22 Dutch lessons to go! 

I would have done my entry sooner. It's just that I felt pretty shitty there for a while. I don't know what happened. I still don't feel all that great. It started with me getting very lightheaded and then I felt very weak and cold. Lightheadedness has been happening more often to me, and while I assume it's connected to the peri-menopause or my ear, I should probably ask Dr. A about it when I see her in June. Usually, it's just annoying, but this time around it started to get a little scary. Maybe because I’m alone right now. I go from hot to cold and it’s like something’s sapped the energy right out of me. Frustrating too, because while I don’t want to lie around and dwell on it, I don’t have much energy to divert my mind either. I’m working on it, though. 

Life isn't all bad. I got a great start on my story yesterday with over 2,500 words. This is the idea I got from a dream. I was thinking of having something along the lines of a woman who is comfortable but bored with her lazy, overly predictable husband. She then meets a younger guy who is intriguing and interesting in many ways that she finds new and exciting. What she doesn't know is that he's an FBI agent investigating her, and when her husband is killed and she is harmed and ends up in the hospital, that's when he tells her what's going on and takes her to his place to keep her safe. Where most stories have a happy ending, I was thinking I might have a sad or scary ending to this one just to be less predictable. I don't have the entire plot mapped out yet. All I can say is that it will be my first book with all straight characters and all fictitious characters. Normally I base one or two characters on someone I know or have at least seen somewhere. If I could ever feel better enough to muster up more energy I will work on it throughout most of the day since I don't have much else to do at the moment other than worry about labs and doctor’s appointments. We're both going to the lab this Saturday actually. Please God, if you exist, please don’t give me new health issues simply because nothing else is going on with me right now (not poor, not being legally screwed, etc.). 

Yesterday I saw a guy putting the white shutters back up across the street on the gray house, only he put just the outside shutters on the two windows and not the inside shutters, so I don't know what's going on over there. 

The white trucks that work on Jackie's place weren't around, but I'm sure there will be something going on today somewhere. There always is. 

My latest juicing experiment has been making carrot juice and it's surprisingly good. I don't get myself at times. I can't stand carrots yet I like carrot juice. Same goes for oranges. Yet it's the other way around with tomatoes. I'll eat tomatoes but I won't touch tomato juice. 

Last night I dreamed that my friend Kim lived here and was pregnant. She was telling me she was leaving the state and I was disappointed but happy for her. In real life, I have oftentimes wished we could have spent a little more time in each other's lives. But since we met in 1991, we've spent most of the time living three thousand miles apart, and when I lived just next door to her she was a very busy person. She was never one to just sit around. 

In another dream, Tom read the start of my current book and really liked it. 

Then I had a couple of strange dreams, one in which I had this blood machine at home. It was supposed to draw a certain amount of blood for some reason. I wanted to hurry up and turn it off for fear of it losing its mind and sucking all the blood out of me, but I didn't want to turn it off too soon either and have to start all over again. 

Then in another dream, I opened the front door at the crack of dawn. There was just enough light to see that next door hadn't yet opened their garage door. I went outside and sort of stumbled down this slope and onto their driveway as I was heading for the street. I hoped no one had seen me because they would probably wonder why I was in their driveway all of a sudden. 

I then walked up to a U-Haul-type truck that was parked in the middle of where the street forms a T and opened the back of it to pull out a key. I don't know what the key was for but it seemed to be important to me for some reason. 

In the last dream, I had just finished being examined by one of my doctors. I stepped out of the exam room and suddenly realized I was still in my bra and panties and hadn’t gotten dressed yet. I had a T-shirt dress draped over my arm. I quickly fumbled with it trying to get it open so I could slip into it. The instant I managed to slip it over my head and feel the hem fall to my knees, a line of kids that were around 6 years of age walked by me in a single file. 

And then I remembered that all-important key. I started to hurry out and accidentally bumped into one of the kids. I said, “Excuse me, sweetie,” and hurried off to make sure the key was outside the building somewhere where I had left it, and it was.