Making my first slow cooker meal of honey garlic chicken with potatoes and broccoli. Not sure I’ll like it, though, based on the smell of the spices it’s cooking in. It has a bit of a…tangy?…smell to it.

Switched the pigs’ cages and I am allowing Fuzzy to visit with Blitz. As long as he doesn’t run Blitz ragged by being too much of a pest or chew the liner, he’s free to come and go between the two levels.

Heard sawing AGAIN and went out to investigate but no one was in Dahl’s carport. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. It’s EVERYWHERE here. He could’ve sawed something and then gone indoors, though.

Exchanged hellos with Jon. He likes the progress Tom has made with the yard.

Still worried about my teeth, our finances due to COVID-19, and whatever the lump in my neck is that’s sometimes more noticeable than others. Plus, I felt a mass on the side of my left boob. Pretty sure that one is just fibroid-related (those things that fill with fluid before periods), but still. My health really needs to hold up until we get out of here!

I’m also worried that my tooth isn’t going to get a hundred percent better. I think where I’m at now is as good as it gets. This means I’m no longer in excruciating pain, I usually don’t need ibuprofen, but I can’t chew on that side.

I’m so glad I keep a journal! I recently read an article about how our memories change over time. Not only that, but I’m becoming more and more forgetful with age. Everyone should keep a journal! I read back on the details of the county quack that pulled my other molar that got infected in 2011 and forgot a couple of things. That’s that he had to numb me four different times and even had to drill where the root connects. This confirms what my dentist said about antibiotics helping but not completely getting rid of the infection, and I can totally see where numbing agents would be worthless. This makes me even more determined to get knocked out regardless of whether or not I have them pull the tooth or do a root canal. I want to be as oblivious as possible!

The longer this shit with the virus goes on, the more I worry about worst-case scenarios happening. When I think about it, we could now be on a long, slow, tortuous path toward death, even though I doubt it. I sure as hell would at least like to think the end isn’t near, anyway. But then who does unless they’re really suffering? It’s just that when I think about it, there are a number of things that could go wrong. He could have no choice but to work for Amazon and get sick and die. Or, if he couldn’t find work anywhere, we could lose the place. As much as I dislike it here, I would certainly rather be here than on the streets.

Finally, I told myself not to worry about the streets because we’re not going there. It’s that simple. Just like the two times we came close when we first moved here, that’s not happening. I couldn’t survive the streets. I’m just not tough enough. That for sure would be a slow and torturous death for me, so we would definitely end it before it came to that.

A part of me wishes we’d gone straight from Arizona to Florida or maybe sought a more permanent solution toward getting rid of the problem next door (even if it might have been a long battle) and remained in Phoenix. Yes, they favor minorities that aren’t gay or Jewish, and yes, the courts favor minorities over whites, but at least the place would have been paid for ages ago.

Another part of me wonders about those who believe things happen for a reason. Could the medical trauma I went through be in order to prepare me for something even worse? Something like having to take my own life? I mean, I’m going to have to do it sooner or later unless I die before Tom does and I would definitely not be as terrified as I would have been a decade ago, but I would still be plenty terrified enough. Again, who wouldn’t be?

I swear I’m going to slap the next person that talks about free will and how we make our own choices and choose our own path in life and all that bullshit. I can choose what to wear today, I can choose what to eat, I can choose to walk out of this room and cuddle my pets, but I can’t choose the outcome of the situation we’re in. Nobody asked for this virus and to be affected by it be it directly or not.

At this point, I’m a little more worried about us getting extremely ill than I am about running out of money. Despite the fact that just over four million people have had it in a world full of over seven billion people, I would think that would be more likely than anything else. So yeah, I’m worried about whether or not we may get sick, our finances, my teeth, and whatever other health issues I may encounter. I don’t want to have to deal with health issues no matter what and no matter where we are, of course, but I would certainly rather deal with them settled in a cheaper place than here.

I realize that in some ways it might be better to die now than in another 30 years where I would have to endure decades of God only knows what additional shit physically and emotionally, especially physically. But self-preservation is a natural instinct that’s hard to fight. I also continue to worry about what, if anything, may lie beyond. It still makes no sense that there is an afterlife since we need eyes to see, ears to hear, and a brain to think, but maybe it’s like transferring digital information from one hard drive to another. Maybe there’s a way to transfer all those things from our brains in this existence to something else. I just don’t know. Personally, I’m still hoping for no afterlife at all. This life is enough!

Finished proofreading and editing my 1998 journal. Although slowly, I’m moving along steadily, making them as correct and readable as I can, and it’s filling some of my time.