Enjoying a break from the planes this morning but traffic and landscaping will start up in a couple of hours. It’s getting my peace until 8 a.m. that’s nice instead of only until 5:45 a.m. I got up before midnight and even the small planes and helicopters were quiet throughout the night.

I’ve come to hate Rockefeller as much as I love him, LOL. Seriously, I hate it when those who don’t get along put others out because of it. Sort of like how other countries have to pick up the pieces because countries like Syria can’t grow up and get along. Well, Rockefeller not getting along with Blitz definitely puts me out and makes things a little harder on me. Changing their liner definitely isn’t as easy because I only have so much room to move the fence to and the middle divider I added gets in the way.

But I realized that if I just lower the dishwasher door, they can hide under that when I’m changing them. Lately, they haven’t had anything to hide under and that’s also part of why they’ve been getting in the way, peeing off the towel I put down, and just being a real pain in the ass. I’ll try that when I change them tomorrow and see how it works out since I shoo them over to that side of the kitchen when changing them.

Rockefeller may prefer his solitude, but he’s just going to have to deal with being with Blitz in the cage we got for them when we’re on vacation next year. I could leave them in the kitchen in the pigpen but I’d rather not because the last thing I want to do after being on a plane for several hours and awake for God knows how many more is to come home to have to change them right away. With traditional bedding in their cage, it won’t be nearly as filthy after 4-5 days as the liner would be. I’ll make sure I lay down a fresh liner before we leave so all I have to do is transfer them back. I could separate them and put Blitz under the rats but then Blitz would be depressed, and 4 days on a fleece liner, even if it’s just one pig, is going to call for quite a mess. I’d rather them both be on paper bedding, and I’d rather Rockefeller feel like his space is being invaded than for Blitz to be lonely.

Tom and I agree that in order to save money, we’d be willing to fly coach even if first-class is so much better. With my short legs, I’m not hurting for legroom, though, and if God forbid we get stuck next to a screaming brat with parents who don’t give a shit, at least it would only be for a few hours.

Since I couldn’t use speech-to-text on the plane and probably won’t take my laptop, I’ll take an old paper journal and then just speech-to-text it into my Windows PC when I get home. I’ll be taking my phone for pictures and whenever I have the opportunity to take notes and check in with friends. Even if I don’t have time to interact with them as I usually do, it would still be nice to let them know we’re alive and well. I can’t fucking wait! 2021 is too far away. :-(

In other pet news, I didn’t latch one of the lower doors properly to the rats’ cage. Then when I walked up to it later, I found it wide open. Fortunately, Woody stayed put, but of course Fuzzy escaped. Where did I find him? You guessed it; in the pigpen scavenging for whatever he could find, LOL.

The weather has been showing signs of the gradual warm-up that begins at this time of year with temperatures slowly reaching toward the 60s and actually getting into the 60s by the end of the month.

We had a nice weekend. We went to Sam’s on Saturday which was probably our quickest and quietest run ever. We didn’t get as much stuff and those annoying forklifts weren’t running around beeping really loud. They did have music playing for the first time that I remember, and of course, so did Denny’s and Walmart. Denny’s was a little annoying, but Walmart was worse, especially when you were right under one of their fucking speakers. I just don’t get why so many stores and restaurants in this state feel the need to entertain us while we eat or shop.

I got steak and eggs at Denny’s, and the steak wasn’t quite as good as I hoped and a bit tough. The eggs, steak fries and English muffin were delicious, though. He and I want to try one of those plant-based burgers that many places have these days and that people swear tastes exactly like real meat.

Soon I’m going to make a salad. That Greek yogurt dressing has really grown on me. I want to try Green Goddess avocado dressing sometime, too. I picked up a few apples since we have this wonderful peeler. The rodents really love the skin and I take a few bites of the meaty part. I hate the skin of apples because it’s too much like biting into cellophane.

After Denny’s, we went to Walmart to get some groceries. We would have normally gone to Target, but I wanted new bath gloves and I picked up some more brushes for my painting. Whenever we want more than just food, Walmart is the better place to get it if we don’t get it on Amazon.

When Rite Aid opened, we went to get treats and Merlot for me to have during the week. Ramping up my dose for the March 6th blood draw has me a bit nervous. This way, if I really start feeling wound up, the alcohol may calm me down. Plus, I got slices of turkey, so I’m armed with both alcohol and tryptophan.

I was borderline anxious on the 16th, anxious on the 17th, and I was borderline earlier today but I’m feeling better now. Thanks, Barefoot!

I started throwing copies of my journal in the ‘notes’ section of Facebook, and it’s kind of cool how they now list the reading time. So far, my entries for this year range from taking 1-9 minutes to read.

When I was working on the rewrite and editing of my book, I realized I no longer had to guesstimate property distances. Thanks to Google Maps, I can now measure the actual distance of our old property in Phoenix so I could be a little more accurate in my current story where “Riana” lives in a guesthouse in the backyard of a property with a similar layout. It was much deeper than it was wider. Tom guessed it to be 150 ft from the front of the property to the very back. It was actually 133 ft. I thought the property was about 50 ft wide. Close, but not quite. It was actually 55 ft wide. The house itself was 36 ft wide. That house was square whereas this house is rectangular. It wasn’t quite as big. It was closer to 1200 square feet whereas this house is closer to 1400 square feet.

My measurements in my book weren’t too far off but now they’re a little more accurate. The backyard we had there seemed puny compared to the yard of my childhood home, but it actually wasn’t that tiny at 55 x 40. The yard in my book is a little bigger, though.

The more I use it, the more I really like Goodreads. Discovering I was being bashed and trashed there turned out to be a good thing in the end because it not only brought positive reviews to my books later on, but it really is a great way of keeping track of what I’ve read. I love how I could add all my Amazon book purchases. So I will be adding hundreds of books over the next few days to my ‘read’ and ‘want to read’ lists. This way, from now on, if a book looks interesting to me, I can always check and see if I’ve already read it or not.

Still enjoying my new electric razor which Rite Aid sells for twice as much as what I paid for mine on Amazon. I wouldn’t have liked it when I was young, though, because it doesn’t quite shave as close as a regular razor. As we age, our hair not only thins out, but the hairs also get thinner, so any stubble is less noticeable. Plus, our legs don’t look as smooth so any stubble kind of blends in with the blemishes. So it’s good for older people.

I saw markings in the road about a week or two ago that I forgot to mention down by the office. So they’re going to be working in the road again if they haven’t already, not surprisingly. I knew they couldn’t go that long. They can’t stay out of the roads for more than a year here. Why they bothered to seal-coat them is beyond me since it’s only a matter of time before they tear up the entire park yet again.

Something was recently done in the road outside the front gate since there is a section of newly paved road, but that’s way too far away to hear anything at our place.

I had dreams about being in Florida, but they didn’t make any sense. Maliheh was working out with someone in one dream, and then I was outdoors at night when a deep fog suddenly lifted and I could see this enormous lighthouse a few hundred feet away.

Enjoy this entry that Facebook says should take you 8 minutes to read.