Reflections in 2020s

Last Night:

I’ve had time to reflect, and let’s just forget New Mexico. Owning land, having some breathing room around us, and a nice new house without the motorcycles and constant planes near someone I know—without being a planet away from civilization—is a nice fantasy, but that’s all it is. Why take unnecessary risks when we know life rarely goes as planned? We’d only end up stuck with delays that would take much longer to escape than anticipated. Too many unforeseen events could set us back.

It would have been nice to pay only a small property tax fee, but it’s just a fun dream at best. We’re never going to have the money, and between that and my health, our lives are pretty much what the rest of it is going to be. Money may not be everything, but the less you have, the fewer options you have.

I love the country, but I was meant to be a city girl. Why not embrace my fate and make the best of it? Someday, if we ever get ahead, we can carry on with the plans we had here. The ones we can afford anyway as neither of us could work.

There’s no need to worry about hurricanes or tornadoes destroying this place because, as Tom said, it has stood for over 30 years. So why not another 15-20 years? Besides, I’ve lived in enough places to know that no place is perfect and I’m going to have sleeping issues no matter where we go. Instead of the summer storms here, I’d have monsoon storms there. Instead of anything that could wake me up here, there’d be sonic booms there. Instead of planes, there’d be more barking, even if it wasn’t as close as it can get to us here. There would be less threat from natural disasters but we’d have hotter summers and colder winters.

I still want to try for that mouthguard, but I’m just not as healthy as I was in 1999 to take on any big and risky adventures.

It would have been nice to live in a state with doctor-assisted suicide if one of us were diagnosed with deadly cancer, but if one or both of us ever get that desperate, there are other options.

Today:

He found some cheap land in California. The only problem is that it’s near a military base. Those are going to be a problem almost everywhere. There’s no dodging them in rural areas. The biggest concern is that we don’t want to be more than about a half-hour away from urgent care, labs, and things like that given my health and our age.

Personally, I don’t see how we can make it work. This is far from the worst place to spend the rest of our lives, but it would be nice to eventually have more options. Money may not be everything, but it’s almost everything. So much depends on whether or not you have enough of it.

For now, I’m going to have to deal with the honker annoying me and be glad he’s not here full-time. I don’t notice him much every day. I’ll need to put fans or something on if I don’t want to hear the planes on days when they’re more noticeable. Then, I’ll just have to manage the stress of future hurricanes and hope we don’t get hit any harder than we have been.

I got another alert on my phone, and I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” But all it said was to watch out for flooding in low-lying areas.

Still missing my pre-2014 mind and body—the one whose thyroid functioned on its own and didn’t come with these funky emotions at times. I miss being able to see clearly, not being so big, and being in better shape. I hate to say it, but as shitty as they could be, a part of me misses having his family in town and mine just a phone call away. They were toxic in their own ways, but they were there.

The pill cuts and shitty eating during the storm caused my weight to jump by 3 lbs.

I only slept for 5.5 hours today, so I took a nap. During the nap, I dreamed we were in our last house and Tom was sitting in the laundry room at the built-in desk while Dr. Ostrander—who was alive again—put ear drops in his ear. I went to open the front door to let the fresh air in, and right away, that damn power saw across the street started up that used to drive me crazy.