Oh my God, I’m feeling so overwhelmed, trapped, and helpless right now! It’s going to thunder every single day for about a month! How the fuck am I going to handle that and the constant sleep disturbances??? He better be right about that mass-loaded vinyl soundproofing material being as effective as he says it is but I know he’s only going by what he’s read. It was developed by NASA to help with rocket sounds. There’s no way I can survive this week after week, month after month. It has to work or we have to go. One or the other. This is too extreme for me to ever get used to.

Why does something want me to suffer like this? Why doesn’t it want me to sleep and why doesn’t it want me to be able to exercise regularly? I just don’t understand why this is happening to me. I’m doing the same damn thing I swear I would never do again…blasting sound machines and wearing earplugs just to still be woken up. How fucked up is that? It’s just that now it’s storms rather than traffic and it’s way worse.

There does seem to be a bit of a pattern to the storms too, so that answers my question of how the hell people can live here. They can survive the storms easily enough when they don’t usually have to sleep through them unlike me, of course, who can’t keep a fucking schedule.

Just when the hell are we going to get our stuff??? That’s what the holdup is. We can’t start without our tools. And what if it does work? Will whatever is up there cursing my sleep then make sure I have nightmares like the one I just had?

Yeah, I took a 2-hour nap until my mother woke me up. She was driving us into a fire. Tom and I were in the back seat. Someone was next to her in front but I don’t know who. It didn’t seem like Dad. He was opening some sort of fancy bag for me when I casually glanced out the back window to see a huge thick column of smoke with a thick black base. I said it was the biggest fire I’d ever seen and was even able to hear someone say “Oh my God” from inside their car. We were on some sort of highway and there were many cars around us. The road then began to curve toward the direction of the fire. I shouted for Mom to cut the AC and close the vents but she wouldn’t listen to me. She just drove on as if I wasn’t even speaking at all. No one else said a word either.

My chicken quarters came out great! I slow-cooked them in the oven at just 350 degrees for 80 mins.

Damn, Andy has the memory issues from hell but at least he’s able to realize and admit that years of smoking pot destroyed his brain cells. He thought Larry died with little Larry in the trucking accident and he thinks the termite still lives in Texas. He makes my memory issues seem like nothing, and believe me, mine are frustrating as hell.

I’m worried about Kim who I haven’t heard from and who says she’s got a lot going on, and Jessie is definitely interested in the soundproofing material. For years she’s been living next to screaming kids and barking dogs. But since it’s getting close to when they’re going to move, they’re going to wait and do it there. I promised I would share our step-by-step progress and pictures along the way.

I asked if she and David were still working. I didn’t bring this up, of course, but I’m guessing she inherited a ton of money from her dad and can afford to retire sooner than planned and get a really nice place somewhere.

Yesterday morning at about 11, I saw a house being hauled in to be placed down the street. It wasn’t that loud. Neither were the trash collectors. They were in and out. No thumps lately either. The problem right now is the thunder.

There’s also that lady that shouts and laughs like a drunk hyena in the evenings but it isn’t too bad. It would be if she was next to us. I mean I’m glad that someone’s that happy and amused but come on. Don’t be rude to those around you while you’re at it, right?

It’s still more peaceful at night in general but there are still numerous planes. Definitely not as many helicopters. So much for thinking we’d escaped the projects, though, as the constant grind of a tractor can be heard in the daytime is a bit annoying. How long is it going to take them to add the houses they want to add?

The sleep I got before I napped included a few weird dreams. We were setting up this really tiny pet we just got in an aquarium. It was so small and almost looked like a tiny frog or something. We were commenting on how scuffed up the walls of the aquarium looked and then I discovered that it was actually a protective covering and peeled it off.

Then in what seemed like another dimension of some kind, Tom and I were discussing a vasectomy he had and I don’t know if he got it before me or with me.

Lastly, Dad was alive again and was about 83 years old.