When I realized my curiosity might be coming off as pushy about Eileen’s surgery I told her she didn’t have to talk about it if she didn’t want to and I didn’t mean to make her feel uncomfortable or anything like that. She thanked me for my understanding, saying she didn’t like to talk about it and preferred to focus on life’s positive things like friends like me. This makes me think it’s pretty serious. Like maybe she’s fighting an aggressive form of cancer or something. I’m thinking hysterectomy or mastectomy but I may never know unless she decides to tell me. I don’t know that she’s atheist but I admire how she doesn’t kid herself about God, if there really is one. I know I shouldn’t and that everyone has a right to believe what they believe but when I see people suffering yet continue to praise God and insist they’re oh so loved by Him, it’s all I can do to resist the urge and slap them awake and scream, “This is NOT love! It’s NOT love any more than a man who slaps his woman or a woman who slaps her child! Even if He’s not actually doing this to you, He’s not exactly helping you either, so wake the fuck up!”

I get that it’s a matter of perspective and that some people who go through shit and claim that God was “looking out for them,” means that things could have been worse. True, but didn’t they suffer enough in the first place?

But I understand that many who are suffering have a fierce need to tell themselves that they are loved from above and that out of 7 billion people, they’re somehow special. People have to do what they have to do in order to cope, and I guess this is better than drugs or alcohol, whether they’re kidding themselves or not in the end. I’ve definitely noticed that those who are serious God fanatics do tend to be either very controlling, crazy, or absolutely miserable.

As Tom once pointed out, people tend to be less hesitant to discuss the more serious things. It isn’t just that, though. It’s that Eileen is naturally the type to focus on the more positive things in life no matter what, not because she’s too emotionally weak to address negative issues but because that’s just how she is. Over the years I’ve tried to become similar. I dwelt on too much negativity for too long and have been trying to get more in the habit of focusing on positive things. Not those that have hurt me in the past. Not the horrible things going on in the news. Not the everyday annoyances and inconveniences we all have to deal with. It doesn’t mean I forgot the people of the past who have burned me or that I can’t discuss them, and it doesn’t mean I have my head buried in the sand as to what’s going on in the world, just that I prefer to focus on positive things going on at the present moment. I’ve had enough of the constant overload of racism, diseases and other negative stuff. No, ignoring them won’t magically make them go away but neither will obsessing over them.

I don’t remember much in the way of dreams last night. Tom said something about how we might actually get snow here. It actually does get cold enough but that would be an extremely rare event if it snowed at this elevation and not being overly far to the north.

Got some awesome ideas for the book I’m working on and I’m going to be backing up some of them on Facebook but only Tammy will be able to see most of them. I don’t care if she read them or not. I just think it’s always good to have multiple backups.

Tammy should be home now. I hope so! And I hope this will be the end of her own misery for a while and having to deal with one thing after another after another after another… I swear it seems like things have gotten much worse for her since she moved! I was thinking about how a friend said that suffering is part of the human condition. I know that and I know all about suffering. But it’s just gotten way extreme for her. It at least seems to have gotten to be anyway. Every single one of them has had to be in the hospital in the few years they’ve been in Florida, and two of them were involved in car accidents, one serious. Okay, so is it me or does that seem a bit extreme? Even though I’m still inclined not to believe in gods, devils, angels, ghosts and all that stuff, such extremities do sometimes make me wonder if there’s a health curse on the family. Well, whether it truly is an unusual amount of hardships or not, they really, really deserve a break for once! I can’t remember the last time Tammy was able to contact me about nothing but good things to say. So yeah, life’s been a little too rough on her.

It’s been raining steadily since I’ve been up. I got up in the early afternoon. It would have been nicer if it had rained like this when I was on days because it rarely rains in the daytime and the nights are usually quiet anyway.

Sometimes I get really sick of hearing the guy’s TV at night that lives across from next door. This is the last place I should be hearing anyone’s TV! I’m in a house after all and not an apartment. But I know how poorly most Westerners tend to take to complaints no matter how legit the complaint may be, and since it is easy enough to drown it out with the soft whir of the air cleaner, I just deal with it. I don’t want to have to deal with how they may react along with everyone else around here which they would certainly tell. I have too much of a temper to stand for anyone’s possible rudeness these days. While I prefer to ignore people I don’t like, if I’m not left with much of a choice since they are my neighbors, after all, there’s no saying how I myself may react after years and years of having to deal with problem neighbors like I did before we came here should anyone get confrontational and I doubt there are many people here that could take me, so I don’t want to do anything I would regret, not that I can imagine it coming to that. But since it’s not every night and it’s just a little annoying and not something that’s maddening to the point that Bob’s power tools and hammers can be, I can just deal with it. Bitch about it in my journal but deal with it otherwise. The guy’s probably hard of hearing but why the hell would he open his windows at this time of year? If they’re not then that TV’s got to be OMFG kind of loud!

Oh, almost forgot before I sign off…my hematologist sent me a message letting me know that my bone marrow tested normal as I suspected it would. I really believe it’s just normal for me to have an elevated white blood cell count and sometimes red as well. Even so, I was surprised at the relief I felt when I read his message. I guess maybe in the back of one’s mind, we always know there’s a possibility, no matter how slim it may be, until we’re told otherwise.