Argh, the motorcycle isn’t covered. That likely means it’s going to be used again before Tuesday. I can’t wait for him to go back to Canada! Really hope they don’t stay till May, now that he’s retired. The bitch behind him isn’t a snowbird, and I hear from her more frequently, but she’s not as loud.

The honker and his wife left, and then some older guy came and got the golf cart. I’m guessing it’s to borrow it since it’s way too soon for them to be leaving.

Ray just got rid of the furniture in the lanai and one of the living room rockers. The lanai has me a little concerned as I worry he plans to turn it into a little workshop.

Now the black SUV is visiting him.

I wonder if Little Miss Be Happy on the other side of him will bash me to him if they meet as that grumpy old guy did with the Twenties in Cali but if she does, she does.

Andy should now be on the plane bound for Phoenix. He’s going with his best friend Ken. He’s like me in that he stresses over appointments, even if it’s months in advance. So he’s stressed about getting the code for the Airbnb they’re renting that he was promised and things like that. He said that because he’s so fat, he doesn’t fit comfortably in the seats. So traveling is stressful and a pain in the ass for him, although he is looking forward to visiting Phoenix and the people he knew there. He’ll also be glad to be back in his own bed with his own stuff when his vacation is over in 10 days.

I’m starting to believe that we’ll not only never move, but we’ll never be able to upgrade this place and make it what we want it to be or take vacations or do much of anything, but things could be worse. As long as we feel well and are relatively healthy. I just want to get to 65! But I have almost as long as we lived in Citrus Heights to get there.

Although I feel good these days aside from the appointment stress, I worry about our future. I don’t mean just end-of-life stuff like when we’re actually dying. I mean throughout the years in general. Sooner or later, he’s going to get too old to work and I just wonder how we’re going to get by when we need extra money and both of us are unable to work.

I’ve passed Madrid and heading for the France border. It’ll be a while before I get there. I’m tired today, so I’m not going to do much riding.

As I’ve said before, I’ve been missing Aly and having a good friend who’s smart, mature, caring, sensitive, tolerant, and remembers most of the things I tell them.

Later...

Not much to report as far as yesterday’s meeting with Helen. We basically talked about the different emotions during different times of my life that I’ve experienced and how to go about building those happy neural networks in the body. She wants me to focus on a time when I felt at peace as well as a time when I showed compassion for myself.

“But what is showing compassion for yourself?” I asked her, “Does this mean giving yourself a manicure, a bubble bath, or something else?”

Her answer, which made sense, was that it’s a subjective thing. Everybody has a different definition of self-compassion.

A time I felt happy and at peace is easy. That was when we went to Maui. The self-compassion is a much more generalized thing. I guess it could be a time when I’ve had to remind myself that I didn’t deserve to be abused. But then it could also be relaxing with a good audiobook or a movie. Maybe cooking myself a nice meal or treating myself to the art supplies I’m getting.

As Tom said, what’s 50 more bucks? So I’ve got more things coming related to the oil pastels. I did a forest with a waterfall on a 5x7 canvas. Andy said it’s the best I’ve done so far. I personally don’t think it looks anything like the demo I was following, but I guess it’s okay. The next tutorial I’m gonna try is a moonlit sky with the silhouette of a girl on a swing. They use a graphite pencil for that part.

The problem I had with the forest waterfall was that I didn’t have enough colors, and you can’t mix pastels like you can paints. So in addition to the 24-pack of colors I have, I ordered a 50-pack. I’m also getting a 120-pack of soft-core colored pencils for the finer lines, which is another challenge I had with the forest. Lastly, a pad that’s better for oil pastels as opposed to canvases, and blending stumpers.

I told Irma that an AC/plumbing truck was in front of next door the other day and asked if she thought he’d be needing a new AC. She said the unit is old but works.

The honker and his wife left earlier than I’ve ever known him to take the motorcycle out yesterday at 7:45. They didn’t return until just after 4. It’s the bitch behind them that’s getting on my nerves lately. She’s running and gunning her motorcycle multiple times a week with her little friend who comes to ride with her. They go joyriding through the park and it’s totally annoying. Gone are the days when these places were about neatly dressed little couples with granny-like cars that you seldom saw and heard much from. You just didn’t have these big burly tattooed men on motorcycles. Or ladies for that matter. At least not in these kinds of places.

I had a dream about how to make more money with his betting, told him about it, he did it, and it worked. While that’s great and he’s off to a good start since winning $40 is better than losing a few dollars, it’s not enough. He still says he hopes his future picks are better because he doesn’t want to rely on the “dream people.” Who cares what the source is, though, as long as they’re correct? It’s just that he’s going to have to make about 10K to stay home. He needs to keep betting big, and he’ll either win the money or lose the money that was designated for the horses, and it simply won’t be meant to be. Rarely is life what we plan it to be anyway. If he does return to work, it can’t be until after my appointments die down, which I’m hoping will be in April.

This next week is going to be hell on me. My schedule wants to jump so fast because I’m sleeping so shitty and therefore my body wants to sleep longer to make up for all the sleep disturbances. If I let it have its way, it would be jumping 2 hours a day. At that rate, I would only get a few hours of sleep before my appointment on the 16th. If I can barely function on 7 hours of shitty sleep, I don’t see how I would function on half of that. I’m trying not to let it jump more than 90 minutes a day, but I was so tired when I got up that I had to nap for an hour. Maybe taking hydroxyzine tonight would be a good idea to see if it will help me sleep sounder.