Wow! Got my first sleep score of 90! Been more awake more often too. But once I get back onto nights…

Sheila, my new Holly, cleaned my teeth and did an amazingly wonderful job. I love how my teeth look and feel! It turns out that the stains I had along the bottom teeth weren’t so much from being late on my cleaning but because of the wine I drink. She said red wine is a major stainer. So I guess I’ll be switching to white wine, like Moscato, and only have Merlot once in a while. I ran and brushed my teeth as soon as I had my last one.

She scaled the teeth by hand, polished them, flossed them with this sandpaper-like thing, and then she used their supersonic scaler that was both cold and hot at the same time. She warned me it would be loud but it wasn’t. It made a squeaking sound that sort of reminded me of mice, but that was it. It was the cold and warmth I noticed most. The supersonic vibrations probably create heat that needs to be cooled.

She said everything else looked great and that I didn’t have much tartar buildup and was doing great with the home care. I didn’t even see the dentist. I saw her and Dana working on another patient but other than when I paid Vicky $90 with our credit card, I didn’t see anyone else and I won’t be returning until March.

Just checked my schedule predictor and it actually doesn’t look good for either my dental or ear appointment. :-( Might have to reschedule.

No fucking wonder the planes are so annoying here! For some reason, I thought the airport was between 40 and 50 miles away but then Tom laughed and said, “It’s not that far. We’ve driven to and from there before.”

He pulled up a map to show me and it’s actually 21 miles by car and 14 miles if you draw a straight line from the airport to here. So no wonder they’re obnoxious. Another week and they’ll be really bad again. So from now on, we’ll definitely make sure the airport is at least 50 miles away from wherever we live. It won’t matter if we’re in a flight path if they’re 20K feet above us as opposed to 2K.

I’m so confused as to where to go! There’s a part of me that thinks it would be pointless to bother with rural since the world is so noisy no matter where you go, and why add other sounds you won’t have in a retirement community? But then I don’t want mowers coming up to the window every week like they would in a Florida park and I would still like to get people and their shit far enough away from me that I only need to sleep with just a fan or an air cleaner or maybe Alexa playing some nature sound and that’s it. I don’t want to have to continue blasting white noise via an off-dialed radio station on my old stereo. I’m sorry but right or wrong, no one should have to live like that. Or with the sound of loud power tools nearly every fucking week.

But adult communities simply aren’t what they were 30 years ago and they’re never going to be again. In fact, by the time I’m old, I’m sure the car stereos will have caught up to these places right along with the power tools. If we can just get off the busy street and further from airports, big and small, it’s got to be quieter. As far as the circular saws that are everywhere these days, maybe we can get lucky enough to get a neighbor that uses that shit once a month instead of once a week. Yeah, maybe.

Meanwhile, while we still think we’ll probably start off in a Florida park and then look for land there, we’re going to keep all our options open. If we find the ideal piece of land in the ideal location in some other state, we might take it as long as it doesn’t get too cold or snow there. It would take a hell of a place to get me to go where it snows. It’s hard, though, trying to find a place in a decent climate that’s not too far from a hospital if God forbid we ever needed to go, and that’s at least 70% white.

As a backup for if Florida messes with my asthma, allergies or sleep, we’re looking at Northeastern Texas and the desert areas of California which is the only affordable area that isn’t so expensive in this state.