November 2016 in 2010s

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2016
75 days until I call Stacey. I decided to just see what happens and then make a decision based on how I feel at the time. Just because someone puts out clear and obvious signals doesn’t mean they plan to act on them or become a home-wrecker. Getting together every now and then wouldn’t be “wrecking” anything as long as nothing “serious” happened, though I still think if I see her again it’ll be at her office.

A couple of mornings ago at 8:30, right as I was getting ready to crash, I saw Bob come out with a ladder in front of his place, presumably to trim trees. I was surprised (and a bit worried) since it was only 39° out. He didn’t wake me up, though.

Looking forward to finally receiving my bath bombs tomorrow, which accidentally got sent to the wrong place. These are supposed to be the size of tennis balls instead of golf balls.

Decided I just wasn’t all that into my voice blog so I made it a text blog. I’m not going to post daily entries there, but just use it as another place to store my yearly life updates instead.

I dreamed that Jesse owned a large rooming house in which we were renting a room. Tom was sitting on either a bed or a couch watching TV when I stepped up to the room’s only window and looked down from the upper floor we were on. Jesse lived next door and parked between the buildings.

“Only that black car is down there with its ass sticking up,” I said to Tom, referring to how the back of the car stuck up in the air.

“I want to go visit my old room next door,” I then said, and headed into a small dark room with bunk beds. I sat on the bottom bunk and remembered that the last time we were there, things were rough for us and I was miserably depressed. I remember how I sat on the bed crying for hours at a time.

My bean/veggie diet has totally lost its magic as far as keeping the hunger away. I had half a bag of veggies, 3 slices of cinnamon bread, a cup of rice, a bowl of soup, and a bag of Cheetos, yet I’m STILL hungry! :( If this is PMS can I just get my fucking period now? It’s horrible. I just CANNOT get rid of my hunger no matter how much I eat.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2016
Burke’s lucky he’s a good rat because if he was anything less than that I would have just beaten the shit out of him. I let him out and he was super wound up and playful and he nipped the shit out of my pinky. His teeth sliced the side of it and it took me a few minutes to stop the bleeding. I had to sneak into Tom’s bathroom to get a Band-Aid. Good thing he’s a heavy sleeper. The fucking thing is stinging like hell now.

The kitchen floor tiles arrived today and are absolutely beautiful. You never can really know for sure when you’re looking at a picture of something on a computer. I hope the laundry room tiles will look just as nice when they arrive.

Had some spotting. :-( That explains why I had light cramps earlier. Tom even thinks I look a little watery.

As I learned, if it’s too good to be true, it’s not true. I gained one of the 4 pounds back that I lost, though I figured I would sooner or later, and soon I might have another period. Let me guess… nothing’s going to happen with Stacey either, even if more than a part of me agrees it would be much easier if it didn’t.

The weather’s been horribly cold and it could freeze tonight. The outer corners of the living room get warmer in the summer and colder in the winter. My desk is in one of those corners, and so I pulled out the old portable heater we got up in Oregon to bring extra warmth to that area. We have an even older one that we got in the 90s in Arizona, but that one’s going out with the next bulk trash pickup.

The Twenties’ place looks really nice with all their bright colorful Christmas lights. I still say it’s a little early, though. I mean come on, it’s not even December yet. Even so, I’d like to be out admiring the different lights, yet it’s way too cold to be working out outdoors.

Signed up on Blogger for AdSense, but I don’t think I’ll really make any money with it. Not as many people know about my blog there, and Blogger’s pretty dead, so we’ll see. It’s not fully set up yet.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2016
Damn the person(s) responsible for inventing religion and brainwashing people with the God fantasy. Yeah, another Muslim refugee we so stupidly allowed into this country because it’s “politically correct” and we must, must, must have a bleeding heart for despite their unworthiness it, tried to go on a killing spree at OSU. Well, my damn good cyber friend Christine works there and I can just imagine how terrified she must have been!

As long as this country is going to remain too stupid and too ignorant to the fact that yes, some groups of people truly are more dangerous, delusional and irrational than others just like with some groups of animals, then we’re going to continue to put ourselves in danger by allowing these little fucks to terrorize us.

So obsessed with political correctness are people that they have lost all traces of common sense. Pretty sad if you ask me. What’s next? Lavishing all the love in the world on rapists and child molesters? Will it soon be politically incorrect to point out how dangerous they are as well? Will we be considered “haters” for bashing those perverts?

Man, I’m just so sick of some people’s shit in this world. People who think they were born to kill in the name of an imaginary God that doesn’t even exist. People who feel they need to use their race against others no matter how many lives they ruin in the process. People who enable, allow and encourage these people to wreak the havoc on society that they do.

Just wondering how many more people have to die or come close to it before something is done to keep these savage beasts out of this country. These people are taught to go out and kill as many people as they can that isn’t a carbon copy of themselves as soon as they’re old enough to understand. Is this what we really want to be “politically correct” over and invite into our country?

Let them kill each other instead, and if their cities are no longer habitable after they get done, that should be their problem and not ours. Why should we be responsible for picking up the pieces of death and destruction? It’s like being made to pick up the pieces of a puzzle that some spoiled brat got frustrated with and flung all over the floor. Let those who make their own damn beds lie in them!

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2016
Incredibly, I’m still losing weight. I’ve now lost 4.2 pounds since the first. That’s HUGE for an older woman with Hashimoto’s. It’s going very slowly, but what’s the hurry anyway? Losing 1-2 pounds a week is reasonable. I just wish my medication wasn’t dampening some of the excitement, but I intend to discuss it with Dr. A next month.

Tom dyed my hair yesterday and this time we used a much cheaper dye. L’Oreal’s Colorsilk. It’s a little lighter and I don’t expect it to last as long as John Freida’s, but I like it better because it doesn’t stink nearly as bad and my hair doesn’t feel as fried.

So while our robot is the designated vacuum-er, and I’m the designated floor mopper, Tom is the designated carpet cleaner. It took two hours to do our giant living room, but he cleaned until he ran out of cleaning solution. It takes forever but it’s worth it since it’s something he’ll only do every six months or so. The carpet he’s done looks brand new.

All that’s left is the dining room, hallway and bedrooms. The filthiest spots are definitely by the computers, the rats’ cage, the front door, and the section of hallway between the kitchen and laundry room.

It’s been raining all day and night, and I heard one of my older, bigger wind chimes fall down in the carport. I think we got that one after we moved here, but what’s amazing is the medium-sized one in front that sounds the best. I’ve had this one for about a dozen years now and it’s still going strong!!!

Later…

And now I’m down 4.4 pounds! I went from 154.4 to 150.0. Now if only my hip and ear would stop driving me crazy!

We took our cactus plant out of the small pot it was in and replanted it in a large pot that was left here.

The four days he had off were both productive and relaxing.

It was mostly sunny all day but now it’s raining again. I can’t believe all the rain we’ve gotten so far this year. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t go out walking. It’s too cold now anyway.

I was bad again, messing with Kim and Aly on NaNoWriMo after Aly changed links there. Sometimes you just gotta have a little fun, I guess. Found her by searching “Nebraska” and “nanny.” Her location and part of her bio. Kind of funny how dumb she is at times, but maybe she wants to be found. I used to notice in the past how she’d made herself rather obvious when changing names to avoid Molly. If not, every genius is entitled to a blond moment here and there. :-)

Pretty funny how Aly is afraid of Kim. When she pisses her off by leaving her hanging, she’s afraid to confront her directly and risk getting her ass dumped and then stalked shitless for years, so she dances around the subject in an indirect tweet about how rude she is.

Sadly, however, I doubt Kim will dump her given how long they’ve been friends now. I also get the feeling that they don’t have anyone else, so being the perfect twisted match that they are, I just can’t see them dumping on each other as much as I wish they would. Seriously… if Aly’s my karma for dumping Andy, then who’s her karma for dumping me? Oh, wait! It’s perfectly okay to dump me or wrong me in any way. I forget at times that people are exempt when it comes to me.

Had some very weird, long, detailed and negative dreams. In one dream I was in some crackhouse for some reason. I was excitedly trying to tell this girl in her 20s (Hispanic?) about how I tried Atkins, Nutrisystem, and other diets just to get nowhere until I went vegan.

The girl, clearly very pregnant, didn’t appear to be paying attention to me as another girl injected her with some drug.

That’s when I told myself not to bother with her. She was too young for a friend, too fucked up, and she was an obvious druggie. Plus I didn’t want to be friends with anyone with babies or toddlers.

I turned to leave, apparently on an upper floor. I walked down a long narrow hallway, heading for the stairs, just as a black cop came up the stairs and passed me.

“There are a lot of druggies in there,” I told him.

He started to enter one of the rooms.

“No, the next room,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, backing out of it as I hurried downstairs and out of the old dilapidated house. I crossed the lawn and hoped that no one would consider me a snitch and want to kill me for it.

In the next dream, I might have been talking to my mother. I entered a restaurant and approached what seemed like an older woman that I’m pretty sure was her, sitting at the counter on the stool. I had been accused of murdering some girl. I don’t know if I was just a suspect in an investigation, or if I was out on bail.

“Don’t ask me any questions,” my mother said sharply as soon as I approached her.

This really pissed me off and I stormed out of the restaurant and off to I’m not sure where. Wherever I went, I threw an ashtray full of cigarette butts on the floor. I then picked up the mess moments later.

Next, I returned to the restaurant where my mother was now sitting at a small table for two. I sat down across from her and insisted that I had nothing to do with killing the girl.

“When I was charged with prank phone calls, I was guilty of that. But I have nothing to do with this case. I don’t know this girl. I’ve never seen her. I’ve never talked to her and I have no idea who killed her.”

I turned away for a second and when I looked back at my mother she had tears in her eyes. “My God,” she said, “you really are innocent.”

Then I asked her if she was surprised about how she ended up back with my father, not that they ever separated in real life, of course.

The dream ended with one of us saying something about playing amateur sleuth and trying to find the real killer.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2016
The weather has turned cold and wintry. The afternoons usually aren’t that bad, but today it was one of those days where it just never warmed up. I’m just so glad it doesn’t snow here, though it wouldn’t be impossible. I’m in my one-piece fleece pajamas. This weather is ideal for sleeping, working out and keeping the motorcycles at bay, but I do miss the warmth.

I probably won’t be running outdoors much for the next few months and will just use the skier inside instead. Plus I still have my hip injury that doesn’t seem to want to heal.

My new gold chain fashion belt arrived and fits well, though it’s surprisingly heavy. I also got my black shirt with the cutout ¾ sleeves and it fits well, too.

Got some things done around the house today. Tom cleaned the carpet around my desk before I got up. The thing works great and it only takes a couple of hours to dry. He said the water was clear when he was doing sections along the wall, but under my chair it was black. I don’t doubt it. I’ve spilled some food and drink over the last 2.5 years.

We asked Alexa what her daily deals were, and Tom was strong enough to say “no” to the white chocolate truffles and the 5-pound Hershey’s candy bar. A 5-pound candy bar… that’s disgusting. Delicious but disgusting. No wonder there’s so much obesity in this country, haha.

I’m still losing weight since going vegan, but very slowly. I’m going to see if I can eventually coax him into the same health kick I’ve been on.

I started dusting cobwebs off the ceilings, which was raining popcorn all over the place. Damn these popcorn ceilings! I miss smoothies.

I did the laundry and switched out the light blanket for the down comforter. Hopefully, it won’t give me the hot flashes from hell, but if it does I’ll just switch back.

I’ve got about 17 more days to my appointment and to hope I don’t get a period. That’ll make 3 months!

I have felt so good physically and emotionally and I absolutely refuse to let the doctor give me any more meds no matter what the numbers end up saying.

The year was off to a shaky start, but I think that 2016 has been one of the best years of our lives.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2016
Another Thanksgiving with nowhere to go. A part of me is sad about that, but it is what it is. I just wonder if Marjorie ever thinks about the son she dumped who was too “needy” and too far away to be worth bothering with. That a mother could cast aside her own son seemingly without a shred of guilt after all he did for her when we lived near her is just abominable. Just totally and utterly appalling. I don’t doubt for a minute that she’s as guiltless as a rock on the beach or else she would have Mary and Dave contact us if she couldn’t do it herself.

Her choice. Her loss.

I had a dream I was at Tammy’s, and Lisa was there. First I hugged Sarah and then I guess I was smoking again because I lit a cigarette. Then someone gave me a letter Lisa had written for me. I suspected she wanted to play kiss and makeup by the way she looked at me from across the room.

I began walking through another room and she was suddenly walking alongside me. I pretended not to notice her because I didn’t want to consider talking to her until I read the letter. I noticed she appeared to be slim.

In reality, I don’t want anything to do with her any more than I want anything to do with aunts, uncles, and cousins I’m not connected to on Facebook. Once you’re out of my life, no matter if I dumped you or you’re the one who dumped me, that’s the way it stays. Period. Almost every time I’ve given people a second chance it’s backfired on me and I only end up kicking myself for it and wishing I never bothered.

I realize I’m pretty normal being as unforgiving as I am. I hear people preach about forgiveness all the time yet I don’t see them putting their actions where their mouths are very often. Well, “normal” or a genuine ice princess, I am the way I am with zero apologies, and I do what works best for me.

Life is still great otherwise. :-) We’re having a nice relaxing day and enjoying a break from our regular responsibilities. It’s nice to be lazy every now and then and just do what we want and nothing that we absolutely have to do.

We tried out the carpet cleaner by doing just a square patch of carpet in front of the rats’ cage and it looks beautiful. I was worried at first that the cleaning solution would smell too chemical-like, but it actually smells good. It’s amazing how much dirt came out of that one section. That’s why the next place is going to have mostly floors in which we’ll just get a robot mop like we have a robot vacuum.

Although I don’t expect to hear any landscaping today, I do expect to hear a lot of car door slamming. You know my neighbors can never go anywhere for the holidays and that everybody has to come to them. I hope I sleep through Christmas!

As expected, the assholes turned our water off for an hour yesterday.

We got a ton of packages yesterday. The strapless bra and the tank tops fit great, but the skirt, as gorgeous as it is, is way too long. I will have to wear it as a tube dress, which it says you can do.

That was a hell of a deal on the tanks. I thought they might be thin flimsy crap for the price, but nope. You can wear them to bed or you could wear them outdoors. I love all the colors, too. A dozen good-quality tank tops for $23 is a sweet deal.

Really loving shopping for groceries online. The Walmart site is slow but simple. It’s very easy to use. I just wish they would add nutrition labels to the products. I love how it keeps track of what we’ve ordered so I can kick things out of the ‘favorites’ that I try and decide I don’t like.

They gave us a goody bag with some nice samples. I didn’t care for the snacks (thank goodness for rats and husbands, LOL), but I like the Crest tooth whitening strips, the L’Oreal hair system samples, and the full-size tube of Vaseline lotion. Figures I just had to go and buy lotion right before I got this, haha, but I can never have too much. It will all eventually get used.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2016
I think I’ll just bullet today’s entry.

• I had 1600 cals yesterday so my weight is the same… 150.6.

• The LUX light is a complete waste of money.

• Two days ago I had a strange stomach flu for 4-5 hours. It started with sharp cramps in my upper stomach. Then I had intermittent nausea.

• Slept better last night but that could be because I took a lorazepam for the first time in a while after being up 18 hours.

• I don’t remember a single dream.

• UPS arrived at 9:30 with our carpet cleaner, goodies for Tom, and a few goodies for me.

• Jasmine and her blonde buddy look great in their new pants and tops.

• I now have a nice clean glass dish for my wax fragrance warmer. A tiny hole burned through the center of the other one as it got old and yucky, dribbling wax onto the bulb.

• My early birthday present from Tom, a glass rainbow wind chime, is gorgeous and I love the sound of it. Now we just need some wind to go with it.

• My new dress (black with a jagged chiffon hemline) is more like a tunic and looks great with my blue tights.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2016
Stacey. Losing weight. Possibly being done with periods. Help with my sleep disorder.

Is it just me or do things seem a little too good to be true lately? I’ve now lost 4 pounds, though I’m kind of doubtful about the light therapy.

I slept horribly, constantly waking up, and I’ve decided to take a few days off from the new allergy nasal spray I started to make sure that that’s not affecting my sleep in any way. I doubt it is, though. I seem to be having longer, more detailed dreams, too.

I’m going to give it a little more time, but the light therapy seems like it’s going to be a bust since I got up 1.5 hours later today, which is typical. One of the times I woke up I didn’t think I would be able to fall back asleep, so maybe I would have gotten up sooner had I slept better.

I had a two-part dream that took place at Valleyhead, even though the place looked different. Several students and even that evil Donna were there. At first everybody slept on double beds (two to a bed) in a large dorm.

One of the girls complained to Donna that they were unable to sleep with their assigned bedmates because they kept them up all night.

“You’re going to have to find two people who would be able to sleep with each other and take one of their places,” I said, not caring what Donna thought of my suggestion.

In the next scene, I was going through my clothes and realized that I needed to do laundry because I was running out of underwear. Yet every time I thought I found the opportunity to do it, something would come up, keeping me so busy I barely had time to breathe.

I woke up for a while and then when I fell back asleep I was able to get that laundry done, LOL, that I was scrambling to do in the previous dream. The laundry room was downstairs in the basement. There were three washers on one wall and three dryers on another wall. I had been waiting for a machine to become available before I realized that I was waiting for nothing because it was a dryer when I needed a washer.

Then I went upstairs and I was moving some things out of one room and into another (I guess now we were in rooms instead of dorms). As some girl was leaving the room I was moving things into, I explained to her that I wanted to put the stuff there because I would probably be in that room soon enough.

She smiled and said that was exciting.

Then on another day within the same dream, I fell asleep intending to take a short nap, but ended up sleeping all day and didn’t get up until 3 PM. I realized I would need to go to sleep when “school” started in the morning, and I awoke from the dream as I was trying to decide if I should attend class or just skip it and hope they didn’t notice my absence.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2016
“HA! HA! HA! HA!” said the ducks at the lake when I passed by the adorable Chihuahua in the pink frilly coat.

I was only out for 15 minutes because my hands froze. I don’t know why I didn’t take my gloves. It’s cold and foggy out there. I’ll make up the remaining 15 minutes on the skier.

For a few minutes after returning indoors, my left hand did this strange vibration that wasn’t visible but that I could feel. I can imagine my reaction to that one if I were on a little more levothyroxine and hadn’t been EMDRd.

Unfortunately, the kind of drug I’m on has me as worried about losing weight as I am excited. The difference between being beneficial and helpful versus being tormented both physically and emotionally is just a few micrograms and probably only a 20-pound loss in my case because I’m short. As he assured me, however, they test my levels often enough that I should have plenty of warning if I’m heading to a bad place.

I see Dr. A on the 13th. Hopefully, I will be able to tell her that my last period was right before I last saw her three months ago. Yes, I’m breaking records and I could very well be done with that. It’s still too soon to say for sure whether or not I will once again visit Bleederville, but either way, how many more periods could I possibly have?

Oh, great. Now the scammers know about my Gmail address and are spamming the shit out of that account in addition to my Hotmail and mail.com accounts. Makes me wonder if anyone I know is behind it. Would anyone really take the time to sign someone up for a bunch of shit or give their address to these shitsters?

He doesn’t think anyone I know is behind it. As he said, all it takes is one site being hacked.

The full-spectrum light therapy is off to a good start. Maybe a little too good, although the nightmare I had is why I woke up a little early. It’s way too soon to know for sure. There have been times when I would get up at the same time for three or four days in a row. If I were able to get up at the same time for a whole week, then I would think yeah, maybe we were onto something here. I might not use it for a few days if that’s the case because 4 AM is a little earlier than I would like to be getting up at. 6 AM is more reasonable. I would prefer to sleep 10 PM to 6 AM rather than 8 PM to 4 AM. I just got an early head start because I ran out of patience waiting to try it.

The one and only thing I would hate if I were always on days would be having to listen to landscaping and traffic every single day unless it was raining. The rain doesn’t always save me from that shit either.

I’m also going to hit the Bowflex and clean both bedrooms and bathrooms today. I did the laundry room last night. Tomorrow I’ll do the kitchen, dining and living room.

I got a brush made for ceiling fans when we were at Lowe’s.

We saw some robotic fish while we were at Target and joked about throwing them in the pool. That would really make the old folks wonder just how senile they were getting!

We decided to go ahead and do our huge Amazon order now rather than wait until early next month. This way we avoid the holiday rush.

He got several electronic parts/gadgets, plus I ordered a couple of boxes of the protein cookies I’ve been having on this diet in a couple of flavors I haven’t tried yet… peanut butter and birthday cake.

We got the flooring tiles and the carpet cleaner, plus I ordered a replacement dish for my wax fragrance warmer, and a new hammock/tent for the rats.

For fun things, I have about 10 things on the way, one of which is coming today. That would be my black dress with an asymmetrical hem. I will also be receiving the following list:

1. A glass rainbow wind chime

2. A rainbow sweatshirt

3. A beige strapless bra

4. A 12-pack of tank tops, each in a different color

5. A black long-sleeve shirt in which part of the sleeve is cut out

6. A gold chain belt

7. A floral skirt with a feather on the end of a ribbon

8. An assortment of 10 different bath bombs

9. Two tops and two pairs of pants for my 18” dolls.

In last night’s nightmare, I dreamed I was staying in some cabin in the woods with three or four other people. I guess there was a main cabin that we all met up in, but we would sleep in individual cabins that were nearby. Word was out that a killer was on the loose. On our first night there, one woman who seemed fairly youngish was a little worried about heading to her cabin alone. I told her I would watch her from the door. Her cabin was about 100 feet away, but by the time she got barely 50 feet away, a man jumped out of the shadows and started stabbing her. I opened my mouth to scream for help and for someone to call the cops, but no sound would come out as I awoke.

In another dream, my sister called to tell me she won a karaoke contest. LOL, no chance. She hates to sing. I used to win these things in the early 90s. Too bad I hadn’t yet quit smoking as I probably could have won even more.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2016
Those brown butter rum cookies were so good! Amazingly, I didn’t go up the pound I expected to go up taking a day off from my diet like I did. Instead, I went up just 2/10 of a pound. Been back on track today and didn’t get any treats at the store.

I began light therapy this morning even though I’m still getting up pretty early, and even though I don’t see how a simple light could help much. But I’ve been surprised in the past and so we’ll see if I’m surprised again.

The cheap shiny silver faucet I stupidly picked out for the master bathroom not long after we moved in here sprung a leak yesterday. A part of me is glad because no matter how much I would clean the damn thing, it would always have these white spots on it. So this morning we went to Lowe’s and I picked out a less shiny nickel-finished faucet that’s quite beautiful. It doesn’t have a single lever but it’s very stylish, way better quality, and it goes well in there. This faucet is a little higher and that should make rinsing my mouth when brushing my teeth easier. It cost $100.

Some other time we’ll replace the drain. The drains in both the sinks look kind of old and gross.

Our second stop was at Target to use a coupon for $5 off $25 worth of stuff. However, there was a hidden catch and the stuff we got didn’t qualify. As he said, this is why we don’t get their rewards card; because there are always hidden catches that weren’t advertised. I do like their store, though. They have a good selection, and for once the store was pretty dead, so we got to shop in peace.

I got a couple of necklaces that are unique to anything I’ve ever had before. One is a 3 in 1 where it has 3 gold chains of different lengths, each with a different color gemstone. The smallest one on top is clear. The medium-sized one in the middle is magenta, and then the largest one on the bottom is what I would describe as “cloudy” pink.

The other necklace is a very long strand of blue beads with little tassels on the ends. You can either wear it as a scarf or tie it in a knot in front.

Grabbed a bag of Birthday Cake bath bombs, and the cutest, most comfortable pair of slippers I ever had. Pretty sure they’re girls’ slippers. They’re pink and blue furry slippers with a scattering of shiny firs and they go a few inches above the ankles. I kind of wish I had boots like these. Initially I wanted something convenient that I could quickly step in and out of, but when I saw these I said screw convenience. They were just too adorable to pass up.

They did a good job with the groceries that we ordered online and we’re thinking this is what we’ll probably do for the most part. There was only one thing missing that they substituted for.

I’m going to order some of the protein cookies that I’ve been having online because it’s cheaper that way. Meanwhile… no meat until after the labs at the beginning of next month.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2016
I’ve been alive for 18,600 days. That’s what Alexa just told me. She also told me that there are 87 days until Valentine’s Day. I can’t wait! thinks of Stacey and smiles

So now the Trumpster is whining about his sidekick getting booed, and demanding an apology. Oh, but he has no apology for the women he sexually abused, right? Seriously if these two can’t handle those who can’t stand them, then why don’t they just resign?

This cold rainy day is passing too slowly. This is the last Saturday in a while that DH should have to work. He should be home around 1:00. We ordered groceries from Walmart for the first time and he will be picking them up on the way home.

I’ve lost 3 pounds since turning 80% of my diet into vegetables. I have pretty much cut out meat completely, but not for forever. Forever is just too long. I’m sure I’ll have both meat and sweets on weekends. It’s just too close to lab time for me to be having any cholesterol right now. I’m not even eating fish, which doesn’t have as much cholesterol as beef does.

My sweet treat this weekend is going to be something new to try that I stumbled upon while shopping… Pepperidge Farm brown butter rum cookies.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2016
Was today another noisy day? Well, of course it was. Landscaping here, landscaping there… landscaping everywhere, every single fucking day.

I kind of wish it was bedtime now because I’m bored. I’m at that point in my day where I’m no longer awake enough to do anything productive, but I’m not tired enough to fall asleep yet either.

Instead, I’m sitting here wondering why my joints are so stiff. This time it’s my other hip and I have a little stiffness in my lower right back.

I’m also sitting here thinking of how it’s almost always been me that initiated friendships and relationships and even just casual conversations be it online or offline, and how that gets to me at times. It just bothers me that not as many people have cared to seek me out as much as I cared to seek them, even if it’s just to say hello.

But then I realized that hey, maybe this is just the one way I was meant to be a leader in life. For some reason, I have been “designated” to be the one to make the first move, even if I don’t always get very far. I’m not sure I like that any more than I like the idea of being a follower. I’ve never had any desire to be a leader in life or a follower, though I’ve been forced to be a follower many times by circumstances beyond my control.

Seriously, I was obviously meant to be a real leader in this way for whatever reason, plus I also realize that not everybody cares enough to remember names like I do, nor do they have the ability to if they did. Furthermore, they probably don’t have nearly 30 year’s worth of journals to refer to for any names they might have forgotten.

Either way, if patterns hold true to themselves then I should never hear from Stacey again unless I contact her. My head says not to bother but my heart is curious. I can’t believe even a friendship would come of it but there’s still a part of me that feels it’s hard to believe it wouldn’t. Not that she would intentionally do any such thing, but I’ve been led on by women before, so this is why I’m hesitant to bother with her. Again, not that it’s her intention to lead me on, but women have gotten my hopes up in ways that men never have, for even just a friendship. Then again, I don’t know if I can fairly make that comparison when I haven’t been interested in very many men in my life.

I just wish I knew what she was open to. Does she have any particular hopes for us? I will admit that a part of me, even if it’s a very small part, has sometimes wished for a woman on the side to spice things up and add variety to my life. It isn’t that my life is bad or that I feel I’m missing anything; but more like me being open to any fun and interesting additions.

But just how open am I really to anything more than friendship? That’s the one thing I’m not sure of, and I guess no one ever is unless they’re actually in that situation and have to make a choice.

I’m guessing that the only thing she would be open to is meeting in her office, and I would certainly be okay with that if I knew for sure that she didn’t have anything else in mind, and I’m still guessing that while she gave me every indication to believe that she’s attracted to me (no, I definitely didn’t imagine that), she would remain professional. If even friendship is forbidden between a counselor and a former patient, I just can’t believe she would risk her license and career even if she may be coming to the end of it, just because someone might have noticed her in a way she probably hasn’t been noticed for years. Would I really be worth it to her?

If only I knew what she wanted because then I would be willing to work with that as long as she didn’t have any ridiculous expectations in mind, and again, I just can’t imagine her of all people wanting more than I could give, let alone wanting what I could give.

Only time will tell for sure as things play themselves out over the upcoming months, years… whatever. For now, I can just guess that if I ever do see her again it will be in her office.

When I call her on Valentine’s Day, because I know she’s not going to call me first, I was thinking I might let her know that I miss her and see if she suggests I come to see her. I thought I would also see if she was open to texting or email.

So yeah, I’ll “lead” the way by calling Stacey and being told that I’m welcome to come and see her, but that text or email is not an option, even though she seemed quite pleased when I gave her my contact info, and even though she was clearly attracted to me.

I suppose I shouldn’t think that negatively. After all, I never would have believed that someone like her would be attracted to me in the first place, yet she is. I just don’t want to get my hopes up for nothing, even though it’s not like I’m going to ball my eyes out if things don’t go my way. I’m not the person I was 15 years ago when Johnson fucked with my head. But why invest the time?

If I see Stacey, great. If not, I will always appreciate the help she gave me and I will always have her memories to cherish.

I think it’s her not going to my blog, and her asking if I would be okay with not meeting a certain woman that’s got me thinking a little negatively.

Foolish or not, though, I am thinking positively more than I’m thinking negatively where she’s concerned because she gave off more positive signs than negative signs.

I just wish I knew if she’s got it in mind to call me after a certain amount of time has gone by, or if she’s hoping that I’m the one to make the first move.

Well… I’m 99.9% sure that I’m going to be making that first move.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2016
I’ve been hearing less and less from Tammy but I understand that she is no doubt excited to catch up on things she hasn’t been able to do now that she’s got more energy since being stented, and is breathing easier since quitting smoking. She does still have fibromyalgia, though, and invited me to a Facebook group she created, even though I’m rarely on Facebook these days, and don’t know how I could possibly contribute other than to send my love and well wishes.

I don’t have chronic pain throughout my body; just in my left hip and my ear that isn’t really my ear, and it’s not quite “chronic.” I do get some days off. I just think it’s rather sad, as I told her, that it took 3 doctors in 12 years to finally be told what it is. It’s jaw joint arthritis, which was probably caused by my ear surgery. I can’t swear that I wouldn’t have it had I not had surgery, but I have a feeling I wouldn’t. The more I looked up the symptoms, the more I think my ENT is right on with the diagnosis she gave me. Funny because the last two EMTs were males. Yet Trump thinks males are smarter? Who the hell does he think he’s kidding? I’ve always known women were the smarter gender. This doesn’t mean there aren’t smart guys out there – my hubby is probably smarter than 98% of the population – and that there aren’t any stupid women in this world, but I think that women are smarter in general. Anyway, it’s called Temporomandibular Joint Disorders (TMJ and TMD).

They say that understanding something helps us to deal with it better, but I’m not sure in this case. I think all it does is settle my curiosity. They can’t fix this any more than they can cure my circadian rhythm disorder, so my knowing and understanding don’t change anything.

I was chatting on Yelp with this poor girl named Kristi in Woodland who was asking me about my old endocrinologist. She’s having the exact same symptoms I am and I assured her that my old endo is definitely the one to go to. Being older she’s had more experience, and she’s very understanding and knowledgeable. She understands that you can’t look at just the numbers and assume that every patient’s ideal numbers are going to be within their standard reference range. She’s super nice, too. A little stern at times, but nice. I told her of the symptoms I had and how frustrating it was with my old team of doctors at the old medical group telling me, “Oh, you’re just anxious,” when I knew it wasn’t normal for me to have my heart feel like it was going to jump out of my chest. So… I feel for her. I really do. I know how horrible and downright scary it can be. Just don’t expect to recover for a few months, I reminded her, since levothyroxine isn’t like aspirin where it leaves the body after a matter of hours.

It’s a very chilly 38° out now and I’m really hoping today is quieter than yesterday. First I had to hear landscaping at the house diagonally from us, then Bob broke out his blower, and then the park came by with their insanely loud blower, and I’m like, “Can we please stop it already?!”

At least it’s too cold for the motorcycles.

I don’t remember much of what happened, and the dreams only seemed to last for a second or two, but Stacey appeared in a record-breaking three or four dreams. I know we’re supposed to dream about things that are on our minds, but I’ve thought of her pretty much every day since last summer, yet this is the first time she showed up in my dreams this much. Although none of the dreams seemed to be negative in any way – if anything one of them might have been rather explicit – I don’t get the feeling that they mean anything. In other words, I don’t think they’re a sign of anything in particular to come.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2016
Although I’m keeping my Facebook account, I’m only checking in for messages once a week because I’m sick and fucking tired of nothing but political rants. No matter what side of the coin you’re on, too much is too much, and I’ve definitely had enough. Every day I tune in to hear about people and subjects that are beyond old and I’m tired of it. But people have a right to post what they want.

Even if people post a good mix of variety on Facebook, I prefer other social sites where I have more control over my privacy and can interact with people privately if I choose to do so. If I don’t want a certain Facebook friend knowing I’ve been there, I can’t comment on another friend’s post without it being waved in front of their faces.

My blog posts will still be shared there, which I don’t have to do from Facebook, and I let Tammy know that she should email me if anything important happens with her or the girls, as when I check in for messages I’m not going to be combing the newsfeed. Politics, religion, racism, Bill G… I’ve had enough.

The park not only had our water off again (I knew it was due to be shut off anytime now) but they also never warned us ahead of time like they did the last few times. I hope the office was bombarded with calls and messages from people complaining! I wonder when people are going to get so fed up that they demand space rent cuts. Over $800 a month for this shit? Come on! Actually, it’s over a grand when you add in trash pickup and shit like that.

I slept through the water shutoff, but I knew the water had been off when I got up and used the toilet cuz it “farted.” Poor Tom, though. It was off when he got home at 5:30 and it was still off when he went to bed at 7:45.

I’m now 8 hours away from trying the circadian light.

We’ve changed our mind as far as going with solid white in the kitchen. It would just look too stark in comparison with the maple cabinets. More than likely it will be flower power all the way with each section having a neutral color with some kind of flower design on it.

I was going to throw in some watercolor paints and a watercolor pad in the next Amazon order we’re planning, but then said, nah. I’m just not into being artistic in that kind of way anymore.

Last night I dreamed there was either a warrant out for my arrest or I was going to be charged with something (I don’t know what) and my brother was alive and either working for the police department or someone connected to it. I was talking to him on the phone and he was somehow going to take care of things for me by having someone pick me up that he knew.

I waited in this strange house with a cluttered living room and old dingy-looking kitchen, but whoever was supposed to pick me up never arrived. I called and told Tom I was tired of waiting and that I didn’t give a shit if there was a warrant out for my arrest or not at that point.

I then stepped out the back door of the house which was off the kitchen and began what I knew would be a long walk to some office.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2016
I laughed when Tom told me he thought we should get roller skates to use around the park until the thought of using them on this hilly terrain changed his mind. He couldn’t even walk in the snow and ice in Oregon without falling on his ass, so how does he expect to be able to roller-skate? He’s right, though. This terrain is too hilly even for those of us who can actually skate.

We went out walking late last night. I didn’t think the moon looked that much bigger than usual, but it was definitely bright. Of all the places I’ve lived, the moon looked the biggest in the desert.

The yellow African daisies just outside the front door are blooming nicely now. strange time of year for them to come to life, but I guess they thrive in the cooler temperatures.

It was pretty cold on our walk last night, down in the 40s. I had my hoodie on as well as a scarf and knit gloves. It’s supposed to rain today and then by Friday night get down into the 30s. Ugh.

We’ve now got a pretty good idea of what tile designs we’re getting. Tom said he would go with white in the kitchen and at first I thought white would look too sterile, almost like in a hospital. But compared to my surprisingly few other choices, I think white would be our best bet for that room.

I’ve chosen beige tiles with small pink flowers and their centers for the laundry/bath areas. Really wish we could see what they’d look like in the rooms, but even if I printed pictures out, the colors we see online aren’t always true.

One of the things they voted on in California was to stop using thin plastic grocery bags. They’ve gone to thicker plastic bags that are reusable and that cost a dime each if you decide to keep getting new ones. I figured that we might as well make it more fun and colorful, and so I picked out a 9-piece set of grocery totes on Amazon, each one being a different color.

Not that I’m complaining, but where are all the motorcycles? Even before it cooled down I noticed that I haven’t been hearing any.

Here’s something that’s probably meaningless but a little strange just the same. About a week or two ago, I heard this strange creaking sound late at night. At first I thought it was Tom’s chair, which creaks when he moves. But he was asleep and this particular creaking sound was consistent in volume, pitch and length of time.

Then one day I was standing in the kitchen waiting for my coffee to finish brewing. As I slowly shifted my weight back and forth I noticed the exact same sound. It was then that I remembered Andy, who insisted he was just as psychic with ghosts as I am at times with dream premonitions, told me that the spirit of the guy who used to live here was present.

Hmm… interesting. Still not sure I believe in ghosts, especially since I’ve never actually seen one, despite some signs suggesting that our land in Arizona was haunted. I’ve never had the feeling that this place is haunted, but it was a weird coincidence. If Andy was right, what does the guy do… walk around the kitchen late at night on occasion?

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2016
I just searched different combinations of keywords and actually got about half a dozen psychologists in the state with the first name of Stacey. That could be cut in half based on area, and yes, there is another one in Sacramento. But even so, anyone could call them all. Giving her real first name hasn’t caused any harm yet, but if God forbid some psycho troll latched onto me and called all the Stacey psychologists in my area, I would be so pissed. Stacey wouldn’t give out any information of course, but it’s one thing for trolls to come at me, and another when they go after people I know.

At this point I don’t know what gets to me more… Trump winning or the fact that people have become so obsessed with him that he’s all I hear about no matter where I go. Then again, Trump didn’t “win.” Hate won.

Really wish people would find a – shall we say – healthier obsession. Dwelling on shit that can’t be changed, unless someone can find a way to assassinate both him and Pence.

Lenore peeked in on me after the election but hasn’t been back since. I’m guessing she was curious about my reaction to who was elected.

The more I think about it the more I’m sure that whenever I start a low-calorie diet, the few pounds I always lose isn’t weight but water instead. If the diets were really causing weight loss I would ultimately lose more than just a few pounds, wouldn’t I? I think that for some reason it just triggers water loss.

My Aurora Borealis sweatshirt arrived and fits great. Any smaller and it would be too tight. The material is thicker and of better quality than I thought it would be for the price. The only thing is that the design appears to be a bit darker than it does online.

We went to Walgreens earlier where we both got some junk food. He got chips and cakes and I got a candy bar and Tic Tacs. Other than Tic Tacs, I’m determined to cut out the junk starting tomorrow. It really isn’t good for me. It’s what Tom mostly eats, however, which is unfortunate.

I also got a large rose-gold barrette, which is hard to find. So whenever I spot barrettes this large I grab them.

I also got a pair of blue leggings with faint white streaks. They’re slightly tight but wearable. Now I have leggings in four different colors.

For $10 I got six Hawaiian Lei bath bombs that I’ll be looking forward to trying tomorrow.

The Supermoon is huge and bright, so we’re going out walking just after 3 AM after he’s had a chance to wake up. He still likes to get up a few hours before work so he doesn’t feel rushed and he has a chance to do things that he likes to do.

I let the rats out earlier. Burke always wants to come out, but Dumbo sometimes does, and Simon almost never does. Rats eventually find their way back home when you leave their cage door open. Once Burke was home I shut the door thinking everybody was home. Burke and Dumbo are both dark brown, and an hour or two later I see a dark brown rat climbing up the door. I immediately thought it was Burkey boy and wondered how the hell he got out, but when I picked him up I noticed right away that the fir was coarse and wooly and not smooth and silky like Burke’s. Plus, there were the “down” ears instead of the top ears, and so I knew it was Dumbo. He’d obviously been out the whole time and probably fell asleep behind my desk.

Later…

This bath bomb wasn’t quite as good as the big bomb I got at BB&B, but it was better than the set of small bombs. Still had to lotion up my driest spots… legs/forearms. Didn’t mess up the tub, though, so that’s good. Will probably get more from Walgreens eventually. As for the online variety pack… don’t know. Will leave it in ’save for later’ for now.

I’m excited about the huge Amazon order we’ll be doing next month. Each year we do a huge order and take the year to pay it off. This isn’t just about getting fun stuff, but things we need, as well.

It’s been 2.5 years since we had the carpet installed and it definitely needs to be cleaned. Because I went with a lighter color, dirt tracked in from outdoors is more evident. For about the same price as a rental, you can buy a decent carpet cleaner. That way we can do it at our own convenience anytime we want.

We’re also going to get the floor tiles and FINALLY redo these hideous floors.

Got up just after 7pm, which means I’m now 11 hours from trying the circadian light. I’m going to try to hold my schedule so that I’m sleeping between 10pm - 6am. I still seriously doubt it will help long-term. I know it’s helped some people, but as recent studies have shown, sleep schedules aren’t all about light like they originally thought it was or else they wouldn’t have discovered this particular disorder in some blind people as they have.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2016
Read that in 1995 the Code of Ethics had a 2-year ban on sexual relationships between counselors and clients. Then it was raised to 5 years after termination of therapy in 2005.

But what about just a friendship with a former counselor???

I’ve asked myself over and over again… despite the mutual attraction and fondness that any idiot would’ve picked up on, would I actually want anything more than just a friendship if the choice were mine?

Definitely not. I just don’t feel the need for a side dish nor would I have the confidence for that even if I did, thanks to being fat and older. I could see kissing, hugging, snuggling up on the couch to watch a movie, but definitely not spreading my legs.

The experts insist that even long after termination of therapy, and even if the client is open to sex, it is harmful to the client. I can totally see this being the case if the client goes to a therapist because they were raped, and that therapist takes advantage of their vulnerability and fragile state of mind.

But what about a nonsexual relationship involving a client who went to a therapist on account of a scary reaction to a medication? Rape is a long way away from a drug that can scare the shit out of you in the wrong doses. I just don’t know if we can really lump every single client into one big group like that. Then again I’ve never had any kind of relationship with a former counselor, and I don’t expect to despite the “signs,” so I can’t say for sure how I might end up feeling. My guess is that I wouldn’t feel any different than had I been sitting across from someone on a bus when I happened to be anxious and was given tips on how to handle it, as opposed to sitting across from someone in a room who gave me the same tips.

I know I said this with Johnson, but it’s a little hard to believe that something won’t eventually happen, even though there were a few signs saying it wouldn’t. Not checking out my blog was the biggest sign saying she might actually have zero hopes/plans to meet later on down the road, and personally, it’s really very hard to picture Stacey of all people doing anything unethical. If she has any future hopes or plans for us, then I certainly couldn’t be the first one she’s had them with. So then how would she be getting away with this for 27 years even if it only happened a few times? Would she have waited or something? I suppose if she waited or no one said anything, then she wouldn’t be at risk of losing her license. Again, very hard to picture her ending up friends or fuck buddies with any old clients, but I never would’ve guessed in a million years that I’d catch the eye of a therapist either. Cassandra, which I saw back east in 1991 might have been attracted to me, but this is totally different. Totally.

The not knowing what’s going to happen is slightly frustrating but it’s mostly fun because it keeps things interesting and gives me something to look forward to. The only difference is that if it comes down to me realizing we’re never going to see each other outside the office, I’m not going to be devastated over it for four months like I was when I realized I’d never hear from Johnson again because I’m older and smarter than that now. Then again I don’t know if smarter is a good choice of words, but maybe I’m just better, not as needy, and used to things turning out a certain way.

I keep almost nothing from Tom but I have chosen not to let him in on Stacey’s attraction for me for now so that he doesn’t go getting his paranoid pants on, even if I’m smart enough to know that he knows me better and we’ve been “just friends” for ages now. Attraction or not, we’re not going to get it on like we’re in our 20s, and I’m not going to run off with her into the sunset either. He will know someday. Just not right now unless he’s reading my journals. Otherwise, the only ones who know at the moment are Tammy and some PBers.

I don’t expect to see her ever again, but I’m definitely open to a friendship, and I still plan to call on or around Valentine’s Day, depending on my schedule at the time.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2016
I love to think. I mean really sit and think. It’s good for the brain. It allows you to imagine real possibilities as well as to indulge in fun fantasies. The brain can be one giant workshop or can be one giant playground. It’s an outlet for creativity as well as a means of cultivating understanding and knowledge.

So I sit here tonight and I wonder… how have we become more tolerant yet still so intolerant? We’re more tolerant in that we’ll give blacks extra rights/protection and we’ll allow gays to marry, yet overall we can’t tolerate shit. Or better yet we won’t.

And what is it with the stupidity? Sorry folks, I don’t mean to sound like a know-it-all as I’m the last one who has all the answers, but shouldn’t some things be rather obvious and a simple matter of common sense?

Are there really still people out there who still believe that there’s no such thing as global warming?

Or medical conditions that really can make you depressed or anxious?

That gay/bi people choose to be gay/bi due to rape or incest and that it’s all about body parts only and not the gender as a whole? Yes, we can choose, alright. We can choose not to be who we are. But wouldn’t that be like eating nothing but foods you don’t like for the rest of your life? I wouldn’t change who and what I am because I don’t give a shit about what others think of me. I’m much too selfish to care. But I have a feeling that if we had more control over certain things, we would see a radical change pretty fast.

Later…

I’m normally one who believes in resolving issues without violence, yet I have never in my life wished for a president to be assassinated as I do now. Seriously, he needs to go. We can’t afford to have people like him in this world, especially as a leader. He’s just too fucked up and too dangerous. So please, please… Someone out there… Do the right thing. I don’t care if it’s slow and torturous or short and sweet. Just someone… Get rid of him!

Sure enough, people have begun rioting as I figured they would. While white people have been involved in the riots, I’m not at all surprised that a high school black girl beat the crap out of a white schoolmate for supporting Trump. Gee, blacks, that’s really going to make us like you.

It’s sickening how many bystanders just sat and did absolutely nothing until one girl finally helped. And why do Facebook and Twitter post this shit?

Later…

I couldn’t wait for the election to be over because I was so sick and tired of hearing about the candidates and political shit as a whole, yet everywhere I go online people are STILL going on and on about it. It really is getting old and I wonder when people will move on.

I can’t stand Trump either and I would love to see him and Pence assassinated, but it’s not going to happen, so we might as well just get on with our lives and remember that they’re not as powerful as some may think. There are 2 of them and there are about 300 million of us. I say they’re pretty outnumbered no matter who/what they are. :-) But yeah, even though I’ve always believed in resolving issues without violence, this is the first pair in which I wouldn’t lose a single tear if they got taken out of the picture. The only problem is that it’s become virtually impossible to do since the Reagan attempt.

While we are on the damn subject… I read an interesting journal entry of someone’s that spoke of people’s twisted views/laws no matter what side of the coin they’re on. They pointed out some of the following issues, although maybe not in so many words.

If you wouldn’t vote for Obama because he’s black, you’re racist. If you voted for him because he’s black, you’re not racist.

If you don’t want a shitload of Muslims coming over here that have no regard for American law, believe that gays should be pushed off of buildings and that no woman should be allowed to leave home without a male relative, you’re once again racist.

But then if you support Muslims coming over here that refuse to abide by our law and that want to kill damn near everybody they disagree with, you’re just a sweetheart.

If you voted for Trump, you’re sexist, and if you voted for Hillary, you’re still sexist.

If you’re in favor of birth control, you’re a real ass for believing that women should have total rights to their lives and bodies.

If you’re against birth control, then you’re saving “lives.” You know, those lives that aren’t really lives but actually just a cluster of cells with zero sense of awareness?

If a black person beats the shit out of a white person, it will probably be labeled simple assault and they might get just a few months in jail.

If a white person beats the shit out of a black person, it will probably be labeled a hate crime and that person may very well go to prison for life.

In non-political news, I had palpitations twice when out walking. Really hope it does this during my stress test, but it probably won’t. It doesn’t do it every time I work out. It fluttered a few times as I was climbing the “rollercoaster,” then once as I was coming uphill from the lake. But like a car quits making those funny noises when brought to the mechanic, my heart probably won’t flutter during the test.

Even though it’s way too early being that it’s not even mid-November yet, someone’s got a bunch of Christmas lights running alongside the lake and it looks really cool the way it reflects off the water. I wish I had my camera.

The muscle injury in my lower left gut has healed, but the pain in my lower side is back. Tough shit. I have to work out. Not working out will raise both my weight and my cholesterol.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2016
Walmart is now offering this service where you can order your groceries online, they pick them out for you, and then you pick them up. This is awesome and it would save him a lot of time. The one thing I miss from our old place (besides the seclusion) was when we used to use Raley’s for this service which, strangely enough, isn’t available outside of the rural areas.

It’s nice to know that Sheriff Joe Arpaio will not be reelected. He’s a genuine piece of shit and I honestly don’t know why he’s still alive. He’s pissed off so many people and made so many enemies. I understand his frustration with illegals, but to make inmates live in tents like they’re fucking dogs in doghouses in the brutal heat of the desert is totally inhumane. I can see this with a rapist perhaps, but with women who are prostitutes or druggies? Do they really deserve and need to be treated like animals?

I haven’t had any heartburn in a while now. It definitely had to do with that deep-dish pizza I was getting. It was just way too greasy. I have felt a lot better since I changed my diet and started eating less. Yes, I’m hungry at times but I would honestly prefer that to feeling full and bloated. I eat six times a day, every few hours, and I virtually cut out all cholesterol. I mostly have veggies. I split a giant protein cookie that is loaded with vitamins and nutrients but still tastes good in half for the first two times I eat since it’s two servings. The next two times I eat I split one of those Birds Eye protein mix bags. I really like the Tuscan and the Italian-style mixes. The California and Hawaiian styles are so-so. I won’t dare try the Southwestern or the Thai styles because I don’t like spicy foods. Curry sauce, chili, hot peppers, jalapeños… no way.

I also have a small kiddy yogurt and a fruit cup in between.

As usual, my weight began to reset itself as soon as I hit 151.8, and I don’t doubt that I’ll be back to the 154.4 that I started at, even if I keep dieting. This is where my body feels comfortable and that’s OKAY. I still feel better this way, it keeps me regular, it’s healthy, it’s low cholesterol, and it’s cheaper than TV dinners.

There really are benefits to keeping the extra weight as well as losing it. I would be healthier, more flexible, and better looking if I lost weight. But this way the clothes I got will still fit, my wedding band will still fit, and I don’t have to worry about my meds backfiring on me.

For once I slept okay and didn’t wake up too hot.

I don’t know which rat it was or if it was just some fictitious rat, but last night I dreamed that we were staying somewhere for a while and the rat we had at the time loved it there so much that we decided to leave it behind when we left. No way we would ever do anything like that, of course. Rats can be happy anywhere as long as they have food, love and attention.

Then I was in some store and I just had to have this purple and black dress that was part of some Halloween costume. I was also looking through some strange journal as well.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2016
I still can’t believe Trump won. Everything was pointing to Hillary winning, and she did win the popular votes. No offense to female Trump voters since it was your right to do so, but I have to wonder what kind of self-respect a woman could possibly have for herself if she chooses someone who hates her for the body parts she was born with. Because she thinks he’s going to stop illegal immigration? Well, think again because he just doesn’t have the kind of power a lot of people like to think he has. The vast majority of his power is over the military. I don’t know that I buy his claims of being so anti-immigration anyway because his wife started off as an illegal and he has illegals working for him. I think politicians simply say whatever they think is going to make them the most money whether it’s what people want to hear or not. Yes, I wanted Hillary, but she’s a self-serving, greedy liar too. They all have their good and bad, but I do think this team definitely has more bad than good.

Personally, I wish people would stop coming over here even the legal way because we have enough people here already hogging our precious resources. I highly doubt my husband would have spent 2.5 years on unemployment during the recession if outsiders weren’t coming over by the thousands to take what’s ours.

I know that we’re all entitled to our beliefs and that a simple belief is harmless, but Pence’s belief that gays can be cured through conversion therapy is utterly ridiculous. No one gets to choose their sexual orientation whether they’re gay, straight or bi like me. If one could be converted to being attracted to the opposite sex, then one could be converted to being attracted to the same sex. This isn’t possible, and even if it was… why??? Why should one be forced to change their sexual preference so long as they’re consenting adults?

As I said, he only has so much power, so at least we can take solace in knowing that he can’t strip women of their rights and salaries, he can’t dissolve gay marriages, and he can’t paint black people white either, as I was telling someone else. Tom doesn’t think he’ll ignite World War III, even though that’s what some people fear. We do believe Middle Eastern Muslims will attack more Europeans, however, because Europeans are the closest people they can take their frustrations out on. These are people who believe violence is the answer to everything and will use the slightest excuse to act on that belief.

I know some people are worried that this is sending the wrong message to society saying that it’s okay to hate, and that it’s going to fuel more hatred, but I don’t think it will. There were haters long before Trump hit the scene. I think people become haters because they either choose to do so or they had a horrible personal experience that made them hate.

Even so, and even though I’m a person who does not condone violence whatsoever, I wouldn’t lose any tears if Trump were ever assassinated. I doubt very much it’ll happen, but then again I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be elected either.

Later…

I had a dream that Aly tweeted to me. Good luck with that Hündin, since you don’t know of my Twitter account. She RTd a tweet saying that it’s easier to forgive an enemy than a friend. I’m sure that was aimed at me, too. Still can’t believe she feels she can’t “forgive” someone who was just being honest with her, but as we all know, the world is full of idiocy and senselessness. So yeah, if you tell a friend that she’s getting to be a little too demanding and clingy, and you warn her about phony crazies trying to burn her, you just might find your ass being dumped like yesterday’s trash. Great world we live in, ay?

Lenore is back, too.

Speaking of violence and the way kids act so animalistic these days, Tom was pointing out how my parents probably thought they were helping me by putting me through ear surgery because even though I was a bully, especially in elementary school, kids were much crueler and violence was much higher in the 60s and 70s despite there being fewer people. When our parents were kids, and even when he was a kid, it was socially acceptable for big kids to pick on little kids, just like child abuse was practically legal. If my siblings and I were born in the 90s and later instead of the 50s and 60s, our parents would have been arrested for many of the things they did if they parented in a similar fashion. Child Protective Services would have at least been called to investigate, that’s for sure.

It’s because parents are less violent as a whole that today’s children are out of control. He totally has a point when he said that you either beat them into submission and controlled them with intimidation, threats and violence, or you just let them be, and there isn’t much else in between. I’m sure there are some people who can breed and raise good kids without the violence – he came out just fine without the physical force – but he still does have a point. It’s much quicker and easier to control a person with violence than through words. Either that or money or maybe blackmail. But blackmail comes under the category of intimidation.

This is a tough one for me because while we don’t support child abuse of any kind, I sure miss the days when we could go to stores and restaurants and not be bombarded with screaming, spoiled brats running all over the place. I spent my first 26 years in the East and I don’t remember screaming kids in any restaurants or stores I ever went to. Ever. Things changed around the time I moved to Arizona in the 90s.

So do we bring back and make the unacceptable acceptable once again? I say definitely not. But there doesn’t seem to be much of a happy medium or any other way around the issue. My mother would have kicked my ass if I carried on like today’s kids back when I was a kid. But if she had been like most modern parents, I would’ve been a totally different kid and probably a different adult as well.

Another thing that pisses me off is the dual standards, and this has nothing to do with who the president is. If I beat the shit out of another white person I would be put in prison for years, but if they were black, it would automatically be labeled a hate crime even if that wasn’t the issue at all, and I would be sent to prison for life because they are a “protected class” right along with cops in most state and government officials. I’m sorry, but I still don’t see how blacks are supposed to be discriminated against on the large scale some claim they are. I can see the gays still being shit on by the masses, but with all the special laws and privileges that blacks have that whites don’t, where’s the so-called discrimination that’s supposed to be running rampant?

Later…

I hope Michelle Obama decides to run for prez in 2020. I really do. Tom and I both agree she stands a chance of winning. I think that because she’s black she has a good chance right there despite being a woman. You know me, I still say racism is exaggerated while gay-bashing is played down.

We both agree that she stands a chance because she gives better speeches and she comes off as nicer and friendlier than Hillary. Hillary is just as smart but she does come off as rather stern and businesslike in comparison. So while I may not care for blacks as a whole, Michelle is one of those exceptions and I wouldn’t mind her for president at all.

It really pisses me off that they legalized marijuana in California. Not because I care what others choose to do to their own bodies. Oh no, if you want to kill your brain cells and make yourself a fuckedtarded zombie, go ahead. The problem I have with it is that now I’ll have to gag on secondhand pot smoke when I’m out in public just like I do with cigarette smoke. I’m sure they’ll keep it out of restaurants as with cigarettes, but no one’s going to give a shit if I would prefer to breathe in clean air rather than the joint you’re smoking by the door to the Walmart I’m about to enter or exit.

Tom, however, thinks it will be treated like alcohol, which means you can’t do it in public unless it’s in a place specifically designated for that. Let’s just say this is another reason for me never to want to return to a casino.

So yeah, make yourself forgetful, make yourself stupid, give yourself lung cancer, shorten your lifespan, waste a shitload of money. Just don’t do it at my expense, ok?

Later…

Before meeting Tom, and with very few exceptions, I did a great job of attracting mostly losers. Jobless, carless, stupid, immature people that bordered on crazy. I realize that a lot of us older folks look back on our youth able to say the same thing. Youth often attracts the wrong types no matter how with it we may be.

Yet even before I started turning the heads of the computer wizards, the cops, the lawyers, the nurses and the psychologists, there has always been another pattern present in both my younger and older lives. I seem to mostly – not always but mostly - attract the shy, quiet types. Okay, so Stacey isn’t exactly shy. Quiet, but not shy. Tom is more on the shy side just as Brenda was.

The only problem with shy people is that they tend to be the ones who aren’t very exciting in bed. Then again, Brenda wasn’t that bad and she sure had a major appetite.

As sweet and as likable as Stacey is (I honestly can’t imagine anyone in the world not liking her), I can’t imagine her being very romantic even though she’s not what I would consider shy. You can’t be shy and sit and counsel people all day. She is on the quiet side, but definitely not shy.

For one who’s always had the habit of trying to imagine what people might be like in ways I’ll probably never know firsthand, I just think she would be a major bore in bed with probably not much of an appetite. She is older, though, and you don’t usually have much of an appetite as an older woman anyway. I know the one I started to “vibe” back crapped out pretty quickly.

I still wonder the same things I’ve been wondering about her. Does she think of me as often as I think of her? Does she have any specific hopes for the future? Although I can’t imagine even being just her friend, it’s also hard to imagine her never wanting to see me in some way shape or form because how many other me’s could there possibly be out there? Sweetheart or not, great body or not, she’s not what most people would consider attractive, plus she’s older. Can that many people, like me, stop and say to themselves, you know, there’s just something about Stacey? If she’s in a marriage she’s bored with, or at least that’s sexless no matter how much she may love the guy, and if she likes me and knows I like her, plus knows that I might be her last chance for any kind of “romantic” friendship, would she really pass that up?

Well, Stacey, I’m still going to be your Valentine’s Day phone call in a little over three months from now.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2016
I don’t get it. Everybody complains that Trump hates women, hates gays, hates blacks, hates Hispanics and hates Muslims. Yet they go and vote for him??? WTF? By 6:30 PM PT, it was obvious Trump would win.

I’m both surprised and not surprised. I’m surprised because I thought we were more politically correct than sexist. But then I’m not surprised because I never thought I would see a woman president in my lifetime. Poor Hillary, though. It’s got to be a bit embarrassing to know that your whorebag husband could win but you couldn’t.

Even though all politicians are pretty much the same and they all have their good and bad points, I am disappointed. On the bright side, the president doesn’t have as much power as many people believe they do. Even I know this and I know very little about politics because it simply never interested me. The only real control he has is over the military. In a sense, his presidency will affect those in other countries more than it will affect us. This can be a good thing when it comes to Muslims. That’s the one thing I agree with him on, and I don’t care who the hell I piss off in saying so. I have just as much right to my beliefs and opinions as you do, and I promised myself years ago I wouldn’t choke back in the name of political correctness, not that we’re very politically correct tonight.

Either way, we definitely have to toughen up on not only letting foreigners in general come and go and hog up our resources by taking what’s ours, but especially with potentially dangerous groups of people. Sorry, but it isn’t a small percentage of Muslims that are running around with machetes ready to kill the first person who isn’t a carbon copy of themselves, and this isn’t a belief, but a fact. It’s not just a few hundred either. It’s not even a few thousand. We’re talking millions. That’s just the way their culture is… you treat women and children like shit and you slaughter those that are different. It’s a socially accepted norm within their everyday way of living. Well, I don’t want that shit brought over here. You want to cut your neighbor’s head off for being Christian, do it on your own damn turf.

I can’t even go more than a few days without seeing some headline about some Muslim somewhere being caught with explosives, or bombing this place or bombing that place. How many more innocent people need to die before someone does something to at least cut down the number of senseless murders?

Still, I really had hoped that Hillary would win, and a big part of me actually thought she would despite sensing that I would never see a woman president in my lifetime, because for every one complaint I would hear about her, I would hear dozens about Trump. But we do live in a country where women love men and men just adore each other as well. The best we can hope for is an assassination, but would Pence really be any better? Honestly, I never could get people like these guys. If they hate women that much then why aren’t they with men?

Had to laugh when Tom said Hillary would win Florida. I knew Trump would win because of the older population there, and they tend to favor him more than the younger people.

“It depends on how the Puerto Ricans vote,” he said, “and Trump says they’re all bad.”

Yeah, and I say Puerto Ricans are dumb. They would vote for someone that hates them.

I’m back to not sleeping well and therefore I’m a little tired when I’m awake, but since I received my circadian light today, maybe it will help. I have my doubts, but then I never would have thought that Stacy’s emotional tapping or EMDR would help as much as it has either. Even if it helps for just a week or two at a time, that will make getting to appointments, going on vacation, and things like that a lot easier to deal with.

My Childhood:

Born and raised in Massachusetts in a bedroom town that wasn’t rich but was very comfortable. My parents had me when they were 32 and 33 years old, which was considered a bit old to be having kids back in 1965. My sister Tammy was 8 years older and my brother Larry was 12 years older.

The house we lived in when I was born was next to my maternal grandparents. We spent our summers in a small cottage at a Connecticut beach and moved to the older section of town when I was around 12.

My health issues consisted mainly of asthma, allergies, and a deformed ear in which my ear canal was also fused shut. Had surgery in Boston to build an outer ear through plastic surgery, but ended up with something that looked worse than what I started with.

My Teens:

Having an abusive mother with an enabling father who chose to look the other way, I developed emotional issues that left me insecure and eventually to attempt suicide.

As a child with ADHD, I didn’t always do well in school or get along well with others. I ended up in an adolescent psychiatric hospital in Vermont for 5 months which my mother promised me I would come out of as a “whole new person,” and then I attended an alternative school in the city.

In April of 1982, my parents gave me up to the state. I went through a couple of foster homes, one with a loving Italian couple and another with a neglectful black woman, before a quick trip to the state funny farm and then a private girls’ school for two years, which I hated. I did, however, become close with a few students and staffers which I’m in touch with today on Facebook.

My 20s:

Got my first apartment in the city the day before I turned 20 in 1985. At the time I was working as a housekeeper at a hotel just below the state line. I soon lost my job and went on disability.

I became a very liberal person who had both boyfriends and girlfriends. Nothing was a “sin” to me so long as the people were of age and consenting.

I had two apartments in Springfield, MA, one in South Deerfield, MA, and then I spent four months and the projects in Norwich, CT.

Had a nervous breakdown mostly due to the noise that put stress on me and prevented me from sleeping, then I finally gave up on the East altogether. I moved to Phoenix Arizona in 1992 where a longtime friend and gay guy lived that I’m no longer friends with.

For a while, I was an exotic dancer, and my husband Tom was my neighbor in one of the four apartments I would have in Phoenix before I moved into his house with him. We married in 1994. We lived in Phoenix from 1993-1999. We went through four different neighbors next door while we were there, each one progressively worse.

My 30s

In 1996 I had surgery to remove what was left of my outer left ear and to create an ear canal. I’ve had intermittent earaches because of it for the last 12 years, but surgery was necessary to rule out a tumor once I began to experience sensitivity within the ear.

In 1997 I quit smoking and in 1999 we bought a 10-acre ranch in rural Maricopa and lived there for five years.

We traded in Arizona for Oregon in 2004 after purchasing a 2.5-acre parcel of land. Our plans to build a dome house quickly fell through due to the expenses which added up fast, prompting us to rent first a duplex and then a small, old rundown house in the town of Klamath Falls.

I hated the cold and the snow, but my husband eventually got a good-paying job and we had a lot of fun shopping and winning things. I would enter tons of sweeps and contests and would win something every few days back then, from little prizes to big prizes, before the competition grew fierce with the onslaught of social media.

My 40s

We moved to NorCal in 2007. The recession damn near killed us. We spent the first eight months in motels, then rented a dumpy old trailer out in the country for five years. My husband was on unemployment for 2.5 years, and I’m not able to work mostly due to circadian rhythm disorder.

In the fall of 2011, he was finally given a good-paying job and it was all uphill from there. In the summer of 2013, we bought a two-bedroom house in a gated adult community. It’s a little noisier than I’d like, but we love having something that’s not so old and all the extra space.

In January 2014 we took a wonderful trip to Maui with travel credit I won right after I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease and told I had high cholesterol.

July 9th of that year and one day shy of our 1-year anniversary in this house, I called the paramedics in a panic because I thought I was having a heart attack and suspected my thyroid medication was connected to it somehow. It was absolutely terrifying and I believed I would die that day. It wasn’t a heart attack, however, just extreme anxiety unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

My 50s

The incident with my thyroid medication traumatized me so deeply that I was compelled to switch medical groups (though we also switched for other reasons) and I began to see a therapist. I suffered on and off for a year and a half. Tachycardia, along with perimenopause, was a factor in what happened. They all fueled each other in a bad way.

In late January we flew from California to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and then went on a cruise to Cozumel, Mexico. The cruise ended up being a nightmare, but reuniting with the sister I hadn’t seen in 25 years back in Florida, along with seeing two of my nieces since they were babies, was a wonderful experience.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2016
It’s been almost a year without Andy in my life and I can’t say I miss him. This doesn’t mean I hate him or wish bad things upon him or that I think he’s a bad person. We definitely had our share of fun, funny and interesting moments. I’ll always giggle when certain things come to mind, and if he suddenly showed up homeless on my doorstep, of course I wouldn’t have the heart to turn him away.

We just simply grew to be way too different over the years. His ignorance, arrogance and stupidity really got to me. Normally I don’t give a shit who might have these little false truths in mind that they believed about me, as there is a difference between a belief in fact, but aren’t our friends supposed to be able to take us for face value?

Did he know me better than most people? Absolutely. But sometimes we’re wrong about the people we know well, and we don’t know every single thing there is to know about them. People change and you can’t always assume they’re going to handle something a certain way based on their past actions. I mean, when he was a kid in school he ignored bullies. Today he’d fight back. Now if something like watching TV got in the way of my writing then I might very well reconsider watching TV.

I just got so tired of being judged and compared to others as well as himself constantly. If I disagreed with him it was because I was “being just like my mother,” rather than an individual who simply happened not to agree with him.

If he was jealous of someone who was young and skinny, then it was automatically assumed that I was too, and that there was no way anybody else was going to be comfortable with who/what they were, even if they knew they weren’t perfect, as long as he wasn’t comfortable with his own self. Everybody was expected to have the same insecurities he had. That’s just the way he was. He didn’t seem to care if others could relate to his positive traits and experiences, but any negative ones were automatically assumed to be mutual. Like he got off on the idea of others being miserable right along with him, not that he was always miserable. But he seemed to be down in some way a lot of the time.

I also didn’t care for his two-wrongs-make-a-right attitude. “It’s about time whites got to feel how blacks once felt,” he once said.

I remember shaking my head sadly, embarrassed for him, the day he said this. Did he ever listen to himself? Did he ever hear the stupidity and senselessness in many of his words? You might as well tell every woman who hasn’t been raped that it’s about time she finds out what those who have been raped feel like, right?

It was weird, though, because he could be as compassionate as he was lacking in empathy. He bought coats for the homeless, and he sent me cheesecake when I was going through the side effects in conjunction with the perimenopause… but Robin Williams threw it all away just for shits and giggles?

Now let’s talk about the selfishness – yes he did apologize for not even making it out of the parking lot of the train station when we picked him up yet already he’d mentioned God, and yes he did apologize for being stingy with the gum after we spent enough money on him – but why was it that I was always quick to ask him how his doctors appointments when more often than not he wouldn’t ask me shit? He would eventually read about it in my journals, but was that really the same thing? Especially if you’re going to read about an appointment 6 months after the fact?

The hypocrisy was like OMG at times. How can you pat yourself on the back for being what you believe is unique, but then you seem to want to go out of your way to fit into the so-called norms? In one breath he would bash those that bash blacks and gays, but then he would turn around and judge my husband who never did a damn thing to him in his life. He would judge his lifestyle and preferred way of living, despite the fact that it works just fine for him and he’s happy. AND Andy’s the same loner he is. The only difference is that with Tom it’s by choice. With Andy, it’s because he can’t make friends or keep them for very long when he does.

He once said that when we were younger, other gays didn’t like us. In hindsight, I can see that that’s only half true. I can’t speak for him, but for me, the issue was more that back then I was just so damn picky than that there was nobody that wanted me. These days, however, I’m not solely attracted to ultra-feminine women. I’ve actually come to like them in the middle and I’ve actually preferred that since around the new millennium. I realize that a lot of women that were interested in me back in the pre-Tom days that I wasn’t attracted to; I would now probably consider them attractive or at least acceptable. Honestly, I doubt I would be attracted to Stacey 20 years ago. These days she’s totally my type. The only thing she doesn’t have that I normally go for is height. She’s a brilliant psychologist with a brilliant and compassionate mind. She has a great body, warm brown eyes and a sexy smile, though I can see where most people may consider her face rather average-looking. And her shoulder-length brown hair.

I appreciate that he apologized for some of the judgmental, cruel and false things he said about both myself and my husband. But no matter how sincerely we may apologize that doesn’t take back, erase or undo what was said and the hurt that was caused by those words. People may forgive but they don’t forget. Not until selective amnesia is a real possibility.

As for his constant forgetfulness and being slow to grasp some things, I think that was for a variety of reasons. I understand that the pot damaged brain cells along the way. I get that. And he may not be the brightest person on earth naturally, but he wasn’t the dumbest either and I think that he would sometimes play dumb/slow just to mess with and frustrate people. Again, I know we can’t always judge people in the present by how they were in the past, but as even he admitted, he sometimes liked to annoy and mindfuck people. The more I would let him know that his constant obsession/chatter with celebrities and food, for example, was annoying, the more he would “happen” to mention these topics. The more I would dislike a particular picture, the more I would see it on his old Ask wall before that site went to hell. The more I would have preferred not to hear about God, the more I would.

I would never want anyone to try to change or control me, but when someone I supposedly care about lets me know something I’m overdoing something and being annoying, I do try to curb it within reason. I get, however, that if you literally are obsessed/addicted to something it’s not easy to choke it back any more than it’s easy to quit smoking. Food, celebrities and young men were what made his world go around, you could say. LOL

Another thing I don’t miss is the blatant lack of sensitivity. His insisting Robin Williams “threw it all away” is not only a sheer display of utter ignorance but also an ultimate display of stupidity. Any idiot with half a brain would have common sense enough to know that no one’s so damn happy that they up and decide to say WTF one day and throw it all away. It’s a mental illness! Various medical conditions, illnesses, injuries and medications can affect anyone emotionally at any time, and if you think you’re invisible and that it’s all a matter of choice, you’re a real fucktard IMO. Seriously, I hope the guy didn’t take the cooking class he once said he considered. That’d not only feed his obsession with food (pardon the pun), but I think a psychology class would be more beneficial to him. In the end, it’s his life and his decision. I’m just sure that most experts would agree that not all suicidal people can be saved just like not all cancer patients can be saved.

As they say, you can’t change people and make them who/what you want them to be, and I wouldn’t want to any more than I would want someone doing that to me. Therefore I am glad I can just avoid these types of idiots instead. We were just too damn different in the end as I said. He’s sure there’s a God and that things happen for a reason and are destined to play out the way they do. I believe there probably isn’t a God and things are just random. There’s just too much diversity in people’s lives. If there were a sense of order and sameness for all of us, then it would seem planned and designed to be that way. But sometimes the innocent baby dies of cancer while the murderer wins the lottery. My sister’s a die-hard fan/believer of God yet she had a heart attack and a million other health issues this year. I’m agnostic and 95% of 2016 has been great. Sorry, but I don’t see the “grand plan” in that. But you know what? It’s ok to disagree. It’s when we go into judgmental, critical, control-freak mode that I have a problem with. Sometimes you’re wrong and sometimes I’m wrong, too. Nobody knows it all.

He once said he prayed for Comcast to be late with a repair job so he’d get something like $20, and they were late and he did get the money. Well, guess what? They were late with us too, we didn’t pray, yet we still got the money, too. Go figure. I still say it comes down to fate and not what we pray for. If prayer actually worked, we could ask for anything we wanted. I just don’t know if there’s something up there deciding on what we get/don’t get, or if it’s happenstance, but I’m leaning with chance based on the random diversity I pointed out in which no obvious pattern is present. So… Life is going to play itself out whether I prefer it to play out a certain way or not. That’s just been my own personal experience and observation.

What it came down to with Andy was not only the things I just mentioned but his negativity as well. I realized that in his mind he was just being honest, and it isn’t that I don’t appreciate the truth, but there’s a time to be honest and there’s a time to just accept and be happy for people. When you focus on nothing but the negative possibilities and aspects of things, people find you both annoying and depressing, almost as if you don’t want them to be happy.

Lastly, the immaturity got frustrating. We’re all young at heart in various ways. I mean look at me with my rainbow teddy bear. But again, too much is too much IMO, and oftentimes I felt like I was talking to a teenager.

So do I want to resume our friendship now that a year has passed? No, I don’t, and I don’t think he does either. I hope not for his sake. But I do wish him the very best.

Later…

Waved hello to Geri as I was out front watering the cactus that we plan to move into a bigger pot. It’s a large clay pot that was left here by the last owners.

We’re planning to finally do the floors next month. I’ve got a design in mind for the kitchen and one in mind for the laundry/bathroom area. Andy was the smarter one when it came to that. Yes, that’s the one thing he definitely got right that we didn’t… leaving only the bedrooms carpeted. Well, I’ll consider this the practice house. The next house will only have carpet in the bedrooms, all the walls will be white so no wall hangings clash with the colored walls, the place will be less busy so it’s less circus-like, and wooden blinds will be in the windows instead of these traditional blinds. Wooden blinds have a stick where you can open and close them in a split-second. With regular blinds, you have to keep winding and winding the stupid wand. Wooden blinds will also be sturdier whereas these are flimsy.

I was so glad to learn that they canceled Oktoberfest on Sunday, which the rain had prevented last month! I’m just amazed because I don’t usually get that lucky. One less thing to have to deal with.

It’s also been surprisingly quiet these last couple of days as far as motorcycles go. Didn’t hear the really loud car stereo tonight, but it might have blasted around when I was under the headphones.

I can’t believe how lucky we got with the new neighbors and how quiet next door has been for over a year now. This is a totally well-deserved compensation for the years we had to put up with one bad neighbor after another who just couldn’t shut up. To this day I have to ask myself… how did I not end up snapping and totally losing it on one of them? Everybody has their breaking point and we can only be pushed so far for so long. I’m just glad we escaped it before I could finally snap, storm over to them in the heat of the moment, and do who knows what.

The people next to the “Twenties” have red and green projection Christmas lights dancing across the front of their place and it looks really cool. Still think it’s way too early for that kind of thing, but that’s just how this country is… instead of waiting till it’s a few weeks away from an event, they start celebrating a few months in advance. It’s silly and annoying but I guess it’s harmless.

I was laughing at a couple of things I read. One said that you’re partly bigoted if you even so much as notice that somebody you may pass in the store or something like that is black. Oh, come on. How can you not notice any more than you can not notice if they’re white? Take Alyssa, for example, who just married black guy. Does anyone who knows her really think she’s unaware of the fact that Donte is black and consider her part racist? So… sorry but I gotta disagree with this one.

Then there’s the issue of what’s judgmental and what’s not. It’s human nature to form opinions on various things the instant we hear and see things throughout life. We do it subconsciously without even realizing it. It’s like that saying… opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got them. So I don’t think it makes us judgmental in a bad way because we may mentally decide that the woman at the bank wore a very pretty shirt while the guy down the street painted his house an ugly color. I think we only become judgmental in a bad way when we criticize others for being who/what they are and trying to force them to conform to what we think is right.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2016
Last night’s plans of enjoying the night away and into the wee hours of the morning turned into a long, luxurious sleep. It felt so good, too. Not sure why I tired down so early, but I must’ve slept longer than I have in ages. Like 10-11 hours. Didn’t sleep with my Fitbit on, so I don’t know the exact time.

Sarah’s health took a turn for the better and she’s now home. Good for her!

I was very active yesterday and this caused the muscle injury I’ve had for a few weeks now to flare back up. The one in my very lower left gut where the stomach meets the pubes. So I’ll limit what types of exercises I do for the next week to hopefully finally get rid of it for good. I’m like, come on, heal already!

After we returned from walking and running my heart fluttered more than usual. Like maybe a dozen palpitations instead of just a few. It was a little unnerving and might’ve been scary had I been alone. Hope it does this during my stress test next month so they can tell me if it’s harmless or not, though I think it’s pretty safe to say it’s probably harmless. I’m alive, aren’t I? Still, it was weird and I wonder if it should’ve done that or not.

My eyes have been itchy the last few days and the allergy eye drops I usually use for that didn’t help, so I used Tom’s artificial teardrops and that helped a lot.

Has Stacey literally dried up my tears by EMDRing me? LOL, I haven’t shed a tear since, though most of the tears I have shed over the last couple of years have been medically/hormonally induced. I think the last time I cried genuine tears of sadness was when my rat Sugar died. There were also tears of joy when I reunited with my family at the beginning of the year.

My light gray sweatshirt with the cat face arrived yet I was totally swimming in it so I gave it to Tom. It looks good on him.

Last night I dreamed I was walking down a long hallway and I glanced into a small room with an open door. The back wall of the room had a window in which I could see my dad sitting just outside of it on a chaise lounge on an enclosed porch patio of some kind.

I walked into the room to say hello. He was munching on some chips and talking on the phone with Mom. He handed the phone to me and my mother began talking but I don’t remember what she said.

Later…

And the loud car stereo has hit the scene. How can people still be “ok” with these things??? This is like the 6th night in a row this thing has been at it. They stop the music and start it and back and forth. You can tell they’re doing it just to piss people off.

Stepped outside to try to see where it was coming from, and it was right over the wall somewhere. Even a couple of other people came out to try to see what the fuck was up. I could hear the hot water tank door vibrating it was so fucking loud.

Someone’s finally GOT to do something about this shit, but when??? How many more decades is it going to take??? Do we have to wait till they’re loud enough to literally destroy windows and homes before action is finally taken?

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2016
Signing it at a sunny 65° after waking up just in time to hear the first motorcycle of the day tearing around the corner.

I’m worried about Sarah who has been hospitalized. At first I thought it was just a shoulder injury that they mentioned before and that they were just being their usual dramatic selves. But she actually has a bowel infection and the bowel is twisted. It’s fixable, which is nice to know, but it may require surgery to do it. Let’s hope not!

Tammy called and filled me in on what’s going on with everybody. That poor sister of mine is so overwhelmed now with all that’s going on. Wish she’d get the break she deserves! And Sarah, too. I hate to say it, but I’m so glad we never had kids. That’d just be one more (or more than one more) person to have to worry about.

Anyway, they thought she had a stomach bug at first, only she was in pain and not having the runs or any bowel movements at all. So Becky called the ambulance and Tammy shot on over. She was able to beat the ambulance since they were just a few minutes away. They had her on liquids at first, then let her order regular food to see if that would get things going. It didn’t. So they’re not sure what they’re going to do next, but Tammy said she’d keep me posted.

I learned something new about myself while chatting with Tammy. I knew she was 8 and Larry was 12 when they moved from Springfield to Longmeadow, but I thought I wasn’t born until after they moved to Longmeadow. She said nope, I was born when they were still on Willowbrook and how I was in her room, she had to put up with my shit, and she wanted to open the window and toss me out, hahaha.

Also, they found traces of asbestos in one of her lungs, which she suspects could be from the Willowbrook house and maybe the older Longmeadow house. Well, if she’s got traces, I might, too.

So I worry for them and I also worry about my numbers when I hit the labs next month. My TSH would have to float up to around 16 before I could tolerate 88mcgs without the killer anxiety. I hope it stays where it has been, though. It’s usually around 10.

As for my cholesterol… I know it’s going to be high. It’s just a matter of how high.

Said hello to Bob and Virginia yesterday when I saw them sitting outside the front of their place on the way to pick up the mail. She said she liked my purple pants and purple shoes. Damn, that woman has bionic eyes for an oldie to be able to tell my shoe color from where she sat on her patio. I never left the street as we spoke.

The only thing that shoots down the doctor’s jaw joint arthritis theory is that it not only seems worse when I lay on it but like the pain is more toward the surface. It almost feels like it’s in the area where what’s left of the upper part of the ear meets my head. But with the jaw being so close it could be deceptive as far as exact location, and we do lay on our jaw/teeth to a degree. People have had what they thought were earaches that were really toothaches, so who knows for sure?

Couldn’t take the dizziness yesterday when trying to fast so I had one of those nutritional cookies that still taste good but that’s loaded with protein, vitamins and minerals, and I felt MUCH better. By the end of the day, I’d consumed about 1200 calories and was down another half a pound when I got up. So even though I can’t go longer than 3-4 hours without getting dizzy, I still ate less.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2016
Lenore is still checking my blog as religiously as she is.

My new zebra pattern stockings fit well, but the skirt is too tight. It’s too bad too, because the skirt is surprisingly good quality for the price.

My sizzling pink sweatshirt fits perfectly and is also of good quality.

Peyton’s Rainbow dress looks great. Better than the dull outfit she came in.

The Neroli chamomile shower bombs I got smell wonderful, but they don’t last long. You’re supposed to put them in a spot that gets wet but that isn’t in the shower stream. Yet this isn’t very easy to do in the master bathroom’s tiny little phone booth shower stall. Just the water bouncing off of me pretty much hits every spot. That’s the thing I hate most about this house that I otherwise love. You have this 10 x 8 bathroom with this little teeny shower in it.

I slept kind of shitty the last two nights so I’m lightheaded again and may not get much done today other than the laundry. Part of that may be my fault. I got the bright idea to try to fast for the day. If you fast for just a single day here and there it’s supposed to be very beneficial. It boosts the immune system, detoxes the body, and boosts the metabolism. Long-term fasting has negative effects on the other hand.

Hunger pangs are one thing, but head rushes are another. I got up at 8:30 and at 11:15 my head was swimming, so I slammed on a yogurt. I take multivitamins every day which need to be taken with food, but that also has to wait 4 hours after taking my thyroid meds, so at around 1:00, I may have a little something. I just can’t do what I was able to do 30 years ago. Grrr.

Had a dream that Stacey surprised me with two or three letters, but I don’t know if the “letters” were postal letters or emails.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2016
Seriously? Now we’re up to THREE motorcycles on this circle alone where OLD people live?!

And damn the Twenties and their service vehicles and visitors! Argh! I won’t even get into the landscaping, planes and car stereos I heard yesterday as well, though the stereos aren’t in the park.

Anyway, I went to my ENT and was seen in the exam room by a new male nurse. He was very friendly and was also nice enough to use an old-fashioned blood pressure cuff on me. I hate the electronic ones. Ridiculous fear or not, I always worry they’re going to lose their minds and squish me to death. I’d rather rely on a human being than a machine for something like this. So I’m almost normal at 130/80. HR was 97, not surprisingly. Weight = fatty but I have a new plan of attack in mind for that.

The doctor recently married and her name has changed. The instant she stepped into the room and I looked at her face I thought, wow, she’s gained weight. Then my eyes moved downward. She’s pregnant, so that explains it, LOL.

So I told her my ear’s been really achy and I’ve had to oil it every day instead of a few times a week, yet when she looked inside everything looked fine. It didn’t even need to be cleaned of dead skin or anything.

She said the drainage I sometimes feel is probably allergies, and that I should return to my nasal spray. I stopped using it only because it’s not prime allergy time, but then why wait for the sneezing fits to strike, right?

She said she could refer me to other specialists if I’d like but that there was nothing that could be done about the achiness, which she said could be arthritis in my jaw. Hmm… she has a point there. I never thought of that, but it’s true that when it aches it is in the jaw joint area. She also recommended getting a mouth guard from my dentist in case grinding my teeth in my sleep, which I think I might do, is a factor. I don’t see my dentist till March, but I’ll definitely mention it to her. For now, I’ll keep up the daily oiling cuz it has helped as opposed to every few days.

Will return to my ENT in May. She still wants to keep up on it every 6 months, which makes me feel better as well.

Now I have to decide whether or not to carry on with NaNoWriMo, and maybe I’ll do some highlights on some old stuff, too. It just may be a few days before it’s posted.

Last night I had dreams about being stuck in Oregon with no way to contact Tom to tell him where I was and have him come and get me.

Then I had a ridiculously silly dream where next door’s house was even closer than it really is, and instead of their garage window facing our bedroom windows, there was a bathroom window instead. Tom was going to do something to their window late at night to keep their light from shining into our bedroom. Only problem was that there was a thorny rosebush he would have to work around in the dream. In reality, we have blackout shades/curtains. Works great. :)

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2016
Had a nice half-hour walk in the fog this morning. Yesterday I met with Dr. S for the second and probably the last time. This is because, as I expected, there’s no cure for my type of circadian rhythm disorder and there really isn’t much more he can do for me other than recommend melatonin supplements and a LUX lightbox. Melatonin is only so helpful for so long, so I’m going to try the 10,000 LUX light he recommended I use for the first half-hour of my day to help set my body’s rhythm. I don’t think it’s going to get me on a schedule, but it may help, and since it’s not a medication or anything going into my body, why not? It’s safe. :-) It’s similar to a SAD lamp that people use to fight seasonal depression. I could have used one of those up in Oregon not that I was “depressed.” I was just rather blah, though, and didn’t have much energy.

Come to think of it, though, when we were in the RV on Bly Mountain on the 2.5-acre parcel of land we so briefly owned up in Oregon, I slept alongside a huge window. I would awaken with the sunlight that would stream into it as soon as it rose above the evergreens and junipers. So I wonder… if I lived outdoors as if it were primitive times, would I be on a schedule? Maybe not, since this disorder was discovered in blind people, after all.

I learned from him that there are different types of circadian rhythm disorders. One of them is a delayed circadian rhythm disorder where people can’t help but fall asleep and get up earlier than they like, like 6 PM to 3 AM, for example. There’s a late one too, where people go to bed and get up later than they’d like. Those won’t prevent you from working outside of the house like my kind does.

I told him that I would sometimes use Benadryl to help me sleep, but never cared for how groggy it could make me the next day and how long it would make me sleep. Even though I may wake up at times, I still average eight hours of sleep, so that much is good. He said Benadryl is best to avoid because it can affect cognitive memory. Back when I used to use it more often I had memory issues, but untreated hypothyroidism can cause that as well. My memory has improved tremendously with thyroid treatment.

I’m not even using lorazepam anymore. In fact, I’m almost certainly going to cancel my December appointment with the new shrink. I haven’t had anxiety for the better part of a year now that my medication has been regulated, so there’s no point in seeing him.

The sleep doc said that those who end up with Hashimoto’s usually start off with hyperthyroidism, and even though they never tested me for some reason back then, both Tom and I would be willing to bet that I did indeed have hyperthyroidism 20 years ago. I’ve always been a rather animated person, but I was WAY more hyper than I was now and my heart raced more often back then, too. It will get racy if I stop my meds, though, because as O pointed out, your heart can race if you have too little or too much thyroid hormone in you.

I have had palpitations here and there where the heart flutters noticeably hard for about three or four beats. Sometimes it seems to skip a beat or double up on beats, but I can’t say for sure that it is. That’s why I’m having a stress test in December. He said that some palpitations are harmless while others could put you at risk for stroke or heart attack. When we first moved to Cali I had them all the time, but when I checked online I found that more often than not, they’re harmless. Family history says I could have problems later in life, but right now I would be willing to bet that my heart is still just fine. I’m still relatively young, I’m active, I’m not obese, and I eat right most days.

So we have the LUX light, a new hand vacuum, new batteries for the scale, a new felt cube for the rats to nest in, and rat bedding on the way from Amazon since we’ll need it before the next bedding subscription arrives.

He also got some electronic-related stuff and I got some clothes. A black skirt, black zebra patterned pantyhose, a pink sweatshirt, a sweatshirt with the aurora borealis printed on it, and an ash-gray sweatshirt with a cat face.

I also got a rainbow dress for one of my 18-inch dolls and shower bombs. I guess you place the bomb on the shower floor away from the spray and it’s supposed to make your shower smell really good. I got the neroli and chamomile-scented ones.

Yesterday’s traffic and landscaping were totally obnoxious, especially the landscaping. I didn’t hear any motorcycles yesterday, but I have today. Figured I would, too.

Not sure I want to continue on with NaNoWriMo as I just don’t have any exciting ideas. That’s something I can’t really force. I either have a great idea to expand on or I don’t. More than likely I will just edit my last book.

I’m also not sure if I want to continue with my monthly bio project because it is just so much work to go through so many years of journals, pulling out the main highlights, etc. I’ll leave what I have posted so far which is up to mid-1993. I can always decide later on to continue with that if I want to, but if I do, it’s a project that could easily take a year or two.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2016
NaNoWriMo has begun but I haven’t. Yesterday I totally took a day off from life. I wasn’t fatigued; I just didn’t feel like doing much of anything. We all have those days every now and then. I did go out for a walk and I did do some things I usually do, but for the most part, I just sat around, goofed off, and was annoyed with the tech issues going on at Prosebox.

Change always equals tech issues. I understand that people want to keep perfecting and making things better, but sometimes things already are better and they should be left alone. There’s so much change online that it drives me batty at times. Amazon’s changed so much that I can’t even find where I stored my doc files. That’s okay, though, as I can always back things up on other sites. I just wish people would leave a good thing alone and remember that they wouldn’t have gotten users in the first place if they didn’t like the sites just the way they were.

The only popular site that I rarely use is Facebook. Never had an Instagram account either. I can’t do anything on Facebook without it being thrown in my friends’ feeds, and I still say it’s none of their business, as much as I love them unless I want to make it their business. So I rarely “react” or comment on things. Even if I could control who sees my activity as easily as I can control what I see of their activity, there’s nothing for me to really do there. I always hated their games.

Gotta see my sleep specialist today. Even though I’ve only seen him once, I still don’t see how he can help me. There simply is no cure for circadian rhythm disorder. If there is, it’s news to me. I guess I can update whatever he says later on or tomorrow. I mean I probably shouldn’t share anything health-related in public, but it really is no big deal. Oh, it’s a big deal if you’re cursed with having to live with it, but I know how so many people are… if they don’t get it, then it can’t possibly exist or it must be some grand lie/excuse. Well, it’s not my job to educate life’s little ignorants. :-) It’s just my job to live my life the best I can in a way that suits me best.

Didn’t hear any motorcycles yesterday, but as expected, the end of the rain brought out the blowers and somebody’s hammer, along with the usual spattering of car door slamming. So, little distractions but nothing maddening. It was raining in the wee hours of the night, but there’s only a 25% chance of rain during the day today.

I just asked Alexa what the temperature is in Springfield and it’s 26°! ROTFL!!! It’s colder there right now than in Klamath Falls. It’s 55° here right now. Still, I envy those in Florida and Maui right now.