Every now and then just to either confirm my belief or to surprise myself with being wrong, I do a little prayer experiment. So I chose 3 things I’ve struggled with in which to pray for and I made sure they weren’t easy prayers like asking for the sun to rise and things that are so obviously likely to happen anyway. I didn’t ask for anything off-the-wall and totally impossible either. I asked for things that were very reasonable. One of them hasn’t happened for about a decade, another hasn’t happened for a couple of months, and one of them has basically never happened. So I prayed every day and I gave it what I believe is sufficient time.

Not a single prayer was granted. So yeah, if there’s anything up there it’s either me it’s not listening to or you guys are praying for things that would’ve happened anyway. I’m not saying there is or isn’t anything up there. I don’t know the answer to that. But I can say for sure that for me personally, prayer is a joke. So maybe it’s time to ask yourself… would the things I prayed for that I was granted have happened anyway? Could they have?

And please don’t say that things “happen in their own time” because it doesn’t count for much to ask for something now and not receive it for 10 years.

Prayer number one was something I’ve done before. Live without anxiety. I prayed for it not to return. Well, yesterday I was anxious enough to have my coffee 15 minutes after my meds today.

Prayer number two was also something I’ve done before. Lose weight.

The last prayer was to hear from Kathleen.

I haven’t been able to go more than a few months without anxiety, I haven’t been able to lose weight without getting sick in a decade, and I’ve never really had a friend like Kathleen. I don’t know if the anxiety will ever be a thing of the past, but I’m obviously never going to lose weight, and I’m not going to hear from Kathleen either. You know how it is, some things really never do change. Especially this late in life.

When we can ask for anything we want, far out or not, and get it when we ask for it (or close enough) then I’ll believe in prayer. But when I ask for perfectly reasonable things and don’t get them, what can I really think? You can look at things through the eyes of wishful thinking, denial or desperation. Or you can look at things through the eyes of logic and experience. Not trying to persuade anyone one way or the other, just sharing my own individual experience.

Moving from fantasy to reality… the people who make the custom soundproofing windows want $800 per window so that’s a no-go. That’s fucking ridiculous! How do they expect to stay in business with prices like that? I’m guessing they mostly do businesses. They would need it with all the damn car stereos and since the law obviously isn’t going to do the right thing and ban them, I can see where businesses would really need these. These days it’s not just loud music that’s an issue but loud vehicles to begin with. From what I gather it seems to be more of a problem in the west than in the east. Just the rise of pickups using diesel these days which makes them sound like huge semis is truly mind-boggling. I think it stems from the same reasons that people feel the need to blast their music for anybody and everybody whose ears they can possibly force it on… a deep-seated sense of insecurity and desire for acknowledgment. Everybody wants to put on a show and be noticed. I don’t need to be a psychologist to know that it obviously makes them feel like they’ve got some semblance of power and control if they know they’ve made you hear them.

I slept well last night. Oh, to be able to sleep at night every night. but for some of us, some of the simplest everyday things are too much to ask for. There’s still a chance of being woken up at night if a motorcycle roars through here at midnight but it’s definitely less likely. But still, if I could sleep at night I would sleep better overall and then all I would have to bitch about would be the daytime noise. There’s plenty of that… loud engines, car doors slamming, landscaping, planes, etc. At least the barking and the screaming kids are left out of the mix, and what car stereos I do hear are coming from the freeway.

Started learning Swahili on Duolingo. While it seems easy enough, there are no sound files for that language because that course is still in beta.

Last night I dreamed that I had a rat and when I called it, it emerged from a hole in the carpet. Yet when I put my hand into that area I never felt a hole in the floor beneath the carpet.

Then I had a dream about Tammy and some cat but I don’t remember the details.

Next was a dream that Tom and I were driving on a dirt road through a wooded area and I was saying something about how I looked forward to hearing from the new friend I recently made, even though she seemed kind of youngish. Then we were walking through the woods and after a while, I got tired of walking and asked Tom if we were there yet. He said something enthusiastically and then I replied to that with, “But we’re not going anywhere.”

In the last dream, I was walking up to an apartment building. Some guy was sitting out on his front patio leering at me in a way that made me uncomfortable as I fumbled with the key in the mailbox.