On the treadmill right now as I do this entry which will start off with the usual complaint… Noise. OMG, I heard 5 planes in just 10 minutes when I timed it, one of them being a small plane. The mornings are absolutely horrible! Didn’t seem as bad yesterday but this morning it was one after another for over an hour.

It seems that since he started working at this place we’ve been compensated for all the years we struggled financially, not that we’re not still in debt. I wish to hell I could believe I’ll be compensated for the health horror I’ve gone through here with nothing serious for a good long time and also compensated with spending our final years in a wonderfully peaceful, beautiful home.

But almost all my adult life has been spent dealing with noise so that one is really hard to hope for. If it’s true, though, that the more noise I have to deal with now means the more peace I get later on, then that is going to be one seriously peaceful place we’ll end up in! I still have my doubts because almost anywhere you go these days is noisy. Even if we don’t have all these planes overhead, we’re still going to get traffic, landscaping and other shit. It’s like I’m always compensated for what is lacking in that particular area. I don’t have barking and screaming kids here so it’s like it must be made up for with other shit. So even if we ended up where traffic and landscaping were less of an issue, that could mean more planes and more problem neighbors happily sawing away with their power tools and whatever other toys of annoyance they may possess. Our neighbor would be the one, like Tammy, to have their mutt barking out the door of their lanai. It’s like there’s always something.

Maybe if we do get close to any body of water, the main source of noise will be boats. I was looking at a home for sale by a canal in Florida and I would think that boats run up and down it regularly and that some would be audible enough. Obviously, large ships couldn’t pass through it but other things could. We hope to have our own boat at some point but don’t know what kind it will be, be it an inboard motor, outboard, whatever. It’s different when things are your own, though, because you have control over your own stuff. I can’t tell those with loud vehicles not to ride by the bedroom tonight because I’ll be asleep.

As for all the planes here, I can’t get anyone to listen to me much less to do anything about it. No matter how much I tweet to the airport or file online complaint forms, I am ignored.

Surprisingly, I haven’t heard the loud car yet today but it came and went early yesterday morning and then in the afternoon, as usual. When they came in around 3 and still hadn’t left by 6, I was again getting worried that they moved back in, but they left shortly after that.

Again, that is one devoted son! Or is the correct word clingy? We’re living in strange times, that’s for sure. Everyone’s quick to preach independence… Get your own place, get your own job, get your own vehicle, get your own everything. Yet kids are living with their parents older and older these days. Used to be everybody left home at 18 like I did and visited their parents once a week or less, and it isn’t when they leave home or how often they visit I have a problem with, it’s me having to know about it that bothers me. I don’t force my noise on others and I just wish I could get the same fucking respect. Hope the punk with the loud car has someone at home when they leave, even though I suspect they’re single. What a great way to announce your departure to potential burglars! Same thing I thought about the welfare bums blasting in and out with their fucking car stereos in Pheonix.

Something occurred to me earlier in regards to the mutt that would be barking its ass off two or three times a day when it would be out walking. It occurred to me that I haven’t heard it in a while. I don’t know if that’s because it was in one of the houses that moved or something happened to it, but it makes me wonder if my influencing had anything to do with it disappearing. I mean, what are the odds of the thing suddenly disappearing given how long dogs live? There are too many loud vehicles these days for me to influence them all but it gives me a little bit of hope then I can get rid of some of them. It definitely does seem like while I can’t actively wish them away, the anger and frustration I feel as they continue to annoy me seems to affect them.

“Blame the brown people,” a Mexican character said on Law & Order SVU when the cops came to his door. Then Ice T pointed out he was just as brown.

LOL, nice try, asshole. But sadly, this degree of race card playing doesn’t happen only on TV.

They weren’t kidding when they said that potatoes aggravate LS. Wanting to use up the rest of the potatoes before they went bad, and knowing how much Tom loves them, I made mashed potatoes and they came out so damn good with the perfect balance of margarine, milk and garlic salt that I ate tons of it. I paid later on with itching and especially with burning. If it weren’t for Tucks I’d be lost! This was after doing well enough for a few days that I didn’t need to Tucks myself like I usually do at the end of my day so I don’t wake up itching.

Everything is bad for me somehow. Everything. It’s frustrating as hell because now I can’t just shop for whatever when ordering groceries and it makes things harder. I have to avoid potatoes, canned soup, frozen pizza, greasy foods, and things high in cholesterol and sodium. I rarely eat bread and not much pasta either.

Walmart really fucked up the last two orders by getting things wrong and being out of stock on a lot of things. They’re very irresponsible. Safeway isn’t perfect but I think next time around I’ll order from them. Will focus mostly on fish, fruits and veggies.

I really should try once again to get some weight off not for appearance’s sake but for better health, and mobility, and of course my clothes would fit better too. But how? HOW??? Older people have slower metabolisms with or without thyroid disease and it takes so few calories to maintain and even fewer to lose. If most of us could simply stand the hunger for so long, then most of us wouldn’t be fat. I even prided myself on being one of the “smarter” ones who long since stopped bothering to try as I’m A, not likely to succeed, and B, not likely to maintain that success should I succeed in the first place by some miracle. But sometimes I wish I could lose even just 15 pounds or so. It isn’t only the hunger that prevents me from bothering but I worry about my medication as well.

Now why did my shoelaces come untied? Got to stop this thing and tie it.

Okay, that’s 16 minutes I’ve done so far. I wish this thing had a pause button so the counter wouldn’t start over.

Once again we’re contemplating getting rats for the lower level of the cage. The only negatives to that would be that it would up my responsibilities because rats take more time and care than guinea pigs with the way they like to run around loose and the way they’re attention whores that are much more social than guinea pigs. The pigs would probably like running loose as well but they’re not nearly as smart and I would have a hard time getting them back. A rat will return to his house eventually on his own. Even if the guinea pigs weren’t so stupid, they’re on the upper level so they couldn’t just go home. Gotta admit their stupidity is kind of cute, though. They’re dumb in a silly way. The only thing they know is to squeak for food.

The rats would need to be downstairs so they could come and go. Rats are also notorious pissers that would go about marking their so-called territory and are smart enough to figure out how to get into shit I don’t want them getting into. Ever since having to remove the side paneling between the dishwasher and the cabinet under the sink, there has been a little opening in which even an adult rat might be able to wiggle through and we definitely don’t want them getting back there. The clever little shits could probably figure out a way around whatever we put there to try to block it.

But even though it would be more work, time and money, I can’t imagine not having rats until we get a dog and if we do, it won’t be till he retires because I can’t always be available during the daytime to take it out. With a dog, I doubt I’d want anything else but maybe a betta.

Just did a little research and rats should actually be able to live with the guinea pigs so they can go up and down both levels of the cage. The pigs will probably just stay on the top but there will be water bottles on both levels if they don’t. I watched an adorably cute video of them interacting with each other and then I remembered that I have seen videos of them together in the past. I don’t know about putting adult rats with them but if the rats are babies to begin with then there shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll try it, assuming there are any left in the state. It seems everyone’s either out of them or no longer sells them.

Hopping off the TM at 20 minutes. Will walk more later.