Even though it may be more expensive, I should probably order my coffee directly from Keurig, so I can be sure to get compatible cups. The coffeemaker arrived yesterday and while I absolutely love it, as high-tech and sophisticated as it is, not all the coffee pods are compatible with it that I got from an Amazon seller. They’re all from the same brand, Crazy Cups, so I don’t know why. The different flavors have different color writing on them, so maybe it’s got something to do with that. I got to sample the Italian Chocolate Cheesecake and Death by Chocolate, but the Bananas Frosted Blasé is giving me a hard time.

The lovely purple coffeemaker came with a sampler pack. Hot chocolate and a few coffees, one being from Starbucks. I also got some iced tea, but all our plastic cups are too tall for it, and it says not to use glass.

I think this rather pricey hair treatment really is helping after all. My hair feels smoother to the touch and Tom says it looks shinier. I just wish it looked less shabby. If it weren’t for the fact that it’s been growing so fast ever since I was put on 75 mcg of levothyroxine and the exciting new straightening brush, I would simply cut it off. But I don’t want to do that for a while. I do want to get a trim, though.

I still don’t know if the house across from us has been sold to someone who’s going to live in it, or if it’s been sold to someone who’s doing a fix and flip on it. Either way, the vehicles coming and going over the weekend (and door slamming) really sucked as I thought – and hoped - that they would at least give me the weekend off. I’m working in the back bedroom now because I don’t want to listen to it for 8 hours, or the workers at the house next door to it fixing the water damage. I just wonder how many more weeks this is going to go on, and how much peace I’ll get in between before someone else has another problem or project going on around here. Plus, Bob’s got to be itching to get outside and grab that hammer and saw. We had a cold snap, but it’s to warm up again.

Tom gathered some food items to experiment with the pressure cooker at Walmart yesterday, and I grabbed a beautiful wind chime, black thigh-high stockings, and a rainbow glitter wand.

Not hearing very good things about cockatiels. They seem to be noisy, from what people say, and I worry about how the dust might affect my lungs. The last thing I want to do is have to return a pet like I did with Simone because I found I couldn’t breathe. I still feel horrible about that, even though there’s no way I could have known. But I still have time to decide. I don’t have to make my decision in a hurry.

Later…

There was one item that Tammy gave me that I found rather disturbing. That was a rock in the shape of a miniature headstone that said something like: No longer by your side but always with you.

This, along with a few other things, is nothing I feel comfortable sharing publicly. The ”headstone” sits in a cabinet under the hutch. Why would she give me something like that if she didn’t believe that she would die relatively soon? I don’t know what to think where her health is concerned. She’s always been a hypochondriac, but clearly she has been suffering. The oxygen tank, all the pills, and many other things aren’t there just for show. She is even entitled to handicapped parking and mentioned something about the nurse bringing up the subject of a motorized wheelchair which was a place she didn’t want to go. So I guess she refused to discuss that much.

At the very end of our visit, she asked if there was anything I wanted to ask her, and while I had no questions (at least none that I felt comfortable asking her) I wondered if she was basically saying it was okay to ask her if she was going to die.

I just don’t get it. Everything I read on fibromyalgia says that it’s not deadly. So what the hell is really going on?

I also wish Tom hadn’t been so quiet and had praised me more to her, but that’s just how he is. He’s very shy and quiet and has not one romantic bone in his body.

While we were there she told me some stories about the girls, and it was hard to tell whether or not she was amused or pissed. I guess they were farting in the grocery store when Tammy went to the next aisle something like that to look for something, and some lady told her that she ought to use the ladies’ room. Then she said something about them taking off and driving manically around some parking lot in a car she had.

Another funny story was Tammy being called to Sarah’s school when she was still in high school. On the way out of school, the two of them were walking side-by-side, and Tammy said, “Your principal is a real asshole. Meanwhile, the guy was right behind them.

She’s already made an enemy at her park, though I don’t know that I would consider her an “enemy,” so much as your typical rude person. They have a wide space of grass running behind their place. This lady was letting her dog piss and shit right outside their storeroom while there was plenty of space for dogs to do their business away from the homes. Tammy, who is much like me in that she doesn’t hesitate to speak her mind, especially when she knows she’s in the right, kindly asks the lady to keep her dog away from their house. Yet she caught her a second time letting her dog piss and shit too close. This time, however, the woman refused to even meet her eyes, let alone say anything. This is so typical and very Western-like too, where a perfectly reasonable request is made of someone and then they take it personally. I guess some people really believe they have a right to do whatever they want. Literally.

I’ve learned that while Tammy may not be broke, I don’t think she has as much money as we do. She didn’t put up much of an argument when I gave her $40, and based on some of the things that they’ve said, she and Mark don’t have much extra.

I don’t know if I’ll do this because I don’t know if it’s worth wasting an extra email address on Twitter just to test Kim, as I may want to use that email address for an account there for other reasons, but I realized a simple way to test if she is still stocking me but just doing it silently. She can’t be too afraid to go to my accounts, because she does it’s a block me and play victim every single time she creates one of her silly fan accounts.

Anyway, if I create an account and call it something like Jodi’s Wins or something like that, I’ll see if she notices it and blocks it. She may not have noticed the account I created in Tom’s name had Aly not followed it. This will tell me if she sees my activity through Aly, or if she’s seeing it directly through me. If she’s following my tweets then she’s probably following my blog as well.

Sarah publicly thanked Becky for being there for her when she got sad. For what, I wonder? Wacky hormones due to early menopause? Not being able to get a man? Never having kids? Something else?