Whoever’s been referring to me as “pretty lady” on Ask never returned after saying I could be right or wrong on guessing they’re Christine, so maybe today they’ll confirm or deny my guess.

But if it is Christine then why hasn’t she replied to the last email I sent her? There hasn’t even been much activity on her Facebook account. It doesn’t seem like anything Maliheh or Nane would do, so I guess that leaves Eileen, though my first guess is still Christine.

The net was down earlier, but now that it’s back up, hopefully it will stay up. Plenty of warmth and sunshine is in store for us this week, and let me guess…plenty of noise from Jesse too, right?

Had to give Tom the new keyboard and take my old one back because it wouldn’t allow my screen saver or blackout corners to kick in. It may be a pain to have to unplug and replug this one at times, but at least it works.

The internet is still going in and out, so I can’t post any of my journal entry yet. I have a bad feeling it’s going to be a regular problem once again. I’m just amazed we went so long before they started fucking with us again. It will be so nice to be not only back with cable but with more than one internet provider to choose from. That’s probably why this one is so fucked up; because they know we can’t dump them for someone else unless we move. I’ll try to post them as soon as they’ll stay connected long enough to let me.

Last night I had ok dreams and even a funny one, but the two nights before last I had anything but fun dreams. The kind I wake up from hoping isn’t a sign of bad things to come. Tom thinks it was just because I was on my period and that changes in hormones can cause such things. After all, certain medications and foods can cause nightmares. It does seem that that’s when I get stuck in jails, motels, and poverty, and now I’m tripping over skeletons. Yeah, that was the creepiest dream. I was alone with a body bag with my dad’s skeleton in it even though he was cremated in real life. I wanted to get out of the room, but in order to do so I had to climb over the body bag. In doing so I tripped over part of the bag and then I could see his foot sticking out. The bones of his foot didn’t look right, though my dream self seemed to think they did.

In another bad dream, I was showering in jail. I was the only one in the shower room at the time and had just soaped up my legs so I could shave. In jail, you press a button to turn the spray on and it automatically shuts off in 5 minutes. Well, when I went to press the button after it turned off it wouldn’t come back on again. So I had to dry off with soapy legs.

In the last bad one I remember, I said something to Tom like, “So we’re not going to be able to buy groceries till the 13th, right?” The 13th was only 4-5 days away in the dream, but negative money dreams always depress me cuz I know we’re gonna be poor again sooner or later. I figure if it can happen as many times as it has, it can happen again. Age and hard work don’t always seem to matter or protect one from tough times.

In one of last night’s dreams, I dreamt it was nighttime and I woke up to pee. I felt nervous as hell because I remembered that we could’ve sworn we saw a huge spider earlier in the day.

Then there was this dream where we were in a small one-bedroom house. It was square-shaped and simple; bedroom and kitchen to the left, living room to the right. Tom was reading the paper in a recliner. I looked out the window behind him and could see houses closely set. In the one next to us, 3 or 4 adults (one carrying a screaming toddler) were hanging out by a large pickup. I could hear the crying all the way into the kitchen on the other side of the house. So that much I didn’t like, but we must’ve been planning to travel somewhere because I was talking about making sure to leave the rat enough food to last a week.

The funniest dream was that some reality show secretly arranged for me to meet all my cyber friends. I don’t know what the show was about or why I was going to be on it, but as I was making my way toward the stage I saw a woman who looked remarkably like Christine. The show’s hairstylist was fussing with her hair. Then I was on stage being interviewed by the host. I don’t know what was being said, though. Suddenly a light was shone upon the audience which had since been nothing but a sea of black as the lights were shining only upon the stage before. That’s when I began to recognize my cyber friends sitting in the front row, though I don’t remember everyone I saw other than Christine. Maybe Mitch and Adonis were next to her, but I woke up before my eyes finished scanning the entire row.

Now that we’re back to having to play net games that’ll probably go on for quite a while, if not the rest of our time here, I won’t be online as much. IDK, maybe it’s a sign I should get back into my writing.

Later...

Ok, it’s official. I am officially bored out of my fucking mind. Yet it’s not like there isn’t anything to do. I just don’t feel like doing anything. I can’t bring myself to work on any unfinished stories and I can’t seem to interest myself in the idea of starting a new one.

I cleaned the kitchen, worked out, played around on Ask, and studied languages a bit, but that’s about it. Other than thinking ahead to the move and wondering where we’ll end up and what it will be like there, I’m not sure which pisses me off more, my vision or my weight.

I first started noticing signs of farsightedness in my mid-30s. By 40 I was in my first pair of reading glasses but I only needed them for reading books. By 43 I needed them for working on the computer as well but could still see off in the distance. Now at 46, I can’t see shit and am badly in need of bifocals. At 46! Who the hell needs bifocals at 46? I really thought that was more like a 50s or 60s thing, but I’m so blind. Going to stores is hard. With or without glasses I can’t see past a few feet away from me. People’s faces are so blurry I can barely make out if they’re frowning or smiling. Even with my glasses on I still have to get relatively close to things not only to read them but just to be able to tell what the hell it is. It’s gotten so bad that even distinguishing certain objects is difficult. For the most part, I can’t see anything unless I have my glasses on and get up close to things. But my friend Andy is 4 years older yet has single-vision lenses, so why is it that I’m in need of bifocals this young??? I know I’ll never get progressive lenses again. They’re too “dizzying.” They give the appearance that things are moving and you have to tilt your head and focus your eyes on just the right spot in order to read something on a large monitor such as my computer screen, for example. They suck shit.

As for my weight, that too has changed. It used to be that I struggled to lose weight. Now I’m struggling to keep from gaining it. Yeah, I get a little carried away on weekends, and no, one doesn’t have to literally eat like a pig to gain weight at this age, but I do take it easy most days. So should trying to keep it off be this hard? I realize some of it could be muscle weight since my clothes aren’t that much tighter, but it still makes me wonder. I feel like I’m more bloated than ever right now. This has been going on for a while now and my stomach is usually pretty flat what with all the crunches I do. I wish I could muster up the willpower to cut calories even more but that’s been easier said than done and I’m not sure why. Maybe it really is that hard putting up with the constant hunger and fatigue and that’s why most people are heavy, especially older people, or maybe I just don’t care enough. If I did, wouldn’t that help me eat even less? I wish I were as obsessed as I was in my teens and 20s, thanks to my mother taunting me about my weight and overall appearance as she would because faster metabolism or not, I sure had an easier time losing it and keeping it off back then. But insults just don’t hurt a 46-year-old like they can a 16-year-old and even a 26-year-old. We tend to care less what others think as we age and where I would feel hurt over someone putting down my appearance when I was young, now I have that I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude and would tell someone not to look if they didn’t like what they saw.

While I may be blind as a bat and look 4 months pregnant, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me. I’m not in any pain or having any other obvious problems, so I guess this, along with the thinner, drier skin, gray hair, barely existent sex drive, and other things, are just part of aging. Ah, such a fascinating and horrifying experience all in one!