Needing heat at this time of year sucks! Hell, my buddy in Nebraska is warmer than we are now. Not. Funny.

And is my sleep cursed? Oh no, I just “happened” to wake up once to pee, twice because I couldn’t get comfortable, then because my ear hurt (thankfully my ENT appt is in 19 days), then because I was cold, then I stupidly took the earbud out hoping traffic wouldn’t wake me up by some miracle, and then I had a terrifying dream of him having chest pain.

I was standing in the doorway to the second bedroom in the dream chatting with him. As I went to turn away and walk down the hall, he rubbed his chest and I asked if he was okay. He said his heart really hurt today and my dream self knew this wasn’t the first time this had happened. I had been trying to get him to see a doctor to no avail. Then he slumped down at the side of the bed. Instead of a wall with a window in it, there was a huge sliding glass door with a padlock in the middle of it. When I looked through the glass, I didn’t see houses or buildings but the ground was definitely covered in snow.

Anyway, I’ve been tired ever since I got up and frustrated to the point of tears. If we can’t figure out how to get me to sleep better soon, then as much as I hate spending time and money on appointments, I may have to go back to my sleep/neurologist doctor and see if he can help me. Yes, I’m terrified of medication and prone to side effects but I wonder if I may need something to help get me into a deeper sleep and prevent me from waking up so damn much.

Then my HR was elevated in the 90s for a while and now I have a backache that came on suddenly. The middle of my back is aching so I’m probably going to take ibuprofen for it.

So definitely not a good day even though things could be worse. Shitty weather and shitty sleep which is making me grumpy. I still think the main problems are the traffic and the earbuds. The earbuds aren’t always comfortable and sometimes slip and allow traffic to make its way through.

I swear there’s something up there that does not want me sleeping. It’s like it finds a way to override everything I do to try to help myself. That’s what worries me, too. If there really is something up there actively and deliberately cursing my sleep, running to the doctor won’t help. If I could eliminate the traffic and the need for earbuds, my sleep wouldn’t be perfect but I think that would help a lot. But how??? I still have serious doubts about the cocoon working but what have I got to lose? The plan is to pick up PVC pipe tomorrow and basically drape sheets of soundproofing material over the top of the bed and down the side closest to the street. I have to have a way to get in and out and for air to circulate so the inner side will be open.

Another thing we’re looking at is an airbed. Not a high-ender like the one we had in Arizona but just a cheap 13-inch full-size air mattress which is the same height as this saggy coil mattress. They’re actually more comfortable than waterbeds and keep you cooler. We’re not in a position to spend money on a high-ender right now because we’re still in debt and need to get the fake grass and trellis as well.

Another thing to consider is wireless earbuds so I wouldn’t get tangled up in the damn wires.

All I know is that I’m tired of being tired and stuck in bed half the time because I have to do things in spurts. Well, I’m tired of spending so much time in bed or sitting down and not being able to live my life to its fullest! I’m not disabled for fuck’s sake! But we’ll be stuck here for years and that right there makes me want to scream even though there are no guarantees it’ll be much quieter wherever we move to.

I’m so tired so much of the time that I’m now looking for ways to cut down my workload. I redesigned the rats’ cage so I no longer have to wash shelves every day. Instead, I set up more hammocks and tubes which are easier to wash and clean than those big old shelves. I love my pets but sometimes I wonder if getting them was a smart idea since they’re both quite a bit of work. Sometimes we should do what’s best and not what we want. With them, I did what I wanted.

I can’t believe how shitty I’ve slept ever since we came here. I hate this place! How did sleep come to be such a struggle for me? How? It’s always been a problem for me but this is worse than some of the apartments I’ve had. All I want is to sleep decently enough. Why are the simplest of things so out of reach for me? Instead, I always have to wait till I’m on days to sleep a little better which goes too fast. My schedule would flip faster if I could always sleep better as I do at night. This is ridiculous. Just fucking ridiculous. Something’s got to be done cuz this is wearing me down to shit. I don’t understand why I can’t always go back to bed or nap on tired days. Something up there preventing me from doing so in order to keep me tired?

I asked myself if I wanted to stay here even if I could sleep, and no, I definitely don’t. It’s too cold, it’s too expensive, and I would prefer to be somewhere further from the road and where I didn’t have to hear landscaping every single fucking day. It’s going to take years, though. I just really hope to hell wherever we end up works out because if we get there when I’m 58 or so, we won’t be able to get back out until I’m 65 with the way something up there is obsessed with me being stuck in places I don’t want to be. The house is decent enough and the neighborhood is upscale, but the climate, costs, and noise are ludicrous.

I checked my journal and the longest I seem to have gone without the type of anxiety that started at the end of 2016 is 7.5 weeks. I went from November 23rd to January 15th without anxiety. Monday will be 6 weeks since I lowered my medication so we’re getting close to when the real testing begins. if I can get past June 3rd it will start looking a bit promising and also a bit disappointing, of course, since I don’t want the problem to have been a dosage issue. We’ll find out soon!

Because I had so many damn books on Prosebox, I decided to break up my journals by state rather than by year. Even doing that I still have 55 books, mostly stories. Only 10 of the books are journals and other things.