We’re planning to go to the beach at the end of the week. I was considering stopping writing until then but then decided not to. I like to keep my entries even and consistent and not write in big chunks. I’ll work on my story on the road like I did last time.

Tom really likes the VR webcam and says it’s way better than he thought it would be. Even the difference between a $40 air pump and a $60 air pump is amazing, so he says. He pumped up the tires on the bikes because we want to take them out early tomorrow morning. I still prefer riding when there are fewer people and not much traffic. It will be cooler then too.

We both agreed to give up sugar for a while and I’m going to cut way back on carbs. I don’t want to cut them out completely. That would be very hard to do anyway as it would with trying to cut out all cholesterol. I don’t want to give up potatoes and I don’t want to not put creamer in my coffee since I can’t stand black coffee, but I can trade the bananas in for blueberries and stay away from pasta and bread.

I got a Rosemary plant from Walmart. It’s a nice-looking plant. It’s much easier to chop the needles than it was to chop the basil leaves from the basil plant that died.

Thunder only woke me up twice in July, which is way less than I expected. Let’s see how I do with that in August.

Part of receiving Medicare meant that he could get some free gifts. I think it was $80 worth of health-related stuff, so he got some lotion, dental toothsticks, and some other things. The only expensive thing he got was a new thermometer. I guess this one is easier to use and high-tech. It talks to you and tells you what your temperature is.

Kindle Publishing came through after all, and I received $24 in royalties. So that easily covers my Dance Central app.

I received some shocking news from Kim B even though she didn’t go into detail. Like many people, she’s afraid of Facebook and doesn’t want to say too much there. She won’t even leave audios. I offered to have her call me, but I guess she turned in for the night. I told her she could also go back to the old-fashioned way of doing letters if she wanted. I’m always curious as to what’s going on with her and wish she lived in my town. I really miss her!

So she asked how I was and I told her that I was better and that the anxiety had backed off considerably since we slowly ramped up my dose and that my TSH was coming down. How is she doing, I then asked her and she said that there was quite a bit of drama, but things are settling down. I told her I hoped it wasn’t serious and she said that it was, but she guesses that was just life. I asked if it was OK to ask what was going on and she really surprised me. I thought she was going to tell me something bad happened to her health-wise. Instead, it’s that her daughter isn’t talking to her and wants absolutely no contact whatsoever with her. This really blew my mind because Kim has always been so easygoing. Doesn’t swear. Doesn’t get moody. Doesn’t get emotional or dramatic in any way. So what in the world could she possibly have done to piss off her daughter that much? The only thing that comes to mind is that it’s got to involve her husband. Like maybe he did something to her that she didn’t handle the way her daughter would have liked. Kim has always been tolerant and accepting and isn’t pushy in any way, so if it was something like her daughter seeing someone she didn’t like, she may voice her opinion, but she wouldn’t demand she stopped seeing them. Whatever it was that happened, I can’t believe her daughter, who can’t be more than 20 years old or so, would cut her out forever. Hell, I didn’t even cut my own parents out forever and they were abusive. Literally.

OK, now for the bits and pieces of the dreams I remember. It was one of those dreams where one dream kind of morphed into another, even though they were all part of the same dream. I went to the ER to investigate something. I might have wanted to see if someone was working there. I was by myself and I wasn’t sure I wanted Tom to know what I was doing. I feigned stomach pain to get in.

Then Aly was beside me and she didn’t look well. She said she needed water. I called out to the many people in the room for someone to get her some water. Suddenly we were outside and a cop reached into his cruiser for some water. Still not looking well, I asked her what was up, and then she started listing off a bunch of things about me. Her tone of voice suggested they were things that annoyed her and she was trying to make a point. The only thing I remember her mentioning was that I supposedly wanted to run while drunk. My dream self laughed at this one with confusion because Tom had mentioned me saying the same thing. The dream ended before I could find out whether or not she was going to dump me.

Why are all my dreams of her usually negative? Or just these vague weird dreams? Why can’t I have a dream where she happily tells me that there is no afterlife, or that there is, but it’s so wonderful that she’s actually glad she died at 40 instead of 80 and that she can’t wait to meet me there because we didn’t get to meet in real life?

Then there was another dream where I was staying in a hotel room with my mother. It was a long room that had four twin beds along one wall. My mother was sleeping in the third to last bed by the inside wall. I had been sleeping in the one that was the second from the outer wall in which a corridor ran. I thought of moving to the bed by the corridor to be further away from her snoring but I didn’t want to be closer to the corridor either.

Then I was roaming the property between my first childhood home and my grandparents’ house and wondering what it must have been like for them when we were gone to Connecticut for the summers at our beach cottage. Did they feel lonely with us gone? Less safe?

In the last dream, I was getting dressed up to attend a dinner party. I was unusually self-conscious for some reason and I wanted to get my outfit just right. I had dyed my hair bright red in the past and it had grown out so that only the tips of my hair were red and I thought it looked cool.