Tom and I had a fun, interesting and exciting chat yesterday. As you know, I’ve been torn between rural Nevada and subtropical Florida. I could sit here forever listing tons of pros and cons to both of them.

But then we looked on Zillow to get ideas of what’s available in both areas and then it hit me. Who says we have to choose one or the other? Why not do both? Hawaii may be just a fantasy but why not go down to the Nevada or New Mexico desert for a handful of years and then finish off in Florida?

We talked about the benefits of him working until he’s 70, and to be honest, as long as I’m not suffering in the way that I was with the anxiety ever again, I’d be okay with that. It’s nice to know that if worse came to absolute worse and I needed him to be home all the time, he could now retire, get whatever assistance we may need to supplement the retirement income and be home with me full-time.

If he works until 70, we’d get just over $2,000 a month and I’d start getting a bigger percentage then as I’d be 62. I wouldn’t get as much if he retired at 66 and got $1,600 a month. Right now it would only be $1,100 a month. So I hope he’s not being overly optimistic when he insists that coding apps can eventually boost our income by a few hundred dollars a month.

The idea of going to the desert until he’s 70 excites me mostly because I’m sick of the crowds and being so close to such busy streets. It might explain some of the “country dreams” I’ve had, too. I know and accept that if we go rural there’s going to be nonstop barking from the neighboring properties because that’s just the west for you. Dogs aren’t considered household pets here unless they have to be. So I know I’ll be in for barking day and night. But at this point, if I have to have sound machines on all the time to drown out noise that’s at least drownable rather than have to worry about ferociously loud sounds overriding the sound machine and waking me up, so be it. It’s a compromise I’m willing to make at this point since I’m not allowed to live in peace anywhere. We just have to be sure to get a place at least 100’ from the road and avoid flight paths. I’m talking about military flight paths. Living with Sonic booms was no fun at all.

I don’t know if we’re really going to do this as I do know that one’s plans often get thrown off course due to circumstances out of their control. One of us could develop health issues that could ultimately prevent us from moving to Florida in the end or something like that. I don’t like the idea of remaining in a climate similar to this or even a little colder, but I would take eight more years of that out in the country before I took five more years of it right here. I know yesterday was unusually quiet and it’s been quiet so far today, but I can pretty much guarantee that it ain’t going to last long. The loud car, other loud vehicles, and landscaping will make their presence known before I know it. In fact, here’s the mama’s boy right now.

Yes, rural pose some potential problems like a higher risk of a home invasion, longer waiting time in the event of an emergency, and the potential for more problems from neighboring properties, it also opens the door to all kinds of exciting possibilities as well. While the neighbors may be blasting music, letting their dogs yip and yap, and allowing their trash to blow onto our land since we’re likely going to have to go back to burning trash in a metal drum, we could get our own pool again! Not an inground pool like we had in Phoenix but one of those inflatables. About four feet deep is all we need and remember, one of us is short. I could have fun and just two or three feet of water. :-)

We could also get a dog sooner. The reason we haven’t gotten one here is that I can’t always be available to walk it during the daytime when he’s at work. But if we had land somewhere out in the country, we could put it outside during those times. Why not? Everyone else’s dogs would be outside. I just want to make sure that this time around we have adequate fencing to keep loose dogs out. Hated that in Arizona! Yeah, that’s another thing; they don’t just let them bark nonstop without a care in the world as to who it may annoy, they let them run loose, too.

I don’t know if we’ll get an established piece of land that already has a home on it or if we’ll go off the grid, but I guess that depends on what we find and the costs. We really don’t want to go over $100,000.

At first I was like, but we can’t get a place unless he’s fully retired or he could show he’s been at a job for at least a year, but given how much the average manufactured home is selling for in this area, I think we could actually get at least $70,000 for it as is. So if we put $30,000 down on a house, that leaves us $40,000 to hold us over until he can get a job, and it’s not going to take him two years to get one. Not unless we have another huge recession and that’s unlikely.

We saw a gorgeous modern house listed on a property in Belen, New Mexico, so we’re keeping our eyes peeled. Even if we do this, it’s not going to happen tomorrow or the next day. The biggest thing is that we stay healthy! As far as I can see, sudden and unexpected health issues could be the only thing that could hold us back. Hopefully, I’ll never experience the kind of anxiety I experienced because I’m never going to be in the heart of perimenopause again and I’m never going to be dumb enough to keep taking medication that so obviously seems to have a big hand in making me feel like shit. I’m now going to know about cutting back and questioning brands, etc.

With August approaching, my excitement is definitely turning up a notch after having just 9 anxious days which were mostly pretty mild compared to the weeks and sometimes months of hardcore anxiety I used to go through. I’m definitely onto something with the brand. No doubt about it. I’ll never touch Mylan or Lannett again. As far as dosage? I can’t say for sure exactly how much of that was a factor at this time. I won’t know until and if I return to 75s.

77 days. Just 77 days is all I need to go without a period and I’ll be officially menopausal!

Anyway, there are pros and cons to just about every state. I don’t like how Florida, New Mexico and Nevada don’t have the Death with Dignity Act that should have been implemented everywhere ages ago. That would be one of the few negatives to leaving Cali. Cali also has more programs than any other state. We couldn’t afford to stay here on $1,600 a month, but then we would get food stamps and free insurance to supplement us. Cali is a very giving state. It’s just harder to get stuff when you’re white and you’re from here. We shamelessly took food stamps in Auburn during the recession and it helped us tremendously. We were only disappointed that we didn’t know we qualified for help sooner. A lot sooner.

There is nothing more important than good health and happiness. Nothing. I would rather be happy and healthy and have just enough to get by than feel like shit with all kinds of extra money. Hell, I’d be dirt poor before I went through what I went through for most of the time we lived in this house!

Now for a surprising update on Tammy. First she tells me she’s reluctant to discuss her health with me because she read in my journal how I wrote that we spoke and once again it was all about her health issues. She’s correct. I did indeed write this not because I was sick of hearing about her health but because that seemed to be 99% of what we talked about. She would rarely ask things about me and I felt like I had to volunteer whatever. I don’t mind discussing the same things over and over for the most part (unless it’s race, politics or religion). It’s when that’s all I hear about that it gets old. Like me bitching about the noise or talking about the rats. I can see where that would get old for some people but what if that was all I talked about?

The question is where the hell did she see this? That’s something I would have kept private.

The surprising part was when she said the house was for sale and they’re moving to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. I was like... WTF? How did she go from Ohio to North Carolina? I thought maybe they had a falling out with Mark’s family but she said Ohio would be hard on him, whatever that meant. I’m thinking it has to do with the climate. I told her I couldn’t imagine her moving to Ohio and that she would regret every single snowflake just like I did in Oregon.

Getting a little worried about my weight. At first it looked like cutting my pills wouldn’t affect it but now I don’t know. Or maybe it would’ve happened even if my numbers were perfect and it’s just part of aging and my shitty genetics, but it’s getting harder to get even just those few pounds off that I’ve always been able to lose.

My weight’s still the same at 155.2 (has been for days now) and I worry either something’s wrong with me or it’s too late to lose weight. I’m afraid I’ve hit the latest highs too many times to get back down. The longer the extra weight hangs on, the more it becomes a part of you. So now getting to 153-154 may be a thing of the past. I’ll eat a little less today and tomorrow we’ll see if 155 really has “become me” or not.