OMG, it burns me up every time I read about the US sending aid to foreign countries. When are we going to finally take care of our own for once? When do the people right here get to matter first and foremost? Maybe we should all go on strike and refuse to pay taxes and teach the government that we want the money we earn or our spouses earn to pay for our own needs and not a bunch of strangers in another country, some of which make their own damn problems to begin with.

I think I’m going to forget about dieting. I just hate the way diets make me feel and my weight is the least of my concerns right now. Right now, I just want to be able to sleep during the fucking daytime without having to wear earbuds that cause wax buildup to irritate me because people can’t shut the fuck up. After the first few hours of sleep, they woke me up every half hour. Fucking trash and green waste trucks, the loud car, plus God knows what else. Really miss the days when they simply came by to pick up the trash and that was it. They were gone. Now they have to make a big fucking production out of it, winding in and out of streets and going back and forth, so I hear them for hours. Several times I swear they’re at our place dumping our shit just to find they haven’t gotten to us yet.

I really, REALLY miss the days when all I needed to sleep with was a fan or an air cleaner and that would drown almost everything out except for the sonic booms we had in Maricopa. Yet I didn’t have to deal with sonic booms nearly as much as loud traffic. Sometimes we would go months without hearing any but here we don’t even go a day without something insanely loud roaring through here. It’s sad that people are dumb enough to believe that louder is more powerful and that there’s so much insecurity in this world that people feel the need to stand out and get any kind of attention they can from anybody they can. When you think that bad attention is better than no attention, you’ve really got a problem.

I think Tammy was either playing the noise down at her place or she was lucky enough to get into an unusually quiet place. I doubt she was playing it down because drama queens don’t usually do that, especially Tammy, so I think she just got damn lucky. I can’t picture her willing to put up with a place this noisy.

But I refuse to run. First of all, I’ve tried running from noise for decades to no avail. It’s never done me any good. I just go from noise to noise. Secondly, most places are more expensive than here and we still can’t leave the state without a job or a retirement check. Besides, all places are noisy these days unless you’re either rich or you go way out in the middle of nowhere. Really, if you can’t sleep in an adult community of all places, you ain’t sleeping anywhere if you’re a light sleeper trying to sleep in the daytime.

So I thought about my different options. First I thought that going in the opposite direction and turning off all sound machines completely may help me get used to sleeping through shit, but I know I would only wake up every few minutes instead of every half hour to a few hours if I did that. No one wants to be that tired even if they don’t have much to do the following day.

Then I thought I might try to hold my schedule but if I could do that there would be no such thing as circadian rhythm disorder.

I asked Tom on a scale of 1 to 10 how hard it would be for him to pull a 24 if he had to and said about a 2. He has always been amazingly flexible compared to me, that’s for sure! So I don’t know if I can do it but I’m going to try to stay up until 4 p.m. and reverse my schedule. The less I have to sleep during the daytime, the better. I’m not the heavy sleeper he is. I don’t think anyone else in the world is as light of a sleeper as I am.

I totally, totally feel cursed in the noise and sleep department! Maybe not so much with noise because it’s noisy everywhere these days. Then again, I don’t know because I heard the woodpecker shortly after getting up that no one else around here seems to hear but us.

But being cursed in the sleep department is a no-brainer. It’s bad enough to have circadian rhythm disorder but did I really have to be a light sleeper on top of it? If there is any bastard above that cursed me with the sleep disorder, couldn’t it have had the decency and the heart to at least let me sleep through more things? I feel like I only end up punished every time I try to help myself. Like the wax is my punishment for the earbuds which have been the most helpful solution so far of the 10 million things I’ve tried in this place. Had to Debrox that ear to break down the wax and was very dizzy last night.

I start to want to scream when I think of all the years we have left here but again, why bother? I’m only going to hear the same shit wherever we end up. As much as I want to live in a tropical climate like Florida and as much as it’s cheaper there, I sometimes wonder if Florida wouldn’t be very smart because of the risk of hurricanes, the humidity, and because I would probably get even less sleep there with storms waking me up. But I would really, really love to live there! I don’t think we’ll be able to get a place on the ocean and I don’t think we’ll have any kind of yacht or boat or anything like that but I would still love to live there. If for any reason we don’t, then I guess the next thing to consider would be the Nevada desert. Maybe New Mexico, but I highly doubt it. There are even more illegals there. As long as it’s not Arizona, Texas or Utah. Texas hates women and gays, Arizona hates almost everybody, and Utah has too many kids. If only I was oblivious to cold and snow. In that case, maybe we would go join Aly in Nebraska. Freezing, snowing, mouse-ridden, cold as fuck Agent P, who had a much better dream about us than I did, LOL.

I guess I was working in a pet store and telling someone we met 13 years ago when she came into the store. I had a thick brown braid that you could tell was curly, a purple sweatshirt with a rat face on it, and a pink and white skirt. Amazing just how accurate a description that is, too! I have everything but the rat face on the purple sweatshirt. That’s actually on a brown shirt. I guess I was trying to sell her some kind of long-haired rat that doesn’t exist, haha.

Guess she isn’t trying to avoid me, after all.

The only thing I remember dreaming about last night was swimming in this canal with this grassy bottom that felt gross and weird.

There was also a dream where Tom and I were walking somewhere when it looked like a couple was about to get into a physical fight. I moved toward them ready to defend the woman but before I could get a chance to slug the guy or whatever I was going to do to him, a crowd of people jumped him.

Seems like I might have had some other dream that was kind of scary but I don’t remember it.

Anyway, despite all the chaos in the daytime, it’s been an amazingly quiet night so far. I thought I would have to deal with a barrage of planes but maybe in the morning instead. Again I wonder, am I not hearing anything because the wind is going in a different direction than usual? Or are they just not flying tonight?

Read another side effect that the doctors would no doubt deny my medication is capable of is increased hunger. I wonder if that’s part of why I’m always hungry and can’t stand the hunger of dieting. I guess I’m just meant to be a big girl and that’s okay. :-) No, I’m not as healthy or as flexible as I may be if I was slimmer, but I am the way I was meant to be. At least I’m making a point of being active. I’m actually on the skier now.

I’m just tired of all the contradictions out there. My endo told me to double up the next day if I forget a dose while I read not to do that. I also read that you shouldn’t take aspirin on this medication, but I mentioned it to my PCP back when I was taking it to protect my heart and she didn’t say anything. I stopped taking it when new studies said it didn’t really do much good and said screw my heart. It can’t beat forever anyway.

But who do you believe? Who is right? Tom swears my endo said not to double up when he was with me when I saw her one time but I don’t remember that. I remember her saying just the opposite when I saw her by myself. As I told dear hubs, I may forget things people have actually said, but I don’t remember things they didn’t say. :-)

Tom will be going to Sam’s Club in the morning. One of the Lean Cuisines I got turned out to be spicy. So I read online that milk helps with the burning. I took a mouthful and swished it around in my mouth and it really did work!

Kim nephew’s 20-year-old girlfriend has been squealing on her, so she says. She tells the monster-n-law whenever she catches her doing something she’s not supposed to do.

I’d really love to be a little fly on the wall watching that family for a day or two. I bet it would be highly interesting and very entertaining.

So let me get this straight. The rats will run if I approach them for cuddles and playtime but they won’t budge when I approach them to shoo them downstairs so they don’t steal the pigs’ lettuce? Yeah, they really pissed me off last night. I let them out and they seemed almost playful-like when I’d playfully wave a hand toward them. Then they decided they just had to veg out on that wonderfully comfortable carpet under their cage (after pissing on it to mark their territory). After a while, I got bored waiting for them to go home. I know I could’ve gone into the other room and done my thing till they got tired of sitting there, but I wanted them to learn the “go home” thing. They’re not catching on too fast for being intelligent animals. I had to trap the furry bastards in a box in order to get them back to their cage.

Another weird thing was when I picked up Woody. He immediately jumped back into the cage but then turned right around and jumped onto my arm, even though it was only for a second.

At least we got it right with the tree stump burrow we got the pigs. They can both fit in it, even if it may be a bit snug, and they definitely can’t flip it over.

I’m sure I’ll be paged any second now for another round of lettuce.

Two more things to bitch about… My left toenails look horrible again, so I saw when I removed my polish and I don’t like the shade of red I put on my toes or the silver on my nails. The silver is so light and hard to make out. With light skin, I like something either really bright or dark so it stands out. I left my toes as they were but threw some pink polish that smells like roses over my fingernails.