First I had to clear my head, get some fresh air, and go for a bike ride. Then I listened to some music. Now I think I’m ready to write. 

Tom and I talked it over some more and oh, the anxiety and frustration with this doctor/medication shit! There are so many different things I could do and they all seem both ok and not ok. I could just stick with my current doctors, one of whom I like a lot and who is attractive as hell. The only problem is that my endo doc isn’t very helpful, her staff is a bunch of idiots, she’s overbooked, and Sutter as a whole sucks shit. 

I thought of asking my PCP if she could refer me to another endo, but have put that idea on hold for now. The only problem is that if I get an endo not connected to Sutter, I have to first get a new PCP not connected to Sutter cuz I can’t go to a new endo without a referral from the PCP connected to the same medical group. 

This new group we might go with is Mercy. Four coworkers of Tom say they like them, one likes Sutter, and another went to Sutter and refuses to ever see another doctor ever again. So I think it’s safe to say they thought they were pretty awful. 

I would prefer an American female doctor, but she is the most sought-after doctor in the US and she is the most overbooked. Most females of any color/nationality are preferred when it comes to the health field, so they’re always going to be harder to see. Still, when it comes to Americans vs. foreigners, Americans want to see Americans and I don’t blame them. What is it with all these fucking foreigners becoming doctors here anyway? I asked Tom and as he reminded me, a nobody doctor can make more here than a popular doctor in another country. 

I was amazed that he could get me in to see Dr. F in just two weeks, but I’m not at all thrilled at the idea of seeing a Muzzie either. These people hate Americans! So it’s gotta be all about the money for him. On top of that, I’m not used to Arabic and Indian accents and I don’t want to have trouble understanding the guy. Hispanic, German, even Asian or American Indian would be fine, but I not only can’t stand Middle Easterners, but I also have a hard time understanding them. 

Even so, I’m usually willing to try most things once. Just because most Muslims are bad news doesn’t mean they all are. Just because most blacks are running around crying false claims of racism and are loud, rude, vicious, vindictive assholes who don’t care who they hurt, doesn’t mean they’re all like this. Most doesn’t mean all. So maybe he doesn’t hate Americans and maybe he’d do a better job of helping me than Doc Sexy. Damn, I’d miss her, though! I don’t know why and I know it may seem silly as hell but I’m going to be sad to let her go even though she hasn’t even been my doc for a whole year. There was just something about her. I never had a doctor so young, so pretty, and so damn nice, though Tom didn’t think she was that nice. I guess her tone of voice on some things came off as less than kind to him, but when I see her alone she’s very kind and compassionate. But there are other things I don’t agree with that she’s done or hasn’t done, and again, she’s with Sutter and Sutter’s fucked up. 

Dr. F, an internal medicine doctor, has a 4-star rating while his staff has 2 stars. 

All 3 of my sister’s doctors are American and 2 of Andy's are foreigners. I asked if Andy would see a Middle Easterner and he said he’d go to whomever he was recommended to see and then tell his insurance company if he didn’t like them. 

Tom thinks he should make more calls and keep calling around till I at least get a female doctor, and while I told him he could do that if he wants to, I think he’s going to find the same thing… the women are overbooked, and males will see you right away. For non-emergencies, that is. 

As Tom pointed out, though, what’s the urgency? Not that we’re ready to give up on doctors altogether, he read up on what could happen if I opted to go to no doctors at all and found that I’d most likely be many years away from anything life-threatening IF I got there in the first place, and it probably wouldn’t be the thyroid itself to kill me, but a heart attack or a stroke because Hashimotos drives your cholesterol up. That’s why I’m making a point to avoid cholesterol. I have no idea if this will help the numbers in my favor, but we’ll eventually find out. Even though I don’t cook, I’m staying away from processed and fried foods as well as red meats and eggs. What frozen foods I do eat are cooked the same way they’d be cooked fresh, only they’re thrown in a box and frozen. 

The most surprising thing we learned was that Hashimoto’s can sometimes go away on its own. Also, my highest TSH level was 32 which is actually considered subclinical. There are some people over 100 that say they feel fine. Again, I went to the doctor not because I felt bad but because I wanted to know why my body wouldn’t respond to diet and exercise. I later learned that the symptoms I do have were symptoms I’d simply written off as aging. Hey, we do lose a degree of our memories, libidos and some hair as we age. And our skin dries out, too. Some of the symptoms were ridiculous, though… puffy face, hands and feet. Well, if you’re fat of course you’re going to have a puffy face and of course your hands and feet are going to be swollen. Water retention at the wrong time of the month is a symptom I also have, but those late and light periods I thought was a symptom…? Well, according to what he read, they should be heavy, not light. 

He said if anything, he has more symptoms than I do – very dry skin, brittle nails, a pulse under 60 upon waking up, etc. His point is that if he does have Hashimoto’s, he’s had it for decades and yet he’s fine. Neither of us has fatigue. He did for a while but found that Co-Q 10 supplements help him, and I only get fatigued before periods. 

The problem is that everything seems so scary right now. I’m afraid not to treat it, but I’m afraid to take pills and risk insane side effects, too. That is if I can ever even get up the nerve to take them again in the first place. We’re going to try the selenium next as part of busting through this phobia last summer’s nightmare put on me. Words CANNOT express just how terrifying it was on me both physically and emotionally. To be sitting there one minute and then to feel your heart suddenly go booming to hell the next is utterly terrifying. So were all the other symptoms. The weight I lost was more due to being too sick to eat and cuz I was always on the toilet, more so than the meds themselves. 

I knew years ago that I would never lose weight. At least not the healthy way, since I either have to be sick or on damn near-lethal doses to lose on and it’s not worth it at all. Better to accept myself the way I was meant to be. Trying to get thin would be as foolish as me trying to get tall. But I DO have to work most days at staying within the same 5-pound range cuz entering the obesity range is NOT ok for me. I refuse. I will NOT go there! Uh-uh! No way. So I will count calories and ride that bike most days of the week if that’s what it takes to keep on being able to polish my toenails, wipe my ass, and put shoes on easily enough. I can’t bend over as far as I did at 100 pounds, of course, but I am determined to keep picking objects up off the floor with ease. 

What’s got me a little worried right now, more so than Hashimoto’s itself and what medication I may end up on and how it’ll affect me, is all the anxiety I’ve been having lately. Even though I still have almost half of the lorazepams she gave me months ago, I wonder if I’m becoming dependent on them because the thought of not having them around worries me. I don’t want to go down the road of addiction ever again. And just what is causing all this anxiety anyway? I don’t have it every minute of every day, but I shouldn’t have this much for one who has a wonderful husband, a beautiful house, and more money than she needs. I don’t have as much as I want, but I have more than I need. I’m hoping it will ease up once this doctor/med situation is finally worked out. Sometimes I wonder, though, if Hot Doc could’ve been right and maybe I do need a shrink for a while, but if I need more lorazepams I can always get them from whoever my PCP ends up to be at the time. Lorazepam, Xanax, Ativan… they all seem pretty common. 

Still, those anxiety attacks keep coming. They’re getting less and less frequent but last night I bit into a Tic Tac that tasted funny. Sure enough, my mind goes to nasty places like the possibility of it being tampered with and I break out in a sweat and my heart goes thumping madly. This went on intermittently for about half an hour. 

Later… 

Nothing woke me up so far this week, but how much do you want to bet that if I asked Bob if he were making a racket this week, he’d say no. How much do you want to bet that our lovely God is just waiting until I’m back on days for him to get the urge to saw and hammer so I have to listen to his shit? 

And how much do you want to bet that God made sure to have circumstances arise to pull me away from my sexy PCP, knowing full well she’ll never get my future friend request or accept it if she does? I swear it’s like He wants to make sure everyone I’m hot for isn’t in my life for long unless it’s someone I never met like Nane. I totally see a definite pattern there. 

I’d like to think in the mode of and take on the attitude of, “I’m going to get what I want and if I want a friendship with her, a friendship I shall have no matter what any God thinks/wants,” but I’m not stupid. I can pray for her, I can not pray for her, but in the end, I know what’s meant to be and what’s not. She’s not meant to be, like it or not. But does that mean I shouldn’t at least send the friend invite when the time is right? It can’t hurt and all it takes is one click, so I can at least do that much even if I can never change fate and what’s a definite and obvious pattern in my life over the years. 

Tom called around today but couldn’t find any female American doctors or even just female doctors who could see me this century. I’m not surprised. So unless something else comes up, I’m on for seeing the foreign male internal med doc on the 13th who will hopefully refer me to a much more helpful endo than my old one. 

There are two other options we discussed. One is to stay with the same medical group but see if I could get both a new PCP and endo closer to home. Another is to message my current PCP, tell her about the runaround Dr. D gave us, and then ask if she could refer me to a different endo. Certainly, they’ve got more than one. 

I don’t want too many appointments too close to when Andy visits cuz I need to focus on aiming my schedule at that. Appointments can be rescheduled, Andy can’t. 

Meanwhile, since Tom highly suspects his own thyroid may be even worse than mine, we ordered these mineral supplements for him to try. 

Where thyroid meds do what your thyroid is supposed to do, this stuff makes your thyroid do what it's supposed to do, from our research, by giving the body the proper minerals it needs for a healthy thyroid. One reason we think my thyroid may've gone bad is that I don't like salt. Well, iodine is in salt and that's one thing the thyroid is dependent upon to function properly. 

Tammy said she wouldn’t take it and that I absolutely need the right dose of medication. Oh, I still intend to get that taken care of. I just don’t know how long it will take. I’m not sure, though, if I’m going to try this or the selenium while I’m waiting to see an endo. While most reviews were good, a few mentioned side effects similar to what I went through on the levothyroxine - heart palpitations, anxiety, sleeplessness, headaches and nausea… 

Along with ordering this, we got some stuff for the car, flags and poles for the brackets on the front and back of the house, and a knit beanie for when I’m biking in cooler weather. 

The AC didn’t run for a few days, but since the heat is to be rolling back in, it will be on again in the afternoons. 

LOL, found Maryann on Facebook and wrote: Did you know that your drunken brother drove me crazy by letting his damn dogs bark for hours at a time when he'd be out somewhere? If it weren't for us being stuck on unemployment so long we'd NEVER have stayed there 5 years. It was just horrible. I couldn't even mourn the deaths of my parents in peace. He had the nerve to tell us to just "yell" at them. First of all, that only shut them up for 10 minutes at best, secondly, HIS dogs were HIS responsibility, not ours! If it wasn't the mutts it was the damn motorcycle or some project he was working on. I can't believe just ONE person can generate so much noise!

I have unfriended some dead accounts on Facebook that don't seem to be used, or those I never hear from, as well as those with multiple accounts. I hope I haven't offended anyone in doing so, but I try to keep my friends there limited to those I keep in touch with at least a few times a year. Deciding who sees what is so much easier if I don't have tons of people on my friend list. 

I had a dream that Mary G came bursting into a two-story house I was in with this old lady to tell me that while she may not like me, my life was in danger and I needed to hide and be real quiet because she didn’t want to see me hurt. 

Then she ran out of the house and the woman and I locked all the doors and closed the blinds on the windows. I don’t know who the people were that were after me, but we kept still and quiet while they came knocking on the doors. 

Then we were living on a huge piece of land somewhere in the next dream with sprawling fields of grass. I was riding my bike past an older person sitting on a lawn chair and thinking about how Jesse lived next to us and what I’d tell my friend Jessie in my next message to her. 

As always, the details of my health and the doctors involved will only be shared with those I’m closest to in case anyone involved stumbles upon my blog. I will say this much… good news: I have an appointment in just two weeks. Bad news: It’s a foreigner. That is unless we decide to try to get someone else, even if they may not be able to see me till the spring.

I dreamed that I stayed with Andy at his place. In reality, he has a very nice and stylish condo. In the dream, it was kind of dumpy. Where he really has a nice washer and dryer - nicer than ours - he had a huge old ancient washer in the dream. Even worse was that I had to climb this really long ladder and pull these ropes across a hollowed-out attic area in order to hang-dry clothes. 

When I went to use his dishwasher I was in for another surprise. There were no baskets or racks of any kind in it. Just a flat floor with a spinner at the top for the water to shoot out of. There were little drain holes at the sides of the floor. 

"Where am I supposed to put the dishes?" I asked him. He told me to just place them in wherever. I placed the plates facing upward but laid the glasses on their sides so water could get inside them. 

Then half a dozen guests arrived, mostly guys, and I wasn't in the mood to socialize, as I wanted to tend to my blog. They seemed young, dumb, naive and potential trouble anyway. So I climbed the stairs to my room hoping Andy wouldn't be pissed. They were, after all, his friends and not mine. 

Later… 

Last night I started off calm, then as crazy as I know this may sound, I felt anxiety in my throat. You know how we can feel physical waves of anxiety in our chest or our head or elsewhere? Well, it felt like a wave of it swept up into my throat, which still has that slight feeling of there being a lump in it, then it almost felt like it moved up into my mouth, toward the sides of my tongue. I don’t see how it could be from the thyroid itself nor did I ever have this sensation before the levothyroxine nightmare. So I’m guessing it’s just leftover anxiety from that trauma, as well as future worries pertaining to doctors/meds. I took a chill pill, which helped relax me. 

Sometimes I’m still torn between going on something regularly at least for a while, and other times I agree with Tom when he said I’ve coped for over 20 years without pills. Meanwhile, it’s nice to know they’re there if I need them. 

Still successfully taking those necessary baby steps toward getting over my phobia. This is the second day I downed a vitamin D without freaking out. The next bigger step will be the selenium. I’m still at the point where if I was suddenly given a prescription drug (unless I was in a hospital full of doctors and nurses when it was administered) I’d be scared shitless. 

I doubt I’ll ever see her again, but we agreed that if I ever do see Doc Hottie again, I’d face her alone. For some reason, she’s much friendlier, open and relaxed if it’s just me instead of the both of us. Might have to lie and say I at least saw a shrink once just to keep her happy. I’d hate to lie to her, but if I tell her, “Look, I’m not crazy. It was the levothyroxine causing 95% of my anxiety, not me. I need a new medication or a lower dosage, not a shrink!” she’s not going to be too happy with me. I know she doesn’t literally think I’m “crazy,” but let her if she ever does. What she thinks doesn’t matter so much as what she does. Because of this, she is better off not knowing I haven’t seen a shrink. But maybe I will. We haven’t ruled that out completely at this time. The shrink isn’t affiliated with Sutter so she couldn’t prove or disprove if I actually saw one or not. 

This week the hunt will begin and the phone calls are on in search of a new endo who will hopefully care about what’s best for ME and not a bunch of numbers. Numbers don’t mean shit when your heart’s racing like a motherfucker, you’re constantly on the toilet with the runs, and you feel intense dread when life is otherwise great. 

I definitely don’t want to see Dr. D, but have mixed emotions about Dr. C. Yes, she’s a hottie, and she’s super nice (when I’m alone), but if she’s going to refer me to shrinks whenever I have a bad reaction to a medication, then I can’t be dealing with her. I just can’t. I gotta see beyond those 5 feet, 10 inches of slimness, perfect teeth, and sexy lips, and right into what’s best for me. I’d rather a 300-pound black or Muslim that knows what’s right for me than some hottie making all the wrong moves.

Really sucks to know that Molly’s going to be harder to block when she sticks her nose in my blog. Marbridge re-did their computers, as she told Aly, and now instead of having the same IP#, she always has a new one each time she visits. 

Later… 

Tom went for a bike ride with me and then he kicked my ass in lawn darts on the Wii. He is definitely much better at that than I am. 

So glad I’m on nights now. I don’t want to have to be awake to listen to Bob’s shit (his racket better NOT override the sound machine!) and this way I don’t feel as alone so much of the time. The OT is likely to go on for the rest of the year. 

We discussed our options for replacing the broken radio in the Caddy. We could get a new one, or get one at a junkyard, or just take the one we bought a little over a year ago from the Ford. We decided to take the Ford’s. It’s a nice stereo and I love its waves of color. That’s the main reason I chose it. Frau Regenbogen loves her rainbows. 

In February when our 21-year-old Ford needs to be relicensed we’ll sell it to a junkyard. It was a great car for the last 7 years even though it had a few problems, one of them being a broken AC. Then, assuming there are no major malfunctions that require us to tap into our line of credit, the Caddy will be ours for the next 8-10 years or so. 

AGAIN we forgot to do my phone! Argh. Gonna have to get to it soon and set up VM cuz my MJ phone dies on the 15th. People may be able to leave messages on it for a while afterward, though. 

If we do move when Tom retires, whatever our car is at the time should be enough to move in cuz I’ll be willing to sell or donate almost everything by then since it will be getting old anyway. I like shiny new stuff. :) We’ll just take our clothes, electronics, some kitchen/bath stuff, and a few of the dolls. I will admit that even though I love it here (minus the landscapers, saws and hammers) the thought of this being it forever with never any new change/variety in the future doesn’t sit well with me. Sit back and enjoy the ride till you retire, I told Tom… we’re going tropical in the end. :) 

I finished my story last night and will take the following month to edit it before November’s NaNoWriMo.

Forgot to mention a couple of days ago that after more than a week – yes, that’s how prompt and courteous Cali docs are – the shrink finally returned Tom’s phone call. He told them, “Thanks but no thanks. My wife isn’t crazy. She just needs the right dosage of thyroid medication.” 

Except for the occasional feeling of a lump in my throat I’m 100% back to my old self and we’re 100% sure the levothyroxine was what fucked me up so bad both physically and emotionally. 

Today it was back on the vitamin D. I was slightly nervous, but not too bad. 

Kinda missed posting on my-diary, so I’m bringing it up to date. Already the trolls with bogus email addies are out and about, this last one in German. What was cool was that I understood every word without looking it up, even though it made no sense. Meaning that it would make no sense even if it was in English. Ich bin dein Soldat? I’m their soldier? Really? And I will always have their love and heart as they wait for me? 

LOL, doesn’t sound like any kind of a joke Nane, who’s now vacationing in Turkey, would play on me. Probably just some bored American with a handy translator. 

Grape Tic Tacs don’t taste like grapes at all. I’m not really sure what they taste like, but I’m definitely done with Tic Tacs for a while since the store we usually shop at stopped selling my Strawberry Fields. 

Went to KFC, which the rats and I enjoyed and that’s pretty much it for today. 

Later… 

Ok, I know this sounds crazy but I felt anxious in the throat. You know how sometimes you feel anxiety in a physical sense and not just in an emotional sense and it can be in your chest or other parts of your body? Well, I felt anxiety in my throat, that lump was still there, so I chilled pilled. Also, my pulse was over 100. IDK, sometimes I think Tom’s right in that I’ve coped this long without head pills, but other times I wonder if I should be on something regularly at least until I get the doctor/meds thing worked out so long as it isn’t anything hardcore.

My hair has thickened up since stopping the levothyroxine, but I’m beginning to wonder if my rash will ever go away. Oh well. Next week we should hopefully have appointments scheduled with whomever my new doctors are going to be, even if they can’t see me till next year. 

I don’t get why my TD has been acting up. It even woke me up once! :( 

Other than that, I’m looking forward to the weekend. I’ll be mostly on nights, but we can still do things together that we want to do, and come Monday I won’t have to listen to Bob hammering away or his circular saw. Whatever he’s been doing once or twice a week lately isn’t likely to stop anytime soon. 

I watch what I eat during the week to stay around the same weight, but on weekends I eat whatever I want. Haven’t had any KFC in a while, so I think I’ll enjoy some of that after Tom checks out some new games for the Wii and radios for the car and stuff like that. We’re going to just take it to the Caddy dealer and have them install us a new one that’ll have an MP3 player. 

We’re also going to look into a new laptop/tablet for me, and he still wants a 3D printer. We should still be able to get these things, along with a living room set, and still hit our goal by the end of the year, thanks to all the OT he’s been doing. That’s to owe only what we still owe on the house and car. 

As for my own job, I watched a video on a mock criminal trial, though the events really did happen, and acted as a jury member. 

I have till November 1st to finish my current story and then I will be participating in this year’s November NaNoWriMo. I’ve got my plot mapped out in my mind! I just gotta do a few days of words at once, though, because of Andy's visit on the 24th.

Once again Bob is driving me crazy and once again I don’t get how Tom can say we’re not neighbor-cursed. We’re not? No one else around here is sawing and hammering twice a week or coming and going 2-3 times a day but the one who happens to be closest to us. 

At first I was glad to see a garage next to us when we moved in here, figuring the walls of it would muffle door slamming. However, they park in the driveway half the time and use the garage as a woodshop, so what’s the point? Really, does this guy want to drive me crazy or does he just not give a shit? This trend he’s been on obviously isn’t going to stop anytime soon. It’s just occurring later in the day since the weather’s cooling down. It was only 59° when I went biking. Perfect daytime temp as long as the sun is shining. 

I’m really sick of the male neighbors! Virginia’s not noisy at all. All the noise is coming from her husband. Females can be noisy, but the males make 10 times the amount of noise. I don’t usually hear female neighbors unless I’m attached to them. But the males’ shit is so damn loud it carries quite a distance. 

Despite being in his 80s, Bob’s health isn’t likely to decline for years. Then the bastard above can pick out someone else who’s just as noisy or worse for me to have to deal with as if I’m oh so noisy myself that I actually deserve it. I just hate being forced to crank up the music or sound machines to drown it out when I just want to hear nothing at all. I hope to hell all that hammering doesn’t start overriding the sound machine when I’m sleeping! 

They’ve got this beautiful patio set up in front of their place with all this nice, comfy outdoor furniture, yet he wants to hang in his fucking garage right by us all day. It’s like the guy’s restless like Jesse was and just can’t sit still. Really hope he isn’t pulling this shit when Andy visits. He’s just two months away now! 

Later… 

It really pisses me off that we’re forced to go through the hassle of starting all over again with doctors and all that all because of people’s lack of competency. As always, when we fuck up, we pay. When others fuck up, we still pay. 

Why, though, do I have a feeling God has made sure this happened due to my being hot for C? Let me guess, He’s going to make sure she doesn’t accept my future friend request if He even lets it go through in the first place, right? All the hotties are so temporary in my life. Too temporary to be a coincidence. 

I thought about telling her on MyHealth something like: Due to some problems and changes within our insurance we will need to drop Sutter. Meanwhile, I would love to add you on Facebook once the changes are final. 

However, I don’t know how she’d react to that or if that could cause more headaches for me, though I don’t see how it could. But you never know. 

I’m just going to be pissed as hell if we make all the changes just to get the same shit from both doctors and their staff. 

Ok, that just made up my mind as to whether or not to send her a message on MyHealth. I just noticed that beneath the message box was a note saying that that documentation would become part of my medical record. No thanks! I don’t think it needs to be on record that I’m asking a soon-to-be ex-doctor to be my Facebook buddy. 

I will just send the friend invite once we’re officially de-Suttered. If that isn’t accepted, I will send a message asking if she got the friend invite. If that isn’t answered I will send another message letting her know WHY I left Sutter, for whatever it may be worth to her, and assume she’ll never get it or that I’m not getting her replies. Really wish that after all these years Facebook would make their messaging more reliable, but they obviously want it this way for some reason.

This may be a good test to see if she gets and replies to the message. Or not. The message I last sent Norma appeared as unseen, but Norma not only got it but she replied to it, too. If she doesn’t at least appear to get the message she might not get a friend request, but we’ll see. If things are meant to be or not, then it’ll all come down to fate. My guess… I’ll never hear from her, but at least I’ll have tried. 

Later… 

Was surprised to wake up down another 1.5 pounds, though I’m not even trying to lose weight right now. Just to stay the same. I don’t expect it to keep dropping. 

The AC never ran today and I’m sure it will be chilly as hell in here come morning. That’s ok, though, I’ll be under the covers. 

While Tom and I were right to leave Arizona and will always hate that state for the way it raked us over the coals, we miss certain things about it that have nothing to do with people, crazy laws, or anything like that. He misses the intense heat. I don’t know if I miss the intense heat, though I’d take it over the intense cold of Oregon and New England. What I do miss are the storms and being able to see so much sky at once like we could in the open desert of Maricopa. You could see for a million miles in every direction. But in the end, there was more bad than good to living there, or anywhere in that state for that matter. 

Tammy was telling me her Vitamin D count was also low even though she’s in the sun a lot. Meanwhile, I look like Casper. 

LOL, I do and I always will. That’s because A, I don’t tan but burn instead and then get sun poisoning, and B, I have no patience to just sit there and tan. I could read for a while, but then I get bored shitless. 

Those pics of her dressed in a sexy costume at a party didn’t disappear like I thought they did. I just missed them when I was combing through albums to re-download stuff.

So an elderly Asian couple has purchased the condo next to Andy’s. He’s thrilled there are no brats but now he just has to hope they have no mutts. Or do things like blast their TV/music, slam doors, have tons of company, etc. LOL, he and I don’t have a very good track record for getting quiet neighbors. 

It sure has been quiet here the last two days. I love it. Wish it were always like this. Got up at the same time the last 3 days. Rare but not unheard of for me. The only problem is I’m still having that “lump” in the throat and a slight burning sensation. You know how you sometimes don’t manage to swallow something all the way and it gets stuck in your throat? That’s sort of what I’ve been feeling. I took a chill pill to see if it would alleviate it and it did. Does this mean it was anxiety? But why that one symptom if it was? The burning is more likely to be caused by my thyroid, enlarged or not, than the lump. People can live with enlarged thyroids. I’ve seen pictures of them. How it doesn’t press against the windpipe is beyond me, though. I guess it bulges outward instead of inward. 

Tom’s on his way home after being crazy busy at work, as he says, and then we can make plans. 

Later… 

It’s official. We’re definitely dropping Sutter, these incompetent doctors, and their equally incompetent staff. I hate to give up my sexy PCP, but my health is more important than her looks. 

As Tom said, it was ridiculous of my PCP to tell me I have high cholesterol but to never suggest any kind of a special diet. I had to figure things out on my own, even if some of it is common sense. She also never followed up after removing my ingrown toenail, nor did she follow up with other testing as the endo doc had pointed out. 

The only area within the psychic world I readily admit to is mood influencing and dream premonitions. There’s one thing I don’t tell people other than Tom and Nane, cuz it sounds crazier than crazy even to me. Well, when I was about 10 years old I discovered my ability to communicate through photographs. I’ve written about this in Word before. No, I don’t talk to the dead or anything like that. I don’t know who the entity is that “resides” in the pictures (usually of celebrities that I used to collect who served as the hosts). It wasn’t the celebs themselves, that’s for sure. 

In my teens, they thought I was talking to myself and hearing voices. That’s why they started me on the Navane and many have thought I heard voices, and well, I couldn’t have come out and said, “I’m not hearing voices, I’m just psychic.” Like anyone would’ve believed me, especially in the 80s? The problem is that I have to mention this to any doctor I see because certain drugs can make it worse. So that’s why I have this problem with doctors thinking I’m crazier than I am and hearing all these voices and shit. It puts one in a very rough spot when you were given a medication for the wrong reason, you KNOW damn well what was really going on, but you know no one’s going to believe you either. It’s really embarrassing and frustrating. I just can’t tell them they mistook psychic for crazy and have them be like, “Oh, ok. No problem.” 

The biggest problem with Doc Sexy is that thanks to being misdiagnosed as a teen when they were turning me into an experimental walking pharmacy in search of the perfect drug to make me “normal,” she thinks I’m crazier than I am. I know it may sound funny, but it’s not in this case. Again, one of those teenage/early 20s drugs was Navane. It’s not an anti-anxiety. It’s not an anti-depressant. It’s a fucking anti-psychotic. I didn’t understand this back then, but they seemed to think my “picture talk” meant I was hearing voices. Well, I wasn’t. I never heard voices in my life that weren’t from real people. 

I still have to tell the doctors I once took the shit, thus putting it into their minds that I’ve heard voices or hallucinated at one time. Saying I don’t give a shit what people think stops rather quickly when it’s someone that’s got my health in their hands. I think this is why Doc Sexy felt that the extreme anxiety I was experiencing was more from me than the levothyroxine. Now, I’m not denying that I can get anxious on my own just fine without any help from any medication, but never in my life had I experienced anything so horrible, intense and extreme, and well, it’s quite a coincidence that many others have complained of the same thing. Still, I think she thinks I have this mega-serious anxiety disorder, though she did admit the levothyroxine can add to it. 

Still… why should one have to take a pill for their physical problems (some of which aren’t right for them), and then see a shrink for daily psych pills so they can stand to take those pills? That’s just fucking ridiculous, as I said before. 

In a sense, though, Dr. D, the endofucker, is worse. She’s a very cold, unfriendly person that lacks compassion. Tom and I agree she’s not going to help me. She’s too all or nothing. You can’t just treat everyone the same because we’re not all the same and we don’t all respond the same to various medications. There are lots of people that can take 75mcg of levothyroxine just fine. But I can’t, and her attitude is Armour or nothing when there are still other options out there like lowering the levothyroxine dose or using natural remedies. So going back to this endobitch is no option at all. 

We still have to deal with the pill phobia thing the levothyroxine put on me, one step at a time. Little by little I’m able to take some things again. I wasn’t even able to take ibuprofen for a while at first. Or my kiddy vitamins. Yeah, Fred Flintstone never seemed so threatening before. That’s another weird thing – why did she recommend Vitamin D to me when I get that from Fred? Tom brought this up and I had been wondering this myself earlier. Still, I’ll take the damn Vitamin D next weekend when he’s home, and then the Selenium the weekend after that. 

Tom also pointed out that my PCP didn’t go to medical school in the US but in Grenada. This might mean her grades weren’t high enough to get into medical school here in the US. It could also be that the Grenada school was cheaper. Who knows for sure? I just hate to give her up. Despite not being a very good doctor, she was hot and super friendly. It isn’t every day a doctor will ask what you’re writing about (I told her I write romantic suspense with gay characters in support of equality, which she seemed pleased to hear), then share a little about their own personal experiences, and tells you you’re beautiful even when you know you’re not. I’ll send her a friend invite on Facebook later on, and kill the endoshit in my story. 

In the meantime, thanks to the fucking side effects and how fucked up Sutter is, we’re starting over from scratch. My general trust in doctors is really shot right now. I never had much faith in them to begin with, to be honest. There are just so many quacks out there. 

Tom has to contact his insurance company to make some changes, then hopefully I’ll be able to have doctors who are willing to work with my specific needs and not the needs of the majority with Hashimoto’s. At my size, I’m just not the majority. Never have been, never will be, 20-30 extra pounds or not. I also hope we won’t have to play phone all day long just to get nowhere when scheduling appointments, and hopefully when we do manage to make these appointments they’re not 3 or more months away. 

I’m doing my best with the self-help – foods low in cholesterol, keeping active, keeping calories down, etc. I don’t ever expect to lose the weight, which is ok, but it looks like I can do a good job of not gaining after all.

Was a little surprised to wake up and find I’d lost another pound despite going easy on the food. When I first stopped my meds I thought I’d keep gaining away but I’ve been pretty stable. 

Wouldn’t the good doc just love to know that my pulse is usually down in the 70s these days WITHOUT seeing the shrink she wants me to see? Still don’t know what, who or when I’ll be seeing anyone. We don’t want to rush things. I need to fully recover from all the damage they caused me and am just about there. The only strange sensation I sometimes have is suddenly feeling slightly anxious and like my heart is racing, only it’s not. Still feel that pressure on my throat at times too, but we know the thyroid couldn’t enlarge itself that fast, nor would it come and go if it did. 

Speaking of a certain hottie, oh what fun it is to meet with her in dreams like I did last night. It’s like having a fun affair to spice things up without actually cheating on the one you love, only we didn’t “do” anything. Loved the shirt she had on, though I’m sure she would never wear such a revealing one to work, even under that white coat of hers. 

I sometimes wonder if she ever reads my blog unbeknownst to me, thus my confessions of attraction for her, but she’s not stupid either way. She may not know it all, but I’m sure she figured out 2 or 3 appointments ago that I like what I see. What straight man, lesbian or bisexual male/female wouldn’t? 

My sister surprised me by asking for a good place to learn Spanish and said “mucho gracious” when I linked her to Duolingo. LOL, try “muchas gracias,” I told her. I’m just surprised because she’s never shown an interest in languages and the idea of her studying any language would be like me taking a math course. People’s interests do tend to change over the years, though. That’s why I rarely dance or sing these days. If she finds the Spanish to be over her head, she can forget about Italian and she can really forget about German and French. 

I killed Aly in her dreams last night with a water gun, so she told me, and I was accusing her of stealing my silver glitter wallet. ROTFL! She knows, though, that I would never kill anyone who wasn’t trying to kill me, kill Tom, or break into the house. There are very few exceptions to that rule. Such as those who had a direct and indirect hand in swiping half a year of my freedom from me, costing us thousands of dollars, and a world of mental anguish I won’t even begin to get into. Five minutes with each of these folks would be as exciting as going on a mega-shopping spree. 

Went out biking yesterday afternoon. It was 86°. A bit warm even though the sun was setting. I just hate it when people park right in front of the speed bumps because then I can’t swerve around the very edges of them and am forced to slow down. Might wait till after dark even if it’s a lot harder to see then. I know my park, though, and could navigate it blindfolded. I know right where all those evil little speed bumps are.

I was chatting with someone who knows someone who’s going through a really rough time in life. She said to me, “You know, Jodi, sometimes when she pours her heart out to me I really don’t know what to say.” 

Oftentimes it isn’t about what you can say to one who’s down, but how well you can listen. Sometimes just being there for them and being a good listener can go a long way toward helping to boost someone up. It’s usually better to remain in the gray areas. You don’t have to respond to every single thing they say, but if you say nothing at all it can make a person feel like you don’t give a shit, thus making them feel worse and regret reaching out to you. No one expects you to have a magic wand to wave that would make their troubles disappear. If you could do that, they could probably do it, too. 

Anyway, I hadn’t even been up 15 minutes when sure enough, Bob’s saw began to grate on my nerves. Fortunately, Virginia returned shortly afterward and hopefully reminded him that others live here too, since he did shut up pretty fast. Then they both took off after slamming SUV doors. Hopefully by the time they do return it will be too hot to play outside. Once the sawing escalates to 2-3 times a week I will remind him, in the kindest yet bluntest manner I can, just how few feet lie between his saw and the walls of our house. Hell, not even weekends are always guaranteed to be quiet around here. They spent an hour or so trimming palm trees across the street yesterday. After next door left I could hear them mowing the common area, but all is temporarily quiet at the moment. 

My pulse was slightly above 100, and yes, it was anxiety. When someone’s sawing just outside your windows and you see that your rash is getting worse all of a sudden, you’re not exactly calm, cool and collected. If my rash isn’t better in a few weeks I’ll need to let her know. I’m still nowhere near needing a chill pill, mind you, but due to a combination of it being a bit warm and my pulse being elevated, I’m going to wait till the sun starts setting before I go out riding. 

Oh, shit! Next door’s already back and slamming the shit out of their doors as they unload whatever. Wait… now the SUV’s in the garage. Why would they unload shit in their driveway, which is further from their door, then pull the thing into the garage? Either way, the fact that it’s in the garage tells me they’re not going out again, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m safe from Bob’s power tools. I probably am, but it’s not that hot out. Only 79° now and I’ve heard him working and seen him riding his bike up to 90°. 

I tell myself they’re better than getting next to welfare bums, college kids or the Brady Bunch, and they are, but they can still get annoying enough at times. 

Later… 

Tom will be working a long day today. Some special project going on, I guess. At least I slept in a bit so his absence won’t seem as long. I asked him if he thought he’d have mixed emotions about the day he retires. Like would he be happy but sad at the same time, feeling old or something like that? He said, “No, not at all. Everyone looks forward to the day they no longer have to work.” 

Well, my BIL was thrilled to retire and he seemed to like the work he did, too. Maybe not all of the people involved, but the work itself seemed to suit him well. 

Rats “jump for joy” when they get excited much like people, cats and dogs do. Oh, how funny it was seeing their reaction to last night’s lobster ravioli that I shared with them and the way they kept begging for more! LOL 

Bob’s tucked in for the day and then Xfinity came to steal my peace, though not much of it. Just some scattered door slamming of their van. They were working on the other side of the house somewhere. 

I’ve been asked about my music and Twitter preferences and what types of people I follow. I don’t usually follow individuals with “personal” accounts unless I know them. Tweets like, “I’m in the bathroom,” “I just ate dinner,” “I have a headache,” “Running late for work,” and “I have to go to the store now” bore me to tears. I mostly follow those that show pictures of nature and animals as well as funny/educational quotes and facts. I like to learn things I didn’t already know and see places I’ve never been to. Following some 22-year-old who tweets about mundane and immature stuff with the writing ability of a 6-year-old isn’t my thing. 

I was also asked if I was into oldies. I used to be into them big time, but now I prefer to listen to new stuff. One can only spend so many years, or better yet decades, listening to the same old stuff, though I do like a lot of stuff from the '70s and '80s. 

Gonna be getting a new living room set pretty much anytime now. It’s just a matter of finding a convenient time to go out looking. As experience taught us, never go out and buy something expensive as soon as you’ve saved the money for it. Wait till you’ve saved twice if not three times the amount, so that if an emergency comes up you haven’t drained your savings. 

Aly dumped Molly again. I knew she would, but sadly, I also know it's just a matter of time before she forgives her and starts the same old cycle of shit all over again. I'm sure I'm in for more blog views from Molly, seeing if I mention her or Aly, too. Maybe not Mommy Dearest because it's off for cancer surgery next month. Anyway, I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of acknowledging her in entries, and am even thinking of deleting a lot of “Molly mentions” from old entries. I’m not going to respond to any contact I may receive from her either, begging me to contact Aly for her or to ask if I’ve heard from her. She’d know that anyway as I’m sure she follows our tweets. 

Anyway, Aly swears she’s washed her hands of that relationship, but hopefully, she won’t ever dry them. It’s up to her. As I told her, though, every time she acknowledges her or her crazy mother, it’s like hitting the reset button on a timer as far as her getting the message and moving on. She’ll never get over her obsession with her if she puts her two cents in every so often. It’s gotta be all or nothing with people as crazy and unstable as Molly. As an old lady told me, don’t even bother trying to figure crazy out cuz crazy has no logic or reason. Crazy is just crazy!

It turns out that the casino in town is just a card room for poker and blackjack and doesn’t have any slot machines. We’ll go to the real casino, which is about 15 miles from here, some other time. 

We did grab a bite to eat at Carl’s Jr., though, and that’s pretty much it for today other than changing the rats’ cage. It’s cloudy out with a bit of a breeze. It only rained like two drops, but we’re coming to that time of year when it’s more likely to rain. 

My new pillow was comfortable in any position I’d lie in and my neck feels a lot better today. I got caught up on sleep and am starting to sleep in later in the morning, which is a good thing. That way I can sleep through most of the weekday noise so long as it’s not as maddening as when they were cutting trees down, and then be up later when it’s quieter. 

My anxiety has been virtually non-existent the last couple of days and I love it. I wish I could always feel this good. Not being alone so much helps, and as Tom said, I’m getting better and better each day. The further away from my last ordeal we get, the better I’ll be. That’s usually how PTSD works. As new memories are formed, they help not so much to replace the old ones but to push them further back into our minds. Still worried, though, about when it comes time to get up the nerve to go back on medication of some kind. As it is I don’t know that I’m ready yet for Novocain at the dentist, which I’ve had a million times already. 

Later… 

It isn't every day I get to use my Italian around here. Some guy was at Carl's Jr. and another guy asked if he was Italian and if he spoke it while we were all getting drinks. He said yes and asked the guy if he knew any. The guy said he knew a little. In Italian, I said, "Io so un po d’italiano anche," which means “I know a little Italian too.” That sure threw the both of them, LOL. 

Last night I had a dream involving that hot-looking black judge in Detroit I saw in a documentary. We moved there, not that we’d ever move to such a lousy city and climate, but in the dream, we moved there and the judge left me a voice message. She said someone had been calling her asking for me, and then she said something like, “You’re here now and we will be watching you.” 

I debated whether or not to ignore her message or call and let her know I had no idea how or why anyone would call her looking for me, and that I didn’t appreciate her threats. 

Swimming season is pretty much over here. I hate that winter's coming even if it's nothing like New England or Oregon, and even though there is some good in it. It's better for sleeping and working out but I hate wearing robes and slippers. I like to be barefoot and in short shorts and sports bras. It's still usually warm enough for shorts, just not swimming. 

Since yesterday was warmer, I was pissed to have had this Caddy for less than 6 months just to have a half-assed working AC. We seem to be so cursed with car ACs. Yet it turns out that it’s just a case of the computer losing its mind and needing to be reset. It would only come out the floor before, but a reset should hopefully get it working again at chest level. His online research says it will anyway. 

There are brackets for flags in both the front and back of the house, so we’re going to get poles and flags on Amazon soon enough. I chose one with a hummingbird and flowers, and one with a cat and flowers. 

Later… 

Tom and I were discussing how much progress I’ve made in undoing what they did to me (the meds and doctors). I’m getting better each day and haven’t even mentioned chill pills all week, let alone taken one. Despite my improvement, the pill phobia isn’t 100% gone and I’m not 100% back to my old self. So we devised a plan to help me take the necessary steps to get there. Next weekend (when he’ll be around more) I will resume the vitamin D. I’m already able to take my chewable kiddy vitamin and things like ibuprofen. Then in two weeks, we’ll have me take 100 mcg of selenium, which according to Tom’s research, should help my thyroid a lot because it suppresses the antibodies that attack it. By then I should be brave enough to face whoever my new endo doc will be, not that I expect they’ll be able to see me this year. California has TERRIBLE healthcare! 

I told Andy that while I was happy for him, it’s sad that he gets great healthcare for free while we PAY to get shitty healthcare. Our home state is a great state with a shit climate, you could say, LOL. I think that no matter where you go, though, so many doctors are quacks who don’t know what they’re doing and don’t care about each individual patient’s particular needs. Instead, they have a “one treatment fits all” attitude, which is totally ridiculous since everyone’s different and we don’t all respond the same to various medications. My trust levels are definitely down right now. 

Going to the doctor after all these years ended up making me less healthy, in a sense, so I’ve got to proceed with caution from here on out. No sense in taking something that’s going to make me feel a million times worse than any disease itself ever could. We weren’t talking about taking chemo to fight cancer or anything like that after all. We were just talking about something that’d do what my thyroid can no longer do on its own.

Here’s a health/work update. Tom has not only decided to put his foot down at work and work maybe an hour overtime instead of the ridiculous 10-11 hours he’s been working, but we’re putting our foot down where Sutter’s concerned, too. We’re definitely going to get a new endo (this may take months), and I’m not sure right now if I’m going to keep my PCP, good-looking or not. She’s super nice as well as attractive, but the more Tom and I thought about some of the things she’s said, the more we agree it’s just ridiculous. As Tom said, “They want you to take something for your thyroid, then something for your cholesterol, then something (psych pills) so you can take those pills while you live in a fog… that’s just ridiculous. You may have a phobia to overcome, but you’ve coped without psych pills in the 20 years I’ve known you. You’re not crazy.” 

While there’s absolutely nothing wrong at all with taking something here and there to help ease our anxiety during those super rough moments, do I really want to go back in time, take something daily that I would eventually get dependent on and suffer yet more side effects, some of which could be permanent like tardive dyskinesia? Hardly! Yes, the thought of returning to medication scares me a bit thanks to the levothyroxine’s side effects, but as he said, I’m not crazy. Weird? Eccentric? Strange? You bet. Most people definitely don’t paint their hallways hot pink or have naked body sculptures hanging from their walls, and I’d say the chances of them keeping a journal for 28 years straight and ranging anywhere from familiar to fluent in 8 languages isn’t very good. So yeah, there’s a touch of uniqueness to me. But crazy? Not likely, even if I may feel like I’m losing it at times when the shit really hits the fan in life. I know right from wrong (even if I don’t always make the best choices in life), and there are never any voices in my head telling me to kill the first person I see wearing bright yellow because then I’ll get to live happily ever after in some magical kingdom in the afterlife or some crazy shit like that. I imagine, I fantasize, but I don’t actually believe the shit I conjure up in my head or in my stories. So if having a phobia that I can and will overcome in time after having a very traumatic experience that most people probably couldn’t understand until they went through it too, renders me a case of at least temporary insanity, then so be it. 

My PCP isn’t the main reason why we want to drop Sutter and get a different medical group that hopefully – HOPEFULLY – will be more competent and helpful to my particular needs. I’ve always been prone to side effects and in most cases, I can’t take adult doses. Yes, we want an endo that will do what’s best for ME and not lump me into a group of “norms” I don’t fit into, but we want to be able to contact doctors and make appointments without the fucking all-day runaround. The question is, do good doctors, along with an organized and competent staff, actually exist anywhere? It seems there are so many quack doctors out there. Like as many as there are corrupt cops. It’s scary and sad to know this, too. 

There are doctors who can hopefully treat my thyroid with natural remedies or maybe at least mostly natural remedies like a certain type of diet, and that’s what I’m hoping to find. I’m already doing what I can to help keep my cholesterol down by avoiding red meats, eggs and stuff like that. 

Tom actually was able to get through and talk to someone who gave him information that would help us hunt for what we’re hoping will be both an endocrinologist and a PCP all in one. The only problem is that the good doctors are usually the ones that aren’t accepting new patients while the bad ones are so overbooked. I’m tired of so many doctors not being able to see me for months unless it’s urgent. Why the fuck do they take on so many patients then? 

As Tom said, we were too nice, especially with Doc Sexy, when we should’ve put our foot down at least with some of the things she was saying. It really bothers me that THREE so-called experts kept telling me to keep up the 75mcg when I knew damn well that dose was too much for me. I never had 4 years or more of medical school yet I knew it. That’s the problem with so many of these damn doctors; they don’t get that we sometimes know our own bodies better than anyone else. The extreme anxiety I was experiencing with the booming, racing heart, intense negative emotions, and feeling of panic and suffocation was NOT normal for me in my worst of times. Why would it be in my best of times? I think doctors need to be willing to work with their patients and meet them halfway, within reason, the same as auto mechanics, waitresses and people of other fields do, instead of one of you being so all or nothing. 

My pulse has come way down since stopping the levothyroxine. I was astonished to find it only in the 70s and 80s instead of the 90s or higher, though it was in the 120s when I got off my bike, as is reasonable. 

Tom said he’s not going to worry anymore about taking time off from work when I need to deal with doctors and if they don’t like it, tough shit. “But what if they fire you?” I had asked him, and he basically said, “Tough. If they don’t like it I’ll go work somewhere else and we’ll sue the crap out of them.” 

Well, I did promise myself after I got screwed in Arizona that that would be the LAST time I didn’t fight back. I could’ve fought back yet I just let them fuck me over and that pisses me off almost as much as what they did to me. Eh, just something I have to live with, though I certainly have learned from it. As I told God, one day you’re going to let someone fuck us over that not even You can protect. We’d prefer not to get shit on, of course, but if we ever are, we WILL fight back. In fact, they better hope we can sue them cuz if we can’t, well, then they’re really shit outa luck cuz we’ll move onto Plan B and that would be so, so much worse for them. I doubt it will come to that, though, with any place he could ever work or any doctor we could ever see. We hope not! 

On the bright side, if we do drop Sutter I can send a friend request to Dr. C (don’t know that she’d accept it) and kill Dr. D in my stories as many times as I want to. 

Later… 

I was going to use LiveJournal as my main blog because it cross-posts to Facebook and Twitter easier, but then I decided not to. I don’t want to have to go around and change blog links on various profiles. 

I had such a fun and relaxing day today. Why can’t I feel this good every day? My only complaint is that the ingrown toenail I had removed a while back may be on its way back. The doc said this might happen, too. Fucking figures. 

Tom and I went bike riding and I was too fast for him (I set the pace and he follows me). The poor guy felt like he might puke when we got back. We went 2.1 miles in 14 minutes. Our fastest speed was 22 MPH with our average being 8 MPH. Wow, I didn’t think I ever went over 15 MPH if even that! That’s gotta be going down the steepest section at the beginning of my route. I love flying down that rollercoaster and just letting the bike take me down the hill. I told him that next time he can go slower if he needs to. I can always double back for him, LOL. His wife may be fat as hell and always will be cuz she loves to pig out on weekends, but she sure is in better shape! 

I realized that my metabolism has gotta be moving at least somewhat. First of all, if it was totally dead, I would be dead, too. Secondly, on days I don’t eat more than 1000 calories, I do find my weight is down the next day. I make up for it on weekends, though. 

We didn’t go to the casino. We’ll go tomorrow. Instead, we went to Kmart. It may not be as crowded as Walmart, but those screaming brats are everywhere! 

He got a couple of things for the Wii and I got a regular pillow said to be good for tummy sleepers. I love my memory foam pillow but I’ve been waking up with a stiff neck lately. The memory foam pillow is really only good for when I’m lying on my side. But since I like to fall asleep on my stomach, the regular pillow is good for that. Tom actually got this pillow at Walmart when he went grocery shopping earlier. 

I sprayed on perfume testers as I always like to do and got some vanilla body mist for a buck. 

I got Pumpkin wax cube melts as well as Stressless for a total of $4. 

I got two pairs of Joe Boxer slippers. One pair would’ve been fine, but they were selling them in doubles for $10, so I got a pink and black checkered pair and one in solid black. 

Got a calendar with the last 4 months of this year, plus all of next. I checked out the tropical pics, but thought they all looked the same. I didn’t want mutts, horses or religious shit, so I got cats. I think that was just $5 instead of the usual $10. 

The best thing was the hair clip I got for just $5. It was the same one they tried to sell me in Hawaii for $20 with these stretchy beads with combs at the sides. I don’t know what they’re called, but I love it! Putting my hair up has never felt more comfortable whereas barrettes tend to allow the hairs to pull in certain areas. This holds it up more evenly as if a hand was holding it in place. I almost didn’t get it, but I’m glad I did, even though the beads are just plain black. That was the only color they had, but since it’s behind my head I can’t see it anyway. 

Got a dazzling Barbie in a hot pink mermaid gown, as they call it, with silver accents. My first full-sized Barbie in a long time.

I hope I’m wrong but I have a feeling today’s going to be noisy because yesterday ended up being quieter. It seems to go back and forth like that for some reason. 

Yesterday ended up being mostly cloudy, but we never got any rain. It’s partly cloudy today, too. 

I forgot to mention that when Tom got home the day before yesterday, I told him about the dream I had where the weird-looking plane with the colorful dragons on it crashed. Well, he said that on his way home a plane was flying super low, and although it didn’t seem to be in trouble, it was way lower than usual. 

Tom’s decided to say no to working tomorrow so we can have the whole weekend together. :) Looking so forward to going to this new casino/restaurant in town! Maybe we’ll win since the rich do seem to get richer while the poor get poorer. We’re not rich by any means, but we’re doing well and not desperate or anything. Hell, his OT alone from just yesterday was over $100. 

If Tom doesn’t have any luck getting an appointment made with a new endo doc today (that can see me this year) I’m going to be really damn tempted to just say “fuck it” and treat it with natural remedies. 

In last night’s dreams, Tom and I were in what appeared to be our Maricopa house with my mother in one of the bedrooms just off the den. Tom was dancing around in a robe that was too small for him and joking about how funny it made him look. I started laughing and teasing him and then he got all offended, saying I was picking on him. He called to my mother in the other room and asked if she would say the things I said and she said no. 

“But I was just laughing along with you,” I insisted. “You were the one that started making a joke of how you looked.” 

But Tom was still offended and so I said, “Fuck it,” and went into the master bedroom. Lined up along the headboard were several 16” Tonner fashion dolls I used to have and I decided it was time to change their outfits, LOL. 

After doing that I picked up a guitar and realized I no longer remembered how to play anything. I could still play by ear but could only remember a couple of chords. In reality, I’d be lucky to remember more than 4 or 5. I haven’t had any interest in musical instruments in centuries. I was always better with words than with music anyway, and just a so-so singer. 

I also had a couple of dreams we were vacationing somewhere. In one hotel I was picking something up off the floor when Tom said, “They’re coming.” It was someone we were supposed to be meeting, though, I don’t know who. I said that I had to pee first and entered a humungous bathroom with a mini pool that might’ve been a giant bathtub. It had a dolphin design on the bottom of it and the water was about 4’ deep. Then I looked toward the left and saw there were a few other “pools,” one slightly deeper. Then I took a step forward and slipped onto a water slide that disappeared into the wall. Surprisingly, I wasn’t scared to be in the darkened tunnel for the few seconds or so that it took to loop around and dump me back in one of the pools. 

At another hotel, we entered a room with a hot tub and a bar of some kind. A nice black man said the water shouldn’t be too bleachy and I was relieved not to be able to smell any bleach. 

“How do you like your smoothies?” he asked, preparing to make us some as a few other people moved about behind the bar. Tom hates smoothies so only I had one.

Was out riding just after 6am and was surprised to find it a bit cloudy and muggy. I could even hear a distant rumble of thunder. Sure enough, though, the sun is now shining brightly and Bob, tree services, and other sources of insanely loud and annoying shit are now free to disrupt my day. 

Yesterday was worse than Jesse ever was at his absolute worst with some tree service that was here for 8 hours tending to one of the houses in back. It was terrible. Just terrible. Tom asked if I escaped to the Windows PC in the laundry room and I said, “Are you kidding? It was so incredibly loud that there was no point in the house, as big as this place is, that I could run to.” I would have had to blast the shit out of my music to drown it out but that would’ve only doubled the insanity. 

Andy asked if we were going to move to a quieter location. Nope. It would only be a matter of time before that “quieter location” became chaotic during the weekdays just like most weekdays are here. Besides, I just painted all these walls! Almost all of them, anyway. We still have the laundry room and bathrooms to do. So, no moving unless the economy collapses again and they lay him off and we lose the place, or we move when he retires, or we die. If you can’t get peace in a retirement community, you’ll never get it anywhere. I’ve learned that. Weekdays are just a noisy time of day no matter where you go. I’m just glad the nights are peaceful and I hope it stays that way! If it doesn’t, then we have grounds to complain and demand something be done about it. Otherwise, people have a right to build birdhouses and butcher their trees in the daytime no matter how annoying and distracting it may be. 

I saw Jim at the start of my ride. He prefers to stick to walking continuously around the circle where Bob circles the park, then joins Jim for a few rounds. I passed Bob at the other end of the park, briefly entertained the fantasy of running him over, waved and said hello, and now I’ve got a rainstorm vid going on YouTube to drown out any smaller sounds out there. 

I wonder if Bob ever even gets colds? Better yet, I wonder how many more years it will be before I do. That’s part of why I got Hashimoto’s; because my immune system is so damn good (since quitting smoking) that it kills both real and imaginary diseases. 

More importantly, I hope I don’t have any “flashing arcs” in my eye again today. I’m dismayed at how scary things have been for me after the nightmare I went through with the levothyroxine side effects. I didn’t panic, but I was still a little too freaked out for comfort. In the past, something like that would’ve been weird and I’d have been curious, but not scared. Now, the slightest off thing and I’m nervous as hell. It’s like what happened a while back messed up my head for life, though Tom assures me I don’t need a shrink and I’m getting better and better each day. I know he’s right, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Also, if seeing a shrink just once is going to keep my lovely PCP from nagging me, then fine. I also want someone who will restock my lorazepam as needed, because even though I only take 1-3 a week, it’s still nice to have. Then again, maybe my PCP would refill me. I still have about 20 left, so I’m set for a while. 

Tom said the flashing in my eye could be a sign of a detached retina, but that you can’t know anything for sure with just one incident. I hope it stays just one incident!

Was so glad to see both of them, especially Bob, take off about an hour ago. Hopefully, they won’t return before it’s too hot to play saw and hammer games outdoors. 

Noticed we didn’t get any garden goodies from them this year. Is it because they didn’t have enough to spare, or did they decide they don’t like us very much due to the age difference? 

Passed both Jim and Bob on my bike this morning, and the other bikers, joggers, walkers and mutt walkers stayed out of my way, so that was nice. 

Surprisingly we’re on for a storm tomorrow, but the “storms” here are often wimpy if they occur at all. 

Had a weird dream last night that I was in a high-rise when I saw a plane flying overhead. It was low enough to see the design on it and the “plane” was this oval-shaped thing with colorful dragons painted on it. I was thinking that I’d seen that plane before, or at least one with that particular design. Then it arced downward and just seconds before it crashed I realized it was about to do just that. It hit the ground thunderously and a plume of smoke and fire arose from it immediately. Just seconds afterward, sirens could be heard. The dream ended with me running to close the windows to keep the smoke out. 

Later… 

Andy's such an airhead at times. He told me his SIL trimmed his toenails cuz he’s too fat to do them properly. I told him to get on his knees like Tom does when he does his nails and puts his shoes on, and he asked how the hell he could trim his nails on his knees. “Well, you don’t trim the one you’re kneeling on, you dipshit,” I told him. 

Alison created yet another new email addy, which she says is because of Molly’s mother. Apparently, she was hounding her to spy on Molly for her. Couldn’t she just mark the bitch as spam? Speaking of spam she said she was also suddenly getting a huge amount of it when only a few friends knew of that email address. One of mine got a huge surge of spam a while back, too. I’ve always wondered if there was some other reason I’m not aware of as to why she keeps changing emails and accounts on various sites so often. 

She needs to stop creating accounts in her real name. If you’re willing to pay for them, email addresses can be found. I’m amazed Mommy Dearest hasn’t found and emailed me yet. Still, if she doesn’t know what name to look for, she can’t stalk her. I also still think that her continuing to be friends with the likes of Kim and Molly is like a woman who won’t leave an abusive lover. We know, though, that we can’t just confront and dump them or else they’ll lash out at us. We simply have to ignore them at all costs. I’m willing to do that and that’s part of why they’ve finally fucked off (besides the fact that I think they knew they were pushing me into going after them), but Aly’s never been able to fully let go. There’s always one last reply to their shit she has to make in order to defend or explain herself. Like they’re going to get it anyway? 

The mother’s definitely scarier than Molly and now that she’s retired she has more time on her hands. Molly’s just crazy, but not smart. When you add intelligence to crazy, however, as is the case with the mother, you could have more of a problem to deal with. Pretty sad that she not only stalks people right along with her daughter but would enlist someone online who she never met to spy on her own daughter for her. 

Lost 3 of the 6 pounds I gained since going off my meds, but I’m not stupid. Reset mode will begin anytime after the 20th. Staying around where I’m at, though, is better than gaining and gaining. 

Later… 

Had a freaky, almost scary eye experience. It’s like my left eye lost its mind for a minute. A thin flashing arc of what almost looked like an abstract design was visible with my eye open or closed. I could see it no matter which direction I moved my eye in. When I first noticed I had trouble seeing the screen I thought something was on my glasses at first. Fortunately, it didn’t last long. 

Today has been incredibly noisy for hours and probably will be for yet a few more hours. No, it’s not next door. It’s whatever the fuck they’ve been doing in back. The park has been working on something and I’m not sure if it’s cutting trees or digging up the road or both. We know they did something in a small section of the road in back, but I’ve heard horrendously loud machinery running all day that sounded like chainsaws, wood chippers, and God knows what else. All I can see from here is a large utility vehicle of some kind and some orange cones. 

I am totally, totally dismayed at how noisy most of the weekdays are here. Totally. It saddens me to know that this is how it will always be no matter where we go and no matter what we do. There is just no getting any peace in this world if you’re me. I wonder how many more years the nights will at least be peaceful before that too, is gone. 

If they’re going to make so much damn racket, why don’t they do something useful and flatten out the sides of the speed bumps for us bikers? 

Next door was only gone for a few hours. Yeah, I knew I couldn’t get lucky enough to have them make a day of it, but they’re not the noisy ones today. Saw Bob take off on his bike not too long ago. Wow, he can take the heat better than I would have thought. It’s nearly 90° out, but on a bike, it doesn’t seem as hot. 

Does this guy own anything other than white T-shirts? LOL, it occurred to me the other day that that’s all I’ve ever seen him wear. And where does he get so much energy? He sleeps 6 hours or less a night, goes out and walks a couple of miles, comes home and runs errands (if he isn’t working in the garage), then he goes off on his bike. So much for thinking our energy levels decline with age! 

Getting really sick of having to spend so much time alone, though I know I should enjoy it because one day Tom will be retired and I’ll be wishing I had more space like I did when he was unemployed. Unfortunately, he has to work Saturday, too. He said he could always say no if I really wanted him too, but nah. As he pointed out, the money is great. If he keeps it up till the end of October, we will have eliminated all our debt except for what we owe on the house and car. Plus we can get me a new laptop and him a 3D printer. We can still get by easily enough on his base pay, but the OT pays things off faster and builds our savings and the 401 faster.