Although it was 15 degrees cooler today, I only walked for a half-hour instead of an hour because even at 8:30 it was still kind of warm.

As I was coming up Astro, there was still enough light to see Dixie sitting on her patio. We ended up talking for a half-hour. She tells me I’m the only one who has been nice to her and even though I’ve known others here for longer, she’s the first person I consider an actual friend of sorts here. Not an Aly kind of friend but a friend nonetheless since she’s just different than Bob, Virginia and the Twenties and people like that.

Not sure she’s all there but she’s harmless. She does get contradictory and seems to be forgetful at times but hey, she’s got to be well in her 80s. First she said she loved Ray and Nora whom she got the place from. Ray was the grumpy old man I didn’t like and tonight she said nobody liked him. Well, Jon did.

She told me a little about her stepdaughter Diane and yes, she’s mentally challenged but an amazing survivor from what she told me. Her parents took off to Alaska and dumped her in a state hospital where she grew up for 25 years. I thought my childhood was bad! Diane is 72. That loud obnoxious Pride bus takes her to recreational activities.

Dixie said some Mexican woman who watches her at times is too busy with too many jobs and she wanted to know if I would be willing to take over and I actually wouldn’t mind except for my sleep disorder which I explained to her and she seemed to accept it without judgment. She even seemed to understand too, LOL. She said something about going somewhere at night in September and not wanting to leave Diane alone. I told her that if she calls me and I’m up and available and not doing anything else at the moment, I would be happy to help out but couldn’t make plans in advance.

She hates Trump too and is sure that he, Putin and Kim are going to take over the world as evil dictators but I assured her I have a very strong feeling Trump will not be re-elected.

Here’s something weird. I asked if her last name was T and she said yes. I told her that after we first met, a Dixie T appeared on my People You May Know section of Facebook and that person has no profile picture and only one friend in Loomis. She swears it’s not her and that she’s not even on Facebook because she doesn’t ever want to get caught up in social media or anything like that. Says there’s no way it could be Diane either. So even though she’s either denying it, has multiple personalities, is incredibly forgetful, or has a very strange impersonator, I like her. There’s just something that makes her likable even though she doesn’t shut up and may not be very bright or 100% with it.

They lived in some nearby condo for 30 years and she injured her leg and can’t walk well, so she was hoping coming here would make it better but it didn’t. She has to use one of those sit-down carts that you drive when going to Walmart.

Since I’m forgetful too, I forgot that I already have her number on my phone. She gave it to me when we were helping her with her clicker. We exchanged email addresses and I sent her a test email.

She wouldn’t tell me her age, saying she was sensitive about that and I told her that’s perfectly fine. What I didn’t tell her is that it’s obvious she’s pretty old, LOL. She’s frail, arthritic and definitely old looking but I’ve seen worse.

I don’t think she’ll be a pest or anything but at least anyone that comes to the door can’t wake me up and neither can a phone call or an email. She should be easy to ignore if she contacts me when I don’t want to be bothered but I can’t see her getting pesky. As I said, she’s nice and likable and in some ways, if I needed a ride or something like a glass of milk, I would feel more comfortable going to her than to others.

That’s another funny thing she said. She just spent $100 at Sam’s Club and didn’t get anything fresh, LOL. Like she was beating herself up afterward for not doing so.

When I was leaving I said it was a little dark but I would be able to find my way back. And she asked if Tom worried about me walking at night by myself, LOL. Not in a gated community. Diane goes to bed the same time he does, so she was asleep. Anyway, she told me to go down the front steps, then she said no, go out the back and then all of a sudden she remembered she could turn the front light on and I would see my way down the stairs in front, haha, so I did. I couldn’t get in the front door because our fucking door gets stuck at this time of year so I had to come in back.

Discovered another food that doesn’t seem to put weight on me and I’m surprised to say that it’s toast since bread is supposed to be bad for weight loss. As I mentioned before, Tom and I convinced each other to jump on diets together at least till August 10th. Even though his metabolism seems to be slower than mine despite having a working thyroid, I think he’ll be down 5 to 10 lb because he has more weight to lose than I do but I don’t think I’m ever getting under 153 until I’m old and dying. Need to have 1000 calories a day to bust under that and the only way to do that would be with the stomach band because I’m not going to magically acquire the incredibly amazing willpower it would take to do that every day for months. I also can’t live on toast and popcorn for a year, but yeah, I was really hungry when I was getting ready for bed so I threw a couple of slices of bread in the toaster and sprayed it with zero-calorie butter spray and found it didn’t put any weight on me.

Just to see if it was a coincidence or not, I had a couple of pieces of toast shortly after I got up and had my coffee and found that it still didn’t put weight on me. Then I waited about an hour and had another couple of slices and got the same results… No weight gain. I’m pretty sure bread is still supposed to be bad for you either way because it supposedly has a negative influence on blood sugar or something like that. I’ll have to do some research sometime.

Poor Aly found mice again in their garage. They set up cameras and found the nest and have some guy coming to remove it. She also has the same cough and congestion she had before. At least if they ever have to move they can do it right away as most people can.

Had my first dream involving Cam. Even though I’ve never seen a picture of him, I still knew who he was. I lived alone in a place that didn’t look anything like this, and he and Aly came to visit. As we were all getting ready to turn in one night, he started complaining that I was coming between their relationship. Well, he used the word “marriage,” actually.

“So just because I turn to her during some tough times that means I’m coming between you? Well, I’m sorry if I came between you or you think I did,” I said.

I couldn’t believe how rude he was after I put them up for free. I momentarily thought of kicking him out but that would mean kicking Aly out as well and I didn’t want to do that to her. I decided to go to bed, if I wasn’t too pissed to sleep, and would deal with his rude ass in the morning.

Told Aly about the dream and she said he was not accusatory or jealous in any way even though it was still an interesting dream.