October 2019 in 2010s

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019
Love how Grammarly added a tone detector that helps you get the right feeling across in whatever you’re writing. Like if you sound confident as opposed to defensive or whatever.

Last night, as I was listening to a symphony of night sounds like the freeway and all kinds of planes, a part of me wanted to cry at the thought of being forever cursed with excessively noisy places for reasons I’ll never understand. It’s been that way since 1992, although Maricopa wasn’t too bad in general, and Auburn would have actually been the quietest place we ever lived if we could have gotten Jesse’s mutts out of the picture.

Anyway, I started to tell myself it would be pointless to cry over what fate can’t be changed and all that, but then we have lived in quieter places, so I know it’s possible to get one. It may not be possible to get a place that’s literally quiet, but every other single place I’ve ever lived in has been quieter than this. So it’s doable.

So what was today’s project? Oh, I just got to wake up to insanely loud sawing and woodchippers. Now, they didn’t actually wake me up because I had the sound machine going, even though according to Google Maps, the activity took place just 150 ft from the bedroom. It sure would have woken me up when the tree actually came down had I not already been up! it really hit with a ferocious stud.

When I first got up, I thought it was coming from the oak tree in the center island down the street, but then I looked out and saw that they were in the common area between Dal and Santa. So it was the park that ordered the job, not surprisingly, even though I don’t recall seeing any dead or dying trees in that area. Even Dixie was wondering why they were killing that tree. Tom said if it was leaning over a house, that may be why because if it were to get struck by lightning, it could fall on the house. I don’t remember if any were leaning over anybody’s house but there were three huge branches stemming off of the trunk. They cut it down to where you had just the trunk and two big branches, so about a few thousand pounds worth. They sawed the thing and then with amazing precision and strength, a guy whacked the wedge in the center of it forming more of a gap. When the thing finally went down it was with such a mighty boom that the entire house shook and the windows rattled in their panes. I was so glad I had gotten up when I did because there’s no doubt that it would have jolted me awake. I would probably think someone kicked the door in if it wasn’t for all the people and activity that goes on regularly here. It may have been cool to watch the tree coming down but I’m sick of this shit. Just totally sick of it. We can’t even go one fucking week without some loud annoying project. They’re not done yet either. They’re going to have to come and haul everything away, and if they choose to grind down the stump, it’s going to be loud as hell.

The last commercial plane wasn’t until 12:30 last night and then the small planes and helicopters took over along with the freeway and it just gets old. It really does. Sometimes I just want to hear nothing. I just want peace and quiet. But those moments are few and far between here. Projects in the daytime on top of regular landscaping and traffic, and planes at night. The planes are actually a 24-hour thing, it’s just that they’re more audible late at night and early in the morning when sounds carry better. Same with the freeway which is about 1000 feet away.

We both happily escaped to Rite Aid for a few minutes where I got some wine and we both got treats. So what if I’m 156 lb. Maybe someday I’ll actually care enough about my weight to stop eating for a while. I guess it’s just that age thing. You get comfortable with who and what you are, you don’t give a s*** what others think, and you get tired of filling in the swears that Google Docs doesn’t like. :-) Rite Aid was giving away free Halloween candy so we each got a bite-size candy.

Despite how slow it’s been at work, which Tom expects for the rest of the year, he worked at home yesterday doing a meeting. It kind of sucks because while he does make more money than most people, we as a couple don’t make as much as most people, so doing a detour in New Mexico is probably going to be out of the question even though I’ve asked Becky for some info on the land and the job market in her area. I don’t think we can go straight to Florida without him having a job first, but if we can buy a cheap place with the sale of this place and stay there till he’s 66-70, I’d go for it because almost any place has to be quieter than this!

Dixie saw and heard the felling of the tree too, and said I was the first one she thought of when they came in early this morning and miraculously managed not to wake me up. I did have both sound machines blasting, though. It’s the only way for a light sleeper to sleep on such a busy street.

Love her nickname for Joan… Mrs. Claus. So there’s Santa and then there’s Mrs. Claus. LMAO! I told her that was a good one. I get the impression she doesn’t like Mrs. Claus very much but she’s always been nice to me.

Dixie also cracked me up when she said no hurry on helping her organize the clothes, if Diane comes out dressed for the beach, she’ll just go grab some warmer clothes, haha.

She wishes they would take down that center island tree because it messes up her gutters since she’s right by it, but it’s one of those protected trees in Cali. That old oak tree is probably 100 years old at the very least. I just wish they would stop with all the tree-cutting in general. I’m not only tired of having to hear it, but we need our trees! I’ve lived in other areas that were heavily treed and never did I hear so many of them being cut down.

Since we’re allowed to have up to five accounts on Twitter’s account switcher, I created a fifth account to tweet pictures when I’m about to go out walking. Then when I return, I can see exactly how long I was gone.

Started writing a letter to Stacey which I’ll send her on Facebook since it’s been a while. Almost 2 years. I know she wouldn’t mind an update from me, though I don’t hear much from her, understandably. I really do miss her at times.

So disappointing to see those wonderful orange lines begin to disappear on my book reports. The old setup put an orange line by the date something was either bought or borrowed. I seemed to be starting to be on quite a roll, too.

Okay, Becky just gave me some info on taxes and property and things in general about where she moved to in New Mexico. Tom and I will look around on Zillow over the weekend but I’m not holding my breath. It’s just not that easy to up and move, especially when you’re still working.

She cracked me up after I told her about all I have to listen to here, and not only said that would drive her fucking crazy but also, “God bless you. I’d have killed someone by now.”

Yeah, I think maybe that’s why I keep killing people in my stories; so I don’t in real life. Speaking of that, NaNo starts in just over 2 hours, so even though I’m not very prepared, I’m going to dive in and see where it takes me. One doesn’t have to win in order to have fun, which is a good thing because I don’t expect to win this time around. Just not enough of an idea for the story to reach 50k words.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2019
Tom won a raffle at work and will receive a $25 gift card. That reminds me… It’s the end of the month when most sweeps expire, so I should make some entries soon using the new Gmail account.

Fortunately, I was tired yesterday due to waking up too soon and not because of lowering my dose. I was able to go out walking today just fine. I passed a guy in his 70s or 80s on the way down toward the back of the park and we exchanged hellos. Caught him again on the way back and he stopped to chat and asked if I lived in the park, probably figuring I wasn’t old enough to live here.

Anyway, I pointed toward our house and said I lived on the corner and he said, “Oh, across from Jon and Carolyn?”

I confirmed and he said his name was Ken and shook my hand.

Back at the house, I gathered a pile of leaves that always love to settle in the middle of the carport.

“Hey, Jodi, you back there?” I heard Jon call.

I stepped around the mesh screen that shades the carport and Jon thanked me for pulling their trash and recycle bins in when they were in Reno, which I assured him was no problem.

Around the corner and down the street I soon went to pick up the mail where I waved hello to Joan who confirmed she got the email with the link to the screen we have. A short while later there was a knock on the door, and it was her. She said she wanted to show it to Santa but couldn’t find the link so I told her I would send it again.

Tammy said they don’t know what caused her infection or why her kidneys aren’t functioning properly. Because her immune system is shot, if she has allergy attacks or gets a cold, that’s all it takes to trigger her sarcoidosis.

Because it’s important that she get her health back on track, the house probably won’t go back on the market for a while. She’s already established with her doctors who know everything that’s going on and she feels comfortable with them. Therefore, getting a new team of doctors would be a bit stressful. I can totally relate to that one. Even though I’m healthy and go years between colds, I still have to see a PCP, dentist, and ENT once or twice a year, and now that I feel comfortable with them and they understand me well, the thought of having to start over with new doctors does kind of suck but should be worth it in the end.

Did she have to mention one of her bitches? Of course she did, and I knew she would, too. It’s a little more tolerable with voice clips, though, because then I don’t feel as obligated to acknowledge and respond in the way I would in a live chat.

When out on my walk I heard more planes than traffic and landscaping, even though I still heard plenty of that too, especially landscaping. The planes have definitely become the worst of the annoyances around here. Traffic is the biggest threat to my sleep, though, as I’ll be reminded when that loud car returns. I doubt it’s disappeared because of anyone’s complaints. More than likely something is preventing them from coming around to mooch off of mommy and daddy.

The brown noise played all through the night whereas the night before it cut out before I got up. Will probably have to have a sound machine in addition to Alexa no matter where we live since she’s not 100% reliable. But hopefully, I can just use a portable one. The goal is to get rid of the stereo. Damn is it getting old now! Got it toward the end of our time in Phoenix, so we’re talking a little over 20 years now.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019
I woke up having to pee and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I’m a little tired today. I crashed around 2 a.m. and expected to get up at 10 a.m., but I was up around 8. I lay in bed for a while before actually getting up, though.

Found a really nice message waiting for me from Tammy about how I’m going to be rolling in dough from selling my books, I’m an amazing sister and she’s proud of me.

LOL, unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be rolling in any dough and happily home-hunting in Maui or Lanai, but I appreciate the vote of confidence and love her too. :-) Haven’t gotten a health update from her yet, but hopefully, as I told her, she’ll be making that mountain dream home a reality soon and I’ll be right there to laugh my ass off every single time it snows. She’s not going anywhere that has brutal winters, but still.

Five or six years ago she read the rough draft of Renting Ginny which I sent to my dad, minus some intimate scenes, and now I’m sharing the newer, much-improved version of it with her which will soon be submitted for publication on Amazon. Where I sometimes read old manuscripts and decide it’s crap not worth trying to salvage, I’m also surprised at times by how well something comes out that I feel is worth editing and putting my all into. Once I started getting published, I began omitting X-rated scenes to appeal to a larger audience.

What pisses me off about Amazon is that they won’t allow reviews from friends. It’s creepy, as Aly said, but nothing online is ever really private. I’ve shared the link several places and it’s kind of a no-brainer for them to check out who we’re closest to.

Although I haven’t had any specific dreams pertaining to it, I still have heavy vibes about change being on the horizon even though I’m clueless as to what it could be. I’m a little worried since most change isn’t usually very good. At least not for us. But then it gives me hope that maybe it could lead to something better, not that we’re in a bad position right now.

There are only a few ants left on the farm, but they don’t seem in any hurry to join the rest of their colony in their little makeshift graveyard.

These new giant pee pads are working out so well for the pigs. if only I’d known what to get from the get-go. They’re easy to shake out and they’re way less smelly and I don’t think I’ll even have to change them every other day which was the longest I could stand to go with the fleece liners. I’m going to try 3 days between changes. They now have 3 times more living space which is also part of why they can go longer between changes.

Looks like I might have finally gotten Ashworth College off my ass. They finally responded to my message on Facebook about their annoying daily calls, asked for my number, and told me they removed it from their system, so we’ll see.

Now that I actually want scammers to email me so I can have fun sending them whatever gibberish speech-to-text comes up with when he and I are chatting or I have a show running, I’m hearing less often from them.

Been having a real problem trying to keep from getting bored. It seems like it’s been harder to entertain myself lately. Despite having so much more I could do than I did 20 years ago and even 10 years ago, I struggle to keep myself occupied. I just get tired of doing the same things. Well, actually that’s not it. I don’t mind doing the same things. I enjoy the things I do. It’s after those same things are done for the day that I’m sitting there like…now what? It’s too early to start reading myself to sleep, so what do I do now?

I’ve got NaNoWriMo coming up in a few days but even that might not solve my boredom problem if I can’t come up with enough of an idea for the story to last that long. Even if I did, NaNoWriMo is only a month. I just can’t keep coming up with story ideas like I used to. I hate to say it, but this is part of why I wouldn’t be all that sad if I was told right now that I had some terminal disease. It would be a lot easier to accept than 20 years ago. I would be sadder for Tom than for myself. Why? Because I’m just running out of steam in life.

We don’t have the means or the money to do new things or some things we’ve already done more often. I can’t just say, “I want to go swimming right now.” It’s too cold for swimming. I can’t go for a dip in the ocean. I can’t go snorkeling. I can’t go sailing. I can’t go water skiing. I can’t explore other countries. I can’t spend the day at a luxury spa. I can’t go get my armpit hair removed. So even though there are other things to do, it’s not like I can do all these things whenever I happen to feel like it.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2019
The self-cleaning feature on our oven is absolutely worthless. I thought it a bit strange that it only ran for two hours whereas the one we had in Arizona ran all day or all night, depending on when I started it. I had to scrub the window of this one myself. The one in Arizona didn’t have a window which I hated, but it always got it as clean as new.

While I could complain about all the landscaping noise I’ve been hearing for hours now, the windstorm we had really took down a lot of leaves and twigs, so clean-up is necessary, like it or not. I had to be careful when out jogging not to slip in piles of leaves that haven’t been blown away yet.

Haven’t gone to Sam’s yet for my trifocals, but my reading and computer glasses arrived. I can actually see a little better with my older work glasses with this giant screen, so I’m going to wait for my new computer to use the new ones.

I was thinking of possibly getting an angled bob for my next haircut. When it first came into the style it just looked all wrong for the sides to be longer than the back. But the more I see them, the less strange they look. The pros to an angled bob would be that I would have a little less hair to have to deal with, but then I couldn’t gather it in a ponytail.

His app is now on Amazon as well. Work has been slow, but he doesn’t know what to expect. As in whether or not he might be laid off. I haven’t had any dreams suggesting a particular change is on the horizon, but sometimes I’m blindsided by life’s events and I don’t get any warnings. However, I’ve always had dreams in the past so I would think I’d get a heads-up if we were going to move sooner than expected. I do kinda have a feeling that change is coming, not tomorrow or the next day, but soon. I just don’t know what it could be. Hopefully nothing bad. I beat the worst of the anxiety, I hit menopause, the loud car hasn’t been around, I’ve gotten more familiar with and comfortable with more people here… Those are typical signs of the end times of a particular period.

Just my walk shows change. It was 63° and sunny and I was able to handle the walk just fine. This would have killed me when I was in the worst of the perimenopause as I was just so damn heat-sensitive then even when it really wasn’t literally hot. It was cool in the shade but slightly warm in the sun. Still, that’s all it would have taken to cause me to really feel overheated.

Never thought I’d say this but a part of me hopes they lay him off. We decided that if that happens, we’re going to aim for both things as far as moving and getting another job here. We’ll start making decisions as far as what’s to go and what’s not as if we’re about to move, but while we’re at it, he’ll look for a job and see if he can get something with better pay that would be too good to resist and worth sticking around for until he’s 66. The thing is, I can’t see him ever getting a better-paying job while I also can’t see anything up there paving the way for us to get out of the noisiest place I’ve ever lived in sooner.

I think that if they lay him off and he can’t find a better job here, we may have to do a rural detour in New Mexico or something on the way to Florida. If we have the money to buy a place outright, even if it has to be a dump, they won’t care if he hasn’t had a job in the area for a year. Assuming we couldn’t find the perfect piece of land in Florida, a Florida park is gonna want a year of employment. So we might have to detour. I just want to live where I don’t need sound machines all day and I only need Alexa to sleep with!

On the downside, being laid off could also pave the road for a similar disaster as when we left Arizona. Better to play it safe and hope to stay put till 2024. I guess it is, anyway.

The last Alexa device we got started going out when I would have her play the same brown noise to sleep with that I often have her play when I’m awake, which helps me sleep a little better during the daytime. OMG, that is so, SO typical and NO coincidence! Everything that seems to help my sleep backfires somehow. Earbuds give me earaches and now this Alexa “happens” to crap out at bedtime.

For now, I’ve swapped that one out for another device and we’ll see what happens, though I think I can guess. Some curses really are that hard to fight. I’ve been sleeping fine lately, but that could change without the extra help.

Couldn’t find Joan’s profile on Facebook but I found Santa’s. I didn’t friend him, but I see he’s also fed up with this country putting other countries first and illegals before veterans. He also seems to be sick of everything being labeled as racist and anti-Kamala Harris because of the way she’s demonstrated a desire to focus on minorities and not US citizens as a whole.

Yeah, that was my impression of her as well, and while I would rather her than Trump, I would be a little concerned with her as president because whites are being treated like second-class citizens enough of the time as it is.

I’m guessing he’s a Trump supporter, though not everybody that believes veterans should come before illegals and that the US should take care of its own first is necessarily a Trump supporter.

I know I don’t want a Republican for president because they’re the ones who go after the rights of gays and women and won’t do anything to better the healthcare system. The only problem is the yo-yo effect you got going on every time political parties change. We could get a Democrat next election that sets certain things up or implements this and that, but the next time a Republican is in power they’ll just tear it all down. One undoes what the other creates. Abortions will be easier to get as soon as a Democrat gets in, but then when the next Republican is elected women can kiss their reproductive rights goodbye until the next Democrat is elected. So what’s the point of a Dem being elected and being able to get better insurance if you’re just going to lose it 4-8 years later?

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2019
The 33 MPH winds we’ve been having took out Geri’s umbrella across the street. At least she won’t have to go too far to get it. I was hoping the wind would cancel out the planes by carrying the sound elsewhere, but that was the first thing I heard as soon as I got up and turned the sound machine off. Not going to get a break from the damn things until we move. Until that becomes a flight path too, of course

On our way to the store the other day, we saw a coyote on Oak run from where the houses are down to the creek with something in its mouth.

Tammy messaged me to say she was very ill but is finally feeling better and will send details soon. I was afraid something was up just because of the lack of contact and not seeing her on Facebook as often.

The pee pads came yesterday, and I think these are definitely going to be the best liners for where we have them set up in the kitchen. They fit in that spot well and since they’re quilted on top rather than fleeced, they should be easier to shake out. The hay clings to fleece easier than this slicker surface. Wasn’t really smelly when I got up this morning, so I think I can change them every other day. Since they’re waterproof, I should no longer have to mop the floor underneath.

I had a bad backache yesterday and the day before. It was just a small spot in the middle of the right side of my back. I don’t know if I pulled a muscle or what. Tom gave me a massage earlier and that helped. I’m sure my sleeping conditions don’t help, though. Yes, the bed situation is frustrating. It’s a horribly uneven sleeping surface and I don’t see how it’s going to hold up another 5 years. I had wanted to wait until we got settled in the new place before I got a new bed. It’s either deal with being tilted and lumpy or having to blow up the leaky airbed all the time since we don’t have the money now for a quality bed. The new computer is most important.

Made Tom and I those Brit-style jacket potatoes yesterday and he loved them. I still can’t believe how much I’ve learned to cook! Haven’t yet learned soups or casseroles but I’m sure I could find a video that would teach me if I wanted to make those too.

Had a dream I got in trouble doing something that involved getting caught by that pig back east, Laurie H, plus something else. I woke up relieved to know it was just a dream.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2019
Signed up on Author Central and created a bio page on Amazon which looks very nice and professional looking. Not too fond of the picture I used, but hey, it’s me.

Felt pretty wound up yesterday so I’m just going to go back to 50s daily except for Mondays and Thursdays until 6 weeks before my next trip to the lab. I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to get past 6 weeks without having to lower my dose.

28-mile-an-hour winds are expected tonight beginning at 11. Hopefully, it will give me a break from the planes for a while. Beginning to wonder if it’s going to rain again this year.

I think when the clocks go back I’m just going to ditch my alarm clock since I can’t see very well anymore, especially with the damn thing being backlit which makes it even harder to see, and eventually get an Alexa with a clock in it for when I wake up in the middle of the night and don’t feel like shouting over the sound machine. I don’t need a traditional alarm clock anymore since I can use Alexa’s alarm.

Haven’t heard Santa’s mutts lately, which even Dixie says annoys her at times. I can see where it would since she’s closer to them. I’m surprised that such nice people would be so inconsiderate too. That’s usually the kind of thing you expect from freeloaders, not sweet little old grandma and grandpa.

We’re deciding on what kind of insurance plan to go with beginning next year. There’s a plan in which you could text a doctor for free, but they take more per paycheck. Then there’s a plan where they take less per paycheck but charge $5 per text. Since he’s healthy and I don’t plan on having any more problems for a good long time, we’re probably going to take the second plan.

Went for a walk earlier and now I’m relaxing with some chardonnay. Had a very violent dream last night. I was forced to kill some guy that was trying to kill me. I knew without a doubt that it was a case of me or him and it wasn’t going to be me if I could help it. I don’t know why he was trying to kill me, but I had a rock in my hand and managed to stun him by whipping it into his face. After I hurled the rock and stunned him with surprise and pain, I pummeled his face with my fists to the point that my hands were bloodied. Whenever they would hit his teeth, they would receive gashes, but since it was a life-or-death matter, I wasn’t the least bit worried. I only became concerned after he was dead because I wasn’t sure if I should dare take a chance on trusting the police to believe I was forced to kill, or just keep quiet about it and hope for the best.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2019
Tom’s building was closed due to it being slow, so he has today off. They’ve closed before but this is the first time he was told he could take the day off. I don’t sense any impending layoffs but when I asked him about that he said he didn’t know anything for sure. I’m not worried about it, though. Nothing is going to let us lose a house this noisy. But then again, there are signs of the “end,” so to speak, which I’ve learned to recognize when we’re about to move or end/begin a certain period of our lives. I worry that because I’ve gotten my physical and emotional health back on track within a year or two there’s going to be some new long-term problem.

We always move when I meet nice people in the area if they don’t move first. Plus, the loud car is gone, and while it’s still noisy here in general, everywhere I live seems to get a little quieter at the very end of my time there.

It doesn’t make sense that we’re nearing the end of our time here, though, because even if they did lay him off, that doesn’t mean we could just move.

We went to Walmart at 7 and were going to go for a walk when we got back. Started out in my hoodie but was too warm so I turned around and dropped it off at the house, then found I was too cold. I just couldn’t get my body temperature comfortable so now I’m on the treadmill where I have more control over that.

Okay, it’s a little later after I’ve done some cooking. This time I roasted some chicken wings in one of those bag-and-season things with diced potatoes and some mushrooms. First time I’ve ever added veggies and potatoes to this kind of thing.

Our latest project was the Twenties getting a shed installed yesterday. They’re one of our top project junkies but as I’ve learned, if you live with people with money, they’re always going to be doing shit. Love those two, though. Fortunately, I only heard a few bumps and bangs because it was just a 4-hour job and I spent part of it visiting Dixie. I was glad to learn they aren’t going to be putting up a garage since that would be way more noise. I think their driveway is too steep for it. They replaced the old shed in the back of their carport that most of the houses here have. We call ours a storeroom. It’s not as nice as Tammy’s, though.

Speaking of her, she’s still ghosting me.

Before I saw Dixie, I briefly chatted with the Twenties and it was nice to see them since it’s been a while. Jon was his usual funny self. I started talking to Carolyn first and he came up to us and said, “What are you doing harassing the neighbors?” LOL

He also asked me what a musician’s favorite pastry was. The answer is a drumroll, haha.

They said they were going to Alturas for a few days and asked that I keep an eye on their place. I just asked if they needed their trash and recycle bins pulled in and she said, yes. They’re on the road to Reno now but aren’t sure when or if the person they asked to pull them in will do so.

And now it’s later still. Yeah, sometimes I work on entries on and off for hours at a time.

We ran out to Rite Aid where I grabbed mini bottles of Merlot, Moscato, chardonnay, and Pinot Grigio. No Rosé this time. We got some treats too since we’re having a long weekend. Felt wound up today for some reason, though not in an anxious kind of way, and the wine was very relaxing. Maybe it was just because I’ve been on the go non-stop for about 10 hours doing so many different things in and out of the house. Every time I would think I was done with things, I would remember something else to do.

We ordered a 2-pack for $50 of large quilted, washable, waterproof pee pads with a silica slip guard on the bottom for the pigs since having them in the kitchen is really working out well. So, $140 wasted on their cage, and $100 wasted on fleece liners. Sort of.

Also got a corner hideaway made especially for this fence which some people use for their own guinea pigs as well as puppies. I chose pink, of course, but the pee pads are going to be brown with black paw prints.

Hate it when I forget I have speech-to-text running and then I go talking on my phone, to Tom or the animals, and it inserts text in my journal. I deliberately let it run when I’m not doing any actual writing and let it pick up whatever bits and pieces of conversation it can, then send it to scammers that send me shit, LOL.

Since we have several old phones, and they all have cameras in them, he set one up in the living room window and I’m watching what traffic goes by from the bedroom where I work. Being the middle of a Friday I’m surprised I haven’t seen a lot more vehicles than I’ve seen. Because my screen is so big, I can have the camera display on one side of the screen and Google Docs on the other. It’s going to suck giving up this giant monitor but it’s not practical with my vision being the way it is. Can’t have it far but can’t have it too close either.

This is pure fantasy, but it would be so cool to have a way to spy inside people’s homes. Those I know, of course, like the Twenties, Bob and Virginia, and Dixie.

Aly said: I didn’t say he took over the account. I had him change the password, I no longer use the email I’d used for it, so I had to get him to deactivate it but I have control now if I want it back up. He gave me the password he’d used and I did briefly reactivate it long enough to delete my phone number from it and change it to a password I know.

She also said: You’re reading waaaaaay too much into the D/s stuff. We’re on a break for a totally different reason, has to do with his physical and mental health. Just because I like to write DMS doesn’t mean I like to live it, this is why I don’t tell people personal stuff they don’t get it.

As I told her, I would get more things if she wasn’t so cryptic and vague. :-)

Just saw Dixie leave.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2019
Going to be heading down to Dixie’s place in about an hour to visit her and thought I would get in an entry first.

Yesterday I walked down to the mailbox and had just gotten back and was going through the mail when I heard a knock on the front door. I opened it to find Joan, Santa’s wife, standing there. She looked great for someone I’m guessing has got to be around 70. She wore a nice shiny sleeveless top, and every time I see her she has her hair in a side ponytail, though it suits her well. Her face was made up nicely, too.

She came to ask where we got the screen in our carport and I asked for her email and told her I would email her the link to where we got it on Amazon.

She didn’t come inside the house, but she saw into the living room as we were discussing home improvements and I was telling her we didn’t have a traditional living room setup and all that. Functionality is more important than appearance to us while we’re still in this place.

Their place is bigger than ours. They have a 1700-square-foot triple-wide. She was telling me about their plans for replacing carpet and installing the kind of flooring I wish we’d installed. Also, remodeling the kitchen. Fortunately, I shouldn’t have to hear any of it from here. But then if they’re sawing and hammering some things outside, I might. I swear I’m done with living with those with money! I don’t want to live in the slums, of course, and I know people do home improvements everywhere, but this has been unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Then again, everything about this whole damn place is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

Anyway, I learned something interesting from her. It turns out she’s been a real estate agent for over 25 years and still is. There are some regular realtors in the area, including a woman named Peggy who lives here. Well, Peggy didn’t disclose to Dahl (spelling?) and Barbara, the couple that bought Ralph’s place, that Ralph died inside the house. I didn’t even know that myself. His son was staying with him when he got up one morning to find he passed in his sleep. A lot of people are freaked out about the idea of buying a house someone died in. I remember seeing the EMTs there one last time and thought he had another stroke or heart attack and later died in the hospital, but nope. Wonder if whoever is in my grandparents’ house knows my grandmother died in her bed? I guess disclosure laws vary from state to state and they may not go that far back unless it’s something like a mass murder that took place or something out of the ordinary like that.

Anyway, looks like we’ve got ourselves a realtor nearly half a decade before we’re ready to get one, lol. I did tell her that we’re probably going to sell as is and that I joke with Tom about this place being every realtor’s worst nightmare because of the way I made quite a circus of it with wall stickers galore. Plus, we really fucked up the laundry room and small bathroom floors.

I was surprised when she said she doesn’t hear all the planes we’ve got going here and I’m beginning to wonder if everyone is deaf or if my one good ear is bionic. But then Carolyn did acknowledge them, so I don’t know. Every fucking time I opened the door yesterday to shake out my duster or dump recyclables or something, there was a plane roaring overhead. :-(

Tom saw his new doctor yesterday and sure enough, it’s a foreigner. Some older Asian guy whose accent was a little hard to understand. They really, really should be mandated to do speech exercises to get rid of their accents. When it comes to doctor-patient communication, there should be no misunderstandings!

We were talking about how sad it is that he won’t have good insurance for another 2.5 years and even sadder that I’ll likely have to wait 11 years. Just wish this country wasn’t so obsessed with independence and we didn’t have sick, twisted presidents who think everybody can afford to pay everything themselves as they can, but that’s the attitude here. You want it, you got to get it yourself unless you’re illegal. No one wants to help anyone that’s from here.

We have money budgeted for different things and the money budgeted for medical stuff is kind of low right now, so he hasn’t even gone to the lab yet which he told the doctor. He’ll get to it in another month or two and then they’ll call with the results. Of course they couldn’t just use the damn portal. They’ll probably post results there too, but all the phone calls people waste time with simply aren’t necessary. If something was wrong, that would be different. So far, he’s been very lucky, though. Other than struggling with obesity, he’s only had high blood pressure so far. He does have exercise-induced asthma, but he doesn’t trigger that very often.

The whole medical situation in this country just pisses me off. There’s got to be a better way so that not only can poor people afford the services they need, but so that middle-class people like us don’t lose such a huge chunk of our income to basic things. As usual, only the rich have it the best. Although in this state, even the fucking illegals have it better than we do. Everything’s about putting the outsiders first. Meanwhile, if this country wanted change, it would have been done ages ago.

I realized it was silly to gather the pigs in boxes and set them aside when changing their pen when all I have to do is move the gate in a way that blocks the entrance to the kitchen and have them just step aside while I pull up the dirty liner, clean the floor below, and place the new liner down. They were very good about it. They didn’t try to break away or go anywhere they shouldn’t, although these big beefy guys could never fit under the stove or beside the refrigerator even if they wanted to.

I’m getting the sense that Aly is on the verge of breaking up with Cam because they’re taking a break, as she told me. I’m not the least bit surprised. She’s sounded doubtful on and off yet when you find the right person, you know it. You don’t have so many doubts for so long. I think the type of guys she’s going for is part of the problem. The dominant-submissive thing may be a fun fantasy and may be ideal for those not looking to get serious, but I question just how ideal a guy like Cam could possibly be in a long-term relationship because of their thirst for control. When he mentioned bending people to his will in his old Ask profile, I remember being like no, just no. Seriously, if I was looking for someone, a profile like that would scare me right off. That alone right there tells me something about the guy. Anyone who’s going to want to be that dominant in bed is going to want to be dominant elsewhere as well. If I’ve got my facts straight, he stole a Twitter account of hers she can’t get back. Well, isn’t that pretty controlling?

When they do break up, hopefully she’ll stay single for more than a few weeks rather than jump into a whole new relationship. Not wanting to be alone is one thing, rushing things is another. It’s easy for straight people to do, though. I can just imagine how many boyfriends I would have had before meeting Tom had that been my main cup of tea.

Personally, I can’t picture her ever getting married and if I were less than a year from 40, I would wonder if maybe all my failed relationships had something to do with what I was attracted to, or maybe it was something about me, or maybe I was just plain old cursed in that department. I still think she might have better luck if she searched for an equal instead of a Dom.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2019
“I’m not going to be an author,” said I in a journal entry less than a month ago. Apparently, I got that wrong since I got another borrow yesterday of guess what? Yeah, that Heart of a Forest has become my definite bestseller. They estimate $4.48 so far in royalties for October. A barely noticeable amount, but I seemed to be making less than that in a year last time around, and I probably could have remained on Kobo forever and not made a single sale.

Anyway, I’ve had a productive day. I walked around the park from 8:30 to 9:00. This meant I had to deal with landscaping sounds, planes, and potentially pesky mutts, but it was otherwise a pleasant walk. I jogged a little of it but not much.

Then I checked in with Dixie who wanted to know when I would be visiting, and I asked if tomorrow morning would be okay. She misses me and I miss her too, motormouth or not. That’s why I finished the rest of the house cleaning today; so I can visit her tomorrow and then do laundry and change the rats on Friday. I like to space out the things I do, even though sometimes I’ll do something spontaneously. Like reorganizing the hall closet. Did that earlier and rearranged the kitchen a bit as well. How did we survive the kitchen in Jesse’s trailer when this one seems too small? Not enough counter space and definitely not enough plugs being that it’s an older house.

I moved the fish by the sink and put the oil diffuser where he was to mask the pigs’ smell.

It’s going to be nearly 90° today and tomorrow, which is fine with me. Makes it a little warm for sleeping and exercising but not so cold in the early mornings in here.

Tom is going to leave work a half-hour early today because he has a doctor’s appointment with his new doctor in the new medical building they recently opened here in town.

As for the truck parked close to the house yesterday…it never woke me up, fortunately. Tom confirmed on his way in that they’re painting the place. I could see this myself when I left for my walk this morning. It actually looks like whoever lived there moved out.

The ants are dying off fast and I think we’re down to just about 8 ants.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2019
I’ve already decided which two pairs of glasses I’m going to donate when I get my new ones. I usually donate the amount I get, but I think I’ll just donate the horribly large red ones and my first mid-range pair. I like to keep two pairs of the same prescription or close enough to it so I have a backup. Actually, I do have another pair of progressives that can go.

Going to use these cheap, thin rainbow washcloths I was sorry I bothered getting for a while to mop the pigsty. It would be cheaper to spray the pen with some kind of cleaner and mop it up with that rather than using wet Swiffers every day. Yes, I’m changing them every day, alternating between a pink-orange fleece throw that fits in perfectly, a purple zebra fleece blanket, and the two Maui beach towels.

Forget the ants not making it to the end of the year. I wonder if they’ll even make it to the end of the month. They’re really starting to die off. Tom said he read they can live as little as a month, so three months isn’t always the norm but more like a possibility.

For the first time ever, I now have four Twitter accounts. Decided to create one to log medication doses and just how I’m feeling in general. I love the new account switcher and how we can have up to five accounts. I’d still like it if we could edit tweets and make some private but then I do like to keep certain types of tweets separate which makes multiple accounts more useful.

NaNoWriMo’s getting closer, so I’ve begun fleshing out my main characters. Suki Akamu will work the Cyber Crimes Unit of the FBI, and the crazy FBI agent will be Special Agent Marlene Hughes, thanks to a random name generator. I had to put a little more work into the Japanese name.

Not sure of a setting or if I’m going to bother having one in the first place. I suppose there isn’t any point in a location unless it’s pertinent to the story somehow. I’ve used all the states I’ve lived in for settings, plus some randomly generated states I’ve never lived in.

I was going to go out walking earlier in the night before it got cold but the thought of what skunks or loose dogs I may encounter made me hesitant. I tried to tell myself I didn’t need a man to keep me safe, but I wasn’t very convincing because I waited for him to go with me. He didn’t mind, though. :-)

There’s been a vehicle parked on the side of the road by the house in back of Bob and Virginia. They’re parked almost up to where Lawrence’s place starts which is way too close to our bedroom. When I heard some banging, I looked out the window by the street and now there’s a fucking vehicle parked between us and next door, barely more than an arm’s length away. I have a bad feeling I’ll be hearing a lot more than what I’ve already heard.

I am so, SO fucking sick and tired of all the projects people do around here. I have never experienced this anywhere else in my life. Ever. We can’t even go more than a fucking week or two without someone doing some shit I have to listen to. Tom said he thought they might be painting that house but whatever it is, I want people’s vehicles away from the bedroom! You’re not even supposed to park on the street there to begin with. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a vehicle parked back there. Over the weekend there was a white pickup truck that looked like a gardener’s truck of some kind, but instead of being parked in the driveway or in front of their house, they were at the side. Then there was a white SUV last night and now there’s some kind of light-colored vehicle on our side. I don’t know what it’s doing there but with the way people love to slam vehicle doors, I worry about it waking me up. This is just way too damn close.

Damn, I’m sick of this fucking place and being surrounded by so many houses, streets and people! I love how the loud car hasn’t been around, though.

I got curious and went out and checked and it’s that same white pickup that was there this weekend. I think he’s right about them painting or at least doing something. But hey, someone’s always doing something around here. The house for sale on our street is still hammering away at God knows what outdoors. So fucking sick of this shit!! And the fucking traffic, planes and landscaping.

I’m going to have 5 eats a day starting on Monday. Three of those eats will be 160 cals worth of potatoes. Then I’m going to have meat and veggies which will be anywhere from about 100-300 cals. Lastly, I’ll have a banana, a kiddy yogurt, and of course my coffee. They will happen in no particular order. Beginning 1-2 hours after I get up, I’ll eat every 3 hours. I’ll be making a point of getting about a half-hour of cardio, plus strength training during weekdays. This is barely 1000 cals. If I can’t lose on this then I can’t lose on anything.

Tom says it will work if I stick to it, but I have stuck to other things long enough before to get no results. If something really is going to work, you should start seeing results within a few days to a week. Not be the same weight or more 1-2 weeks later. I get that after a week of dieting you can appear to be the same when you really lost a pound of fat and gained a pound of water. Don’t know if I can stick to it but I’m pretty sure that if I can, it won’t do me any good but to keep me from gaining more.

Aly is getting stranger by the minute when it comes to Twitter. When I mentioned that account disappearing, she said that that was because Cam deactivated it. She said he’s why she couldn’t get into it, though originally that was a good thing.

Uh-oh, something going on between those two I don’t know about? Maybe it’s time to find a partner who believes in equality within the partnership and drop the Dom/submissive thing she’s into. There’s a reason guys like him want to dominate and control. That’s simply the way they are, and if they’re going to be like that in the bedroom, why not elsewhere? Well, I hope this relationship continues to last for her, but it might be that she’s going after the wrong types of guys. Could be something wrong with her as well that’s driving people away or maybe she’s simply cursed in the love department. I don’t know. I’m not there. I don’t see and hear what goes on between them.

I had a dream I was staying in a hotel with Becky H. There might have been other people with us. While we were in the hotel suite, a small group of people entered and one of them was Steve. I pretended to be oblivious to his presence and hoped he wouldn’t recognize me after all these years.

Then we were alone again, and Becky was confiding in me about something personal that got her upset enough to bring her to tears. I hugged her and assured her she would never have just one sister.

Then I followed her into the bedroom as we continued talking. she started going through some of her stuff and I asked if she snored.

“Jodi, I won’t wake you up,” she said in a playfully scolding tone of voice.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2019
A few more ants might have died. Definitely going to just chuck the entire farm when they’re all gone. Not worth refilling, not worth cleaning. Especially when you don’t have a big enough opening in the first place like some of the other farms do.

Watching season 2 of Haunted on Netflix. It’s been a long time since I watched the first season. They’re quick episodes and there aren’t many of them, and while they’re entertaining enough, I don’t know. I just wonder how anyone can validate the authenticity behind any of these stories. It’s like me and my dream premonitions. Unless you’re one of the ones I’ve had dreams that turned out to mean anything, how do you know I’m not just full of shit? These people did seem pretty genuine, though, and I’m guessing that if they were actors, they would all be thin and beautiful. But they come in all shapes and sizes so that at least gives them a little more credibility since if ghosts really do exist, I’m sure they’re not going to pick on just the young and skinny.

Decided I really don’t like painting as much as I thought I would. I would rather color with colored pencils than paints or even markers. So I don’t know if I’m going to bother to finish the two paint-by-number kits I got but we’ll see.

We went to Sam’s on Saturday and Walmart yesterday. At Sam’s, I decided to get a bag of small potatoes instead of the usual size you make baked potatoes out of. Since I mostly make roasted home fries these days, they’re much easier to work with. I don’t have to slice them first with a big knife. I can just shove them through the dicer. Not sure if they taste as good as the russets, whatever these things are.

On weekends I allow myself a sweet treat and a meal I don’t have regularly which means it’s probably processed since I try to keep it fresh these days. I made us some spaghetti and we decided to try a three-cheese sauce, but neither of us could taste any cheese. I wasn’t really impressed with it at all. I prefer Ragu with mushrooms, but he hates mushrooms.

Then when I was scanning the candy bar section, I noticed they had a new Snickers bar with maple flavoring, so I decided to try it and it was pretty good.

And now I better shut up about food otherwise I’ll make myself hungry, LOL.

Still excited for my new computer which is now looking like it’s going to be a Windows desktop solid state. Definitely need more RAM. Love the idea of having the option of switching back and forth between using a mouse and a touch screen. I’m likely going to scale back from my 43-inch monitor to a 21-inch monitor because I’m just too damn blind. With something this big, you can’t pull it too close to you, but you also can’t push it too far away either. It just won’t work well with any type of glasses I have.

Probably won’t get to Sam’s for another week or two to see about trifocals, but I’ve ordered a couple of pairs of Zenni glasses. A child’s pink translucent pair for reading and clear ones that are a little larger because they’re rounder for the computer. I think mid-range lenses are going to be best for any type of computer work I do. My reading glasses are really only good for things like the Kindle and my phone. Those are going to be upgraded as well. If we stick to androids, we’ll renew them every other year or so. This paperwhite is getting pretty old, too. I don’t remember exactly when I got it, but it seems like I’ve had it most of the time we’ve lived here and that’s over six years. This place is now the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere as an adult. Figures that the longest place is the noisiest place.

The only unfortunate thing was that toward the middle of my day yesterday, I began feeling anxious, so I took a 50 today instead of 75. I’ll probably do the same tomorrow.

Started pulling up the elephant mural which has six panels. Tore just a teeny bit of paint but it doesn’t matter because we’re going to have to whiteout the area beneath the strips we popped off. God, I hate these fucking paneled walls! I wanted tape-and-texture in the house we bought in 1999 but it was just too expensive. Maybe our next place will have that from the get-go. If not, I’m going to make sure it does soon enough because the next place is likely to be where I’m going to spend the rest of my life. If we like the climate we end up in, there’s no sense in continuing to hunt for a quiet place that I’ll never have. I hate struggling for something that isn’t meant to be. However, if we stick to adult parks and get off the busy streets and out of the flight paths, it’s got to be somewhat quieter. It’s just got to be.

Using our Maui beach towels to line the pigs which we’ve decided to keep in the kitchen. They really like the extra space and it’s nice to have them there to interact with more and all that. Definitely not going to do this pig thing again, though. These are definitely the last ones we’ll ever have. They’re cute but they’re too much work, money and mess. Hell, a dog has to be easier than this! I also have a fleece throw I can use to line them with, but sheets are definitely too thin. It’s got to be something more absorbent.

Sure enough, as soon as I disconnected from Aly on Twitter, the account she claims is “complicated” and that she didn’t know if she’d ever gain access to again, no longer exists. So she had control all the time and I just can’t find the new handle. I see what she’s doing, though. She’s trying to disengage from me on Twitter for the reasons I’ve always suspected and that’s why she only connected with me there with an account she uses for sweeps which for some strange reason got reported for suspicious activity. But she obviously doesn’t want to be rude about it or lie either. Or at least lie as much as she used to. And also not surprisingly, she changed handles on the other one we were never connected on but I told her that showed up in the ‘people you may know’ section, but I found that handle.

I still miss having a voice blog but was hesitant due to tech issues that can happen and not wanting to scroll back to older clips. But screw scrolling and worrying about tech issues. I’m going to use VoiceSpice again. No one could search for it since you don’t need an email or an account that you have to create in order to use it anyway. I love how it keeps a list of my voice posts (made a few in June and August), even though I don’t know how the hell it remembers who I am.

There’s another reason I thought I would go back to it and that’s because I accidentally discovered that I don’t have to be in the tab Google Docs speech-to-text add-on runs in for it to keep recording my voice. The others will turn off soon. Not this one. I recorded a lot of a show I was watching the other day and thought it would be funny to send to spammers and scammers and play that game again since it’s been a while. It doesn’t record everything perfectly, so it’s the perfect thing to mindfuck them with.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2019
Aly says she has a few friends who do medical transcriptionists and they rave about it due to the flexible hours. She said that since I’m a good typist she thinks it’s right up my alley. This tells me it’s not that obsolete yet and that speech-to-text hasn’t replaced it totally. After I thought about it, I realized one would really have a hard time with speech-to-text if one had a foreign accent and was too lazy to get rid of it. Most doctors aren’t from here anymore and I can tell you that if it doesn’t like the few words that I still have a hard time making sound more generic and less northeastern, it’s certainly not going to have a clue when it comes to Ecuadorian, Indian, or other accents. While I may always believe that if you go to another country you should learn their language and talk like them, it may be a good thing that people don’t.

The above paragraph was written before Tom did some more research and it isn’t good. Unfortunately, it’s not something I can train for in just a few months and for just a few hundred dollars. Looks like you have to take a year of anatomy and then another year of medical terms and stuff like that and the cost is likely to be in the thousands, which we don’t have now. Even if we did, I’d hate to spend anything without a guarantee in the end. That’s the other thing that sucks is that most jobs can’t be done at home and they want you to have experience. I don’t know how you’re supposed to get experience if no one will give you a chance in the first place but that’s just how it is. Aly’s going to ask her friend more about it.

If I can’t do it because of money or whatever, that’s fine. I’m used to not getting what I want in life and it seems I’m not meant to make a steady income any more than I was meant to be tall. I’m just as cursed with that as trying to get a peaceful place to live. Didn’t get up until 10:30 p.m. and the planes have been totally annoying. Big planes, small planes, helicopters… I’ve heard it all. Plus, the freeway.

But I can still make some money winning both cash and merchandise, and apparently I’ve gotten much better at making book sales. I was just starting to get a little disappointed because the sales and borrows were starting to slack off and so I figured there wouldn’t be anything for a while until I found that someone in the UK borrowed Heart of the Forest and has read 176 pages so far. I wonder what makes that book so popular? I guess there’s something in the synopsis that must appeal to people.

Anyway, my only other concern about the transcription job is whether or not I really have the brains to learn what I’m supposed to do. I would think so, but I’m still having noticeable memory issues. When I was learning ASL and Spanish in my teens and twenties, I would usually remember signs and words the first time I learned them. But now it sometimes takes a few takes for things to stick. Plus, there’s the fact that I would be working in a noisy environment. I can throw the sound machine on when I want to focus on my writing but not with something I need to hear as clearly as possible.

My heart went into A-fib yesterday for 5 to 10 seconds and it was unnerving. I hate when that happens but fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often. That’s the “vibrating” one that can put you at risk of a stroke or heart attack, unlike the one where it seems to beat hard for a few beats and that’s it.

Love having the pigs in the kitchen and they seem so much happier too, but won’t decide on anything permanent till the new bedding arrives. Today will be the second part of the kitchen experiment where we see how easy/hard it is to shake the blanket out that they’re on. Then I’m going to try a wool sheet that I hate and regret getting because of how scratchy it feels. With them covered in such thick soft fur, it won’t matter to them.

The ants now have quite a maze going in their little habitat. They’re definitely bigger than when they first got here but several of them have died. I only expect to have a few left by the end of the year, if any at all.

I like the new shampoo and conditioner bars. Now we’ll see how long they last.

The dinner plates look nicer in person. The red one is actually orange. I’m washing them right now along with the tapestry which doesn’t look as nice as it does online. the image isn’t as sharp. I realized our washer has a wrinkle control selection so I’m seeing if that will take the wrinkles out. if not, I’ll iron it. It’s going to replace the elephant mural in the living room but I’m not going to get another tapestry to replace the bedroom forest. I’ll probably just leave it up or replace it with some kind of flower or butterfly stickers.

No anxiety yesterday. Took a full pill today and none so far today either.

Aly finally opened up to me about Twitter and Molly. What’s weird is that she said that the account she and I are connected on and hasn’t used is “complicated,” and she doesn’t know if she’ll gain access to it again. Instead, we’re now connected on an account she’s using for sweeps but not one she seems to share her thoughts and opinions on.

Since she recently dumped a few people she doesn’t hear from very often and has disconnected from Molly, I’m a little worried she might stalk her and therefore me too, but not too worried because I don’t use any sites where I allow anonymous contact. If she contacts me, I’ll just block her and possibly contact Marbridge as well. She didn’t change handles like I thought she did, though.

I get her frustration with being tired of chasing people who don’t seem to care. I don’t know if Tammy literally doesn’t care or if she’s really just that lazy or maybe she even gets off on me wondering what the hell is up with her, but I’m through sending multiple messages that go ignored. Is it really that hard to make a quick reply either by writing or a voice clip? From now on, I send ONE message and I either get a reply or I don’t. No more chasing after people!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2019
Excited for the latest round of goodies we’re expecting from Amazon. The rat tapestry came today, and while it’s cute, the image isn’t nearly as sharp as it appears to be online. Going to iron it out, take down the elephant mural, and tack it up there. I was going to get a floral tapestry that’s a little bigger and replace the forest mural with it in the bedroom, but I think I’ll pass on that one.

Ordered some stencils you stick to yourself for drawing on tattoos, along with markers made for that.

Got 6 brightly colored large plates because now that I’m cooking more stuff myself rather than getting frozen dinners, extra plates would come in handy. Each one is a different color… Red, blue, green, pink, purple and yellow.

I’m also going to try those shampoo and conditioner bars. This is good timing too, as I’m lower on shampoo than I thought I was.

Lastly, we also ordered a different kind of bedding because the liners aren’t working out well anymore for the pigs. They just don’t wick moisture like they used to. For now, because I love to experiment and try different things, I’ve fenced them off in a section of the kitchen. Two of their four walls are cabinets. Because pigs aren’t as curious about the world beyond their living quarters as rats are, they wouldn’t want to escape. I’ve got it secure enough so they couldn’t anyway.

The hay holder that came with their cage works better attached to the fence because the fence has square bars instead of long ones which means the hay doesn’t slip out before they can eat it all. Unless they pull up the blanket that I put down on the floor, I don’t think nearly as much shit will get on the floor as does the edges of the floor of their cage with the fleece liners, but this blanket would be a bit of a bitch to shake out since it’s bigger. I like this setup better than the fleece liners in their cage, though, and they have so much more room here. Can’t give the liners to the rats because they’re destructive and they’d only chew them up as well as burrow underneath them.

I’m still looking forward to trying the new bedding. It’s basically the same stuff; recycled paper. The only difference is that these are bigger clumps of paper to absorb more pee since all these pigs do is eat, piss and scream, lol.

Got a little close to being anxious yesterday so I decided to take a 50 today. I just can’t get past 6 weeks. I won’t automatically drop to 50s every day, though. I’ll go with every other day and see how I feel. If I still feel on edge, I’ll drop it to 50s two days in a row.

Aly unprotected her tweets and said she was tired of nosy people and wasn’t even sure who to trust anymore. Now I’m wondering if she’s talking about Molly because I know she’s been ghosting her because of her inflated sense of self and her not giving a shit. That’s Molly for you. It’s all about her and no one else. I’m not surprised the friendship fell apart yet again. You can’t get a friend out of crazy. At least not a real one. I’m surprised Aly pulling away isn’t causing Molly to stalk her because that’s how it usually works with Molly. The more you run, the more she chases.

I was right about Molly changing handles again, but they’re not even connected there anymore. Aly tweeted about deleting her contact info and I know the “her” was Molly. But she’s got to be trying to hide from someone, and I still think that someone might be me even if she’s done with Molly for the most part. There’s got to be some reason she keeps changing handles, sometimes goes private, and mentions nosy people. I think she’s somehow able to track who visits her. She would just never admit that, though. She also makes like she’s not on Twitter anymore, so I think it’s me she’s mostly avoiding because of my controversial tweets.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2019
The ants are continuing to be very productive and interesting to watch. They have another tunnel now, this one wider. Yes, we have an ant farm in which the gel provides them with all the nutrients they need, and we never need to do anything with them and risk getting bit or stung. The gel isn’t quite as translucent as the picture on Amazon shows, which is a bit unfortunate. I can barely see through to the center of the gel, let alone to the other side.

Been exchanging emails with Dixie, but as I told her, I probably won’t get down to see her until next week.

I’ve now been taking full doses of my medication consistently for 6 weeks. No, I’m not quite as calm as I was before. It’s like I feel myself getting close to the border of becoming anxious, but it never really amounts to anything. If it does, I’ll definitely start snipping the ends of those pills again.

Aly once again changed handles and protected her tweets. It’s got to be me she’s hiding from. Just a feeling I get even though she does know a lot more people than I do. Now Molly is likely to change handles as well. She’s said in the past she tries to keep us separate, but IDK. I think she just doesn’t want to connect with me on Twitter because I sometimes tweet controversial things that she doesn’t agree with.

The fucking traffic is back to waking me up and so did my bladder a couple of times. Plus, I woke up a million times just because. I had lots of dreams, most lasting for just a matter of seconds. Didn’t care for the dream where he and I were home and a plane flew so incredibly low and loud over the house. But in that dream, the house didn’t look like this one. It looked more like the Phoenix house.

Then I had some weird dream that took place in this house. It was nighttime, and I couldn’t get Alexa to turn on any of the lights. He was doing something outside in the storeroom and when I peeked out the back door, I saw he had a pile of stuff all over the carport driveway. I asked what was up and he said something about wanting to bring it all inside the house.

Then we decided to go somewhere and when we returned, he was working out I’m some kind of equipment in his office. He looked a lot slimmer and in really good shape. We were discussing what we wanted to do for lighting in the place and I said something about adding strips of lights to the walls. But apparently, three strips on one wall were already “up to $1,000” in costs, so we had to discuss a cheaper alternative.

Then I went to see Stacey for some reason, and as I was leaving, I noticed she was several inches taller than me unlike in real life.

In the last dream, I was single and living in a second-floor apartment. I don’t know where I was or how old I was, but it didn’t look like anything around here. More like something you’d find in the east than the west.

One day I wanted to go to the store down the street and I headed out on foot. A black guy was on the sidewalk several yards in front of me, but I could hear him speaking into a handheld recorder describing some of his life experiences.

At the store, I told him I’d been following him since such and such a street and was fascinated by his story. We got what we needed and started walking back toward my apartment together. He invited me up into his apartment which was in the building across the street from mine. But when we entered, I found he had a significant other who didn’t seem to like my presence. He and his wife, also black, were in their late 20s to 30s. The three of us sat at their kitchen table chatting for a while but eventually, I gathered up the few pieces of junk food I had gotten at the store and spilled out on the table to share, threw them in a bag, and rose to leave.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs.…” I said leaving it at that since I didn’t know their last name and no one volunteered it on my way out either.

Anyway, I’m tired so no working out tonight either. I’ll probably be even more tired tomorrow because it’s trash day. Really miss the days of being able to sleep without traffic being an issue when I’m on nights! Tonight, it’s just laundry, pet care and online stuff.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2019
After hearing countless tales of unexpected pregnancies while struggling financially, I still don’t get it. Babies don’t just “happen.” Not with a thing called birth control. Add that to common sense and accidents should be extremely rare as you get yourself financially stable enough to actually afford kids.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2019
I was reading a book last night and one of the characters in it was doing medical transcription work from home. I thought wow, that would be a great idea! It was never that I didn’t want to work, but when you’re stuck at home you are rather limited. So I decided to check into training and requested information. They not only emailed me, but they also called and left a message barely an hour later to call their toll-free number to discuss enrollment. Is that a little too soon to be calling, though? I mean, their site at least looks legitimate. It seems to be an online college that offers all kinds of courses. Even if I didn’t work full-time, I would absolutely love to do something like this! You have to get your own equipment, of course, like pedals and all that. Well, I will be getting a new computer soon to start with that will be a lot faster than this aging thing.

I want this. I really do! The question is, am I really smart enough to do it? Also, can I really get enough work? I don’t need to work 8 hours a day, but I don’t want to do just 1 or 2 jobs a month either. So I’m a little hesitant to spend hundreds of dollars on something that has no guarantee. But I am teachable and would think that if I could learn words in other languages, then I could learn medical terms. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight if it does, but together we’ll look into it this weekend when we have more time. I’m just afraid to get my hopes up too much because I know people rarely get to do what they want, especially me. Would I really have this sleep disorder in the first place if I was meant to make money?

Definitely looking forward to that new computer, but we want to wait and take advantage of whatever deals they may have on Cyber Monday. Macs have definitely changed for the worse over the years. I hate that Apple got rid of iTunes. Why would you get rid of such a handy app that so many people love? I guess, as Tom says, Apple is mostly focused on their stupid iPhones now. Aside from the pixels and battery life, those are such an overpriced waste of money.

The fourth plane I’ve heard in less than half an hour. It’s just after 11 p.m. so hopefully they can shut the fuck up so I can get a few hours of peace before they start right back up again. Oh, and here goes someone blasting their stereo around our house and down the street to one of the houses that sold about a year ago. Never would have expected this shit in a retirement community. Ever.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2019
We both had our eye exams today. Same doc, same assistant. Everything looks good for both of us, but as expected, I’m more farsighted. No matter how many years I try, I can’t get used to progressives. I hate ‘em. I want to try trifocals, and she said both Walmart and Sam’s should have them. Walmart’s service isn’t very great so we’re going to have me get trifocals from Sam’s. If not, bifocals. I can get a pair of reading glasses and mid-range glasses from Zenni, though.

The OH is actually a little better. Last time I was 25 and 26, but this time I was 23 and 24. She took pictures of my eyes, but I opted out of having them dilated. Tom had his dilated, though.

She said the nerves look healthy and my “freckle” (I forgot the medical term for it) isn’t worse either.

Walmart’s cooked food isn’t much better than their eyeglass frame service. We got a whole bunch of stuff to share…cheese sticks, mac and cheese, chicken strips, popcorn shrimp… But the only thing that was good was the mac and cheese. He liked the cheese sticks, but to me they were so-so. The chicken and shrimp were horrible because there was way too much batter for the meat, and it was so dried out. I wouldn’t even finish it.

Went on a half-hour walk, as usual, and I’m finding I’m getting too heavy to run as easily as I used to. Even though I always look about 20 lbs lighter than I am because I’m muscular (this is hard to see unless I’m practically naked), I’m just too damn weighty for that much running these days. I do what I can, though.

The scale threw me for a loop. I stepped on it and it said 162 and I said, no way. Just no way I’m there yet, though sadly I likely will be someday. Until I’m old and dying or unfortunate enough to get hit with some kind of disease or illness that causes weight loss, those numbers usually continue to climb throughout life and not the other way around unless we have great genetics. Anyway, I stepped off the scale and back on and found I’m where I have been since getting close to hitting menopause…low to mid-150s. Meanwhile, I will keep active and eat healthy most days just so I can stay 35 pounds overweight. rolls eyes

I was hoping that the “dream people” would give me a story idea since I get a lot of my ideas from dreams and I couldn’t think of anything for the longest time. I finally came up with the idea of having someone falsely talked into the Witness Protection Program by an obsessive FBI agent on my own, but actually, they did give me an idea. I was thinking of the dream I had the other night where I broke into this guy’s house and he made me make him a turkey sandwich in exchange for not calling the cops on me. Well, maybe I could do another story sometime where a home invader was given a choice of either being turned in (with outstanding warrants hanging over her head) or doing whatever the homeowner demanded.

I was glad to see that whoever borrowed one of my books read 119 pages as of last night, and 274 pages by this afternoon. So they must have enjoyed it at least somewhat to get that far. Now let’s hope I get some positive reviews! The thing is that most people don’t bother to leave reviews and I’m guilty of that as well.

Since our devices need to be replaced, we’ve been discussing what phones, Kindles and other devices to get, and whether or not I should go back to Windows or stick with Macs. And should I get a desktop or a laptop?

Well, all good things really do come to an end at least when it comes to Macs these days. The Mac is becoming much slower to boot and incompatible with different things, and we’ve had all kinds of problems lately, even though they do continue to be pretty secure. The cursor jumping when indexing is annoying as hell.

Windows has gotten much more secure than it used to be, so since he’s used both operating systems for work and his apps, he’s more familiar with what Windows is like these days. It’ll take some getting used to with the different setup, but just like I got used to the Mac, I can get used to Windows again.

Probably going to stick with Androids because we don’t see the point in spending hundreds of dollars on phones that can pretty much do the same things the cheap ones can. Androids may not have the type of resolution the iPhones have, and their blocking feature is worthless, at least on this phone, but they work fine. 95% of what I use it for is Google Docs, Skype and WhatsApp. The other 3% is for pictures and 2% is for calls.

I’m looking forward to having a faster computer, which is likely going to be a Windows desktop and then being able to keep my MacBook Air in the living room for doing puzzles on the treadmill and hanging out there at night with the animals. With it being quieter at night and rats being nocturnal, I could use that for a bit while they’re out running around. They sure love to visit the pigs!

I began to feel slightly borderline anxious yesterday, but it passed quickly. Depending on how I do this week, I’ll decide whether or not I should scale back the meds a little. Menopausal or not, better brand or not, it can still cause some anxiety.

Been having fun doing Duolingo Stories. Every now and then I like to practice my languages to keep them fresh, but you have to know the languages in order to do the stories. That’s where you follow a story in whatever language and fill in the blanks and choose what they’re saying based on what you read and hear. They don’t have Italian stories, so I’ve been doing Spanish and German.

The ants are entertaining and amazingly persistent little bastards. I guess one of the perks of getting older is that you just don’t give a shit as much about what others think and since no one’s bothered me in quite a while, not that I would put up with as much shit as I used to, I didn’t see the harm in being more open and public, so I’m sharing pictures on both Twitter and Facebook that anyone can see. They finally completed a tunnel they started early yesterday evening. So, it took them less than 24 hours to complete it. It will be interesting to see where they dig next.

LOL, I asked Carolyn if she wanted some ants, knowing that she and Jon must be horrified by the crazy shit going on across the street from them since she’s seen the pics, and she laughed and said no thanks, they have possums to deal with. And of course, those fucking skunks. Worst place I ever lived when it comes to that (among a million other things). I smell the fuckers just about every day.

Tammy made me laugh by saying I was crazy. I was wondering how long it would take her to tell me that, LOL. But she’s also annoying the shit out of me once again by bragging about her narcissistic brat’s accomplishments. She already congratulated Sarah on her new job to everyone following her, and today she just had to congratulate her to all her friends once again for actually starting as manager of Dollar General and in our group. Funny too, as this is right after I posted that I hate it when people congratulate people to whomever and that I prefer not to hear about those no longer in my life. Bad memory or not, I highly doubt she missed or forgot these things. It’s just too coincidental. Tammy does tend not to pay close attention to things and to be selfish and do whatever she wants, so unless I’m reading more into it than there actually is, I can’t help but wonder If she would have posted again, this time in two places, had I not said anything. Plus, she used a rainbow background and she knows I love rainbows. This makes me wonder even more if she was trying to get my attention and rub the bitch in my face.

Just like I couldn’t care less if a former friend started a new job, why would I care about a selfish family member who chose to exit my life, even if I may not wish anything bad on them? I seriously cannot bring myself to care about those who don’t give a shit about me. That’s the old Jodi. They put themselves out of my life and therefore I have done the same and I’d like to move on without hearing about them. Maybe I’m just as selfish in some ways, but I don’t do crazy and I don’t do people that don’t give a shit either. I hope she doesn’t force me to have to spell it out for her because, at the same time, I don’t want to be made uncomfortable, I don’t want to offend her, and telling any mother you don’t want to hear about their kids is definitely going to be offensive.

I hope she’s annoying them by mentioning me just as much as she’s annoying me by mentioning them. Unless she practically grabs and shakes me by the shoulders and leaves me without much choice but to be brutally honest with her about how I feel, I’m going to just ignore any talk about her kids. Why not? She ignores a lot of the things I tell and ask her. She still won’t tell me if they located where her infection was and how her kidneys are doing. While she’s definitely not healthy, I still think she’s probably exaggerating the severity of her health issues. I highly doubt she’s “done,” like she said her doctor said. I hate to say it but a part of me wishes she was so I could tell her brats off and be done with them forever.

Bottom line - Becky and Sarah have proven to be very selfish and Lisa showed me her crazy side a long time ago. I just can’t handle the intense, erratic mood swings of bipolars. They aren’t just moody but they’re very paranoid and accusatory. I went through that shit with Lisa, Marie, and others, and I won’t be doing it again. Anyone that’s ever been so damn intense, dishonest, contradictory, suspicious, obsessive and stalkerish is not someone I want to connect with. One doesn’t have to be as emotionless as a machine or the biggest genius on earth but there are so many more people out there who are much less selfish, smarter, dependable, compassionate, honest, easy-going, and much more stable on an overall basis. So why would I want to lower myself to diving into toxicity?

Might have forgotten to mention that I also got a pink translucent bath brush at the dollar store and a 2020 calendar with tropical scenes. This calendar that I got for just a buck is just as nice as the $15 one I was going to get on Amazon. It’s just palm trees and beaches instead of rabbits.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2019
Thought I’d do an update as the ants dig away by my side. They’ve got tunnels started on the bottom corners of their little farm. Wonder how old they were before they were shipped to us?

Went to the dollar store earlier and grabbed some cans of air freshener. I always like to keep those by the toilets. Got a cute pair of flip-flops, too.

A friend who’s around my age said she understood the struggle to lose weight after 50 and that it’s like you gotta starve yourself to do it. Wonder if I could even lose on 800 cals, but I’m not about to find out or eat the 1500-2000 cals I’d like to have. I’ll just struggle to remain 35 pounds overweight for now and have 1000 most days. rolls eyes

What I don’t get is why there’s so much obesity among young people. I get that there wouldn’t be so many fat older folks if it was that easy to manage as our metabolisms slowed, but when you’re 20-something your metabolism should be running top speed unless you’ve got something wrong with you. I doubt all these young folks have something wrong, so I guess that the readily available amount of food we have these days as opposed to 30 years ago is a factor. There’s that thing about antibiotics I recently heard about, too. Only that theory doesn’t make much sense when you consider the fact that most Europeans are still thin.

Another friend said she had to keep weight off due to back issues. If it was a case of do or die for me, I’d definitely be dead!

I was looking at HGTV’s past winners over the last decade or so and apparently, HGTV is pretty old-fashioned. Every single winner is married with kids. That can’t be a coincidence. With the marriage rate down and the birth rate down even more, I can’t believe there weren’t just as many single and childless, single with kids, and married without kids entrants. And they claim their drawings are totally random? I’m not so sure about that. Reminds me of this article I read about a regular sweeper like myself who said the draws aren’t as random as they’d lead you to think and that they’re actually looking for specific types that meet their criteria. Those who seem to want it the most, among other things. Well, if HGTV would prefer to give their homes to families instead of couples or a single person, I won’t bother entering then.

I like the new NaNoWriMo site look.

Last night I dreamed I was walking along a deserted stormy beach at night. I told myself to keep away from the water’s edge as I probably wasn’t safe there.

Then I broke into this guy’s place, though I don’t know why. I didn’t know the guy either. The guy, smallish with dark hair and dark eyes, came home before I could escape and caught me. In exchange for not calling the police and reporting me, he promised to let me go if I made him a turkey sandwich. I sized him up, trying to get a sense of whether or not I could take him. I wasn’t sure but I didn’t see the harm in making him the sandwich and seeing if he would actually keep his word before I went trying to fight my way out of there.

He threw the bread, meat, mayonnaise and lettuce on the center island in the small kitchen and I quickly began to prepare the sandwich.

“No, that’s too much,” he told me as I slathered on mayonnaise.

So I scraped some off, and when I put some lettuce on, I asked if it was too much and he told me to add a little more.

And then the dream ended before I could find out what happened next.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2019
Had someone told me 20 years ago that one day my body would cease to respond to diet and exercise, I would have laughed. Oh, I heard many older people say they had that problem, but always thought it was a bunch of ridiculous bullshit that couldn’t possibly be possible.

But here I am with not a single pound lost after about a week of roughly 1,000 calories a day and exercise. The question is how long will it be before I can no longer prevent weight gain on that amount? I would have preferred to wait until I was in my seventies before I said “fuck it” to my weight. I’m still too young for that now because the more I pack on, the more I’m at risk of becoming diabetic and the more it could raise my blood pressure and LDL score. But I would literally have to have just one meal and one snack per day to lose a few pounds that wouldn’t stay off for long, and that’s no way to live. I would be too hungry, light-headed, tired and grumpy. You could throw me on any kind of diet out there - Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Adkins, low-cal, low carb - and none of it would do me a damn bit of good no matter how active I was while I was at it.

If there’s an Amy out there that can work the same magic on my weight as with my skin issues, I don’t know about it. I don’t want to go back to the appointment frenzy and spend a fortune trying to figure it out either. Sometimes I think, well, I’ll just eat my way up to gastric sleeve qualifications which I could do in five minutes, but that still would mean lots of appointments and things would only be paid for after we met our deductible. This isn’t the country for that kind of thing unless you’re either poor or rich. Those in between have to foot the bill for nearly everything.

Oh well. I am how I am and there’s not much I can do about that but hope it doesn’t cause health problems.

It’s also looking like I’ve got another basal or squamous spot on my upper inner arm. It’s itchy at times but it’s definitely not melanoma. If it doesn’t go away on its own as the one on my chest did, A can spray it out in March when I see her again.

We’ve both got eye exams on Monday. Tom was surprised to be able to get us in that soon. He’s not having pictures of his eyes taken but she may want to take pictures of mine because of the OH, but I may tell her not to bother. We’ll just see what the air puff results are. My guess is that it’s unlikely to get any worse. I think I’ll remain borderline pretty much all my life. Definitely need a new prescription, though, as I’ve been having a harder time seeing. I’ve lost so much vision since coming to the state in ‘07 that I hate to think of what it will be like in another 15 years or so. I’m going to be blind as hell!

I don’t know why Tammy has been ignoring my messages. She’s either really busy or has something she doesn’t want me to know, but I can’t imagine what.

I sent a message to Eileen saying that if she bought any of my books recently, thanks! The message appears to be read but she hasn’t replied, which makes me think she was one of the recent buyers… Unless she just wants me to think so.

Anyway, today I’m taking a break. If I’m going to be 155 from eating next to nothing, I may as well give myself a real reason, at least for today, to be that high. So at Rite Aid, I got some treats along with some Moscato and Merlot.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2019
The ants came marching home today instead of tomorrow! It was pretty exciting as I waited for them to arrive. When I pulled out their tube, I could see that most were alive and active. I then place them in the refrigerator. I took the farm outside and gloved up just in case but found in the end that it was totally unnecessary. They weren’t kidding when they said that refrigeration slows them down. Believe me, those things weren’t going anywhere after 10 minutes of refrigeration. I didn’t know if some of them would stick when I poured them out of the tube and into the farm, but they all slid out easily.

Out of the 30 or so ants, there were about 4 casualties. They provided an email address to contact if they die in a few days but I’m guessing they’re going to do just fine. They’re already starting to dig and carry clumps of gel up to the top. They either eat or stash their dead aside, but as gross as that may sound, they’re fascinating to watch. One was so funny when it slipped off the wall and onto its rounded butt, which is actually the stomach, and ended up doing a somersault.

Although the farm comes with a cover with teeny holes for air, I don’t think these things could escape if they wanted to. They just can’t climb the slick walls very well, let alone upside down which they would need to be in order to escape through the opening at the top. Because their habitat is rounded, they have a hard enough time as it is climbing back up after sliding down the sides where the gel doesn’t meet the wall.

The gel appears to have shrunk a bit which kind of makes sense as it slowly dries with time, sort of like those scented Renuzit things.

Knowing that there are waste-free soaps like what I use, I was curious if there was waste-free shampoo, and sure enough, there is. Found a 5-piece sampler box for $16 on Amazon. I don’t need shampoo or conditioner right now so it will be a while, but someday I want to try this and see if it’s worth it. It might actually be cheaper in the end, depending on how long each bar lasts and how easy it is to use. I love trying new things every now and then, anyway. Definitely want to stick to the Dove soap I’ve been using for my body because of past skin issues, but I like to change shampoos every now and then. With short hair that’s easier to manage, I have more flexibility.

The pigs have been very vocal lately and I’m not sure why. I don’t know if they just want attention or what. Rockefeller hates to be picked up, so I’m not sure what it’s about. They have everything they need so I guess they just like attention.

It’s 80 degrees in the house right now but we’re going down to 44 degrees tonight so I’m not running the AC, even though it is a bit warm. I’ve got the fans going. I hate this time of year where it’s nice during the daytime but cold at night.

Speaking of cold, sometimes I still feel really cold which is a bit surprising since I’m no longer that hypo. My TSH should definitely be in the single digits now.

So glad we don’t live next to Santa. Not just because of his mutts, but Dixie wasn’t kidding when she said he and his wife are out there every day. They’re constantly working outside and that would be annoying to have so close to home. They’re never indoors.

There seems to be a gold van and a navy F-150 living in Ralph’s place, but other than the occasional sound of a saw, I haven’t heard much yet.

Dixie emailed me saying she was sitting outside and to feel free to join her, but she had horrible timing. I was waiting on the ants when she messaged me. We later spoke by phone until she got another call. She said I could have gotten ants from her place, haha. She had ants in there a couple of times.

Decided to do what I should have done years ago… Create an email account strictly for sweeps only. Had to make it in my own name, of course, so when nosey people go to look up things that are none of their business, they’ll find it. This way I can just ignore all the spam without having to weed through it or unsubscribe from things to clear the box for things I actually want to receive.

Heart of the Forest got borrowed yesterday but they’ve only read two pages so far.

Who says you have to win just to have fun? Yeah, even though I may not hit the 50k word count goal for November NaNo, I’m going to start The Seduction of Suki when it starts. :-)

Some of the news really gets to me and if it weren’t for my Bing points, I would steer clear away from most of it. It’s depressing and infuriating. To charge a teenager with a felony simply because she made a finger gun at fellow students is utterly fucking batshit ridiculous. If everybody were charged with a felony every time they made some kind of threat, we’d all have felonies on our records. Seriously, people put too much stock in threats that are totally meaningless without the actions to back them up. Show me a kid who hasn’t gone finger-shooting at some kid at some point or another. And they complain the jails are overcrowded?

The case in Florida where a white guy fatally shot a black guy after the black guy attacked him and then got 20 years was pretty ludicrous as well. What’s the point of having the Stand Your Ground thing and agreeing it’s okay to defend yourself if you’re going to just get thrown in prison for it? I would be willing to bet just about anything that he never would have gotten such a sentence had the guy been just as white as he is. So don’t give me that shit about whites being oh so “privileged” and having it easier than blacks. They don’t in most cases these days.

What do people expect, though, when someone comes up when you’re not even facing them and then pushes you to the ground? Had the guy not shot him there’s no doubt the black guy would have pummeled the shit out of him. Ambush someone who isn’t attacking you or appearing to threaten you in any way, and you just might get shot. Self-preservation is a natural instinct, so who wouldn’t fight back? I realize that I don’t have the degree of freedom and rights some groups have these days, but if I were ever attacked I would do my absolute best to defend myself…without a care as to the person’s size, gender, race, color or status in the community. The only difference is that I might be made to pay for defending myself if the person wasn’t white, because in most places these days, they’re the ones that are believed and sided with.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2019
I was psyched to wake up to yet another sold copy of Heart of the Forest! What is it about that book? LOL while selling the same book many times is better than not selling any books at all, I hope some of the others get sales as well.

Heart of the Forest is a book I wrote in 2006 when we were still living in Oregon, in case I didn’t already say so.

I might have a potential story idea for November NaNo. I still mostly like to have lesbian lead characters as a way of showing my support for equality. So, I was thinking I would have some kind of cop. Maybe she’s a regular street cop, a detective, an FBI agent, whatever. Then there’s this woman working in her department but not as a cop. Maybe she’s some kind of bookkeeper or sketch artist. Could even be some kind of IT person. Anyway, the cop likes her but it doesn’t seem to be mutual. Thinking she could win her over with a little more time spent alone together, she falsely claims that she’s become a target of some kind and is now in danger. After fabricating some kind of psycho that she swears is obsessed with her or out to get specific people in the department (maybe someone she sketched that wasn’t too happy with her talent since it led to their identification and arrest), and because she’s not a trained officer, she needs to be in the Witness Protection Program and offers to hide her out at her place. That’s where she can slowly try to charm the woman, and when that fails to work and the woman demands to be relocated, the real nightmare can begin. Sort of like my 2011 book Renting Ginny but without the fancy escort service.

I was surprised with a small win yesterday when I went to pick up the mail. A small bottle of Olay body wash with a lovely smell of coconut. :-)

If I can make it another 3 weeks without anxiety, that will be the first time getting to 8 weeks after taking 75 every day without becoming anxious. In that case, if each year of my life could have a name, this year would definitely be called Breaking Records.

The ants will be here on Saturday. Perfect! That way we’ll both be home to have fun setting them up.

Rather than go on a half-hour walk outdoors today, I decided to do 15 minutes on the treadmill which is where I’m at right now as I speech-to-text this entry, and then in the evening, I’ll do a 15-minute walk down to the lake and back.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2019
I know that showering here is a bit risky during the daytime due to the random water shutoffs, but there’s nothing like a good shower after a run. :-) Feels so good. My hips have been getting better as they get used to the increase in activity.

Got up at 7 and have been functioning just fine on only a banana and a kiddy yogurt, but soon I’ll make some tilapia with fresh mushrooms.

As I was coming up Oak and walking along the wall that divides the park from the mainstream, I could see someone taking a pool net and dumping leaves over the wall into the park. For some reason, I felt compelled to tell them to quit dumping shit over here in my loudest, meanest voice, lol. There was no reply at all. Guess they just weren’t expecting one of the “old” people to yell at them. Why did I bother when it’s something that doesn’t affect me? I don’t know. I guess I just like to surprise people every now and then. I wouldn’t have said anything if Tom was with me as I’m sure he would have been a bit horrified, haha.

The ants have been shipped but aren’t expected until between the 18th and 28th. They’re in a tube and because they’re so tiny, they have plenty of air.

You’re supposed to put them in the refrigerator for 5 minutes or so before you place them in the farm because that slows them down and makes them less likely to escape. In the translucent blue gel is enough food and water to sustain them. I have to take this skinny stick and make half a dozen or so starter holes to encourage them to dig. They’ll only live a few months. We can’t get more until all these ants are gone because each colony has a different scent and that’s how they know which ants belong to which colony. If you mix colonies, they’ll fight.

I quickly and easily finished the closet organization yesterday and I think today I might rearrange knick-knacks and shit like that.

Looked at the weather for the next 10 days. All 70s and 80s. It’s breezy today and I’m getting a beautiful cross breeze with the front and back doors open.

Dixie wanted to know what we pay for mobile home insurance and what company we used because she was looking into mobile home insurance for herself. So I let her know what the company name was after Tom found it in the file box and that we pay $505 a year which is included in our mortgage payments. It covers a huge variety of things, not that any of these things are likely to ever happen. I almost wish one of them would, though. As long as we and the animals were out of the way, I wouldn’t mind someone plowing into a corner of the house and demolishing it enough to call for a brand-new house for the rest of the time we’re here. :-)

Yesterday I decided to switch bathroom wall bodies. Rachel, who faces frontward, had been over the counter for the last half a decade, and Serenity, the one with her back facing the room, was over the tub. Decided to switch them and see the backside for the last half a decade here after seeing the front. Serenity fits in better over the counter as it turns out she’s a few inches shorter which leaves more room for throwing the hand towel on the rack below her.

I have one outfit left from my dancing days which is a very short, form-fitting dress. It does kind of flare out a bit from the belly button down. It’s a satin short-sleeved dress with pink hearts against a midnight blue background. I put it on the doll and it looks pretty good. Wonder if I would have made a lot more money if I’d had the tits to put in it that she does since those were the last of my less-than-chesty days.

The Gia head is on the doll now with the purple shoulder-length wig and greenish hazel eyes and she looks beautiful. She sort of reminds me of Taylor Swift as vapid as Taylor’s overall looks are. Gorgeous or not, she’s not realistically proportioned. Anyone with her body that had boobs that big couldn’t possibly have real ones.

Tom helped me get her leg untwisted which started to twist around a bit at an unnatural angle as it sometimes does. Gotta remember to bend the knee and then rotate the leg grasping her firmly by the ankle when that happens.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019
Bob and Virginia crack me up. I caught them in front of their place doing some yard work on my way back from my walk/jog yesterday morning. They’d been worried about me because they hadn’t seen me in a while, like they always do if more than a week or two goes by without a Jodi sighting, LOL. Virginia was just about ready to come over and ask what was up with me. They always see me running around here, going to neighbors, or just stepping out to say hello when I hear them out and about. As I told them, my hips had been sore, and I was taking it easy.

Bob said he had surgery and was out walking for the first time in a month or so. Virginia looked stronger and has put back some of her lost weight.

Nice to know they care so much and that they missed me!

So did Dixie. I spoke with her by phone this morning and told her to call if she needs me to help her carry anything heavy. At some point she’ll want me to push her patio furniture back close to the house, so it doesn’t get drenched in the rain. We’re getting to that time where it could rain a few times a month.

Sold another copy of Heart of the Forest, so Amazon’s working better for me this time around. :-)

Looks like there may be a couple in Ralph’s place. On the way back from the mailbox Tom met a guy named Dal. Tom assures me I don’t have to worry about him getting a motorcycle. He said he seems very unsteady. Let’s just hope they don’t have dogs because listening to Santa’s mutts every time they’re walked or left to bark out of their porch is enough.

Things are running smoothly even if today’s noise is pretty horrible. Tuesdays and Fridays are the noisiest days here.

Took care of the pigs and now I’m going to finish the closet organization project. I was surprised by how tired I ended up yesterday. I really thought I could do it in one day and I probably could have if I pushed myself, but even so, I guess I really am getting older. Even with the fact that we have more stuff than we’ve ever had in our lives. I guess having money does that to you, but we won’t always have as much money, and we do plan to get rid of a lot of stuff before we leave.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2019
Making my very first journal entry as a very happily menopausal woman! Yes, it has been one year since the last crimson tide. :-) Amazed to have survived perimenopause as horrible as it was.

Right after I posted my last entry yesterday, I received this from a contest I entered on Facebook:

Hello Jodi,
Yesterday, you entered a contest to win our DNA Nutrition Report (normally $100) for just $1…

Click here to claim your prize now. This prize expires after 24 hours, so please don’t wait. Get your DNA Nutrition Report for just $1.

I would, except the problem is that they neglect to tell you you need a DNA kit to begin with. Starting to get a little tired of these wins that aren’t really wins. Lately, there seems to be a catch to them making them not worth it and so I forfeit.

It was a fun and relaxing weekend, as usual. It contained a good mix of activity and relaxation. He worked on his coding and I worked on my writing, but we also relaxed and did fun shopping on top of necessary shopping.

Can’t even get much peace in public here. :-( Loud music at Walmart, kids running unattended through Goodwill, music blasting while stopped at every other light…but it was still nice to get out. Even if we were rich, we would still shop at Goodwill at times because it’s always full of surprises. You just never know what you’re going to find there. Last time he found a camera to put in the carport at some point, and I found a figurine of a Doberman. Definitely nothing I’d want to come across in real life but makes for a cute decoration.

Lacking winter nighties to lounge around in, I found a pink long-sleeve fleece nightgown with roses in size medium for just a few bucks that’s very warm and comfy. I don’t mind if an article of clothing is used as long as it’s clean and in good condition. Bras and panties are where I draw the line, though. Jail will always be the first and last time I wore used undies.

I expected my nails to look worse when I removed my polish to redo them, but they look the same, maybe even a little better.

The night before last, that fucking motorcycle that sometimes visits someone around here late at night woke me up as I was falling back asleep at 10:30 after getting up to pee, but last night I slept great.

Just when I thought the new people with the gold van or whatever it is in Ralph’s house would be quiet after all, there was a U-Haul there yesterday for a while, although they weren’t exactly noisy. Just some door slamming. Some of my worst neighbors have started off quiet, though I don’t expect them to be a problem in a place like this. Then again, I didn’t expect motorcycles to wake me up at night here either, so we’ll see. The one further down hasn’t sold yet.

Because it’s good to organize and rearrange closets and drawers every year or so, I was thinking I would do the master closet and hall closet today. Tomorrow I’ll do the hutch, kitchen and desk drawers. Wednesday, the bathrooms.

Last night I dreamed that we were in someplace that seemed to be pretty remote. I was waiting for Tom to return home one evening, and we were replacing old appliances. It was almost spooky-remote and while I wasn’t literally worried in any way, it was easy to imagine how easy it would be for someone to break in, kill me, and get away with it as opposed to in the city. Not that it would be impossible in the city, of course, but less likely not to go unspotted with so many witnesses so close.

Then Tom was home and we were both hanging out in what looked like a really long bedroom. I was relaxing on the bed and he was sitting at a desk that was behind the bed. When I imagined some intruder suddenly bursting in and running through the place toward us, I realized I wouldn’t necessarily be any safer with him there since I was stronger and in better shape in some ways.

I’ve lived in remote places before, and the wildlife worried me much more than potential intruders. I don’t think the dream means anything either way because I don’t see us getting a place that remote or old. It really depends on a lot of things like price and location. Rather than put more money into a newer place that may not be in an ideal location, I would be willing to get a cheaper, older place where we had money left over to fix up and make what we wanted it to be. The sale of this place will definitely give us the money right away for things like furniture and appliances, but I don’t know about big things like floors and windows. That may take a little more time.

Dixie replied to the email I sent this morning saying Diane is going back to the program. Great, now I have to listen to that loud obnoxious Pride bus again, LOL, but I’m glad she’s doing better. She said she’s going back with a cane, and they’ve got someone to help them since she can’t help her walk when they’re out together since she can barely walk herself. She says she doubts they’ll want pictures taken this week, so she can let me know when she’s ready for them.

Aly told me she hasn’t started Shane yet because she’s waiting for a couple of friends to finish a book she also read so they can all discuss it. Well, I don’t see what one has to do with the other, but that’s cool.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2019
Hoping I’ll get a win notice soon in the midst of all the spam and congratulations on other people’s wins I’ve been receiving. Why do these companies, people on Facebook, and wherever, feel the need to congratulate so and so or wish a happy birthday to so and so to everyone and anyone instead of just to them? If it’s their birthday or they’ve accomplished something, congratulate them! rolls eyes

And then I awake to this:

From: “Thomas L. Brown-OBGYN” [email protected]
Subject: RE: BIG SURPRISE, You are selected to receive a prize email [email protected] and call +1-506-800-1138 for validity

Oh, this is too funny. A surprise from an OBGYN! How lucky is that?

With my stiff and possibly arthritic hips, I’m going to give myself a day off from working out. Maybe just focus on my core. Better sleep means more energy for more walking, but I’m not yet used to all this extra walking.

Yesterday I’d swear they slipped sedatives into our cheesy breadsticks, so our energy didn’t last long. Then I read that meals high in carbs release more melatonin, so it was no wonder. We almost never have anything with bread anymore but when we spotted the cheesy breadsticks, we agreed they looked good and would throw them in to have something different. Ended up crashing a couple of hours early and getting up a couple of hours earlier than yesterday.

Going to Walmart later for the stuff we didn’t get at Sam’s and then treasure hunting at Goodwill.

Last night I had a dream I was telling someone the word for “star” in Spanish, German and Italian. Only I gave them the incorrect word in Italian and said “estrani,” which means “alienate.” So, estrella, Stern, stella.

Glad to learn Tammy’s home, though still weak. Hopefully, she’ll be strong enough to get out of there soon. Nothing on her infection and kidneys, though.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2019
Someone grabbed a copy of Heart of the Forest yesterday! I’m guessing it was a total stranger because I figure anyone on Facebook or PB would have gotten whatever they want by now. That’s great, if that’s the case because that shows I can be found. I wonder how they stumbled upon me, though? I’m guessing it’s a category thing that works like tags…suspense, thriller, mystery.

Less than two days until I’m at full-blown menopause! Very exciting and very relieved to have survived perimenopause, the worst thing I ever experienced in my entire life on top of medication issues. A chilling reality hit me and that’s that it takes a very sick, evil and twisted God, if there is one at all, to design a woman’s body to basically torture the shit out of her. Really who/what the hell in its right mind designs a woman’s body to turn on her like that? It was truly torturous!

Still worried about the anxiety returning, though, even if it never gets nearly as bad as it was before. I never go beyond 6 to 8 weeks of taking 75s every day without getting some anxiety and it’s already been about 4. Been taking it every day since the lab.

Today was a productive day although a tired one. I’m not sure why I’m so tired today since I slept great. Maybe some of the times I was tired on 50s wasn’t due to my thyroid as much as I thought. I guess we really do get tired more often with age. Tom’s tired today too. It’s okay to enjoy a lazy day every now and then, though. Everything that needs to be done has been done, it’s the weekend, and we’re entitled to relax at times.

After going to Sam’s, I went out walking for a half-hour or so, took care of the animals, and then we ordered an ant farm, a tube of 30 ants, and moisturizer made for wet skin that I want to try. Lotioning up with wet skin works way better than applying lotion to dry skin. You get a much more even coverage that way.

Looking forward to our LED-lighted ant farm! The farm will be here in a few days, but the ants won’t come marching in till the 18th or later. They only live for around 3 months, so we’ll have to get refill tubes of them when we want more. It’s illegal to buy queens because they’re considered an invasive species.

Tammy’s lack of an update is both frustrating and strange. I don’t know why she went silent on me. I don’t even know if she’s home yet. Did they find the source of her infection? Have they gotten her kidneys under control? I just don’t know anything, but I don’t want to make her talk about anything she may not want to talk about.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2019
Sometimes I miss my more human and creative side. But I just can’t bring back old feelings, desires and interests that I wish I hadn’t lost. I can’t remember the last time I got to enjoy the fun of having a crush on someone and throwing them in one of my stories.

I almost never get horny, though I guess that’s a good thing with a husband who also never gets horny and couldn’t perform if he wanted to due to his age and weight. But I at least found some enjoyment in the damn vibrators when he wasn’t around or in the mood, yet that is a thing of the past as is my flexibility and much more.

I really wish that if I had to lose my libido I at least didn’t have to lose my creativity right along with it. Lately, unless I get some idea from a dream, which doesn’t happen very often, I find myself experiencing the ultimate writer’s block. I have such great tools for cranking out all kinds of stories but can’t think of a damn thing I haven’t already written about in some form or another.

So then I move on in my mind to what else I could possibly write about, and absolutely nothing comes to mind. I mean I could do writing prompts but even that would be old news because most of the prompts ask me things I’ve already written about. I don’t know, maybe I should at least do that and expand on certain subjects in more detail. It’s just that many questions are repetitive, just phrased differently. How much detail could I possibly go into when asked about who made me smile today anyway? I just can’t always come up with some grand reason and long explanation. Instead, a quick sentence or two would be all it takes to answer many of the prompts.

Then I thought of writing a list of the experiences I’ve had in life and people that pop into mind, and again…already been written about. So I think, well, I could probably write about it better these days because my writing improves with time. While this is true, I just don’t want to. I have no desire to once again discuss the ups and downs of my childhood, what a bitch my mother was, and all about the teachers in school. Nothing I care to say about friends, lovers and neighbors that I haven’t already said.

While one can find so many things to do online alone to keep busy, I feel like it’s going to be a real struggle to keep myself entertained for another two or three decades.

I want change. The problem is that change usually means something bad happened and whatever things change into don’t last forever either. Plus, I wouldn’t want them to if they could because then I’d be bored all over again.

I’m still doing the same old things every single day and that would be just fine if I had something new once a week or so to sprinkle into the mix and break up the routine, but what? What can I do? Play pretend? Write similar versions of stories I’ve already written with similar characters? I just don’t know what to do to fill those last few hours of my day when I’ve completed my regular routine. Okay, I haven’t painted today and I haven’t done any puzzles. The problem is I don’t feel like doing either one of those things right now. So what do I do when I don’t feel like doing what I could be doing?

I guess I could talk to Alyssa, LOL, in the freak chance that she actually reads my messages. No way to ever know. She could opt to ignore messages without me knowing it in which case she’d never even know they were there.

It was 48 and sunny on my walk, and with my gray sweatshirt, pink hoodie, and pink knit gloves, I was comfy. Had I been hypo I’d have been utterly freezing.

Tom says some of the airplane noise I’m hearing is practice for an airshow. Said he saw them on his way home from work yesterday. But at 5:40 in the morning?

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019
So Tom reported for jury duty selection yesterday, but as expected, he wasn’t selected. At about 10:30 we Skyped each other and he told me they were watching stupid movies. There were about 50 people in the room at the time.

Then, out of the blue, it came to me that he would be home around 1:30 instead of 3 as originally told and thought. I told him this, but then he told me they were given a two-hour lunch break and had to be back by 1:30, so I assumed I was wrong.

He returned to the jury waiting room early after going to the cafeteria where some of the people still were when a woman popped her head in the room and said, “This never happens but I was just told that half of you can go home. So go ahead and leave if you want to.”

He looked at his phone and saw it was 1:05. He got in at 1:30 and told me, “You’ve still got it.” Well, it was a very strong vibe, so I was surprised at first when it looked like I’d be wrong, but not worried since it was something trivial. What a nice breath of fresh air, though, as opposed to knowing when someone is going to die or at least reach the beginning of the end. I don’t want to know that shit till everyone else knows, but I can’t help what I see or sense.

In an episode of Cold Case called A Family Cursed, there’s a girl like me whose brother disappeared. She dreamed their father killed him and buried him in the woods. Then she confronted him, and she too disappeared until Daddy’s GF turned him in.

Just like I was reminded that I “still got it,” I was reading around and was reminded that no, I’m not alone, nothing’s wrong with me physically, and I haven’t lost my mind. There really are people in this world who can’t lose weight even when they play all their cards right through proper diet and exercise. Especially if we’re older unless we have great genetics or some kind of medical condition keeping the weight off.

This person said they’d been adhering to a 1000-calorie-a-day deficit through diet and exercise, yet their weight was bouncing back and forth by about 4 pounds two weeks in. They say they’re eating proteins, fruits, veggies, and lean meats, have no known health issues, and a normal thyroid function. Also, that a friend is doing Weight Watchers, eating much more than her, and has lost 10 pounds in two weeks.

I know what it’s like! For me, it’s either diet and exercise to stay the same or don’t and gain indefinitely. I have about 1200 calories and a half-hour of exercise most days of the week, something that would cause me to lose a few pounds a month or more before my mid-30s. I figure that once I get in my 70s, I won’t count calories as much since I “feel” I won’t make it past 77. Have a light to moderate vibe Tammy might not beat 68 and she’s already 62.

His job is a dead zone, though. I see nothing as far as lay-offs or raises…nothing. This leads me to think he’ll be there till at least 66.

The little mama’s boy came in yesterday, and unfortunately, I could hear the bastard loud and clear over the dual sound machines. Again, just too loud too close. I wasn’t asleep yet but that could’ve very easily woken me up if I was. Really, really hope it’s just a rare visit as has been the case for a while now, but I know that sooner or later it’s going to be back to coming around twice a day.

I’m so torn between Florida and New Mexico! I want Florida’s climate, but I’m so tired of having so much activity and so many people so close to me. Yesterday I had to hear Bob blow his tiny little lot for an hour, then the insanely loud blowers the park uses. With the leaves coming down, the landscaping is twice as bad as in the summer.

Decided to use the portable heater in the bedroom where I work and leave the rest of the house at 68°. That’s a good temp for the treadmill anyway. I’ll drop the temp in the bedroom when I sleep and raise the rest of the house when I shower.

It hit me that maybe it doesn’t have to be all or nothing when we move. I had it stuck in my mind that it had to be either a rural place in the west or a Florida park. But maybe there’s an in-between and a way to compromise on getting both space around us and a warmer climate. We couldn’t afford land on the coast of Florida. That’s just outrageously expensive. But then it hit me that maybe we could get an acre in Central Florida. No, we couldn’t get to the beach in just 10 minutes, but it sure would be a much shorter trip than if we went to New Mexico or Nevada. Even from here, it takes a few hours. But there, we wouldn’t have to drive for hours to reach the coast, and we’d be safer from hurricanes while still able to enjoy some really cool storms.

I’ve had a feeling something would happen in September of 2022, but don’t know what. Well, since it makes more sense that we’ll be here till 2024, maybe our moving date will be September 22, 2024.

I don’t want to kid myself every time the noise gets to me and tell myself that some peaceful piece of land in a better climate will eventually be waiting for us, but oh, how I wish that could be the case! No checking anything out without verifying flight/boom paths first and how far it is to civilization, especially hospitals since we will be older, after all.

I don’t “see” Tammy leaving Florida, but don’t know if it’s due to her health or just because it’s hard to imagine her trading FL in for NC. Hopefully, it’s just the latter!

Had a weird dream about living in a two-story house with Larry and Tammy. Our parents were alive and working at a store they owned.

First I got in an argument with Larry on the second floor, then called down to Tammy in the basement to ask if she wanted me to cook her some chicken and was relieved when she said no since I wasn’t in the mood to cook. Then I thought of calling Mom and Dad at the store because I was feeling a little down.

Lastly, I was whining to this couple on the first floor about loud motorcycles waking me up just as one happened to go by. The woman said something about having a hard time sleeping as well because of them.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2019
Those fucking courts. They really do know how to mess with our lives, don’t they? He has to go in for jury selection and that in itself is fine. That’s not the problem. The problem is that this is the worst day of the week for that because this is when he normally works from home and makes extra money. Plus, it’s so unlikely that he’ll be selected so it’s basically for nothing. He’s never been selected. The most he ever had to do way back when in Phoenix was be asked to sit with a group of others in the jury box to convince this defendant who didn’t believe his case was really going to a jury trial that yes, it sure was. This doesn’t surprise me when I think about it. Those in law enforcement love not so much as to prove themselves right but to prove others wrong. Just part of the control and arrogance that usually goes with the territory. Sure, there are some decent cops and lawyers who are in it for justice and who are willing to be as fair as possible, but for most, it’s about power and control and a means of being able to act out their aggressiveness.

Slept long and well. I didn’t crash till around noon, then I got up after 7 to pee and dozed on and off till after 10. It felt so good to be able to do that without the stress of my schedule and appointments!

Skunks. That’s another extreme I’ve experienced here that I can add to the planes, landscaping, traffic, and a million other things. It fucking stinks out there right now. Because this is a temperate, dry climate that doesn’t get too hot or too cold, it’s ideal for skunks. But just like I can say, “never before have I experienced so much of this or that,” never before have I lived anywhere where there were so many damn skunks. I fucking hate it here. I really do. Anything is better than anxiety, but it sucks to know we’ll be here for many more years. Seems to be the story of my life, though; being where I don’t want to be. I start to feel the faint glimmer of hope that maybe I’ll be compensated and get lucky enough to finish off my last 20 years or so in a place I absolutely love, but I know that isn’t meant to be any more than I was ever meant to be tall. I think we can find a place a little quieter than this, but how long will it last before it catches up to this place?

Kobo doesn’t make unpublishing books as easy as Amazon does, but I’m officially done with them with no plans to return anytime soon. Better to stick with the biggest stores, not that I expect to make much either way. Because Kobo was lazy, I had to do their job for them and gather all the titles and ISBN numbers. Only then was I able to delist them.

I lowered all my books on Amazon to KU eligible with an option to buy for $0.99. One is at $0.99 and not KU eligible which is probably how I’ll set my books in the future. That way I have a mix of prices. There’s a guideline as to prices per word count and I think I’ll follow that in the future rather than just list everything at $0.99. Even my shorter novels that are around 20-30K words take time and work. if I’m not going to make many sales, I should at least get paid fairly for what few I do make.

The British-style potato I made yesterday came out great! Instead of poking holes in it and baking it at 425° for an hour, I made quarter-inch crosses on either end and baked it for 2 hours on 400°. Then I cut the slices deeper and threw them back in the oven for another 10 minutes. Came out so light and fluffy!

Instead of an update from Tammy, she congratulates Sarah on the store manager job she got ages ago. Does she want me to wonder what’s up with her? If she could write that post, she could’ve given me a quick update. Fuck it. I know she’ll live. She may be unhealthy but she’ll live.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2019
Aly bought a copy of Shane and it showed up on my reports right away. Now let’s hope I get more sales!

So far we’ve been getting away with not needing heat, but since it’s going to get all the way down to 40fucking3 degrees tonight, it will probably need to go on early in the morning. It’s 72 in here now but between my robe, being fat, and still hot flashing at times, I’m not too cold. Having more thyroid keeps me warmer as well. My T4 has settled in by now and my TSH has to be getting close starting from 20. I’m probably down to about 11 now. My end-of-the-day Merlot warms me up as well. Going to miss summer even though we’ll be back in the 80s for the highs soon enough.

Tom was able to get my preferred brand of poison on the way home. They were out yesterday. No wonder there have been complaints from pharmacists all over the country about not having enough levothyroxine, off-brands or not. This is the second or third time they’ve been out. I guess that’s because it’s dirt cheap and easy to make. Anyway, the shit will probably still be a problem at some point; just hopefully not nearly as intense as the offies.

I asked Carolyn if she could hear all these fucking planes and if they annoyed her. Turns out they lived in Natomas, so they’re used to it. I don’t see how I could ever get used to this shit. Even though it won’t do me any good and I was a little wary of giving our address, I put in another complaint. This is just fucking ridiculous. To only have peace from 12:30 a.m. to 5:45 a.m. is crazy and even then I still hear some traffic and small planes. This place has had one extreme after another, all right, putting every apartment I ever had to shame. I’m tired of being forced to choose between their noise or my own with sound machines or whatever. Sometimes I just want to hear nothing for a while. That’s just a pipe dream for the most part, though.

Some people on Twitter are into plagiarism with a twist. If you say something they disagree with, they’ll quote your tweet and change a word or two to twist things around in their favor or to make you look bad. I was confused at first, wondering how the hell they did it, but then I saw the little dot before my handle.

Didn’t quite sleep as well last time around because I kept waking up. Traffic might have woken me up once, but I can’t swear to it. I had a nightmare about walking through the woods with someone when we spotted a huge tiger. It was either a leopard or a tiger, but it was dinosaur-huge, standing many stories high.

I crouched against the wall of a small ditch, unable to conceive of how I could possibly remain calm and avoid being attacked. Fortunately, I woke up then.