It’s a chilly 73 degrees in the house right now. I don’t like it under 75.

My lymph nodes have shrunk but they’re still noticeable. At least the one in my neck is. The soreness in the one in my groin has gone way down. I still don’t know whether or not I’m going to go to my doctor before October. I’m starting to think I won’t because bumping it up isn’t going to change things. I don’t think it’s ever going to get to the point where it’s not noticeable at all and I highly doubt I’m in any danger. I think this is just one more annoying and uncomfortable thing I’m going to have to live with on and off for the rest of my life just like my ear.

I’m starting to think that the reason I lost weight and then started putting it back has to do less with age and genetics than I thought and more with my medication. I don’t think I would have ever gone under the 150s, but I think I started going down because it was building up in my system and now it’s resetting because of the days I cut the dose. It takes a while to build back up.

I swore I would never be one of those who struggled hopelessly with her middle-aged weight for the rest of her life, and I won’t. I totally accept it as it is and will only continue to work at not gaining anymore. However, I sure would love to be as titless as the actress in the movie I just watched!

I’ve read 36 books so far this year.

I looked up libel and slander statutes based on state and found it isn’t just one year in the entire country. In most states it is, but some give you as long as three years to file. Even though the termites couldn’t make a case out of the journal excerpts since I don’t provide any sensitive info or anything they can prove detrimental to their lives in any way (plus, that’s already been tried before unsuccessfully when they supposedly went to the pigs in 2009 complaining about what I had to say about them then), I’m still going to take that into consideration if I decide to give them the blog link instead of directly sending them the excerpts. In Florida, it’s two years. It’s just that Messenger won’t hold italics. I still have plenty of time to decide what I’m going to do, though.

After hearing some sawing yesterday, my first thought was, I’ve had enough! I’m not going to listen to this every time it’s under 85 degrees. I’m going over there once and for all.

But then Tom, who assured me he wasn’t defending him and that I could do what I want, reminded me that people not only check the utilities for the last year of a particular place they’re considering buying but often talk to prospective neighbors as well. Well, if they talked to Dahl and he mentioned me complaining about his racket, that may chase off potential buyers that like me, want to live in an adult community and not a fucking woodshop. So, because we have less than a year to go, I’ll just listen to his fucking sawing, then listen to it for a few more months in the tester place before we pick a state and finally get back to country living. We’ll still hear shit there too and I’m sure we’ll happen to get the worst of neighbors, but at least they’ll be hundreds of feet away.

So I visited next door briefly yesterday morning and to be honest, I don’t even know if Bob knew who I was. It’s like he’s a whole different person from the Bob I’ve known him to be these last seven years, and while I certainly hope for the best, it’s hard to believe much of the old Bob is ever coming back. I just can’t picture him riding his bike again or even going for walks.

I knocked on the door and Virginia said she didn’t have anything and that I could come in. I asked if it was safe to remove my mask and she said it was fine. Meanwhile, Bob was standing with a cane in the dining area. He looked at me but didn’t say anything. Instead, he shuffled off down the hall. It’s like the lights were on but I’m not sure if anyone was home. I could see right away that he lost a lot of hair from the radiation, which Virginia says he’s completed. Maybe he shied away out of embarrassment, I don’t know.

Virginia says she’s worn out, understandably, and she was a lot like Dixie in that she was very chatty and sometimes struggled to come up with words and names. She mentioned their grandkids visiting and asked if Tom was working and what our “plans” were. Figured she suspected we were on our way out soon enough and I did tell her that yes, we were looking at leaving next spring. She didn’t seem all that surprised. The Twenties probably mentioned it to people around here and it got back to them. That’s okay, though. I don’t care who knows we’re moving.

I just wish I could jump up to that time and get the show on the road already! I also wish I could magically know where the best place for us to go would be. We may hire a realtor to help us. The most important thing is getting as far away from the street as we can, especially busy ones, and not having other people’s driveways too close to us. It would kind of defeat the purpose to get at the end of a quiet little cul-de-sac just to find that the neighbor, whose driveway is just 10-20 feet away, has a motorcycle.

I think we’re definitely looking at going rural no matter what state we end up in permanently. I’m sick of listening to all these projects and I can’t believe it would be different in another park in another state. I think this is just what adult communities have become…full of projects, loud power tools, and motorcycles. Why bother then? Really don’t see the point of these communities if we’re not going to get much peace in them. I’ve heard circular saws dozens of times just in this place. Yet out of all the millions of other places I’ve lived in, I can’t think of one time I heard that. I heard some hammering but that was it.

Back to Bob and Virginia. I’m not sure what to think but I don’t think this is going to end well. I didn’t want to come off as nosy and get too direct with the questions. But going by what she volunteered, it’s hard to believe the outcome is going to be positive even though she said something to the effect of how things should be taking a turn for the better. That may be what she hopes for and what she wants to believe but I don’t know if that will be the case. I sure hope so! At the risk of sounding horribly selfish, I don’t want to have to deal with new neighbors before we leave even if it wouldn’t be for long. I know they would be outdoors all the time with loud vehicles, loud projects, and probably some barking mutts and annoying company as well.

Here’s the part of my discussion with Virginia that really bothered me. If she weren’t so old at 87 and probably not all there at times, I would be really pissed. She said, “I haven’t been exactly honest with you. I’m going to be getting testing for that COVID thing.”

I asked if she thought she had the virus and she said she has no fever, but she’s been coughing more. She didn’t sound congested to me and never coughed while I visited, but I realize that with all the people coming and going as they have been, it may have been a dumb idea to go over there. Today I woke up with fatigue and a hint of dizziness which could be due to my good ear. The thing is that if she’s got it, he’s going to get it and I would think it would kill him. I sure hope not!

Anyway, tomorrow is dentist day and then NaNoWriMo begins the next day!