Things have continued to be hectic upon returning home, but nothing bad has been going on. Just some annoyances here and there like not being able to sync my Fitbit very easily, and the Mac Mail program being all screwed up. Tom read that this has happened with El Capitan as well as whatever it was I had before (Maverick?). I can’t receive anything from Hotmail without going to the actual account, nor can I send anything from mail.com. My solution? To just use Yahoo or Gmail for now, but we’ll untangle the mess soon enough.

The only other annoyance around here is whatever’s going on at the corner house across from our carport. This woman is usually very quiet, but there has been some project going on there that includes hammering, sawing, and plenty of door slamming as the workers go in and out of their trucks.

The house diagonally from us has sold, so I’m a little nervous about what we may be in for over there.

I’m so far behind in my writing that I don’t expect to remember every single experience, thought and feeling, but I’ll do my best.

Yesterday I went next door but only Virginia was home. Bob was out golfing with Jim. I told her a little bit about the trip and gave her the same wind chime I got for Tammy and myself in Cozumel, only theirs is heart-shaped and ours is butterfly-shaped. She really appreciated it, saying I didn’t have to, they didn’t do anything, etc. Yeah, they did. They took in our trash in green waste bins and we really appreciate that.

The wind chime was tangled just like mine and Tammy’s, but I managed to get mine untangled relatively fast. Virginia said Bob likes to do things like untangling things, so she’d let him have fun with it. I realize it’s not ideal for outdoors because it would probably get seriously tangled in no time as delicate as it is, so I’m just going to keep it inside. It sounds a lot nicer than it looks, but since it’s not very loud I doubt I would hear it if it was outdoors anyway.

Virginia said she and Bob were on a cruise to Alaska many years ago and they loved it. It also didn’t hold over 4000 people, and I think the number of people really makes a huge difference in the service. Incompetent people can screw up with just a few people, but I think they’re a lot more likely to mess things up the more people there are.

I told her about the family reunion, and she told me that Bob lost his last of 7 siblings last fall.

Their place is so much more modern looking than ours with all they’ve done to it over the years. They’ve got sheetrock on the walls and all that. It’s very neat and non-cluttered, too. I think our place is a good 100-200 square feet bigger, though.

What was funny was how determined she told me Bob is to have fun shaping some of our trees and how she told him, “Don’t you think you’re getting a little pushy?” And he told her that we could tell him if he was.

LOL, there’s no such thing. He couldn’t cut or shape our stuff enough. I know the guy likes to keep busy and be outside as much as possible. I also know that we don’t have as much free time as he does, so he’s welcome to butcher whatever he wants. I don’t think he would wake me up when I was sleeping in because he doesn’t use any power tools. Just those giant cutters like what we have. Pruning shears, I guess they’re called. Seriously, we’ve got way too much shit on our property and we have to clear out some stuff as it is just to be able to have a place for the new spinner we got in Florida. We got one with a cat riding a bike that I would like to put in front, and we got a flamingo twister that hangs. I want to put that outside the kitchen window.

Virginia said Bob noticed when we got home Monday night cuz he saw the light on through their kitchen window. I wondered if they’d notice with their window being at an angle the way it is.

I took pictures of the many things we got along the way, but not any of the clothes yet because they’re dirty. Yes, we did get carried away, LOL. Unless you’re trying to make it on our income in a place like Manhattan, most people would love to make what Tom makes, and so we’re lucky to be able to indulge like we did, and I admit we did! I will also share pics of the gifts we received from the family.

Saw my shrink today for the second time and we chatted like old buddies. It was kind of funny, though I think she might have ADD worse than I do with the way she changed subjects a lot, haha. She’s a sweet lady either way. We talked about the trip, anxiety, perimenopause, etc. I told her I had used the lorazepam to help me sleep while on the trip (plus I have the sound machine and an earplug) but then I stopped the lorazepam since returning home and will only use it if I absolutely need to. Hopefully, I will never need to again or it will at least be several months before I do. With anxiety, you just can never know what to expect. It can get you anytime. The butterflies tried to welcome me back yesterday, but they didn’t last long. I still have my tryptophan-laden chicken as well as the emotional tapping trick my therapist taught me just in case things get rough. For now, though, there’s no point in taking it and making myself drowsy if I’m not feeling anxious.

She loves to drive and prefers road trips, saying she feels safer on solid ground. Not us! I have a driving phobia, Tom hates driving, and well, you don’t have to worry about some drunk cutting you off in a plane or a boat, do you?

My period is 3 days late. I love how they’re getting later more often, but wish they would just hurry up and STOP ALREADY! Peri is worse than menopause cuz you’re getting the peri symptoms, but you’re also still having to deal with PMS and periods. So I’m kinda stuck in the middle as I make the transition.

I didn’t know this, but as I learned from Tammy, menopause hit her full blast after her hysterectomy. I thought that having that done meant you got to skip that shit, but nope.

I just hope the anxiety doesn’t hit me when I’m alone for the first time in 2 weeks starting tomorrow. Yes, the root cause may be the peri, but there are still memories of the trauma I went through when the levothyroxine adjustments fueled the fire, so to speak. So while the vast majority may be physiological, there is still a part that’s psychological.

We stopped at Raley’s for a few things on the way home. The apple and cherry trees are now in bloom and looking gorgeous. But with this resurrected beauty comes the resurrected nightmares. You know… the ones with 8 legs? Gonna have to bomb the shit outa the place soon.

Less than two months after returning to sweeping I hit another good win in which I learned the details of today, leaving my sister no doubt both frustrated and determined, LOL. I gave her some tips and tricks to help her turn on her own wins. :)

So the prize package includes a pressure cooker, a power chopper, and some recipe books. Even though I’m not much of a cook, it may be interesting, especially since both of us want to eat healthier. Oh, speaking of health… my vitals were amazingly normal. My blood pressure is perfect and my pulse was a nice comfy 82. No scary “beatdowns,” thank God.

I have really missed winning like I used to but didn’t think I could ever do that again with all the competition out there these days. But whether or not I’m psychically influencing it or I’m just that “lucky,” it’s great to be winning again! Even if I’d still prefer to hit the million bucks over the pressure cookers.

Tried my new weekly hair treatment thingy that I got from the ship’s spa, but can’t say yet if it’ll make a difference. I think this frizz and fuzz is just going to have to be hacked off.

Last night I had a dream that Tom and I were sailing with some woman on a small boat. It wasn’t tiny but it was far from huge. As we were sailing along I spotted what looked like the tops of these 4 dumpster walls way out in the ocean somewhere. Curious as to what could be inside the “walls,” Tom and the woman dove overboard and pulled one of them open. A giant face peered out at us. It was painted on part of a ship that had long since been abandoned. Most of it was submerged in water, and once they pulled apart the wall we could hear water falling like some sort of waterfall that was filling up a space they had created in opening it.

I urged them to get back on the boat because I was afraid I was drifting away faster than they could swim. Yet a split second later all three of us were in the water, and one of them said that we might as well start heading ashore since we had a long swim ahead of us.

My sister was in another dream for a split second and looked nothing like herself even though I knew it was her. Her hair was longer, parted at the side and pulled back in a ponytail. The thing that struck me the most was her face. Totally unlike in real life, it was extremely wrinkled. This gives me hope that she’ll live to get very old.

I also had a dream Virginia died and I introduced some tall skinny woman to Bob by accident, since one of them approached me while I was talking to the other. The woman was in her 60s or so and she and Bob really hit it off well. After several days or weeks had gone by, I ran into the woman and she said, “This guy’s too good to be true.”