Yesterday I only needed to take Ibuprofen twice and so far today I haven’t had to take any. I’m now able to brush the infected area as long as I do it carefully but I do still have some sensitivity when I bite down, and quite a bit of fatigue. So my body is still busily fighting the infection.

Since penicillin is a common drug, it was cheap at just $9.21. But even if I go with having it pulled which would be cheaper, it’s still going to be a few hundred dollars in the end that we really can’t afford to spend now, so I’m almost tempted to just get rid of the infection and hope it doesn’t come back. I still don’t eat unless I’m famished or close enough to it, and I limit where I go online since talk of food is as abundant as racism, if not directly then at least in some indirect reference.

We lost both Woody and the fish yesterday. :-( Since Rockefeller prefers his solitude, I’m going to switch him with Blitz and open the door between the two levels so that Fuzzy can visit him every now and then. That way they can each have some company. I’ll have to watch the food, though, with the way rats hoard and hide food. I won’t put the ramps down so that it’s a little trickier for Fuzzy to climb up, especially being older and fatter, so it won’t be too easy for him to steal many of the veggies. I’ll make a point of feeding Blitz mostly when Fuzzy is asleep. Fuzzy has a schedule, Blitz doesn’t. The pigs are sleeping more, though, as they age.

Dixie called yesterday wanting to know if I would be willing to go down and help her sort Diane’s dresser drawers, and since Dixie’s had limited contact with outsiders, I decided it would be okay to go down for an hour or so and I did. We chatted as I helped her sort drawers and she gave me a few things, too. Black sequined flats which are slightly big on me, a pink knit scarf, and a small colorful canvas tote.

Through her, I learned why we haven’t seen Jim. He’s moved to an apartment with assisted living.

So now we can’t even go a month without sawing or one week without the motorcycle in the middle of the night. If I wasn’t so hot and in a hurry to get back home, I would have confronted Dahl on my way back from Dixie’s about the regular sawing going on over there. Yeah, that’s the worrisome part…that he’s not as incapable as I thought. The guy in the blue truck wasn’t here. It was him doing the sawing. This has gotten to be way too much so I definitely plan on finding out what the hell is going on soon enough and seeing if they would be willing to move the saw to the other side of the house if they’re going to pull this shit every goddamn month and more. This isn’t the place for that shit! I didn’t come to an adult community to listen to loud power tools and motorcycles in the middle of the night.

The more shit I hear from people, the more the idea of returning to country living appeals to me. Oh, we’ll still hear shit with the world being so noisy, but at least it won’t be 20-50 feet away. People just can’t shut up no matter where you go. But if we can get a piece of land in Florida, at least when the neighbors are barking, banging, sawing and making the racket they do, it will be hundreds of feet away. I’m sure we’ll still be able to hear some of it inside the house, just not nearly as loud. The two biggest problems in rural areas are barking and engine-gunning. I don’t know why, but they really love to gun their engines out in the country. I’m sure there will be some degree of motorcycles and car stereos as well. But if I could not have to sleep with such loud sound machines, it would really be nice.

Unemployment told him it would be a few days before they made their final decision but I’m not very hopeful there. Between the government’s reluctance to take care of their own and the way they’re overwhelmed with so many requests, I don’t expect him to get anything.

Cam is now in the hospital. Aly said his fever got dangerously high and he was delusional and gasping for breath. She’s getting updates through his family. Today he’s doing better and is more alert. They hope to release him this weekend.

I didn’t have any bad dreams about Cam, but I had a dream Aly’s father died. Only she was living with her parents at the time he died.

Quickly scanned Molly’s tweets and she’s the same old miserable person who’s always fighting with someone where she lives. Plus, harassing a couple of guys online that she used to know. From what “Penny” could gather, she seems to believe she’s still friends with Aly, so they’re either keeping in touch elsewhere or Aly finally dumped her, was too embarrassed to admit I was right about her, and Molly’s too stupid to get that she’s been ghosted. I think the first case is more likely and that Aly “magically” knows that I’m Penny and that’s why she hasn’t created a new account to connect to her from there. For some reason, she’s very private when it comes to her friendship with Molly. She doesn’t want me reading any tweets from any account connected to her, and she doesn’t want to discuss her either.