyriding through the place and there’s a complaint, they’ll be kicked out. I was surprised she mentioned a Doberman living there but I guess they used to allow dogs of all sizes until they put similar size limits on them that they have here. I don’t think smaller dogs are necessarily quieter, but if you’re like me and you’re afraid of big dogs, then it’s definitely nice to live where there aren’t any.

A lady was walking her Chihuahua which she freed of its leash as she neared her home and it ran up barking at me. I petted it and then it barked for more when I stopped just like the woman said it would. I like the look and feel of this breed but they do have the bark from hell. A quick check of dog breeds, sizes and temperaments suggests a Basenji dog might eventually be good for me. It’s hypoallergenic and doesn’t bark as much.

Tom has gotten really good at picking locks, haha. As I may have mentioned, he gets a surprise electronics box every few months from ADAfruit and this time it contained a clear lock with lock-picking tools because the point of their packages is to understand how things work. He can pick their lock in just a minute or two but it took him a long time to pick an old rusty padlock of ours. I can’t even pick the easy one but I’m not as patient as he is.

My book Socio was published over the weekend but I’m sure I won’t get shit for sales.

So in the one to six years we expect to be here since they could lay him off anytime, while he doesn’t expect to be working there beyond 67 if they don’t, we decided on what we think is worth doing with the place while we’re still here. It’s a little late to do the windows. We should have done them early on but we didn’t so we’re not going to do that and we’re likely not going to laminate the laundry and kitchen floors like we should have either. We actually don’t know for sure on the floors, but we are getting the new oven probably at the end of this month, and we have plans to drywall the hallway. I love pink and it’s definitely my favorite color but even I can’t stand the blinding pink I so stupidly chose for the hallway. So we’re going to white that out. We had planned to eventually do another mural in the living room and our long hallway, so we think we might do them both at once when he takes a week off in early June.

We disagree on when we should do the roof, though. His logic is that we should wait another year since it held up during the rainy season because that way we’re getting the money’s worth out of what we paid for when we bought the house nearly 5 years ago. My logic is that the sooner we get the new roof, the quicker we can enjoy the peace of mind a new roof would bring and an extra year to get the money’s worth out of that.

Cutting back on sodium has helped my blood pressure at least enough to where it’s not waking me up with my pulse pounding in my neck but it’s still elevated. I probably do need blood pressure medicine but with my medication phobia, I’m not in any hurry to get any. I still say that how I feel matters more than how many more years I live. If I were in my 20s I would be more concerned.

It does kind of suck to know that it’s probably going to take another 20 years before and if I naturally get on a schedule. By then my life will be virtually over.

We went to Sam’s on Saturday where I got a gorgeous floral quilt. It’s very stylish yet colorful. It will be good for the winter but probably not the summer. I’ve been looking for this for quite some time but didn’t realize they were calling them quilts. When I would look up duvets I would get comforters and when I would look up blankets I would get fleece blankets. What I like about this quilt is that it’s thicker than a fleece blanket so I don’t need two blankets during the winter, but it’s not as thick and heavy as a comforter.

We also loaded up on some bulk items like water, detergent, and even got some of those air fresheners you clip on your car vent and I like them a lot. Way better than the danglies that obstruct vision and lose their smell in no time.

On Sunday we went to Walmart and I got a bright pink tank dress for the summer.

I also got a deep dark red wine-colored lipstick for Suki and it looks awesome on her. Where I look horrible in dark-colored lipstick, she looks great. It’s totally her color and goes well with her dark eyes and black hair.

Breaked from this entry to get some other things done. Just finished cleaning Tom’s room and bathroom and now Roomba is taking over. So glad I don’t have to vacuum! Especially the living room.

It was quite chilly on my walk this morning but it’s to be a beautiful day and I have the window by my desk open since I’m not going to be sitting there today. I’m in the bedroom now and have a window open in here, too. I can faintly hear the guy mowing his lawn a couple of yards down even on the treadmill but that’s about it. The smell of fresh-cut grass is wafting in here. I’ve always liked that smell.

Decided to try some peanut sauce with which to season my vegetables but instead of being a thick nutty sauce it’s watery, spicy and gross.

It’s funny to see Mexico get a taste of their own medicine and see how they handle hordes of immigrants for a change instead of it always being on us. Funny how all these “poor” people claim to be so broke yet they appear well-dressed, well-fed, and in possession of all kinds of fancy gadgets.

Molly created a Prosebox account after all. It’s a little hard for me to fully trust Aly because she’s lied in the past. I can’t say for sure that she pointed my account out to Molly or that Molly even knows how to access my profile there since you can’t look up my name as I use a sun emoji for the ‘o’ in my name. But I did stupidly share the account link in the past and she could have gotten it on her own from a different site. I think that for the most part, Aly has learned from her mistakes and that I can mostly trust her with things, but if I really don’t want to risk anything being shared with Kim or Molly, then I won’t say anything at all.

You know, for a split second I laughed to myself at the thought of Aly and I remaining friends for the rest of my life and her inheriting my stuff and then being able to read everything I’ve written, including stuff I never shared with the public or anyone for that matter. That’s the price you pay, though, when you get all kinds of goodies from someone for free since everyone has at least something that someone could really use or that they would like. With those good freebies may come some rather strange, hurtful and surprising revelations.

Nothing’s changed with Molly. I read the two quick entries she posted, and according to Aly Molly says Prosebox is lame because no one has responded to her entries. Of course, that’s the whole point for her is to get attention. For me, it’s writing first, audience second.

Same old shit going on with her. They’re still trying to find the miracle concoction that will help her with her dramatic mood swings, no guys notice her, etc. Same old sad sob story. I guess she really has moved on in some ways, though. Aly said she has an iPhone and I did get a Texas view yesterday but they were in Arlington. I know every now and then someone shows up in a different location and sometimes even a different state. Still can’t say for sure that it was her. Aly assured me that while she seems to have let go of most things, there are a few things she’s still obsessed with like Roman, Josh and Kathy. I was a little surprised to hear that she’s still obsessed with Kathy but I’m guessing maybe she’s remained fixated on these people because she’s actually met them face-to-face. As long as she doesn’t harass me, all will be fine. I know right where she is, though. So if she does revert back to her old ways, Marbridge is just an email away.

I was surprised to learn that Molly hasn’t been restricted from being online at all. She just prefers to stick to Facebook mostly. She can go anywhere she wants from her phone but is not allowed to add any apps that didn’t come with her phone like Facebook.

I had a really sad dream the other day involving a cinnamon rat with the same colors and markings that Tinkerbell had. For some reason, I was forced to give it up and was devastated because I knew it would be killed. I was crying, hugging and kissing it, dreading the moment when I had to basically send it to its death.

Last night I dreamed that I was hanging out in some woman’s home or store. It seemed like it might have been more of a place of business. Some kind of boutique maybe? She received a delivery while I was there and the delivery man referred to her as Eden. She seemed to be in her 30s or 40s and I seemed to be young and desperate again even though I was married to Tom. My end goal was for her to be a playmate.

She said something about me being the kind that was fun to hang out with a few people around or alone and I told her she could contact me anytime.

Then I was going through her shorts. She had a pile of shorts present and I complimented a pink pair with a little rainbow.

Well, I may not be young and desperate, but I’m a little annoyed with Kathleen. First, she says she would like to go shopping with me, then she agrees to look me up on Facebook, then she tells me she doesn’t have a Facebook account, and then she invites me to some little get-together she never follows through on.

Why do women do this to me? She’s given me every indication to believe she likes me even if she knows we’ll never be more than friends, so what’s her problem then?

SUNDAY, APRIL 8, 2018
Just thought I would start catching up while my chicken dinner is cooking. It’s in one of those McCormick seasoning bags where you throw the chicken in the bag with the seasoning. Comes out awesome that way.

It’s been a busy weekend so far and we still have things we want to do.

Backing up and going in order of events and hopefully not forgetting anything along the way, Tammy and I chatted on Friday. I was surprised to get her call because I didn’t expect to hear from her until after surgery. She expects to be pretty out of it for a while so she said the girls will pass along updates for me. They better not forget! They have to work and so does Mark but I’m sure they’ll keep people in the loop when they can.

Anyway, they still don’t know what they’re going to find until they get in there and see what’s going on, and therefore they don’t yet know what they’re going to do about it. She’s just tired of suffering, understandably. It would be nice if her little friend in the sky actually existed and gave a shit.

I believe we’re all cursed in some department or another, and like I’m cursed in the sleep department, it seems she’s cursed in the health department. I hate being so helpless but even if I were there, there still wouldn’t be much I could do. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all go away but unfortunately, there’s just no such thing. However, I can say from firsthand experience that different spells sometimes do help with different things. They may not make things perfect but they can help and so I’m scrambling to figure out an appropriate formula that may help someone nearly 3,000 miles away.

She’s going to be in intensive care after surgery so they can watch for any bleeding. I didn’t realize we had so many lymph nodes all over the place. I guess some of them are too deep to simply reach in and remove for a biopsy so they’re going to go through her throat and try to get something behind the breastbone. At least I think that’s what she said. It sends chills throughout me just thinking about it! I just hope whatever it turns out to be nothing and that they can find a way to make it easier for her to live with the diseases that aren’t curable.

I tried to cheer her up by talking about other things to get her mind off the health issues but then I felt kind of bad afterward like I might have come off as selfish and insensitive to her situation. I don’t think anything or anyone can really cheer her up until all this medical drama gives her a break once and for all.

Where I thought I had one autoimmune disease, apparently I have three. I didn’t realize lichen planus was considered an autoimmune disease in itself until I saw a list of autoimmune diseases listed. I thought that was a side effect of Hashimoto’s. Also, they’ve come to consider asthma an autoimmune disease. For the most part, I haven’t noticed my asthma since quitting smoking. It was bad until I was around 10 because my stupid parents smoked in the house around me every day, but then it improved until I was around 20. I was seldom home the older I got and I was almost never home as a teenager. It was bad from my mid-twenties to early 30s because I too, was dumb enough to smoke for something like 16-18 years. I wish my sister would stop that shit as well.

She got a new dog from the Humane Society, a 2-year-old Chihuahua named Hunter. It has one hell of a fierce bark, LOL, going off on some dog that was passing by when they were sitting in the lanai.

Soon I must change the rats’ cage. Make that their mansion. I could fit in it without the shelves in it.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2018
It’s raining here today. It’s nice every now and then because it keeps things quiet, even if I don’t like the cold. Not keeping the planes quiet, though.

I slept shitty yesterday because the blood pounding in my neck woke me up a few times. I really, really have to back off the frozen dinners! Too much sodium. I just read that we shouldn’t have more than 1500 mg of sodium a day. Well, I had about twice that much yesterday. It’s no wonder my blood pressure went through the roof.

Definitely going to be replacing a lot of what I eat with veggies. I feel so much better when I do and it’s healthier. Less sodium, less cholesterol, less calories.

Today, however, I’m enjoying all kinds of naughties. Candy, nuts, pork fried rice, and lobster macaroni and cheese. Their hot wok didn’t have crab rangoons but what they did have was delicious. Haven’t had the shrimp scampi yet.

The only other thing they didn’t have was sparkling water but since we’re out running errands on weekends anyway, we’ll pick some up then.

Really hoping the apple cider vinegar helps with the cholesterol! Aly’s Fitbit friend swears by it but it’s hard to believe I would get that lucky. As one of my fellow writers pointed out, it isn’t just a matter of what we eat, but a matter of what’s in some of our shitty genetics.

Managed to get some more of my Nano project done yesterday after all. Not sure I’ll be in a writing kind of mood today, though.

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2018
Finally heard from that elusive sister of mine. Tammy, who is at the hospital registering for surgery on the 10th, confirmed that she is on blood pressure medicine. Figured as much. It seems most older people need it and are left on it for life. I may need it too, but I’m going to try to avoid it for as long as I can. I always try to resort to natural remedies first.

Yesterday I replaced one of my meals with stir-fried vegetables and ended up having a little over a thousand calories. I was down a pound the next day but I have my doubts that I could keep losing steadily. Even if I don’t, the most important thing is getting my cholesterol down. I think if I stay away or at least limit the foods that are bad for cholesterol and blood pressure, it will help a lot.

We did our first Raley’s order online yesterday and they’re to deliver late this afternoon. It will be interesting to see how well they do with being punctual and how well in stock they are. I wonder what they’ll deliver them in? I’m guessing paper bags.

As with Walmart, you have the option of allowing them to substitute the things you want them to substitute that they’re out of. I usually don’t let them substitute, though. I don’t want, for example, them not to have sparkling strawberry water and therefore give me orange, lemon or lime.

I admit I went a little overboard, LOL, wanting to try new things and was especially delighted by the Sizzling Wok. It’s expensive but now’s the time to enjoy these things… While we still have money. I say if you have money, save some and enjoy the rest! If you save everything you may have more cushion for rainy days but you won’t have as much of a life in between. We all gotta live a little. Money isn’t everything, but it’s still nice to enjoy whenever we can. I was broke most of my life and would go back to that in a heartbeat as long as it meant staying healthy and feeling good. You just can’t put a price on that! I’m trying not to think of and not to worry about Tammy’s health, but I do. It’s only natural to worry about those we care about but I’m still holding out the hope that they don’t find anything cancerous and that they can get rid of it if they do. The waiting in the suspense must be killing her! I hope they don’t wait too long after the 10th to give her the results so she can know what’s going on and pass the info along to me and others.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to trying their lobster macaroni and cheese and also their shrimp scampi. Remember, I hate to cook and he’s not into that either so we do get a lot of pre-made stuff.

We went out running early this morning. Didn’t see any coyotes, skunks or possums.

He gets a monthly surprise box with electronic-related stuff, teaching people how things work. One of the strangest boxes yet contained a clear lock and tools to learn to pick it. He’s gotten good at picking the lock but when I tried I had no luck. I only tried once for a couple of minutes, though. I could probably learn to do it with practice though I have no desire to go lock-picking, haha. It might come in handy, however, to know how to do if we lose a key to an old padlock or something.

I really like WhatsApp a lot. It’s definitely easier and more reliable than texting and it has some nice features. I can add wallpaper and so my little chat with Aly is now in the cherry trees. I was playing around with the camera and video functions and accidentally sent her a beautiful shot of the bedroom ceiling. Then I sent a lovely video of Suki. She said she looked like she was ready to be used, haha.

I like how it tells me when she picks up texts and when she’s online and all that, too. It says when she was last on even if she isn’t on at the moment.

She has a nice voice but she’s a little hard to understand at times. Like Kim, she sometimes mumbles and talks too fast.

She said that just 24 hours after taking the turmeric pill it seems to be helping. I just might try it for my rash if she continues to have success with it.

I’m going to have to reschedule my ENT because my schedule isn’t looking good for it. It’s looking good for Doc A, though.

I think I might have had some spotting yesterday but it was so faint that I can’t say for sure.

Last night I had another round of vague and strange bits and pieces of dreams that were pretty senseless. In one dream I was following Tom who was following a waitress who was seating us in a restaurant. Only the restaurant was pitch black and I could barely see them even though they were right in front of me. After a few seconds, I lost sight of them all together and couldn’t see a thing. All was jet black. I couldn’t even see any of the other customers or tables.

Then we were in another restaurant and all of a sudden I felt incredibly sleepy. So they let me take a nap in a room in the back of the restaurant. As I felt myself drift off, I forced myself back awake because I knew that if I didn’t I would probably be out for hours and I didn’t want to make anybody wait on me that long.

In another dream, I was walking down a hall somewhere where a few people and a tiger were present. The tiger took something out of my hand that might have been a plastic bag and I didn’t try to get it back because I didn’t want to piss it off and get attacked. I was still terrified but tried not to let it show. Then I saw someone open a door and I called out to them to hold it for me. I ran up to the door and exited the hallway with them.

In the last dream, I was in this filthy bathroom that looked like it was hundreds of years old. Two women were sitting at a vanity table nearby chatting, and I was taking a bath in an old footed-tub that seemed both gross and way too narrow.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2018
I made a mistake when I said my BP was 161/90. It was actually 151/90 the other day when I woke up and checked it. From the way I’ve been feeling lately, I think it’s stable again. I feel great today and I wish I could feel like this every day. Yesterday I was a touch anxious and I skipped my pill today so it wouldn’t be worse. There’s definitely something about the synthetic version of this stuff, especially this brand. Something has to be done eventually but I don’t know what. Not going to worry about that today since my condition isn’t life-threatening and there’s no imminent danger. My energy levels are great, my mood is great, and I wish I could feel like this every day or at least most of the time. Yesterday I had a bit of fatigue too, but I still managed to get a lot done.

Tom and I went on an early morning walk. I ran so fast at some points that he could hardly keep up with me. I must be in pretty good shape too because when we got back my HR was only up to 118 after that mad sprint. Tom said he saw a coyote. He saw it at the foot of the driveway. I didn’t see anything, though. They’re usually harmless anyway.

We decided we’ve had enough of Walmart’s bullshit so we’re not going to order groceries for pick up anymore from them. They keep selling out of everything, and their site is a nightmare. Really think they’re gearing up to stop that service and that’s why they keep selling out of things that they don’t restock. Everything is now out of stock or on clearance, and instead of seven pages of favorites, we now have two.

So we signed up with Raley’s and they do home delivery for just six bucks. He spends a couple of bucks in gas just to go pick up the groceries and then the time to go get them, so it’s worth it.

I can’t go all vegan so I’m going to just do my best to not go too crazy with the cholesterol. I’ll cut it out altogether a week before labs and we’ll see if the apple cider vinegar is helping.

Aly said her hematologist recommended turmeric pills and I read about a guy with my type of rash that said it helped him tremendously. If it proves to be a good thing for her, I may try that myself.

We left each other voice clips, which was cool. She sounds so young and I sound mean, LOL.

Once again, I’ve removed Campus Games and soon I will be publishing Socio. I just don’t know if I want to keep going with my Camp Nano project. I just can’t get into it. Sometimes I start a story and then I lose interest. Day 4 and I’m already bored.

Molly has been behaving so far and Aly says she’s actually been online for years but mostly sticks to just Facebook where she can play games. She said something about a supervised laptop at Marbridge but then she does have an iPhone which Sprint is her carrier. I wonder if the Austin visitor was her that I had a couple of days ago. Whoever it was had a laptop with Windows XP. Would Marbridge have such an outdated browser? The thing is they read my most recent entry and they read the one about Josh. Funny because according to Aly, she misses Josh, the guy who beat her up years ago in Iowa, so I wonder if the name grabbed her attention. Plus, she hates her roommate. So, same old, same old. But she hasn’t bothered me thus far so I’m not going to panic or run and change things. Again, that would be letting her control me all over again and I refuse to go there.

Aly also says that Marbridge does have apartments for seniors so if her parents can afford it she’s pretty much set for life.

I asked the status of the crazy mother and I guess she had surgery for her esophagus cancer, a couple of rounds of chemo, and then she retired a couple of years ago. Aly said she doesn’t ask about her parents nor does Molly mention them. Aly prefers to keep things very basic when it comes to her. She says that Molly’s never shown a real interest in Twitter so she isn’t going to block her but will watch what links she shares. She thinks she might have found her through her phone number. I wish Aly hadn’t given her her phone number or at least opted out of being searchable via phone number on Twitter like I have with being searchable via email address.

Sure enough, Tammy didn’t answer my question even though she checked in yesterday. I really feel like she and the girls are pushing me away and don’t really want me in their lives. I wish they would just say so and I will respectfully let them go.

Tammy showed up in my dreams but I don’t remember what they were about. I just know I fell asleep with her on my mind and therefore I ended up dreaming about her. Couldn’t have been too bad, I guess, or else I would have remembered it.

I also had a dream that I spotted my dentist somewhere only she had short hair, then my first endo was driving me somewhere, and then Tom was driving us through some streets with some very questionable traffic that seemed to love to cut in front of us and all that.

I dreamed I was talking on the phone to my cousin Lori who was living with her mother and saying they got a new pet which I’d never heard of. I Googled it and found it was some kind of reptile. Then I wrote them a letter saying that I enjoyed our talks and they could contact me anytime they wanted to. In reality, I’d never have anything to do with her and her family.

Then I dreamed I was walking through the park and not only were they building some two-story houses that were huge, the park looked different. There was more space around many of the houses.

The last dream made me once again wonder about parallel lives. I was seeing the life of someone else through their eyes yet it was clearly me. A younger version of myself was deciding whether or not to see a fertility doctor about having kids or hang onto her life and freedom. I chose life but I don’t know if I was with anyone or not. I guess I was.

TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2018
Oh, fuckity fuck, fuck, fuck! She’s baaaaack. Yeah, Molly. Aly gave me a heads-up, letting me know that a Molly M was following her on Twitter and said that maybe it was a bot. No way. It’s her. Bots usually follow a zillion people and or make a zillion tweets. She has 0 tweets, 0 followers, and is only following Aly. How coincidental is that? And how did she find her?

Although it’s probably too late, I change my name in hopes of throwing her off. My account has been private, though, because I only use it to keep in touch with Aly and Kim. Originally I thought of blocking her but that may make her more determined to reach out to me. She was a determined little shit. For now, I’ll just ignore her. I will NOT go through what I went through with her and or her mother in the past! It’s been four or five years since I’ve heard from her so why now? Why has the staff at her group home or wherever the fuck she is suddenly decided to let her back online? You seriously can’t teach old dogs new tricks. The Kim’s and Molly’s of the world simply don’t change. Ever.

So now I’m not sure what to do from here. I suppose I have four options.

Block her and disallow anonymous comments on sites that allow them and stay away from sites with no blocking feature.

Ignore her if she contacts me.

Block her if she contacts me.

Be nice and return a polite hello if she says hello to me first.

I’d say the last one’s out. I never was her friend. I don’t want to be her friend. I never will be her friend. This is one I just can’t forgive. I so rarely forgive anyway, and it’s honestly a miracle I forgave Aly and an even bigger miracle I forgave Kim. It really depends on how much history I have with the person, what they did wrong in the past, and how often they wronged me. Aly and I really got to know each other well and she didn’t screw me over nearly as bad as some others have.

Aly said she tweeted to that account asking if it was the Molly in Texas she knows but didn’t get a reply. She said that’s normal for her, though.

They say that the best reaction is often no reaction at all, so for now, I’ll do nothing. I suppose it was stupid of me to assume they would keep her offline forever. She may never be on her own but I can see where she wouldn’t be kept offline forever. I just wish Marbridge or wherever the hell she is now wouldn’t think she one day woke up miraculously sane. Crazy simply doesn’t become normal.

MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2018
While I still can’t see why most lesbians cut their hair off just because they’re attracted to women (I didn’t cut mine off when I dated women prior to meeting Tom), I can totally see why older women go short. By then you’re usually dying it regularly and it’s so much easier when you don’t have as much to color. I think I’ll stay long for the rest of my Cali time and then keep it at the shoulders in Florida. That’s the perfect climate for shoulder-length hair since I don’t think I could ever stand to go any shorter. I don’t want to look like a guy. I might cut my bangs back too, even if it’ll make my huge face look even huger.

Feeling kind of crappy today as I sip on my jasmine tea. I think my blood pressure was up earlier but when we checked it a couple of hours ago it was only slightly elevated. I slept with an earplug in my good ear which makes you able to hear things going on inside you easier like your breathing and your heartbeat. Well, the “neck knockers,” as I call them, woke me up a few times which is a common symptom when one’s blood pressure is elevated. I also felt that strange vibration in my head and that compressed, fuzzy-headed feeling similar to when you have a cold, if that makes any sense. I had some lightheadedness yesterday. The only other symptom I feel is very run down. I don’t know what my problem is but it’s making it hard for me to do things that I want to do. I haven’t even begun today’s CampNano chapter so I may have to double up tomorrow.

I did read that women going into menopause often have high blood pressure. But then so do those with thyroid issues. Out of curiosity, I looked up which foods they recommend to avoid for high blood pressure. I know foods high in sodium are bad but it was funny they mentioned frozen pizza because that’s exactly what I had yesterday. It was a medium-sized pizza that took me two sittings to eat, too.

Just in case my good ear is waxy, we got a new ear wax kit from Amazon with same-day delivery since the one we had expired. We had to bring it up to $35 to get same-day delivery and since he needs new socks and underwear, he got some.

I also got this awesome K-Cup variety pack coming which includes one K cup each of the following: 1 of Cake Boss Dulce De Leche, 1 of Cake Boss Hazelnut Biscotti, 1 of Cake Boss Italian Rum, 1 of Cake Boss Raspberry Truffle, 1 of Cake Boss Vanilla Butter Cream, 1 of Guy Fieri Hot Fudge Brownie, 1 of Guy Fieri Caramel Apple, 1 of Guy Fieri Hazelnut Cinnamon Roll, 1 of Guy Fieri Chocolate Mint, 1 of Entenmann’s Cinnamon, 1 of Entenmann’s Coconut Cream Pie, 1 of Entenmann’s Party Cake, 1 of Wolfgang French Vanilla, 1 of Wolfgang Jamaica me Crazy. 1 of Wolfgang Hawaiian Hazelnut. 1 of Martinson Vanilla Velvet, 1 of Martinson Cayman Coconut, 1 of Martinson Mint and Mocha, 1 of Martinson Caramel Crème, 1 of Martinson Irish Crème, 1 of Martinson Tiramisu Twist, 1 of Martinson Texas Pecan, 1 of Barnie Santa White Christmas, 1 of Barnie Crème Brule, 1 of Barnie Cool Café Blues, 1 of Rio Grande Van Hazelnut, 1 of Hurricane Coconut Fudge, 1 of Hurricane Butter Toffee, 1 of Grove Square Caramel, 1 of Victor Allen Sugar Cookie, 1 of Victor Allen Caramel, 1 of Toraini Toasted Hazelnut, 1 of Polka Dot Café Caramel Macchiato, 1 of Indulgio Hazelnut, 1 of Java Factory Choconut, 1 of Java Factory Vanilla Dream, 1 of Crazy Cups Peppermint Chocolate Mocha, 1 of Brooklyn Beans Maple Sleigh, 1 of Authentic Donut Shop Chocolate Chip Cookie, 1 of Authentic Donut Shop Vanilla Hazelnut.

The only one I may not like is the Irish cream.

I also got a pink pool wrap for the pool and that can also be worn around the house. It’s a unique style and I never had anything like it before. I guess you stick one arm through it, wrap it around your back, then put your arm through the other strap. I know I’m not a plus-size but at the rate I’m going I just might get there. Besides, they say the sizes tend to run small with these.

It’s cool watching Tom in real-time as he makes his way to work. I just wish it updated more consistently but it actually updates every minute or two and draws a straight line from point to point, so I learned. I was wondering why it looked like he plowed through the RV parking lot the other day and drove over some yards, LOL. Even I ran over the pool when I was out running the other day.

I only skimmed it but someone shared an article about forgetfulness being a sign of superior intelligence. Haha, is that why I’ve been so damn forgetful these last seven or eight years or so?

Now that we’ve decided we’re going to stick around a little longer, I guess that means we’re on for doing the roof this summer, and for once we’ll be the noisemakers in the community. Going to get a new oven at some point as well.

I started to say that I was okay with living in the mainstream again when we move since if it isn’t one thing I hear it’s something else and every place I ever live is noisy, but I really would rather not play house again with the welfare bums, the wild college kids, or the large Mormon families.

I feel so bad for that nurse in California who was fired for saying that the black boy who got shot deserved it. Well, he certainly didn’t “deserve” it if he hadn’t brandished any weapons, and I’ll admit I didn’t read the article, but what I do know of the case is that he was running from the police. Why would you run if you haven’t done anything wrong?

That’s not the point here, however. The point is that I think it’s really sad that not only is our civil right to free speech breached constantly, but we are now fired for what we do outside of work.

I read the nurse’s tweet and never once did she mention race. As is often the case these days, it was the people and the media that brought race into the picture. She said he was running and breaking into houses and therefore deserved it. She never said he deserved it because he was black. Only others saw black and took it upon themselves to twist her words. This is so typical of the times we live in. Never before was virtually everything seen as racist. What if she said that about a white boy? Would people be quick to bring race into the matter then?

When you commit a crime and then you run from the police, whether you’re armed or not, you just might get shot and it doesn’t matter what color you are. If you don’t want to risk getting shot, then don’t commit crimes and don’t run showing that you’re guilty of doing just that.

For whatever it’s worth, if the boy never gave the cops any reason to believe he was going to shoot them or harm them in any way, then the police were wrong to shoot him, black or not. I understand people’s frustration with corrupt cops. They’re everywhere. I’m as white as can be yet I’ve had my own civil rights violated, I’ve been tricked, I’ve been lied to, I’ve been bullied, I’ve been manipulated, and I’ve even been threatened by the police in my life, so I get people’s frustration and lack of trust in the police. They’re the last ones I would trust these days myself. Too many rogue cops out there who believe they’re above the law and invincible. Yet sadly, this is often true. The double standards are obvious. They can speed, they can lie, and basically do whatever the fuck they want. So don’t go thinking I’m any fan of the cops. I’m not a fan of anything but the truth. Did the boy deserve it? Probably not. But the fact is the cops abuse all kinds of people. It just happens that the media these days is preoccupied with focusing on blacks. Criminal or not, deserving or not, I just think it’s a shame that our jobs depend on what we do when we’re not working and that people’s words are so often twisted and made into what people want to hear. As long as the nurse wasn’t making any threats, she had a right to state her opinion. I hope she sues the shit out of Kaiser Permanente.

SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 2018
I put a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a 33.8-oz. bottle of sparkling black cherry water and it’s definitely a lot more drinkable than putting it in a 17-oz. bottle of flat water. So we’ll find out in June if it’s going to help my cholesterol or not.

So CampNano has begun and I’m off to a start of 1461 words.

No motorcycles woke me up but the heat sure did. In the winter months, we mostly close the bedroom vent and open the bathroom vent. In the warmer weather, we flip them the opposite way. I’m definitely going to have him climb up and adjust the vents before bed.

Tom said there were no loud vehicles, landscaping or projects today. I’m surprised, but we’ll see how lucky I get tomorrow.

We weighed the pros and cons of staying versus going and decided to stay a while longer because it’s the smarter, safer thing to do. There’s no saying how long it would take him to get a job no matter what state we moved to, and insurance is so hard to get in this country. We wouldn’t mind being uninsured if we didn’t need regular medication, and we wouldn’t mind being broke as long as it didn’t mean being homeless. When he’s retired and we’re on a fixed income I don’t expect to have much extra money and that’s okay as long as we at least have a roof over our heads and our kitchen is stocked.

Will we be able to afford doctors and medication? He will be able to but I don’t know about me until I’m 65. He said we could buy a plan. Let’s hope we can afford it, but if worse comes to absolute worse, we’ll move to a country with universal healthcare. Fortunately, though, my medication is common and therefore it’s not expensive.

Now, if they lay him off or lose their contract in a few months and he has to look for a job anyway, that would be different. He would probably be able to find a job easier in Florida because there are more older people there than here. I’m kind of surprised they haven’t laid him off yet since most jobs don’t last forever and the company has struggled at times, often laying off several people at once.

The only dream I remember was starting a job in the middle of a mall as a “sexless” sex worker. Yeah, I know it sounds crazy. But the idea wasn’t to get it on with the customers as opposed to simply spending time chatting with them.

I was talking to the younger woman training me and she said, “These guys are told all their lives that they’re worthless and can’t get anyone beautiful. But you look great, J-Lin.”

I smiled and thought how this was going to be an easy and interesting job with my worst problem possibly being sore feet at the end of the day as I stood behind the counter in the little booth set up in the center of the strip mall.

I then went to fetch my purse where my phone was so I could text Tom and tell him what a simple job it was and how I loved it, assuming anyone actually wanted to pay me to be their sounding board. But I couldn’t find my purse and began to panic as I glanced into the manager’s office which was empty, questioned some guy who didn’t know anything about it, and then remembered seeing the girl training me place it behind a TV on a cabinet or counter of some kind. I checked, and it was there.