September 2020 in 2020s

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
A site that had one of his email addresses and a certain password connected to it was breached so we went and changed any account associated with that password regardless of the email connected to it.

Yesterday I had a sore throat for several hours but whatever it was is gone now.

Went back to Duolingo and started dabbling in their Indonesian course. I only took a couple of lessons so far, but it seems fairly straightforward enough. They sure make their plurals easy by simply repeating the word.

After I drank some wine yesterday, I started to feel a touch anxious even though it was short-lived and began to wonder if maybe there was a connection after all. I did read that one of the things that can cause anxiety is alcohol along with caffeine and other things. I’ll be sure to drink closer to bedtime when I do.

I’m both surprised and appalled by Florida lifting all their restrictions simply because they ran out of patience waiting for a vaccine. So you get tired of having to wear masks, stay home, social distance and then you say, WTF? I give up. Then go about life as if all is wonderful and normal? Well, we’re not quite there yet so when their death count rises, hopefully they’ll go back to using their brains and wait for a vaccine. Hopefully, there are some people smart enough not to give up wearing masks no matter what restrictions may be lifted.

Had some fun dreams for a change but I don’t remember much of them. Just having a couple of rats living loose in the house that ran up to me eager for attention when I got home one evening from wherever. I picked up a tan-colored one and cuddled and kissed it before going to feed them.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
Been having an interesting day full of adventures. We went out walking at the crack of dawn and then I threw a swai fillet in the oven as we set out to change the pig’s cage while it cooked.

However, things took longer than planned since he went out to find maggots all over the garbage bin for the second time.

“Ugh, I’m a fucking idiot at times!” I told him, LOL. I forgot to spray the bin like I do every week.

So he had to stop and take care of that.

I was trimming Rockefeller’s nails when I noticed a wet spot at the base of the dishwasher. My first thought was that the dishwasher was leaking but I hadn’t done dishes in a couple of days. That’s when it hit me that it was the sink. So I opened the cabinet under the sink and found the pipe had detached from a joint.

Referring to the guy who came to fix our clogged drain I said, “Damn that dumb cock for not tightening the drain!”

“No, it was me,” Tom said.

So his idiot wife has been busting his ass all morning about him being that “dumb cock.” LOL, he should have been checking the pipe more often and I should have sprayed. He may get a rubber gasket to seal it with if he doesn’t just place a block of some kind beneath it. A rubber gasket would probably work well. That’s what seals the door of our front loader.

Then, it was a damn good thing we decided to run out to Rite Aid after dealing with the maggots and leak because after being distracted by those things, he saw that he forgot he had the water running in front. Water was running down the street, and had we not gone out, the water would have probably ended up damn near wrapping around the circle until someone knocked on the door to alert us to it.

Got a couple of single-serve bottles of Merlot by Barefoot and a case of Sutter Home’s white zinfandel and rosé, each with four small bottles. Haven’t tried Sutter’s version of rosé yet.

I was surprised when someone said they were envious that I can enjoy wine freely because one glass puts them in a bad mood or makes them sleepy and wake up groggy. It doesn’t put me in a bad mood or cause me to wake up groggy, but it does sometimes make me sleepy. I would definitely never drink a glass of wine before I knew I was going to work out, go out anywhere, or tackle household chores.

I totally see what Fitbit means when they suggest mixing things up and having more calories than usual once a week since the body gets used to having the same amount. I thought I was having between 1500-2000 cals a day before I started tracking, and maybe I was when I was going into menopause because a woman is pretty hungry at that time. But it taught me that I range between 1100-1500 with 1300 being my average. Yesterday, however, I binged big time on both healthy food and not. Once a month, if even that, I hit around 2000 calories. Yesterday, I must have had 2300-2400. I ate a lot but mostly high-calorie foods. It’s amazing I didn’t feel sick or get heartburn or anything like that. My heart never raced due to all the sugar or anything.

Anyway, the point is that I totally expected to be up a pound or two for stuffing the shit out of myself like I did but nope. I’m up just two-tenths of a pound. I’ll indulge once a week or so. It’s fun to do every now and then and to get stuff I don’t normally get. All those chocolate-covered cherries were divine! I’m just glad I’m not as hungry as I was before periods were due or when I was in perimenopause. Now I can eat fewer calories. Not few enough to lose weight but enough to keep from gaining.

Most days I will start off with a small avocado and either a kiddy yogurt or cottage cheese. Then I’ll have two meals during the day that consist of one piece of meat (chicken, pork, fish) and veggies. In between, I snack on veggies, grapes or berries. Sometimes I might add something like soup. I try to really limit my processed food intake. I won’t let myself have more than one processed meal a day whether it’s a can of Chef Boyardee Beefaroni, a frozen dinner, etc.

Those ACV shots with turmeric and honey are absolutely horrible! Definitely not getting those again. I’ll just pour a dab into my sparkly waters from a bottle of unfiltered ACV. It’s much cheaper that way anyway.

Yesterday, I had mild pains in my chest and back but I’m guessing it was either due to the smoke (today is clear) or I pulled a muscle on the Bowflex.

The shower project is delayed because he found he needed additional parts that he ordered. They won’t be here for a little over a week, though.

I’m now officially registered to vote! And no, I’m not doing jury duty. I swear anytime I get calls for that is when I wish I’d never been vindicated.

Sipping the rosé now. Meh. A little on the dry side and there’s a tang to it I don’t really care for.

Didn’t ignore Aly yesterday even though I had planned to. I noticed she messaged me when she should be in school, so I asked why she was home. Apparently, the virus hit her class. She got tested yesterday but doesn’t think she has the virus. I hope not! Anyway, now she’s teaching via Zoom.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
I should change yesterday’s “overly emotional” to “moody” when I was describing character traits that turn me off. If you lose a loved one, for example, of course you’re going to be overly moody. It’s people with intense and regular mood swings that are beyond the norm that gets to me.

Ended up getting my usual half-hour of exercise yesterday. I just did it on the skier instead of going out. It’s just that I hate to sit still for too long, tired or not.

The fucking park was having a concert as they tend to a few times a year but fortunately, we couldn’t hear it inside the house. What a stupid, dumbass thing to do with the virus still going around and over a million global deaths now. I’m sure there were some people wearing masks but who knows if they kept a good enough distance from each other.

I’m appalled that England is protesting their lockdown and calling COVID-19 a hoax. I may not be the brightest person on Earth but it never ceases to amaze me just how stupid so many people are. I’m seriously embarrassed for and by those dumb enough to believe it’s a hoax. Because people really have nothing better to do than to create some fake virus so people can be stuck at home and can fuck up the economy, right?

Another anxiety-free day. I don’t know why but I know I appreciate it. For a while, I was wondering if Sutter Home wines had anything to do with it because it started around the time, I decided to try them. I’m glad they don’t, though, because I like them better than Barefoot except for their version of Merlot. Barefoot’s merlot is sharper, I guess would be the appropriate word to describe it, so I like theirs better. Even though that’s one of my favorites, I’m staying away from it for the sake of not staining my teeth.

When we get groceries delivered, I’m going to be trying individual ACV shots with turmeric and honey that I can just drop right into my bottles of sparkling water without having to measure anything. It’s a little more expensive this way but I’m curious to try it at least once.

Saw these really cool-looking toothbrushes on Amazon but I’m not going to try them until we get settled. I have a child-size mouth and they have these kids’ dental trays that have brushes in them that automatically brush the teeth on both sides at once. They also have dual-headed brushes I may also try. As a tech fanatic, I love to try new technology and ways of doing things.

Since we took it easy yesterday, today is going to be the day we try to tackle the old shower in the second bathroom and see how hard it is to switch out.

The freeway is loud this morning so I wouldn’t be surprised if the planes were annoying as well. No place is 100% perfect nor 100% imperfect, but we will have a quieter place someday. We will.

It was my turn to have a Calms Forte nightmare. A young woman in her early twenties or so was chasing me with a knife for some reason. I ran toward a busy street with lots of traffic and tried to get someone to stop and help me. It seemed no one wanted to intervene, but a bus did slow down long enough for the guy driving to yell at me to get out of traffic. The dream ended there and then it was off to dream about hearing sawing and hammering every morning at 4 AM. I don’t know where we were living but it turned out to be a young woman who made crafts that she sold. They were these little figurines. I don’t know if she lived attached to us or just near us.

“Do you do this every morning?” I asked, and I wasn’t the least bit thrilled to learn she did.

The rest of the dreams weren’t enough to make sense of. I’m not as tired today since I slept longer but I sure woke up a lot. Twice I got up to pee and I woke up a few other times as well.

It smells a little smokey out there now. When it’s mild it’s actually pleasant and reminds me of incense.

“Those who see the world and the people within it as all black and white (all good or all evil) are doomed to never see the beauty that shades of gray can bring.”

Aly tweeted this on her other Twitter account and right away I suspected it was because I made some negative tweets in regard to people’s stupidity and my lack of faith in anything up there actually giving a shit about people.

She messaged me about trying to keep busy and not dwell on a few things. Then she edited out the part about dwelling on things and I wondered if it was because she remembered that I hate it when people are vague like that or if she decided she didn’t want me asking about it.

She later tweeted, “Reminding myself that giving people power over my emotions does me no good. My open mind is a good thing.”

She was home alone all day yesterday, so someone pissed her off. Not sure if it was me or someone else but you know what? If it’s me she’s talking about and she doesn’t have the balls to come out and say so, then that’s her problem. Is it really me, though, or am I just being paranoid? shrugs I’m not a mind-reader so I can’t say for sure. I can only say that if she doesn’t have it in her to step forward if she’s got any problem with me, then she deserves whatever negative emotions she’s feeling. That’s the thing about her, though; she is a bit of an emotional person. Okay, so maybe more than a bit. She’s definitely more sensitive for my comfort but I’ve dealt with much worse.

When I first got up, I noticed I couldn’t access her Twitter account and I thought Damn! She figured out that I knew about the account and deleted it. Turns out she just changed handles, so she was definitely online yesterday even though I didn’t hear from her anywhere.

Molly tweeted something about finding it interesting that some people block her when she hasn’t been on Twitter much. I wonder if she thinks Aly blocked her.

Aly sometimes has days where she doesn’t check in with me and today is my turn to skip a day after being very consistent. IDK, I still adore her as a friend and all that. It’s just that there’s this underlying sense of dishonesty I’m sensing, and she has been known to lie enough times in the past. I sense she holds back on too many things when I’m supposed to be a close enough friend that she should be able to confide in just like I’ve shared many things with her.

Fitbit says I should be down to at least 154.8 but instead, I’m 155.8, up about half a pound from last week. Again, what should work for most people doesn’t always apply to those with certain medical conditions. Goes to prove I wasn’t imagining it when different types of diets I’d try would fail. Nor are those who also claim their bodies don’t respond to diet and exercise kidding. The only two noticeable problems I have with being and remaining this way are that it makes running harder and affects my range of mobility. But these things haven’t killed me yet. Besides, I’m nearly 55, not 25. I’ll log my food for one more week, then just focus on keeping active. That much I can do.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2020
I’ve never been one to be afraid to voice my thoughts and opinions. In doing so I’ve found that those that accept me as I am stick around and those that don’t take off, leaving me with the people that truly matter. With that being said I’ll just say that if what they say about Amy Coney-Barret is true, I really hope she doesn’t end up taking Ginsburg’s place! It isn’t what she believes. It’s what she may do with those beliefs that have me a little concerned. If you’re a hater who wants to control people and strip women of their rights, then you shouldn’t be in a position of power.

I’ll never get one’s hatred for their own kind. Okay, I can see having ill feelings toward the opposite sex if you don’t like the way they tend to behave and because it’s easy to hate (or at least not like) what we don’t get and can’t relate to. But how can a woman hate other women? So much that she would gladly strip them of their bodily rights if she could and from making personal choices that should be up to her only?

Kind of tired today because I only slept for 5 hours. We’re both going to take a day off from working out which is good to do a couple of times a week anyway. We saw one skunk yesterday, but it skittered across the street and out of sight.

My right eye had a blurry spot that flickered for about 20 minutes yesterday. I’m not sure why, though but that has happened before. I wasn’t in a bad mood of any kind so who knows? I also didn’t have any anxiety yesterday, yet I have no idea why any more than I can be sure why I sometimes do. Still think there are likely many factors because unfortunately, the world just isn’t as black and white as we might sometimes wish it was. Sure would make some things easier if it was but it’s often hard to tell what’s what.

I’ve been asked what my answers were on some of my polls. The few in particular are whether or not I believe there’s an afterlife, nothing, reincarnation or anything else.

I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I’d like to think there’s nothing because this life is enough, and that theory makes the most sense scientifically. I’d say the least likely is reincarnation because of the way our experiences and memories are so much a part of what makes us who we are. If you don’t have the pathway to those memories, then it really isn’t “you.”

My favorite wines are Merlot, Zinfandel, Moscato, Rosé, and Pinot Grigio.

With few exceptions, I’m mostly anti-friend-mixing because I found that that can cause problems and leave one feeling awkward if you have a falling-out with a mutual friend.

No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being choosy about who we’re friends with. Everybody has preferences for everything. We have different foods we like and dislike, different movies, different music, different colors, so why not different personalities? I think it’s okay to not want a particular friend because of any particular trait whether it’s something most people would avoid or that isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all since there are plenty of others who will accept them. As they say, there are other fish in the sea, and I believe this applies to friendships as well as relationships.

I mostly admire those who are sound of mind, intelligent, honest, and with a good sense of humor. If you’re dishonest, contradictory, overly emotional, and easily offended by every little thing, I’ll likely avoid you.

I continued tracking because I was curious to see if that strange person in Reno returned or not. I didn’t see her yesterday at all on my tracker and figured she either left PB or was hiding. But then I saw her and found a message from her apologizing for “going stupid,” and insisting she’s honestly not obsessed with me, and I apologized for my part. I shouldn’t have pulled the prank I pulled, and I definitely went stupid myself, LOL. So I guess all is well there. :-)

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2020
Yesterday was a totally shitty day with anxiety. I also felt a little depressed and frustrated. Mostly just anxious and frustrated. So much for thinking I’d finally beaten it. I eventually took half a Benadryl so it wouldn’t knock me out, but it didn’t do anything for my anxiety. Then I took the other half and while it didn’t knock me out, it still didn’t help much. And of course, I’m still at a total loss as to just what all the culprits could be. He thinks it’s a combination of things like me stressing over my upcoming appointments and hormonal and that a fresh start in Florida will really do me good. I know I have some terrifying memories attached to this house but nah, it’s mine for life whatever it’s caused by. Whether it’s a combination of the above causes or a medical disorder I acquired, it’s never going away completely. Just like I’ve had to do this last half a decade since it began, I have to know and accept this whether I like it or not. It’s a part of me just like my ear/TMJ is, my weight, and other things I’ve had to make peace with. Driving myself crazy over what can’t be changed would be as futile and as pointless as these protesters marching to change pigs that will never change. They are the law. Like it or not, right or wrong, they can make or break it at will. Always has been that way, always will be. So why lower yourself to harming innocent people, spreading the virus, and disrupting so many things just to change nothing but perhaps how people see you, and not for the better?

Anyway, since I’ll probably feel like shit in another five hours or so since it still tends to kick in towards the middle of my day, I’m just enjoying the calm while it lasts. It’s nice and quiet too. I still hear some loud vehicles in the daytime and the daily buzz of landscaping. Can’t wait to get away from that shit in Florida although I do expect I’ll still hear plenty of power tools, projects, and motorcycles, especially before we get land. The only place I would be willing to put up with noise is no place we could ever afford and that’s on some kind of peninsula or island.

Last night I was thinking, oh no! I better send the termites those journal excerpts now so I don’t have to worry about the in-state thing which is why the black bitch couldn’t get me in Auburn as hard as she no doubt tried to and why it was easy for her to seek legal revenge on me in Maricopa being that we were still in the state.

But then I said, nah. Nothing I ever have or will send them will be even remotely illegal not to mention the fact that I’ve learned to ignore subpoenas should I ever get one for whatever. I would still rather wait until she can’t get postal mail to us, even though I understand the pigs could find out where we were any time they wanted.

I started to wonder if Alyssa hasn’t changed her profile picture in over a year because of me but when I was combing through her public stuff, I saw that she did go a couple of years one time. I think that as a doctor, she just doesn’t have much time for social media and even less once she added a kid to the scene. Still guessing she’s never read/listened to any of my messages other than maybe the first few. Then I was probably put on ignore.

Got that swai fish I wanted to try, and I really like it. Too bad it’s not so good for you like most things we like. Yeah, the more we like something, the worse it is for us. It has a nice soft buttery texture that melts right in your mouth.

We went out walking yesterday morning and will probably do the same today. First I gotta hit the shower and get the laundry going.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2020
Guess who’s signing in on an anxious note? Sure wish Tom was right in thinking it’s hormonal and that it will go away for good someday but after half a decade, I have no reason to think it will. I could take Children’s Benadryl now and maybe get rid of it, but I would prefer to go walking in a few hours as opposed to napping and feeling groggy. Yeah, that’s the problem with things that help with anxiety. They eventually stop helping and they make you tired. So that’s why I haven’t sought treatment from a new psychiatrist. I know there’s such a thing as hormonal therapy but I wouldn’t know where to begin with that and don’t want to be spending more time and especially more money on appointments and medications that may or may not work and that also may or may not backfire on me in a bad way.

I forgot to say that a few days ago, Tom said two or three motorcycles that were really loud came blasting through as I was sleeping. It’s a miracle they didn’t wake me up but maybe they didn’t go by the bedroom. They could have entered the circle from the other direction. It would still be pretty loud, though, so adding brown noise on Alexa was a smart idea I should have done from the get-go. It’s just that we didn’t get her until 2015. Either way. We WILL have a quiet place someday. I’m done with noisy places and that shit definitely stops here with this place.

No problem taking Calms Forte and no problem from what I can see with my schedule for labs on the 5th and Doc A on the 19th. I don’t know yet about my appointments in February and March but fortunately, I’ll get some time off from having to worry about that.

I’ll not only have to have Doc A look at the spot on my upper arm that’s a few inches above the elbow, but I now have one on the shoulder as well. I’ve had at least half a dozen of these and they usually heal on their own. I don’t know if they have the potential to be serious or not. When you get older, things start showing up on your skin, so I don’t know.

Did my nails earlier and what a god-awful brand MWellew is! They’re not only way too big for me but just a pain in the ass to work with. It definitely seems that the lighter-colored sparkly ones are easier to see through. These aren’t transparent but more like opaque so they’re still acceptable. They don’t look bad, just not great. They go from light blue to light green to light pink but since I cut my nails, I mostly only see pink on my thumbs. It really is easier working with nail strips that come on a sheet instead of individual nails that are attached to a strip. They’re easier to size up attached to strips but harder to peel and work with in general.

So no more MW, Maity’s or Girzzur. Tailaimei, Augoog and Wokoto are the best so far.

Had a dream I had to pee so bad but every time I would park my ass on the toilet, my bladder refused to let go of its golden goodies.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
We went to Rite Aid yesterday and on the way to and from there, as we passed Cripple Creek, I looked into the greenbelt but didn’t see any signs of life at all. So there are either not that many of them or they’re deep within the brush and well hidden.

At the store, I got lentil chips, a case of Moscato, and a case of Zinfandel.

Aly gave me a hint of where she’s living, saying she was close to a zoo, and I guessed South 13th Street because she mentioned traffic noise and it appeared to be a busy street from what Google Maps showed me. She said I was close. She’s actually on Vinton Street close to 10th Street in downtown Omaha. I’ve narrowed it down to two possible blocks she’s living on and while it would be nice to see pictures inside and out, I’m really not that curious. I don’t have anything to send her at the moment so it’s not like I need her exact address. If I wanted to surprise her with whatever I could send it to her parents. She and Cam will be moving out around Halloween and into a new place in Elkhorn.

My last two polls received answers I would expect from Aly. However, they didn’t come at the same time. In fact, one of them came while she was working, and she made like it was very inconvenient to go online from there. I guess not being there full-time means she doesn’t have as much in the way of breaks, but I wouldn’t think it would be impossible either, so I don’t know. If it wasn’t her and it wasn’t random, someone else is following me that knows what I look like because, in one of the polls, I asked if they thought my hair looked better shorter or longer if they knew what I looked like.

Marie? Molly? Someone else? I am connected to a couple of PBers there, but I don’t know if they’ve ever seen pictures of me. If they have, I would think it would only be with shoulder-length hair because that’s what I’ve had for a while now.

So much for hanging up the tracking for a while. I’m too addicted to doing that. It’s fun. Predictable usually, but fun.

Aly asked if I had nightmares when using Calms Forte as she does. I don’t remember if I took it when I had the nightmare about being alone and broke but I took it last night and the only dream I remember was moving into my first childhood home that was next to my maternal grandparents. My grandparents were still alive and still living next door, too. I walked up to the side of their place and peeked into a window that didn’t really exist and could see into the living room. Sunlight shone through from the front of the house and I knew they weren’t home. I figured they were at their place of business. Their place of business, whatever that was, was just as big as their home and I thought to myself in the dream, wow, that’s a lot of space for just two people.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2020
We got a letter from the park saying that there was a homeless camp set up in the green belt between a part of the park and a regular neighborhood called Cripple Creek and that there was nothing they could do about it because that land wasn’t owned by anyone. They did add coils of razor wire along the base and tops of the fence that surrounds the RV parking lot because they were breaking in there and stealing things.

Good thing we didn’t get the house at the end of Daisy then! I always said that would be the best location in the park but not with a bunch of bums within arm’s reach. So that brief but definite whiff of cigarette smoke I caught as I was walking by the RVs early one morning wasn’t my imagination. I knew it was a strange time and location to be smelling cigarette smoke. Bet it was from one of the homeless people and they had to have been inside the RV parking lot and close to where I was walking because strong nose or not, there’s no way it would have wafted over to me from the creek itself.

Tom and I agreed that neither of us would go out alone after dark (we like to work out together anyway). If we were alone, we’re in pretty good shape and could probably handle one of them. But certainly not groups of them even though I’ve never actually seen anyone hanging around the park at night, not that I’m looking out the windows at that time either. I may only step out to dump trash but that’s it.

I’ll never doubt Dixie again, though! She swears they’re also in the golf course and that they’ve lurked about her place a number of times.

I’m glad to say that I’m not only perfectly calm today so far but for the first time ever, I found something that takes the anxiety away… Children’s Benadryl. Ah, but according to what I read, this will only work a few times and then it will stop having that effect. So much for thinking it wouldn’t knock me out, though, because it did. I ended up napping for an hour, but I love taking naps, especially at night when it’s quieter. I seldom am able to nap, though, even when I’m tired.

In one day my weight went from 155.2 to 156.6 even though I’ve been sticking to the Fitbit plan. It’s no surprise, though. I just don’t lose weight. My body has to be holding onto the weight for a reason, though, and I can only guess it’s due to my thyroid. No biggie, though.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2020
This month has been the worst for my anxiety so far this year and I have no idea why. Just like half a decade ago, I’m asking the same damn questions. Hormonal? Medication? Because I’ve got labs and a doctor’s appointment coming up next month? I’m guessing it’s a combination of the three but there are some things about the medication that don’t make sense. Like how I could go 11 weeks without having to skip, but this time it’s only been about a month.

I skipped this morning too, but I still feel wound up so something else is going on. If it’s hormone-related, how many more fucking years is this going to go on? I guess I’m going to have to accept the fact that I’m going to suffer on and off for the rest of my life. I’ll probably not eat for the last few hours of my day and take my medication tonight. No sense in letting my TSH rise too much if I’m still going to feel anxious anyway.

Speaking of suffering, I was watching a heartbreaking YouTube video about this older couple in which the husband was dying of cancer. My heart broke for the woman who had to accept that her husband was never coming home again, and it broke even more for the guy who appeared to be suffering and in so much pain. It burns me up to know that people are so inhumane when it comes to other people, yet they’ll do anything to alleviate the suffering of a dog. Yes, dogs get treated better than humans more often than not. I still don’t understand why there isn’t a Death with Dignity Act nationwide. Why let so many people suffer so needlessly? I just don’t get that. If I was that woman and that was my husband, and if the doctors and nurses wouldn’t do anything for him, I swear I’d yank the pillow from under his head and smother him with it to put him out of his misery if that’s what I had to do.

Naturally, every time I feel the faintest of cramps down there, I worry about the possibility of uterine cancer. I definitely have risk factors for it too. If I was ever told I had terminal cancer I would kill myself the next day. Why let myself go through such extreme pain and suffering with doctors and nurses who refuse to help me? I know that they don’t get to decide the laws and all that but how could you not want to do the right thing if you saw someone suffering like that? If the law said we all had to jump off a bridge, would we do that? No, of course not. Sometimes you have to do what’s right. Not what any crazy law says.

The good thing is that other than occasional light cramps and those spots I caught, I really don’t have symptoms of uterine cancer, although I would think most of the ones I read wouldn’t happen until it was pretty advanced. I hate to even think of the immense pain one must endure dying of cancer in such a sensitive area! Any cancer would be painful to die from. But I would think uterine, stomach and lung cancer would be some of the worst. “Do no harm” is something doctors swear by and consider their lifelong motto but allowing a terminally ill patient to suffer unnecessarily to such a degree IS doing harm.

Anyway, I’ve tried everything to help myself and nothing I’ve done so far has ever helped when I’m really feeling anxious. Not Stacey’s tapping, drinking, praying to a God that likely doesn’t exist, pressing acupuncture points, nothing. I’m not OMG-I-want-to-die kind of anxious but it’s bad enough at times. Took a children’s Benadryl to see if that helps because even if it makes me drowsy, it shouldn’t knock me out this early in my day.

Even though it does seem to help with energy, I think I’ll take a break from my multivitamin for a while just to see if there’s a connection.

I couldn’t find anything to suggest Ashkenazi women have whackier hormones than others, but I’ll definitely ask my doctor next month how late in life one could have hormonal fluctuations that can make you anxious. I’m still hot flashing as well, especially when it’s warm, and we’ve definitely been warm. In the 80s and 90s. We went out walking at 77° and it had only dropped to 75° by the time we got back.

Anyway, I’m trying not to dwell on anxiety, what-ifs, death, dying and suffering and all that dark shit.

My weight fell into the low end of what Fitbit said it would. I’m going to keep logging and monitoring calories even though I don’t expect to lose any more than a pound or two because it’s a great way to ensure that I don’t gain. It’s looking less and less likely that I’ll ever have to worry about that so that’s nice to know. He’s lost 7 pounds so far.

We registered to vote. It was easy for him because he has a driver’s license, so he didn’t have to print anything out. I had to print and sign a form and mail it in. We’re both going to vote by mail even though Biden’s gonna win this state easily.

Tom said he felt a twinge of sadness when he saw Bob in Virginia’s SUV drive by, but Bob and Virginia weren’t in it. A woman and a man were in it instead. We’re guessing she gave it to one of her kids and their spouse. It would be great if they moved in there and would take over the house and remain there after Virginia is gone. All their kids certainly have to the old enough to live here by now. I doubt it, though. I still wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the house went on the market by the end of the year. She can’t live alone, and I don’t know that her kids are in a position to just take over the house.

When it comes to our future house, I’ve always been a modern fanatic. But I’ve learned that if you can’t afford anything within 3 years old, then older is better because then you can really customize it to your tastes. If you get something that’s semi-modern, it may be harder to modernize because it just wouldn’t be as feasible to remove countertops that are only 10 to 15 years old and not exactly in bad shape for something you find more attractive. I really want to see the house, wherever it ends up being, as a work of art and really make it what we want it to be from top to bottom. I don’t want someone’s acceptable enough flooring or carpet. I want our own. It’s what we’re going to have to live in for the rest of our lives so we may as well go all out to really make it ours.

Since this has turned out to be a practice house, he’s going to see if he can replace the shower faucet in the second bedroom because it’s so fucked up. As I told him, if it turns out to be easier than he thought, he’ll wish he did it seven years ago. If it’s harder, then that’s all the more reason to go for a full upgrade and leave it to the pros in the future.

The Benadryl does seem to be having a calming effect on me but from what I’ve read, it won’t last more than a few days of using the product. Yeah, all good things really do come to an end and a hell of a lot quicker than the bad things do. I’m a touch drowsy but that’s fine. I don’t have anything I need to do that’s physical for the rest of my day.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2020
The index card box for my nail stickers came today. A couple of brands were too big for it, so I trimmed them down. The ones that were in plastic wraps fit fine. It was the ones in paper wrapping that were too big. It was simple enough to trim them to fit, though.

What wasn’t simple was using the punchers to cut out shapes to decorate the box using extra nail stickers. The stickers were too thick. Instead, I remembered I had some gem stickers which I put on top of the box. Not wanting to decorate the entire box with them, I bought some colorful sparkly star stickers for $5 on Amazon.

It has a slide on top of it for standing up index cards, so standing up are the nail stickers I plan to use next. That will be pastel gradients that go from blue to green to pink.

I’m a little tired today and my sleep score reflects it as well. Lately, I’ve been scoring 87-89 but I scored 83 the last time around. Waking up with a nightmare didn’t help. I dreamed of one of the classics; being broke and alone. I didn’t know Tom in the dream and my parents were still alive. I was forced to move out of a small apartment because I ran out of money. I don’t know how I had been getting money before or why it stopped but I was facing homelessness and losing everything. I tried to call my parents as a last-ditch effort to get help, but my phone was broken. When I finally got it to work, I couldn’t remember their number or even what town they lived in. Then I ended up breaking down on the woman who answered when I called Information (do those things still exist in real life where you dial 411 for info?) and she asked me what I needed.

“Well, $120 for my meds, for starters,” I told her, even though my meds don’t cost nearly that much in reality. Levothyroxine is cheap.

I didn’t seem to be in a panic like I would have been when I was younger. It was like I figured I’d lived long enough, I tried my best, but oh well. So what if I had to kill myself to save myself from slowly starving on the streets?

I did have a good dream as well. I met Aly in a hotel somewhere. She told me I looked like I lost a lot of weight and that my face was slimmer. I told her I was so excited to finally meet her and we hugged. I thought she felt kind of bony. Then I said, “I was beginning to wonder if we would ever meet.”

Sure enough, she’s dodging me on giving me her address so I can check her out on Google Maps. I understand wanting to be somewhat private but for Cam to be so private that he won’t let her share a picture of them or anything else makes me wonder. I still don’t think she’s making him up, though. I know she’s very intelligent and has a hell of a creative mind but to keep such an intricate game going for so long doesn’t seem likely. But why such intense secrecy unless he’s got something to hide? It is still kind of weird that I never see any pictures of him, her house, and the fact that I could never find his SIL who’s supposed to be a doctor.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020
I know without a doubt that Aly is fucking with me on the polls but that’s okay because I can play right back in my own way. She recommended doing a follow-up poll and I decided to take her up on that suggestion. I asked those who voted “never” to my journals if they did so because they’re just a random voter who voted randomly, they’re afraid of what I may say about them, or they just like to be different.

Sure enough, shortly after I put up this poll, the first two got one vote each. I would be willing to bet just about anything that Aly voted from her two Twitter accounts which is all she seems to have right now that I know of. There is a possibility that Molly’s lurking and has been doing a great job of not letting me know it, but if she was that curious about my tweets, I would think she’d be reading my journal as well yet Texas doesn’t show up on my list very often.

I put up a new poll asking if I was ugly, average or attractive and I would be willing to bet it was Aly who voted “average.”

I agree. I was above average in my youth (something that had its advantages and disadvantages) and later evolved into an ordinary, average-looking middle-aged woman.

Another poll asks if you’re against, okay with, or have no opinion about the possibility of ICE forcing hysterectomies on some illegals and immigrants and I would also be willing to bet it was Aly who voted it to be wrong.

Don’t know if it’s fake news or not but if ICE is really forcing hysterectomies on illegals and immigrants, I totally commend them. How many times have they come over here, popped kids they knew damn well they couldn’t afford, and then forced our tax dollars to have to foot the bill? Many of the people in Mexico and its surrounding Latin countries breed like rabbits and we don’t need to be responsible and to have our system burdened even more. I think that ICE sterilizing them is helping to control the population as well as saving money in the end. There are enough kids born into poverty be it because the parents are lazy or trapped in a situation beyond their control and others don’t need to deal with it for them.

Lastly, I asked if my writing ability was poor, fair, good or average. I got a vote for good and one for poor.

If it was someone who has really read my journals or stories and really thinks I’m a poor writer, I would love to know why they think that. :-) It may help me improve my writing even more.

I’ll be going to the lab on October 5th at 3:30. Unfortunately, I’m not going to get the good numbers I was hoping to get because I skipped my meds altogether yesterday. It’s unlikely I’m going to be in the single digits. On top of that, I have cut waiting time a few times in the last few weeks. Definitely feel better today. Still can’t say for sure if it’s more on wacky hormones or the meds but I’m guessing the hormones. My day started off with some lightheadedness, but I was fine afterward.

As expected, the garbage and green waste trucks woke me up, but I went right back to sleep and woke up feeling rested enough. I’m surprised the planes haven’t been bad late at night. I just hear the occasional buzz of small planes or helicopters that I always hear at night here.

I wasn’t too happy to learn that most parks in Florida have their trash picked up twice a week. But do they make a three to four-hour ordeal of it? Would the trucks get as close to the bedroom window as they do here? I hope not, but either way, it would only be for a few months.

I visited Dixie as the sun was setting and it was great seeing her even though our chats usually get me down. She never has anything positive to say, but I feel bad for her because she has no one. Goes to show that having kids doesn’t mean you’ll be taken care of in the end. She hasn’t talked to her daughter in years and her son is a drunk. She can’t take care of herself (she needs hip and knee surgery) because she’s so busy taking care of Diane. She no longer has any help with her because Diane isn’t in any kind of program these days and I guess she had a falling-out with a couple that used to help out with her. She says she hates her life and feels like she’s alive but not living. Again, I feel terrible for her and I dread the day Tom and I get to the point where we’re struggling in the way she is. I try to take people’s advice and not worry about the future since it isn’t here yet but sometimes that’s easier said than done. I worry either way. I worry about suddenly dying before he does and leaving him alone. Then I worry about how much I may suffer from whatever kills me and if there’s a possible afterlife that’s a hell of a lot worse than my worst of times on Earth. Then I worry about him suddenly dying first and being faced with having to end my life. I would have no choice but to do so even if I wouldn’t be as horribly depressed and lonely as I know I would be by the loss of him. No matter how much money we had, I’m simply not one who can just live on her own. Things were different when I had my own apartment in the 80s. I was young, relatively healthy, and yeah, things were different. They were a lot less complex in many ways. But now, it would be very difficult for me to be able to take care of myself. Especially since we wouldn’t live anywhere where there was a bus stop right outside the door. So I worry about having to end it all and possibly botching it up and also hope that those that say you go to hell for killing yourself simply say that as a deterrent.

Dixie is grateful for the fact that she has money and hopes to stay out of a nursing home because of it even though money can only go so far and get you so much. I can’t imagine ever being in a nursing home! Especially with my kind of sleep disorder. An assisted living apartment, I can kind of see, but a nursing home? No fucking way! I hate to think of Tom in one of those places as I know that many of its workers can be impatient and abusive and care a hell of a lot more about their paychecks than the patients.

Kind of sad to know that the only way to get instant housing, food and medical care, even if those last two may be a joke, is to commit a crime and end up in jail or prison.

Anyway, I don’t want to get in a funk by dwelling on “what ifs” too much, and again, the future isn’t here yet. For now, 95% of my life is great and I’m going to focus on that.

At around 8:30 yesterday evening, he and I went on the longest walk we’ve been on in quite a while around the entire perimeter of the park which is about two miles and took about 40 minutes. It was a little warm, though, at around 80°.

We went out at the same time this evening and it was a little cooler but still slightly warm for walking. I prefer it under 70 degrees. Anything under 50 and I won’t go out.

Amazingly, we saw not one single skunk on either walk.

The Maitys nail stickers arrived. There are 14 sets, half of which are dull Earth tones that are going to be covered with polish. If it wasn’t for my gorgeous, colorful set of chrome nail polish, I wouldn’t have bothered with this set since half of them are boring. I started with the lime nails. I currently have 63 sets, so they’ll last me quite a while. Tomorrow I get the index card box to store them in.

Made my own meatballs for the first time for lunch. I rolled ground beef into 1.5” balls and seasoned each one differently. Paprika wins!

For dinner, I also made a roasted chicken thigh over jasmine rice with the same veggie medley I used over the previous night’s tilapia, only I threw in a couple of small potatoes since the green beans were going bad.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2020
Another fancy homemade cooked meal! They didn’t have swai fish, so I used the tilapia I had. I made a tilapia fillet served over brown rice which I topped with a veggie medley. I got the idea from a YouTube video where they used yellow pepper, onions and tomatoes. I only like raw tomatoes when I do have them, so instead I used a mix of green beans, broccoli, onions, mushrooms and yellow pepper.

I hope I didn’t skip my meds today for nothing because I’m still feeling a little wound up. I don’t know if it’s because of hormonal imbalances, if I’ve got more medication built up in me than I realize, or something else. One skipped dose can raise my TSH score by several points, but hopefully it won’t be too bad when it comes time for testing.

I’m also lightheaded today for some reason. That, the anxiety, and the occasional racing HR do smack of wacky hormones. At nearly 55 years of age, I wonder when and if they’re ever going to get their shit together. At least I’m only feeling wound up for 2 or 3 hours instead of half a day or all day. It’s also a different kind of anxiety. Before, I was having waves of anxiety stabbing in and out of my chest. It was like I could feel the adrenaline being squeezed out of my adrenal glands and into my chest. But this is more of a breathless feeling like I just did something really strenuous.

Tom just told me he had his own medical scare today. He was playing a video game on his computer when the edges of his vision got all fuzzy and was worried he might be having a stroke. But when he looked it up, he found that a silent migraine described his symptoms perfectly and then it went away like they said it would in about an hour.

I’m surprised I haven’t been cursed with migraines with all the other shit I’m cursed with. I would just think something up there would hate me enough to love to throw something so horrible at me. I’ve heard they’re so bad you almost wish you’d die, and some people even end up puking their guts out. Ugh, can’t imagine feeling like my head is about to explode and then puking!

Tom told me to be sure I keep wearing my Fitbit to bed and don’t get sick of it because if we’re low-income in Florida, I would qualify for SSI. That would mean I could see a sleep doctor there and use my Fitbit info to show that I have a sleep disorder and finally get the disability benefits that never should have stopped before we got married. We wish we had put in for SSI when we were struggling in Auburn, but we just never thought to do so at the time. And why would our lovely government tell us about it, right?

He keeps an eye on the prices of things and his last check of first-class plane tickets seems affordable enough as long as they don’t jack the price up. I would definitely love to go out of here first class! I hope to get more pics along the way. The last two times we changed states, there were issues with cameras and batteries and things like that. I always hated not being able to get a good shot of the breathtaking Mount Shasta.

One of the houses here is going for 260K and they haven’t even been here as long as we have. But the house is really gorgeous inside having been remodeled and all that, plus they have a hot tub in back and a view of the lake.

Decided not to edit and share my bio because it’s a lot to go through and definitely contains more shitty memories than I care to go through. I’m just going to run it through Grammarly since I wasn’t as good of a writer as I was 20 years ago and only had a spell checker back then.

Lisa was in my dreams last night. I hate it when those narcissistic crazy bitches show up in my dreams. I don’t remember much about it. I guess we were having a friendly discussion in person and then I later went back to her house to get something I forgot, and even though the house was dark when I entered it and I called out her name, I could just make out her shadow slinking silently around in the dark which made me question her sincerity.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2020
We uploaded our DNA to some sites that give you some information for free, as I mentioned, and yesterday one of them told him he has a lot of Celtic in him whereas I have a lot of Roman. There’s some East Asian in me too, which makes sense since the Jews started off there before relocating.

Doing Twitter polls has been fun. I’m just not sure what to do a poll on next.

I really miss Ask, but there’s no way I can return there because they’ll just harass me. I guess that instead of banning users who don’t ask and answer according to their standards, you get badgered with pop-ups to the point that their site is unusable. If it was a genuine glitch, it wouldn’t have gone on for years. I’ve tried creating new accounts but as soon as they know it’s me or I give answers they don’t like, the harassment begins. I’ve often wondered why they don’t just write their own questions and answers if they have a specific kind in mind they want but I guess that by messing with those they don’t want, they get others to do the work for them. I can kind of see why they would opt to make it hard for users who didn’t like to use the site as opposed to banning them, but oh well. As they say, all good things really do come to an end.

Just out of curiosity - and this will no doubt put Aly on the spot even if she kind of deserves it for lying - I asked her who she thought might have voted that I never published my journals. Does she think it’s a random voter or someone I know who’s paranoid?

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2020
So there’s a site called Genomelink that allows you to upload the raw data containing your DNA from either Ancestry or 23andMe and it tells you about a dozen different things for free. If you want something like 180 different things, it’s $14 a month. We’re not that curious right now but maybe later on we’ll do it for one month. Here’s what it told me for free.

Food & Nutrition

I tend to have an intermediate amount of Vitamin A and am less sensitive to bitter-tasting foods and have an intermediate taste sensitivity to fat.

I have a lower caffeine metabolite ratio, consume less caffeine than average, and have a higher chance of being a smoker.

I have an intermediate carbohydrate intake and am less of a protein seeker which means my body doesn’t crave protein as much.

I’m likely to have a lower consumption frequency of fried dishes as much as I love fried foods and I do indulge in them sometimes.

I have intermediate bitter alcoholic beverage consumption and a higher affinity for red wine than white.

Most of this is pretty accurate even though I couldn’t say on the Vitamin A thing. I only have one cup of coffee most days, I do like fried foods, and I prefer red wine to white. I was also once a smoker.

Personality

I’m less disagreeable and average in conscientiousness. Tom scored less disagreeable as well and I think in most ways we both are. With him, it seems that he just likes to be different but with me, well, I just don’t usually agree with popular opinion. We agree he’s more conscientious than I am. Sometimes I think he cares too much about others. It’s great to be conscientious of those we care about, but he’s too considerate when it comes to neighbors, for example, even those that have shown not to give a shit about us.

The funny part was how it said he was more extroverted than I am. Neither of us is sociable in general, but I’m at least somewhat sociable online and he isn’t even into that.

We’re both more neurotic, although he doesn’t seem to worry nearly as much as I do, and we’re both open-minded, although I think he’s more open-minded than I am. He wouldn’t care if a Muslim moved in next door, but I would be concerned since there are too many of them who prefer to settle their differences in a violent manner as opposed to just a few here and there. You don’t even have to “do” anything to them, just be different.

We both scored intermediate on being reward-dependent.

Intelligence

It says I have more acute hearing and was above average in intelligence as a child. We both got the same answer and I wonder if they tell that to everybody. I’m deaf in one ear and I think if anything I was below-average intelligence as a child, partly due to ADD and the abuse I had to endure at home. Kind of messes with your focus and concentration, you know?

Physical Traits

It says I’m average as far as a morning person goes and average with motion sickness. It also says I have a lower body fat percentage.

Not quite when you have circadian rhythm disorder and you don’t have motion sickness at all. I do have a lower body fat percentage, though, since I’m just slightly overweight. It said he had a higher body fat percentage which is accurate.

Sports

It told us both that we’re intermediate when it comes to endurance performance.

Deciding there’s no way I can do the second hardest out of the four different weight loss plans Fitbit has where you have a deficit of 500 calories a day, I decided it couldn’t hurt to at least try the easiest one with a deficit of 250 and a half a pound loss a week. I noticed I burn an average of 1700 calories a day. So that means I could have 1450 calories a day and still lose that half a pound a week. My comfort zone is 1200 to 1400 calories a day on average, so that wouldn’t be hard. Hard to believe I could eat that much and lose anything, though, with my thyroid, but I’m curious enough to try it and find out.

My HR is a little high again and I feel slightly wound up like I did yesterday but not enough to call myself anxious. I did have a sugary treat, though, that I got when we ran out to Rite Aid. Coffee cakes. I also got lentil chips for later on, a four-pack of Sutter Home’s white zinfandel, and a four-pack of their Merlot as well. My medication is likely building up in me but I’m going to try to tough it out until I hit the lab early next month.

I wonder how much wacky hormones might be connected to it because I noticed I had some spotting last night and I’ve been feeling faint cramps too. I just wonder when this shit is ever going to end for good! I’m almost 55 for fucks sake! I’m still way better and I was before early 2019 or so but this doesn’t seem normal even though I’m not too worried. In other words, my gut feeling isn’t screaming at me that something’s wrong. While that’s great, I still worry about my health delaying the move. I just think that would happen before anything threw an insanely high-paying job his way. From what I read, though, it’s usually benign. Could be anything from a thickening of the uterine lining, wacky hormones, and polyps, but some things can develop into uterine cancer. It’s just that the exams to test for this are excruciating, and even if they weren’t, I don’t want to have to deal with extra expenses now. I’ll just hope it backs off on its own.

I noticed it last night when I was rearranging the 40 or so Barbies I’m taking with me. I managed to jam them all into a smaller clear plastic bin with the exception of four that wear wide gowns. I’ll probably just leave them in there indefinitely unless they gain value and then I’ll sell them. In this bin, I could stand them upright rather than lay them down in layers which isn’t as good for them mostly because it messes up their hair.

I wouldn’t mind if Aly suddenly knew that I knew she was lying about what she voted for on my poll but not by me telling her so. I wouldn’t call her on her lies unless it was something huge or she dumps me again. Therefore, I decided not to have the post on OD where I mention it ever expires just in case she finds it.

For a minute I started to think maybe she was telling the truth because I voted from my other two accounts again on a new poll I created yet the votes weren’t showing up. Then I refreshed the page and they were visible.

My current poll: Is it wrong to be selective and to prefer not to have the mentally ill or those with prominent emotional problems as friends?

I had my other accounts vote yes and no. Recently received a yes vote when Aly was around.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2020
Nurse Kim is 51 today. Wow, I haven’t seen her since she was 23. I doubt I ever will again, but I wish her a happy birthday just the same. It will be interesting to see if she acknowledges my birthday in a few months.

Had a dream we moved to her state, my home state, of all places. Then he got some kind of job connected to guns.

I also dreamed about visiting Dixie. Only I lived a couple of houses away instead of four houses away and during the visit, it was like I couldn’t sit still, and I kept popping in and out of my house and then returning to hers. Then she got tired and wanted to take a nap but didn’t want to fall asleep alone for some reason so she asked me to stick around and I did, hoping she would hurry up and fall asleep so I could get the hell out of there because I was bored out of my mind.

She emailed me in reality last night. She’s worried about the fires, having an eye appointment today, and looking for help with Diane.

I slept with the AC off because I didn’t want the place to reek of skunks in the middle of the night but I woke up warm a few times so I think I’m going to need to sleep with it for a while longer. In early October, we shouldn’t need it at night anymore. The house one is already taking longer to come on. It comes on in the late morning to early afternoon.

Why would Aly lie about what she voted for on my last Twitter poll? Yeah, that’s the question of the day. She said she voted “now” but that’s not possible. Unless Twitter screwed up and failed to count everybody, the two “now” votes are actually from my other two accounts, so she couldn’t have voted for that. Pretty sure she voted “never” if not twice then at least once.

So why would she lie and tell me she voted “now” when there’s no way she could have possibly done so? I guess she anonymously told me what she really thinks while telling me directly what she thinks would be appropriate to tell me. She doesn’t really want me to share them now. She’d rather I never share them and that’s got to be because she knows I’ve said negative things about her at times.

But why not just say she hasn’t had time to vote yet or something like that rather than tell me she voted “now” when she doesn’t want them published now? Maybe she ran out of accounts to vote from, I don’t know.

She is definitely a prolific liar and I have to keep this in mind. I really can’t trust her as much as I’d like to think I can. I could call her out on it but because it’s something so petty, why bother risking what’s otherwise a decent friendship? Like she said in a blog post, silence can sometimes be a good thing. Meanwhile, I may not have the memory I once had but I’m aware, I know how to read, and I’m not stupid either.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2020
It’s a good thing people don’t regularly test for unlocked doors here (that I know of) since the auto-lock failed to work on the back door and it was unlocked all night.

I really, REALLY hope it doesn’t, but if anything does delay the move, that saw fanatic is going to be dealt with. I’m not going to be put out and annoyed just so someone can have their fun. Nor will I be scared out of speaking up just because some people don’t want to hear it and can’t handle it.

The thing is that they might be interested in him for a job that pays even more than his last one which means we would go from 50k a year to 60k or higher with good benefits and that would be hard to turn down or take just temporarily. The more money we can leave the state with, the more options are available to us in Florida. This job would include local traveling in which I could tag along. However, they did say they want someone bilingual so Mr. Unilingual will probably be turned down.

If there is anything up there that decides our fate, curses, or blesses us, I would think it would use my health to trap us here instead of throwing more money at us. The thing is he can’t claim he’s retired and expect to be given Unemployment. They could ask for the money back if he doesn’t work at least for a short time. I just hate to see him work before a COVID vaccine is available!

He ordered a new bike seat because this one is both uncomfortable and unstable. He’ll get a new stationary bike when we move. We get credit if we opt for a slower delivery method, but it has to be a certain dollar amount, so I grabbed another set of nail polish strips which range from beautiful bright colors to dark dull colors. I’ll throw nail polish over the boring ones.

Because my nail addiction means I now have so many sets of nails, I’m going to get an index card file box to store them in. It’s a boring matte black box so I’m going to decorate it with spare nail strips. I’m also getting a paper puncher that punches various shapes like hearts, stars, butterflies, and flowers since the nail strips would be an odd shape to decorate and personalize with.

Also got a ballet-themed 2021 wall calendar. Beginning in 2022, I don’t think we’ll get wall calendars anymore since I don’t expect to have so many high-maintenance pets that I have to remember when each one needs what. The calendars on our computers will work just as well for appointments and whatever.

Oh wow. First time I got so many votes on a Twitter poll where I asked when I should publish all my journals. No one chose now or when I die but I got two votes for hundreds of years from now, and two for never.

Doing polls is fun. It’s an interesting way to gather opinions without putting anyone on the spot since they can remain anonymous.

I guess I didn’t sleep as well as I thought I did since it seems I was up for about 90 minutes in the middle of my sleep. I do remember getting up to pee and waking up warm, but I didn’t think I would be this tired. As I said yesterday, I have a bad feeling I just hit another cycle where I’m going to be tired most of the time no matter how well I sleep. Even so, it says my sleep score is 88. I sure don’t feel like I slept that well.

Christiane is completely ignoring the messages I sent her. That’s really rude, too. Either reply or tell someone you don’t want anything to do with them! It’s probably because I asked about Nane. Had I just said, “Hello, how are you?” I probably would have gotten a reply. Why do I bother, though? I thought I’d gotten over bothering with those who don’t bother with me or who don’t bother with me unless they hear from me first.

Marie hasn’t been coming around as much. Can’t help but wonder if it’s due to the recent mentions of her if that was really her.

Gonna take a break from tracking PB for a while. It’s pretty predictable anyway, as far as who visits. I think it will be interesting to take a break for many months, then go back and see if the results are pretty similar and if Marie is still there at all. Plus, it’s a bit of a pain to have to make drafts with the code, so a break would be nice.

Aly told me she didn’t hate weekends but tweeted that she did on her Molly-connected account. I noticed that she checked in with her yesterday but not with me and wondered if she was waiting till I went to bed. I jokingly but seriously asked her if she was just waiting till I went to bed or something and a half-hour later she replied saying that after lunch she had a Crohn’s flare-up and was forced to lie in bed. If all goes well, she should be moving in with Cam today.

I love it when I happen to catch her when she’s checking in and she doesn’t know it since I have my settings set to Invisible. It’s interesting to see what she edits. One time she edited out that she sometimes stays late at school to write student reports where it’s quiet, almost as if she didn’t want to admit her place gets noisy too, even though she has mentioned raised voices, doors slamming, and footsteps.

Another time she edited out the mention of Cam having Walmart deliver groceries and I wondered if that was due to her desire to be different. At least she seems to like to be different at times and we definitely disagree on Walmart. She has no desire to shop there.

A few days ago there were half a dozen vehicles next door and I remembered that it was Bob’s would-be 91st birthday.

Finally, remembered some dreams I had. I seem to go in spurts with that, too. One of them took place on the other side of the world. I somehow ended up going home with a friend who was visiting from this other country that I’d never heard of and couldn’t find on a map. I was worried I wouldn’t have a way home, but some woman assured me that she would get me back home.

In another dream, I was driving a realistic electric mini-convertible car around the living room when I heard the sound of a large vehicle nearby. It was really early in the morning and the sun hadn’t fully risen yet. I jumped up out of curiosity to see who was parked so close to the house and found a white van sitting in front of the house. I wondered if it was some type of private ambulance or something.

Then I glanced at the car and saw it was about to crash into the wall because I hadn’t put it in park, even though it was moving slowly. I jumped back in the driver seat and slowly moved it around.

Then I heard a male voice and figured it was a paramedic. I parked the car and got out to look out the window again. I saw the paramedic loading a wooden frame of some kind into the back of the van and then I saw Virginia standing in front of her place. I went to open the door to ask how she was doing but when I opened it, I found three young to middle-aged blonde women dressed and pretty sundresses standing there smiling at me. One of them had spaghetti straps and I thought she must be cold in the chilly morning.

I said I wasn’t buying anything and shut the door on them. I then put my ear to the door to see if I could make out anything being said but all I heard was the rustling of papers. Finally, curious to see what it was all about, I opened the door to find they had placed multiple stacks of letter-sized papers all along the patio.

“So I’m supposed to take one from each stack and deliver them to the neighbors? How much are you going to pay me to do this?” the dream ended with me asking.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2020
The fucking water was off for 8 hours yesterday. Oh, to be able to take showers during the daytime and not worry that they’re going to turn the water off, not that they can’t turn it off at night.

I’m thrilled to learn that there are some parks in Florida that don’t allow pets at all. Since I don’t know what the dog situation is there or if it may be worse than the parks here, why not? That’s pretty much the only thing that’s been better here than expected, but I came to realize that’s because most people in the West believe they don’t belong indoors. But I don’t know what the attitude is in Florida. If everybody’s got them and is okay with them being household pets and not something you just throw outside, that means more of them will be walked which will mean more barking as they pass by our place. The only dogs here that sometimes get annoying are Santa’s.

So if we eliminate the dogs and get out of a flight path and a little further from traffic then that leaves just projects and landscaping until we buy land somewhere and push sounds further away from us. Hopefully, then we’ll only hear things outdoors and what we hear inside will be minimal. There sure are some places on islands and peninsulas, though, that would be worth a bit of noise. But the best of the best is for the rich, so I’m sure we’ll end up in an average home in an average park with an average view until we get land. Also, the state that land ends up being in depends on if I can breathe and sleep in Florida through the humidity and thunder.

I’m mega-tired today. I was up forever and didn’t sleep as long. Let me guess…it’s back to being exhausted every few days, right? All good things really do come to an end. :-(

I vaguely remember dreaming about him and I asking his dead mother where she wanted to eat, and then something about Johnson. It’s been a while since she’s shown up in my dreams.

I vaguely remember the stench of skunks too, not surprisingly.

I’m amazed that despite all the content in my dream blog on Blogger and how long it’s been there, it gets virtually no traffic. I realize I could make my blog containing my entire journal from the ’80s on up to now public and no one would ever notice. I don’t think things like that would be all that interesting to people until they’re over 100 years old or so, though. I’ve noticed that most people seem to only care about current posts but not those from a year or two ago unless they deal with someone famous. So I think they’ll get more curious about older posts the older they get. The idea of someone possibly reading about my life hundreds or thousands of years from now if humanity still exists is kind of neat. :-) But then they wouldn’t get a lot of what I was saying with the way I would abbreviate or give things/people nicknames, especially in the pre-internet years.

A PB friend of mine voted “in hundreds of years” on a Twitter poll where I asked if I should share them never, now, when I die, or in hundreds of years. At least I think it was her since she replied to a message around the same time.

In the evening, when Aly would have been around, I got a “never” vote. Well, she may be curious (if she can’t hack into them) but at the same time, she wouldn’t want anything negative published about her even if there were no full names. Don’t know for sure that it was her. It could have been just a random stranger. But my gut says it was her.

It’s so smokey out there that Tom said he could look right at the sun when he was out watering earlier. It gives a false sense of being a cloudy gloomy day. I can already feel summer slowly beginning to slip away. The AC no longer runs early in the morning.

Just when I thought the serious/critical virus cases would slip under 60k for the first time in ages, it seems to be pushing back up.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020
Nothing like being woken up in the middle of your sleep to the stench of skunks! I can’t wait until I can stop sleeping with the portable AC at night which is part of what’s bringing it in. Please tell me this shit isn’t going to be a regular thing in Florida! Fucking motherfuckers! I don’t understand why Animal Patrol doesn’t do more to kill them or at least move them away from populated areas. Traffic in the daytime, skunks at night…oh, but I’m not sleep-cursed, right? So yeah, if there’s anything up there cursing my sleep be it a God or something else, fuck you too.

Despite taking in 1244 calories yesterday and burning 1958 I’m up half a pound. Fitbit is meaningless for those who simply cannot lose weight be it due to their thyroid or other genetic and medical issues but I’m okay with it. It’s still fun to do and to keep in shape. Got over 1100 steps yesterday, the highest I’ve gone since I got my Versa.

I was even asked to join Fitbit’s heart study, so just like Tom, I’m in! He was probably asked due to his age. Me? They probably noticed my high HR. They will contact me if they notice anything funny which I guess is more likely to happen in my sleep if it’s going to at all. I hope not! If they want me to wear any other special devices or do any video appointments, they’ll compensate me for it.

Not at all liking how I felt a touch anxious the last three days. It’s too close to my next blood draw to cut doses, but I cut my waiting time a little today. Fucking figures this would happen too, when I’m just a few weeks away from labs.

It’s been nice using just Alexa for a sound machine the last couple of nights instead of having the stereo as well, but after one more night, I’m going to have to add the stereo as I sleep into traffic.

We got a new smart thermostat and it’s way better than the last one that was hit or miss. It’s a well-made American brand instead of cheap shit from China. This one can do so much more. I love how we can set it to automatically switch to heat when it gets cold. We still have a while to get to that point, but we’ve got it set to keep the house at 68. If we want it warmer than that in the bedroom, we’ll use the portable. The AC is set to 80 Monday - Friday and 78 during weekends. He got it for the huge rebate that comes with it.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2020
Haha, they refer to senior hours at Safeway as “golden hours.” Isn’t that a little too much like “golden showers?”

There was something familiar about this date. Pretty sure it’s Marie’s birthday. She was a little younger than me from what I remember.

I don’t want to get my hopes up since I never seem to be able to do what I want, partly due to schedule issues and partly just fate, I guess. Either way, I was thinking of checking into making my own jewelry and selling it on Etsy. I’m not going to invest in this before the move, though. I’ll wait and delve into it once we get settled wherever we’re going to settle. The problem is that it might be a little too competitive like with writing. There’s jewelry sold everywhere. Still can’t hurt to grab a jewelry-making kit for 30 or 40 bucks, have fun with it and give it a try. If nothing sells, I can keep it for myself or share with friends and maybe future neighbors. I guess it’s $0.02 a listing for 4 months or until it sells. I was thinking I might price bracelets at $10 and necklaces at $15.

The fucking cock was sawing again yesterday, not surprisingly. At least I think it might have been him but I can’t swear to it because it’s so common around here and when I think about it, it did seem softer like it may have been a house or two away from him. Maybe Santa? I only heard it for a few seconds, but it was enough to grate on my nerves. If it’s too loud or too frequent, it usually has a way of getting old.

As I said the other day, I got a few mini bottles of Sutter Home wines from Safeway. The White Zinfandel was better than the Sauvignon Blanc. Later I’ll try their version of Pinot Grigio.

I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t impressed with the blue hues strips I applied yesterday where each nail is a darker shade from pinky to thumb because they already started to peel off. Seems I do remember some people complaining about that. Not sure if this is a brand thing or not but I definitely won’t get these again because of the way most of them are transparent and too big for me. I would rather not have to trim any down.

The nail lifting has definitely improved but the dark spots on the thumbs are worse, so it probably is a fungus that still grows because it’s being blocked by the strips from getting any light. Most importantly, there’s no pain or anything and it’s not like the nail is falling off. I scrubbed the nails in the shower after removing the strips and then I put some oil on them. After my walk, I’ll give them a little bit of full-spectrum light before I re-strip them.

Overall they don’t look that bad and if I gave up strips altogether, which of course I won’t, I’m sure they would be fine in a few months. Blocking them from light is probably almost as much of a culprit as chemicals were. I’ll hit the thumbs with Lamisil too.

Okay! I went for a nice half-hour walk/jog, came back, and redid my nails with pink/blue gradient strips.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2020
My real email address is plugged into my private Twitter account. If Aly ever blocks it, I’ll know that she’s been looking up accounts of mine. I will also know if she spots my last OD entry before it expires because she’ll delete her “secret” Twitter account or change handles if she does. She may change handles eventually anyway.

I decided to block her on my private Twitter account as well as the one I was doing video tweets on. I can still view her tweets without unblocking her. I just don’t want the accounts recommended to her even though she wouldn’t necessarily know the private one was me. I don’t think she’s spying as much as I thought. Meaning that I don’t think she’s hacking accounts she knows she can get away with hacking. But she could still look for info on me through a paid search whenever the hell she happens to feel like doing so. I hate that people can pay to look up where I’ve signed up. Is that really any of their fucking business?

The other day I noticed that no outsiders had viewed my past two stories on Facebook and figured that the non-friend viewers had been Kim and Aly who are no longer there as far as I know. But yesterday 3 outsiders viewed my story (a rat pic) so I guess they could be anybody.

On my walk yesterday morning I found it to be a bit cloudy and a touch humid even though it was breezy and there was no smoke yet. I was a little warm when I got back since it was almost 80° at that point. I have a little fan attached to a spray bottle that I cooled myself off with, plus I kicked the AC on.

The one thing I hate about coming up Oak is that that’s where most of the dog walkers tend to be and I hate to be stopped to chat about what a beautiful day it is or something like that when I’m supposed to be working out. A woman did stop me for a second to tell me I was fast since she first saw me on Astro. Well, I do run some of the way.

A couple of days ago, I felt huge and out of shape when I was out there for some reason, but yesterday I breezed through my route easily. I’m down a pound too. I’m almost always 155 or 156. There’s very little fluctuation with me. Every now and then I’ll drop to 154 or climb to 157.

Fortunately, the sky didn’t smell smokey when I was walking with all the horrifying and heartbreaking fires going on in the state and now even up in Oregon. By this time next year, I should have traded in fires for hurricanes. The sky became eerily brown blocking out the sun to a degree later in the afternoon as the winds picked up, and OMG, the fucking stench of skunks! Please tell me that’s not going to be an issue in Florida!

I walked on, waved at a black guy who works here that was disinfecting one of the benches and soon found that Fitbit thought I climbed 4 sets of stairs today as opposed to 3 yesterday, even though I took the same route and actually climbed some hills, not stairs.

My heart went on the fritz again yesterday and I have no idea why. I was feeling warm and flustered and then it raced for a while making it up to around 115. I felt slightly anxious too, and the fact that these can be possible symptoms of heart trouble didn’t help either, though as far as I know, my heart is still healthy. Could be hormonal. I swear I’ve noticed faint cramps like my body is trying to kick off a period. Most of it was after having something sugary so maybe that was part of it, and also, Tom thinks the prospect of him going back to work soon may have triggered it. Trauma. It really does scar you for life no matter how much better you may get overall. I’m not as anxious as I used to be when left alone, but I still don’t like it either.

I’m also having that groin pain as well but now that I know it’s not connected to swollen lymph nodes, I’m thinking some kind of muscle, ligament or tendon. Again, I’m 54 and not 24. I can’t expect to be as active as I used to be as much as I wish I could.

I also had a bit of pain in my upper left back below the neck and a little above the shoulder blade but that was likely connected to my TMJ which can move down the neck and into that part of the shoulder/back area. Back pain associated with heart problems is usually between the shoulder blades from what I read.

I feel slightly warm and anxious now and have a touch of fatigue so I may take it easy today. I don’t know if I want to go out walking. Especially if it’s smokey. I may just use the skier today. We are going to Safeway, though. We’re going to grab some scratch tickets because I’ve been having a feeling about winning lately, though I don’t know how much.

Some candle company based in Texas called about a Quality Control Specialist job, but they fail to realize this is California, not Texas. You can’t live on the same wages here. He asked for $19 and they said they’d call back after they check to see if they were willing to go that high, but it doesn’t look like they are. Also, the job would be in Auburn where we used to live and that’s about a 40-minute drive.

I realize that if I keep my hair short, and I likely will since I’m sick of dealing with long hair, then I have room to move around when it comes to colors. Blondes and reds are out of the question but some of the deep dark auburn colors and even burgundy should look nice.

Wow, a Lifetime movie with a childless married couple! It’s about time. Now let’s have some single moms who aren’t divorced or widowed and some more gays and lesbians. Just when I was bitching that it was usually the men winning the fights against women, there was one movie where a woman beat a guy to death and then another where she strangled one to death so it’s nice to see a little more equality there.

Oh, and I know that most people believe that the mentally ill deserve compassion and all that and while I get their point, it’s a little hard to feel compassion when so many of them cause so much trouble. Obsessive behavior, stalking, trolling, intense mood swings, lying, a lack of empathy, selfishness, laziness…how do you have compassion for that?

Because I feel slightly wound up I should probably go do the EFT exercises that I haven’t done in a while and try not to dwell on the three possibilities that could, however unlikely it may be, delay the move. That would be one of us getting sick, one of us getting injured, or him being offered a job with an insane amount of money. We like money the same as anyone else but would still like to move as planned. No one’s ever paid him an insane amount of money yet, though, so I don’t see why they’d start now unless something’s more determined than even I realize to keep me in a noisy place.

We were checking out homes on peninsulas on the outer side of the Tampa Bay and OMG, that area is so damn gorgeous that living with noise, as long as I could sleep, would actually be worth it! I would just love to be a peninsula girl. It’s funny as I was running around like a little kid chanting to Tom, “I want to be a peninsula girl!” We checked out this awesome beach that’s basically a peninsula of its own that I would love to be able to visit whenever.

We saw this house (a regular house built on a slab foundation like what we had in Phoenix) for 90k but it was in the mainstream and I’m sure it would be quite noisy. It was still neat to see a house go for what goes for a quarter-million here. But the loud vehicles and old men wielding circular saws are enough. I don’t want to add partying college kids, screaming kids, welfare bums, barking dogs, and boom car stereos to the mix. So unless it’s on the end of the peninsula, which we’re pretty much guaranteed never to be able to afford, it’s best to start off in an adult park and then get land in central Florida if I can stand the climate or land in another state. It’s easier to get out of a park than to get out of land since there’s more demand for parks, especially senior parks in Florida. So that’s why we’re going to start there. But it’s almost certainly going to be just an ordinary house with an ordinary view. I’d love to have a water view be it a lake or the ocean, but I just don’t see that happening. And again, it would only be for a few months. I’m pretty much all or nothing in that if we can’t afford something spectacular on a peninsula where all ages are likely to reside, then I would rather return to country living. It isn’t just about getting peace when I’m awake, but I need to sleep. I can’t be woken up constantly when I’m on nights like I almost certainly would in a park. Of course, I still don’t know how often the storms are going to wake me up but that’s what we’re going to find out. With many of the parks, the mowers go right up to the houses, and of course you would have dog walkers milling about with barking that might wake me up. Worse would be a carport running alongside the place with a loud vehicle of some kind. I think we could improve on the general traffic and planes, but we’re not going to get away from the projects and power tools. They’re just too widespread these days. You don’t need to rent circular saws anymore. Anyone can walk into a store and grab one for 50 bucks or less. Like I said, no way I’m putting up with it for the rest of my life. I’m not going to be a peninsula girl, but you can bet I’m going to be a country girl again!

It was interesting that you can not only look up the racial breakdown of a particular town but a particular block as well. I don’t know how they know this or that I’d trust it since people do move. I just don’t want to give history a chance to repeat itself where a different race makes trouble for us, has a friend on the police force, and every single fucking lie they tell is automatically believed as it is in most of a country. So what if you may be vindicated in the end because enough complaints were finally filed against the pig when it’s already six months, thousands of dollars, and a whole shitload of anguish too late.

There’s this site that thinks our place is worth around 120K - 130K. We’ve seen dumps in dumpier parks go for around 80K, but I doubt we’ll pocket much more than 30K - 60K after all the fees are paid out in the end.

Took a little break to get some stuff at Safeway…wine, snacks and tickets. The two scratch tickets won us a lousy $4. Annie’s original snack mix is boring but an okay snack. I’d give Sutter Home’s White Zinfandel a 7.5. I’ll try their Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio later.

At least I’m feeling calm now and didn’t need to do EFT or take Ibuprofen for my back pain since they both went away on their own.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2020
It’s going to be over 10 degrees cooler today making it up to 95. I’m sure the bastard will jump out any morning now to play with his saw while it’s still pleasant. It doesn’t really heat up until late in the morning or early afternoon depending on how high the temp is expected to climb. I would still take the damn saw over the car since I always have to have something here as the car was much louder and would drive by multiple times a day every single day often waking me up. The saw isn’t every day, as loud, and it doesn’t get close to the bedroom, so the sound machines can drown it out.

No more putting up with end-of-the-day boredom. When I realize I still have three or four hours before I’m ready to start reading myself to sleep yet I’m done with everything I need to do, I’m going to hit the skier. As long as I don’t go too fast, that wouldn’t be overdoing it or harming my joints, especially since there’s no impact. It’s just a little tough on the feet.

Aly says on her not-so-secret account that she’s tired of having to explain that BLM members aren’t saying that only their lives matter and if you don’t understand this then you’re part of the problem.

I know damn well that was in regard to an RT of mine.

She asked if I decided against doing videoless tweets or if I was doing them on my private account. I told her I did some on my private account and found it a pain in the ass to have to delete the vids off my phone so they wouldn’t take up too much space and thought it looked funny with just a black video or my desktop wallpaper showing, and would rather wait and see if Androids will one day have the new voice note feature. I doubt they will, though. Either way, what I told her was mostly true. It wasn’t on my private account but everything else was true that I told her. Unless I get incredibly bored or I really want to rant about something, I don’t see myself making a regular habit of doing vid tweets.

Okay, I’m mean but I couldn’t help referring to my private account to her as Lady Rainbow when in fact it’s a random name she would never think to look for. She no doubt went looking for what she couldn’t find so she could block it from her “secret” account, LOL.

I just hope she doesn’t find my OD account. But hey, she can mention me openly even though she doesn’t use my name and I can do the same. Still, she’s part of why I LOVE OD’s expiration option. I don’t want anyone I care about to be hurt or offended needlessly.

My poll asking if 6 planes in an hour flying over you at 2K feet was excessive or not and got two yeses. I wonder if Aly voted from both of her accounts.

My Facebook Stories have stopped getting outside views so I’m almost positive they were from Kim and Aly before they both supposedly deactivated there.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2020
When I woke up and saw the papers sitting on the counter, I knew immediately that it was connected to the park and thought how I was going to call them up and demand they never contact us again unless it’s something they send everyone, but then I realized it wasn’t some bullshit complaint from them but from a resident that’s starting a new form of neighborhood watch. They’re pissed that the park won’t hire any kind of guard or rolling patrol, so they want to get the residents to log any suspicious activity to help make the park safer. They claim they’ll keep things confidential, but I wouldn’t trust our info if we had anything to report, to be kept from the park. God help this couple as it is because once the park gets wind of what they’re doing, the park is going to complain on them like crazy about all kinds of frivolous and fictitious things. Well, I don’t just dislike the mentally ill and the chronic liar. Try the overly sensitive/emotional as well. You complain to the park and it’s like they take it personally and feel compelled to counter-complain, though I still think Joy was a friend of Melody’s.

I can’t believe how long it’s been since we’ve heard that damn car too, not that there aren’t other annoyances. There’s always someone who comes along to make up for whoever was last annoying as hell. Like Dahl and his fucking saw. Haven’t heard it in about a week but I’m sure I will this week. Contractors/construction workers are the worst neighbors to have besides the welfare bums.

I was really hoping the planes would wait till after 6 to start their shit, but nope, the first plane flew over at 5:40 yesterday morning. So 12:40 a.m. to 5:40 a.m. will be the only hours I don’t hear them until we get the fuck out of here.

Blogger has finally forced its new and unwanted interface on me. At least on one of my blogs anyway. I have about 10 blogs there, but I rarely use most of them.

I also noticed some changes on MD and one thing I don’t like is that I can’t highlight and overwrite things in past entries. I wish people could just leave things alone! It’s change that leads to problems. Maybe if I deleted the entry before replacing it, it would work. I’ll check it out later.

I ignore most of it as I know people have a right to their opinions and beliefs. However, I’m getting sick of this “hate for whites” trend and the unfair portrayal of them that suggests whites always shit on blacks who are always innocent. It’s insulting to whites and some of us have had enough. People forget that most whites accept blacks and not all blacks are saints.

I don’t follow Norma much because her posts are so negative, bashing whites and putting blacks on pedestals. Sometimes I think of unfriending her because of it and because it would be one less connection to the termite, but that would be mean, and she would worry about me. Besides, how many more years could she possibly have left at 88 or 89? Or maybe she’s turning 90 tomorrow? I don’t know the exact age but she’s definitely over 86.

Tom gave me a great idea yesterday, though I haven’t acted on it yet. A couple of days ago, I was bitching about how I only managed to crank out one paragraph of my story since my writer’s block has been so bad. Then yesterday I got bored and was saying that I had a few more hours left to try to figure out what to do with myself since I’d already done all the things I usually do during my day, and he said to write another paragraph. That’s when I got the idea to just do a paragraph here and a paragraph there like maybe one every hour or two. Maybe this will help get me going with it.

Tom is hoping to work in an Amazon warehouse within a month or so where he can keep active and get lots of steps. That’s what he’s hoping for anyway, and to do seasonal work and maybe even transfer to a warehouse in Florida when we move. They don’t pay much, especially for being in Cali, but it would be adequate enough. He said that as long as I’m still feeling good, he may work until we put the house on the market since most of the time-consuming prep work is now done. The only other thing we have left that will be a bit of work is laying down the rocks alongside the carport. However, he’s not about to wrestle what would literally be tons of rocks in 111-degree temps. He wants to wait until it gets down in the 80s for that.

The rest of the work is indoors but some of it can’t be done until it gets close. This will consist of going through stuff and deciding what’s going and what’s not. Plus I’m going to use the heat gun to remove the wall stickers. Some of them anyway, and we’ll be leaving the murals. Gotta really scrub the appliances down too. I still think that due to its age and needing so much upgrading it’s going to end up with a flipper who will pretty much gut the place from top to bottom.

I just hope to hell Virginia stays put! I know we would happen to get someone with a loud vehicle or that was power tool-happy if she moved.

Amazon’s hiring in Vacaville for $18 an hour and giving a $500 bonus for those willing to come in at 2:30 a.m. He would take the job except that it’s an hour’s drive which would call for a really long day if he had to spend a couple of hours total on the road. That’s a bit long for him even if he didn’t hate driving.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2020
I hope that one year from now when I’m looking back at the On This Day section of PB, I can smile and know that the planes being back in full swing is no longer a reality for me but just a memory. Well, they’re not quite in full swing yet but they’re getting there. It’s still quiet at night, but yesterday morning, I heard 6 of them from 6:08 a.m. to 7:12 a.m. and at just a couple of thousand feet up, I call that excessive. I turned on the fan to drown out some of the sound after an hour, but I know there were more of them.

Again I wonder if I just keep happening to get the extremes or if the degree of noise I hear is actually normal even if it may be from different sources in different places. I mean, I’m not the only one in Citrus Heights. Thousands of others are hearing the same planes I hear. Those in the mainstream are hearing barking round-the-clock and I’m not. They’re also hearing more car stereos. I’m not attached to anyone, so I don’t hear their footsteps or TVs. So I’m not sure what to think. It seems noise is everywhere, but I am determined to cut back the traffic and planes when we move. I’ll still hear some loud traffic, just not so close to the house. Power tools will probably always be a nuisance no matter where we go because they’re so common now. The freeway will also be history in the next place.

I hate this time of year. We still have a couple of more months of good weather, but there’s rarely a moment of silence day or night. At 2 in the morning, even if I’m not hearing planes, landscaping or power tools, I’m still hearing the freeway. By the time it fades out again, we should be gone. It’s definitely a time of year thing and not a temperature thing because it was over 100 degrees yesterday and is going to be 111 degrees today.

I just hope to hell nothing delays the move! I thought about it and asked myself what could realistically delay it and the only thing I can really think of is if one of us had a serious illness or injury. If there is anything cursing me with noise, though, it’s not going to make it easy for us to get out of here since I know we can get a quieter place because we’ve had them before. Not every place is 1100 feet from a freeway, in a flight path, or has a busy street wrapping closely around three sides of them.

I doubt it, but I sure hope the “leaky” dream I had doesn’t mean anything. I dreamed that the rainy season was just beginning, and it was leaking by both the front and back doors. I was worried because most of the rain had yet to come and I was worried we would be forced to pay for a new roof before we could get out of here.

Had another dream where I was wandering around homeless but at least I was in Hawaii while I was at it. Someone handed me a package and it turned out to be a pair of sunglasses and a watch from my parents. I then shed tears of mixed emotions where they were concerned.

One of my nails fell off. First time that happened this long after applying them. Was able to put it back on and enforce it with a top coat.

I was glad to find that not every single set in the second to last set of nail strips is transparent after all. There are about 5 that aren’t.

I was kind of pissed that Lifetime removed one of the movies I was watching before I could finish it. I was watching Your Baby is Mine. Then again, I know exactly how it would have ended. The crazy woman would have attempted to abduct and kill the mother who would have killed or maimed the crazy lady. Then, while the crazy lady, if still alive, was carted off to jail or the funny farm, Mommy, Daddy and baby would go on to live happily ever after.

While I still love their movies, the predictable endings and a few old-fashioned stereotypes are the only things I don’t care for. There’s always a black person in each movie, of course, but there are rarely any gays or lesbians.

Also, in a day and age when most parents are single, why are they always married if they aren’t divorced or widowed in their movies?

Lastly. It bugs me how women are portrayed as weaker than men with almost all of the men winning the violent fights. Then again, there have been a few good kick-ass scenes where women have beaten the shit out of men. Still, whether we want to admit it or not, there really is a grain of truth to most stereotypes. Women were taught to be “ladylike” and not violent or to fight back 50 years ago and most of those with kids were married then too.

But when is Lifetime going to get with the times and bring their characters more up-to-date?

I managed to write one lousy paragraph of my story last night. I really think I’m beyond the point of ever getting my creative juices back again. I skimmed the first few pages I had and decided I had too many missing articles which is basically lazy writing. So I edited more than I created.

Damn, I miss my old hormones! You don’t realize how many things working hormones influence until they no longer work. I wonder if it will be worse for Aly when she gets to this point since she does erotica whereas I just do suspense. But even my suspense is usually influenced by some hottie I turn into a character where there’s a degree of romance and it’s all driven by those hormones that are now dead as are many other things.

I’m bored so much more often than I ever used to be. God’s got to kill me somewhat young because I don’t know that I can do this for another 25 years. Funny-sounding or not, fantasy takes time. Without it, I’m left with just the basics and there are only so many hours I can spend doing those things. Yet I can’t remember the last time I had a crush on someone, and I wonder if I ever will again no matter how attractive they may be, not that I’m in a position to meet many new people. Plus, with my shitty vision, I can’t even fucking see them well even with glasses. Glasses help but can never really replace good vision.

Last plane went by at 12:40, so that will be it till either 5:40 or just after 6. Wow! Five hours off from them.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2020
The nails came a day early and are quite lovely. I started with a lavender-aqua set. The lavender part looks a little more like mauve in the pictures I took but they still came out great! They’re a little thicker like the other sparkly gradients so they would be best applied when I plan on cutting my nails. My nails will grow very long if I let them but they’re a real pain in the ass to deal with when they’re long so I’m probably going to cut them every other week.

These fit well but have a plastic smell to them. I’m sure that will go away soon enough, though.

Overall my nails are looking much healthier, so I saw when I removed the last set of nail strips. However, while much of the discoloration in the thumbs is growing out, I did notice some dark spots by the tips of the nails, so as I suspected, the discoloration isn’t all from nail polish and remover. The lifting looks better as well but I love doing my nails so much that I would do them until they fell off since I hate going with bare nails, LOL. I even hate my toenails to be bare.

Decided I could let some entries never expire on OD. If I’m doing nothing but talking about nails, then who cares, right?

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2020
WTF? 56? Fitbit says my heart dipped to 56 somewhere between 9:40 - 9:45 last night. I’m guessing it was Fitbit and not me because I read that others have experienced sudden spikes and drops as well. If it happened regularly then I might worry.

If we move to one of those towns he was last investigating, we would be just 35 miles from Norma. I would love to visit her and I know he’d like her very much, but I don’t know that I could trust her to keep our location a secret even though the termites might still be smart enough to figure it out if they really wanted to if someone didn’t tell them how to find us first. Norma wouldn’t give them our address, of course, and there would be no reason to give it to Norma, but she might mention the town. Being 100 miles away from the termites is better than a few miles but still, 100 miles is a hell of a lot closer than nearly 3,000 miles, so I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see where we end up first since there are no guarantees yet that we’ll really move there.

The only other thing that might make me uncomfortable about visiting Norma is that she would likely bring the termites up. What am I supposed to say to that? That I know she can’t see it and that she likely wouldn’t have reason to because they have a totally different type of relationship than we ever had but the bitches really are batshit crazy and God help her if she does cross them?

Since they didn’t have his favorite soda the last couple of times we ordered groceries, he’s been drinking water like crazy. In just two days he’s noticed his skin is much softer and doesn’t look as wrinkly. I’ll try this sometime and see if it makes a difference although my sparkling water is water and I do use lotion. I don’t mind looking older so much since that’s a fact of life but if it would make my skin softer and more comfortable, why not?

In looking at my calorie intake over the days I’ve logged them, I’ve learned that I don’t quite eat as much as I thought just like I don’t sleep as much as I thought. I thought I had an average of 1500-1600 calories a day but it’s actually 1300-1400, an amount that almost anybody would lose on and that further proves I’d have to go down to an unhealthy and unsustainable 1000 calories to lose. Again, no thanks.

It’s going to be really hot Sunday and they’re talking about maybe hitting 110 degrees!

Noticed that Christiane read my message yesterday, but I haven’t gotten a reply. She could just be busy. If a week passes with nothing, then yeah, she’s ignoring me, and she’ll definitely never hear from me again.

Right or wrong, childish or not, all the free time I have and the boredom I often experience have given me plenty of opportunities to play with Alyssa, LOL. I “chat” with her as if she’s chatting back. I claimed her messages keep disappearing too.

I started to think that my old dentist, Shannan and Holly being suggested to me was indeed because they read my messages to them and the fact that Alyssa is never suggested to me means she’s not reading my messages. But then that wouldn’t explain why Dr. A and her nurse have been suggested to me. I’ve never messaged either one of them.

Argh, that’s the second time that saw cock has haunted me in my dreams! The first time, I heard its shit the very next day. Tom swears he didn’t hear him today, didn’t spend much time under the headphones, and was even outside as he has been most days.

First I dreamed of being at the beach somewhere and going down these little cement steps that lead to the shore. After I swam a bit in the ocean, I showered. Then I went back down the stairs to head somewhere else when I noticed that the bottom stair was covered in water because the tide was coming in. I hated to get my feet all wet and sandy again but saw no other choice.

Then there was something about a pet rat and my parents. It was as if even they thought it was cute the way it was so playful.

The saw dream was more than just a few seconds. The homes and yards were totally different. We had a backyard half as big as the yard we had in Phoenix and we might have had two floors. It was getting dark when the damn saw started up and it wasn’t only for a few seconds here and a few seconds there. It was a continuous and highly annoying whine instead. I ran out into our backyard where Tom was towards the back corner of it which sort of wrapped around a hedge of some kind.

“He’s at it again and it’s almost 7 p.m.!” I complained. He headed toward me and was talking and since I knew he was hard of hearing I said, “Shhh!” so he could hear it.

“I’ve had enough. I’m not going to listen to this for another 7 or 8 months. I’m going to find out why he does this so often.”

So I cut through our place and as I was pushing the front screen door open which faced his place, I noticed he embossed his name and occupation on a plastic strip sticker he stuck to the inside of the handle of the screen door in hopes of getting more work. The name might have said Michael K, and he listed his occupation as a mechanic. In reality, I’m sure he’s just your garden variety contractor.

I went out the front door with it in mind to ask why there was so much sawing over there and if he was prepping to sell the place or something and hopefully drop enough hints without having to spell it out that it’s quite loud in our place and not just frequent.

Instead of having a carport, he had a double-car garage which he sat inside. He looked younger, though, and a woman, also younger with long light brown hair, came up behind him and they kissed.

A split second later, there were a few other people chatting with him and I realized it wouldn’t be a good time to question him since it didn’t involve the others and there was still the virus to consider.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2020
We went to the store earlier and I got some wine and Jelly Bellies. On our way out was when I realized that the park isn’t quite as gated as I thought. I’m surprised it took me this long to realize this but when I thought of how some people mentioned homeless people coming in through the creek, I saw that the fence didn’t run across the creek and connect to the fences running alongside the backyards of the properties on the other side that aren’t part of the park. So technically, anyone could walk into the park if you went through that small section which would also explain how the occasional stray dog can wander in like that German Shepherd I saw a few times. This is a pretty good area in general, though, so I doubt many homeless people even know about that one little gap in the fence let alone hang out in that area very often. It’s pretty out of the way and not something you would easily come across.

It’s something I’ll definitely keep an eye on if I’m out walking in the middle of the night, but the skunks have pretty much put a damper on that. Besides, as much as I love walking around the park, I do have to get used to indoor walking because I can’t see myself taking walks regularly in Florida due to the humidity, and the alligators there are even more reasons not to go out at night since gated or not, those things are nocturnal. They don’t seem to have as many gated communities in Florida from what we can tell, at least not when it comes to adult communities. In Florida, I would be swimming and bike riding more than I would be walking or jogging.

Tom says he hasn’t heard any sawing and I wonder if it’s because the sawing occurred when he had the headphones on or if the fucking cock across the street is just waiting until I’m on days again. If there really is a noise curse aimed at me, then I guess he would be quiet for a few more days.

We’ve got another triple-digit heatwave coming up, but that doesn’t stop the bastard. He jumps out, cuts what he wants, then jumps back indoors. And back and forth and back and forth.

I had this weird dream where we lived right by a river. The place sort of extended over the river. It didn’t look like Florida at all. We jumped in the car and drove on this freeway that kind of curved above and around the area which looked very industrialized. There was a little dock across from our place and as we drove alongside the river and against the current, I realized that the water that passed our place traveled quite a ways before it got to us.

Then I had an even stranger dream where I literally lost part of my outer upper arm and shoulder bone. Only the end of the arm bone didn’t bulk out like in reality. Instead, it just made a gentle curve toward my shoulder. It was about 5 inches long and was brownish-black and I wondered if I now weighed less as I curiously inspected the bone.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2020
Fell asleep around 5 and woke up right before 8 to pee. It was then that I realized I was nauseous and had likely eaten something bad. Probably the tilapia which was the last thing I ate before bed. I had noticed a funny little spot on it but didn’t think much of it. I took a Tums and lay there for a while with nausea coming and going in waves until I finally puked. Fortunately, I didn’t get as bad as the last time I experienced food poisoning since it didn’t last as long, and I didn’t have the runs. A few hours later I fell back asleep for a few more hours, so I’m a little tired today but not as tired as I could be. My stomach is still a bit queasy too, but I doubt I’ll throw up again.

Funny how I don’t puke since the late ’90s in Phoenix – not in Maricopa, not in K-Falls, not in Auburn – then I come here and puke TWICE. The last time was a year or two ago.

Fitbit thinks my heart spiked to 163 after I got up. Hope that’s wrong and that I didn’t A-fib.

Even though I’ve known Aly for a dozen years now, we continue to really get to know and understand each other which is nice. I think she understands that some bad experiences mean you don’t go back to where you were before. You go through medical trauma like I did, you don’t quite go back to where you were. Just like you don’t quite see some people in the same light after you go through the legal shit I went through in Arizona. As I told her, I can totally see how a woman being raped could really change her view of men and even become violent and abusive towards them in the future.

So do I have a problem with the black person who treats me with kindness and respect at a doctor’s office or in some store or wherever? Absolutely not. Do I have a problem with them as a whole? Yeah, kind of, but then the older I get, like most older people, I just don’t care for people in general no matter who or what they are.

Right or wrong, I like to check crime rates and “pies” when considering moving to a new area. I would prefer 70 to 75% vanilla.

Tampa is predominantly black and can be dangerous as well. Raj and Tina up in Oregon told me they hated it there and had problems with blacks there as did other family members. I don’t care if I have to shop with certain people, I just would prefer not to live with them. So Tom began checking out this new area that he hadn’t checked out or considered before and that’s the northern part of the Gulf Coast. Towns like Palm Harbor, Largo, Port Richey and Clearwater are predominantly white, but they’re close enough to Tampa if you ever need to go to the city for something that’s not in the smaller towns.

The problem with Venice is that their space rents are too high, almost comparable to here. In this area, they go down to the 400s. That’s a third of this place! It would probably be an old dumpy single-wide. Even though it would be in a park and I’m sure the neighbors would find a way to annoy me, it would only be for a few months and it would be fun to be able to bike ride just a mile away to the beach during that time. I’m definitely not going to want to stay there and have those big loud commercial mowers come right up to the bedroom window when I’m sleeping, even if it wouldn’t be an everyday event like the loud blowers are here. I also have no reason not to believe that motorcycles and power tools wouldn’t be a regular annoyance as well.

The Palm Harbor area is about 100 miles away from the termites which is comforting. Any less than that, and there’s a risk of them driving to us if they found out our address. I wouldn’t put it past them to “surprise” us by doing that. We’re still going to do what we’re going to do, though. If we find the perfect place on the Atlantic side that’s near them, so be it. But the gulf side is more appealing. They would be likelier to have smaller cruise ships, and the waves would be a little tamer than on the other side.

I still do intend to get things off my chest by sharing those excerpts, and when it comes time to do that, I’ll temporarily deactivate on Facebook so Sarah can’t create a new account to come at me from.

Tom got a strange text from Vermont asking, “Are you Tom S?” He didn’t reply, assuming it’s connected to something he signed up for and they just want to sell him something. If it’s really that important, they can elaborate from there.

This is kind of weird, though I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Maybe someone they knew found their account. There was a new account, Aloha, on PB and we hit it off right away, exchanging comments and all that. Pretty sure they were in Reno. I recently noticed they deleted their account but I’m still seeing Reno on my visitor list, so they must have created a new account. Why haven’t they contacted me, though?

I’ve only heard two planes since I’ve been up, so they’re not up to maximum annoyance yet.

We hope to fly out of here first class but that will only be if it wouldn’t impact our plans for when we got to Florida. I was laughing with Tom earlier thinking how different of an exit that would be compared to how we came in. We came into the state in a dumpy old truck, so to leave first class would be quite a step up.

When I finally fell back to sleep after puking, it was off to another popular negative dream theme for me and that’s the stolen purse dream. I didn’t know Tom in the dream. I lived in a huge building. Not sure if it was some kind of apartment building or hotel but my mother, who seemed to be around 50, worked in the building as a housekeeper.

I went to watch a movie in a community lounge with three other people who were in their 20s or so. There was a closet with an open door just off of it where you could put your coat and purse. Bored with the movie, I got up and grabbed something be it a sweater or something else, and then looked down at a royal blue purse of mine that sat inside a larger bag. I thought of taking it with me but then decided it would be okay since I would be back soon. So I took off even though I thought better of it and had a bad feeling. The more that feeling came over me, I decided to head back to the now-empty lounge and found someone had stolen the purse.

Then I ran and found my “mother” and told her that while they didn’t get any cash, my license, passport and credit card had been in the bag. I began to panic and feel overwhelmed when I thought of all I would have to do to try to stop the person from ripping me off and maybe even stealing my identity all because I was too lazy to take the damn purse with me.

It took a year and a half, but I finally had a weak moment and messaged Christiane. Or Lisette or whatever her real name is. She doesn’t appear to have read my message which is a little surprising because her last check-in appears to be a day ago. I don’t know what’s going on in her life so I can’t say if she just hasn’t checked her messages, or if she read it, marked it as unread, and plans to blow me off. Right now my feeling is that she’s blowing me off because I didn’t just ask about her. I asked about Nane as well. Time will tell!

I’m bad, LOL, cuz I also messaged sexy doc as if we were having a live chat. Plus, I created “nicknames” which you can now do and which both sides see. So she’s Sexy Doc and I’m Gulf Girl, haha.

It was nice to find that OD now allows free members. I just can’t code my entries for tracking because they don’t allow links for free members but that’s okay. It’s not really necessary there. What I love about it is that I can choose to have entries expire in 24 hours or a week. I decided to go with a week. That way I can drop my thoughts on the world and feel like I can be more open in a place that Aly doesn’t use as far as I know, and the posts don’t have as much time to be discovered with them expiring. I’ve disabled comments because I may get a little more controversial there.

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Last updated May 27, 2024