Yesterday I was up 19 hours and only slept for 5. I ended up taking a 90-minute nap. Not sure it refreshed me, though. That’s another thing I don’t get; I hear so many people say that naps refresh them, but I actually feel groggy afterward. It was still nice. Even the planes have been quieter than expected.

I still can’t find a pattern for them (commercials). Hearing the freeway doesn’t always mean I hear the planes and not hearing it doesn’t always mean I’m not going to hear the planes. The winds aren’t N now but NW instead. They are going to be just N in the morning which is their other prime time so they may be a problem then. It won’t matter if they are, though, because I’m going to be reading myself to sleep around that time.

Carolyn said it was getting too hard for Tricia (or Trisha?) to do things around her place so she’s moving close to where she has friends to help her. Naturally, this gets me worried about our own future for the millionth time. Who helps us when things get tough for us to manage? And then there’s knowing that unless I’m surprised with a stroke or heart attack or God forbid cancer killing me before he dies, I’ll have to kill myself when he dies because I simply won’t be able to go on alone. Even if the loneliness and depression wouldn’t be as off the charts as it no doubt would be, this isn’t the 80s anymore when life was simpler and all I had to manage was the rent and three simple bills… the phone, gas, and electricity. Even then I would fuck up my checkbook because my math is that bad. So there’s no way I could manage as complex as life is today with all its technology and gadgets. I don’t know how to take care of setting up computers and internet-related things and I certainly couldn’t take care of a house by myself. Then there’s the fact that I don’t drive. So with no way to survive and things being way more than I could ever handle on my own, I would have no choice but to go, which brings a whole new set of worries right there… What if I fuck up killing myself? What if I simply don’t have the guts to go through with it? What would I do then? Commit a crime so I could go to jail and at least get some care as half-assed and as shitty as it would be? No way!

I just have to tell myself yet again that the end isn’t here yet and when it does come there’s nothing I can do about it, so just try to enjoy life until then. So far, though, just because I can tell myself something doesn’t mean I can always believe it or at least find comfort in it. He’ll die first and I’ll either take my life right afterward if his death takes us by surprise, or we’ll know his death is imminent and we’ll go together. End of story. Until then I just gotta do my best to not worry and enjoy life while we’re healthy and able-bodied. This is the kind of personal shit I won’t share publicly, of course. People are just too stupid to get most things. I’ve done my time hoping they would catch on, but the truth is they likely never will.

I don’t know that we would be able to afford it but after he retires, I still think it would be nice to travel somewhere every other year or so just for variety. Yes, traveling is a pain in the ass but just like one may get tired of having a room decorated the same way after so long, one sometimes needs an entire change of pace and scenery altogether even if it’s only for a few days.

I thought about it and asked myself could Florida really trigger my asthma as Simone did? I sure hope not, but when I think about it, I don’t think so. I think my usual snot spray would keep the sneezing fits away and I don’t think my asthma would be to the point that I’d need inhalers every day as long as I didn’t spend too much time outdoors when it was really humid. Hopefully, we’ll still get to test Florida out. I want to see what it does to my lungs and my ear, and how often the storms wake me up. We have the desert as a backup, but I can’t see us having as much to do there. The only thing I think we could do more there than in Florida would be bike riding. If we ever have any land around us, which I don’t see, I want to grow lettuce, tomatoes and an avocado tree.

I just want him retired and us having lots of fun, active, productive and happy times together before the end comes, whenever it comes, however it comes! I want to be at the beach and on the ocean and in the warm sunshine!

Right now, I have similar fears that my friend has. One of the many things that makes her such a wonderful person and great friend is that we have enough differences to learn from each other and keep things interesting but enough common ground to really relate and understand each other. Like the fear of brand-new health issues springing up as soon as we get over one. Sadly, though, I’m still not completely over the anxiety. If anything, this year hasn’t been off to a good start and I still worry because of my age.

I’m back to worrying about my meds and labs all over again, even if it’s not to the degree that I once did. Yesterday I felt too wound up to take full doses all the way till March 6th. Fuck the numbers. I’m not going to make myself feel miserable just to get good numbers in the lab any more than I would let myself be hungry to get good numbers on the scale. So I’m only going to take full doses a couple of times a week until the middle of the month. I think what I might have done wrong was the ramp-up. Even though it means having to deal with fatigue in order to be calm, I think I should have kept my dose down until 5 weeks before labs. I noticed that I’m able to go at least 5 straight weeks on full doses if I let my thyroid levels fall enough first. I’m just glad that if I have to have this shit it’s Hashimoto’s and not simply low thyroid because from what Tom told me about a couple of his co-workers, you’re more likely to acquire a goiter and gain weight if you don’t have Hashimoto’s.

Tom still thinks he’ll eventually be able to take full doses every day without issues as my hormones continue to settle into their postmenopausal stage, and I still hope to hell he’s right, and that it’s not just on the medication alone or I possibly acquiring some strange chemical imbalance. If that’s the case, I could struggle with this for the rest of my life. His retiring will definitely make a difference as we both believe. I would definitely be braver to try to stick it out until the 6th if he was home every day and see if it would go away on its own. If I remember correctly when I went back to 75s after the Lio experiment proved to be a bust, I was anxious but then it fizzled out.

It would just suck to always have to choose between anxiety and fatigue. The only reason I’m tired now is that I was up so long and didn’t sleep as long. They say nothing lasts forever. Hell, I can’t even find raw peanuts in the Sacramento area anymore. So, all I can do is hope for the best, even though the things that don’t last are usually the things you wish would last.

Carolyn also said that she thinks Dahl will keep the place because she’s pretty sure he’s still working.

The betta’s filter started having problems, so we’ve decided that since he’s in a 3-gallon tank which is 2 extra gallons than they recommend for one fish his size, we’ll just let him be without a filter. I’ve heard they actually prefer still water anyway. I have test strips to test for the amount of ammonia in his water which I’ll do regularly

Finally found and installed a program that weeds out duplicate photos. Now I just have to find a universal text reader.

Later...

I wish I had the amazing patience and tolerance Aly has for those with mental/emotional issues, but I just don’t. seriously, if she ever gets sick of working with kids, I hope she considers working somewhere in the medical field like doing home care or something because I know she would be great at it. Me? I just want to throttle the Kims and Loris of this world at times.

Anyway, my main complaint today is Facebook. I’ve told her numerous times I don’t do Facebook anymore which is mostly true. I’m hardly active there anymore. Every now and then I’ll change my profile or cover pics and react to something someone posted so they know I’m still alive, but it’s mostly Messenger that I use along with Skype, and I’ve told her this numerous times. I’ve never known anyone before in my life with such memory issues! She makes Andy and I seem like we never really had much in the way of memory issues after all. It is said to be common and those with certain mental illnesses. Anyway, despite insisting I’d rather keep in touch on Skype or Messenger and that I’m not very active on Facebook, what does she do? She goes and sends me a fucking friend request. So, I’m sure that despite all I’ve said, all this time she’s been creating and deleting accounts and systematically blocking me from each one as if I go looking for her and want to be connected to every goddamn account of hers. I don’t care anymore if she’s putting my account at risk, though. It’s only Facebook.

But just because I can occasionally forgive doesn’t mean I forget. Every lie I catch someone in, every time they betrayed my trust, every time they go ballistic on me, that’s a mark that forever remains on my view of you as far as I’m concerned, and you will never again regain the complete and total trust of me. That’s why I’m going to ignore the friend request. We’ve been on good terms for a while now, but I never forgot the times she so viciously and relentlessly stalked and harassed the shit out of me and involved others as well. Knowing she could flip on me should I dare say the wrong thing and piss her off, I’m not going to connect with her on Facebook and give her a chance to post God only knows what on my wall or in response to comments or in messages to friends before I might get a chance to block her. Like I said, total trust can never be regained once you use and abuse it, even though I realize that people don’t always react the same way the second time around. I know I wouldn’t react the same as I have in the past if those who are presently in my life chose not to be, but I still can’t see myself adding her. Why now, anyway? Why would she suddenly want to be added now? She unfriended and blocked me on one of her accounts a couple of years ago. Then I said hello to her on another account that showed up in the ‘people you may know’ section and she replied and then blocked me. So now she wants to reconnect? It makes me suspicious and think she has some kind of ulterior motive. But then those who are crazy or insane don’t always function rationally and sensibly, so I don’t know for sure. I just know I’m going to ignore the request. If she asks me about it, I’ll just tell her I never got a request.

Lori pesters me with tons of back-and-forth messages and sending me shit I have no interest in or like some of the shitloads of videos of her singing and playing the guitar. She’s not the greatest guitarist and her singing is way off-key. I realize that she too isn’t all there. I guess she’s autistic. I tried to avoid those with things like Asperger’s, autism, bipolar and multiple personality disorders because they usually end up being quite a problem in the end and I don’t need any toxic drama in my life when I’ve already had more than enough. These people just get way too emotional, too repetitious, unreliable, contradictory, aren’t usually very bright, and can turn on you in an instant, usually for things they’ve either imagined or misunderstood. Her cousin Cindy has the same thing and when I declined her offer the swap texts, she went ballistic on me.

I hate to sound overly picky and judgmental as I know that I’m far from perfect myself. It’s just that I’ve gotten to be very selective with whom I associate. Just looking out for myself. :-)

Last night turned out to be pretty shitty. I was more anxious than I have been in a while and it eventually turned into depression as my mind took me to dark places. No, I’m not suicidal or anything like that. Just the usual worries about growing old, things that could go wrong, dying, death, wondering if there is an afterlife… That sort of thing. Many who believe in the afterlife seem to think we spend it with our families. But what if that’s the last thing we want? What if we’d rather spend it with our spouse and our friends?

Then I saw a short rat animation and that made me more depressed even though the sad video which depicts rats trying to survive in New York was totally made up. I know it sounds silly. Hell, I’m not usually that impressionable. But yeah, it’s sad.

I felt like I just wanted to cry toward the end of my day which was early in the morning. I only managed to squeeze out a tear or two. It was more that my eyes stung and watered than that I actually cried. I’m just not much of a crier these days.

Why am I struggling with these emotions all over again? I’m 4 months postmenopausal, for fuck’s sake! Tom says he thinks I shouldn’t worry about the lab numbers and that I should just let them show who I am and not worry about upping my dose before labs and lowering my cholesterol intake. Yeah, I think he’s right. I just don’t want my doctor getting on my ass about it, but hey, this isn’t me as a child or on probation or anything like that, right? No one can tell me what to do. Just because she may suggest statins doesn’t mean I have to take them. Sometimes I have to remind myself that while we don’t have much control over our bodies, we do at least have a little control over our lives.

I know I’ve mentioned this before and that it’s gone on for a while now, but sometimes I still feel like there’s some kind of growth at the very base of my neck on my left side where it connects to the chest. That’s a little low for my thyroid, so I wonder if it’s some kind of growth stemming from my thyroid, a swollen lymph node, something else or nothing at all. Whatever it is can’t be serious if I’ve had it for this long. I don’t notice it when my body is in an upright position. Only when I’m lying down and only if my head is turned toward my left side. When I place my hands at the sides of the base of my neck when my body is upright, I don’t feel anything unusual. But I sort of think I can if I lie on my back and put my head back. I’m just not sure. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but if it isn’t, it’s got to be benign.

Tom said he wants me to be aware of the fact that he could very well be laid off because the company isn’t doing well, and they’ve been laying off people like crazy. I haven’t had any dreams suggesting any real trouble or change is ahead, but if he gets laid off, it could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing. At his age and in a country where most businesses favor minorities unless you’re in the Midwest perhaps, I don’t see how his being laid off could lead to anything better. I think it could lead to financial struggles and throw a definite kink in our plans. We may not be trapped here forever but we could probably kiss Hawaii goodbye. There are worse things than being broke, though, as the last half a decade has taught me. I always felt the money wouldn’t last forever. I’m just surprised it’s lasted this long. Worst case scenario he retires early, and this state also is pretty good with supplementing income. They have a lot of different programs, unlike most states. I don’t see him getting a job that pays the same or us getting out of here before he’s 66-67, but then I don’t see him getting laid off either. Really hope he doesn’t since it’s more likely that bad would come of it rather than good. I said that now that I’d beaten the anxiety that something new would go down, but obviously I haven’t beaten it like I thought I did.

Still no pattern with the planes. The first one rocketed overhead at 5:40 yesterday morning as I was about to start unwinding and the winds were heading north. Well, they’ve been northerly all night but all I’ve heard are small planes, helicopters, and the freeway.