Kathleen. I can’t stop thinking of her. Is she the new Stacey? Maybe so. They’re so different and so similar. Stacey was short with dark hair and dark eyes, and Kathleen is a tall blue-eyed blond. Both are soft-spoken, but Kathleen is a little more feminine and a lot friendlier. Stacey’s more of a listener, but Kathleen is chatty like I can be. Stacey had a deep voice, but Kathleen’s is higher pitched.

Kathleen is no doubt friendly to everyone, but I can’t deny that nagging feeling in the back of my brain that makes me wonder… the way she complimented me so much… the way she looked at me… the way she took my hands in hers to inspect my nails… the way she asked to see what I was wearing (I was sitting down with my purse on my lap)… the way she sounded almost sad when she said goodbye to me on the way out, knowing it’d be months before my return… was that my intuition picking up on something? Or was Kathleen just being Kathleen? Maybe she was. After all, she thought my name was Janet (unless she just didn’t recognize me at first since I had different glasses on that would have still been darkened from the sun), yet I would think she would remember my name if she liked me. We remember and notice things more when we like someone.

Or maybe that was the day she actually realized she may like me. Sometimes you can meet someone a few times and then it hits you that you like them. It was the day I realized I liked her. Not my usual type due to the light eyes and hair, but she is tall and good-looking overall. Just a little too thin. Her cheeks are a little gaunt and sunken. I’m guessing her to be a little younger than Stacey and closer to my age.

I seem to have become attracted to more people more often the older I get. It’s like I’m not as picky as I was when I was younger. 20 years ago I never would have considered someone like Stacey or Kathleen.

Well, as I said when Stacey led me on and then “thought it through,” even if someone gave me every reason to believe they liked me without a doubt, I’m not going to be dumb enough to think we could even be friends. I’m determined to play it smart this time. I’m not going to give the slightest hint that she’s grown on me. She’s one of the few I would definitely love to have as a friend, but seriously, I’m not saying shit. What can I say with Tom sitting right there anyway? I know he trusts me, but what could I say to her… “Hey, you’re really nice. Let’s be friends?” I don’t think so. Besides, I don’t know if there’s a policy against her mingling with any of the patients even if she doesn’t actually treat them, but there might be.

Despite knowing damn well what’s in my cards and what’s not, and knowing I couldn’t believe anyone that did show interest after what I went through with Stacey, then Johnson blowing me off, and then Jane the waitress disappearing, I can’t help but find my mind roaming for ways to get her attention. To let her know my door is open. I want to say something like how I tried to look her up on Facebook and surprise her, but couldn’t find her, then hope she surprises me by finding me instead.

Stacey didn’t just lead me on; she lied. Her telling me in December that she didn’t know I liked her was utter bullshit. I also don’t think she got my letter when she said she got it. I think she got it sooner, but decided to call because she saw my number on her phone. Then there’s the fact that she wouldn’t admit that she liked me or was at least attracted to me. There’s absolutely ZERO doubt in my mind that Stacey was in fact attracted to me (even if she may never have been interested in me if we were single). I wasn’t born yesterday. She was just too obvious about it, even if she was never blunt.

Kathleen’s married too, not that this stops humans from being attracted to humans, but why can’t I just keep in mind what’s fated to be and what’s not and just leave it at that? Maybe the chase really is more fun than the capture, not that I would want to capture anyone other than as a friend. If I were single, then of course I would be interested in Kathleen. But attracted to me or not, Kathleen may not be interested in me. The intelligent professionals usually aren’t. No, if you’re not Tom, you gotta be some nutjob on disability or work at McDonald’s to be interested in me. I can’t keep a schedule, I don’t drive, and I don’t work. Why would a therapist or office administrator be interested in that?

Yet I can’t help but wish I could open the door and hope that this is the time I’m finally surprised with someone actually having the nerve to step through that door that isn’t crazy and that could be a part of my life without expecting too much.

Later…

Decided not to bother sleeping with just the air cleaner since that would really be asking to be woken up a lot more than I already am. Why make the problem worse? I think trying to adapt to sleeping through noise without much of a sound machine of sorts in the background would be like me trying to get tall. I am who I am, like it or not.

Sure enough, I was woken up a few times by loud traffic and even more from the perimenopause. I wasn’t having hot flashes or a racing heart. Perimenopause sometimes makes you wake up just because. I was able to get back to sleep relatively quickly and I ended up feeling rested enough.

I’m at the point now where I’m damn near ready to put the house on the market. When we first came here they had just started allowing the motorcycles in and so there weren’t that many back then. I also didn’t expect there to ever be that many because when you think of motorcycles you just don’t think of old people. I had no idea so many old people would ride them, come and go a million times a day, and have people coming and going to them a million times a day. I thought traffic here would be slow, quiet and sparse.

There’s one more thing we’re going to try. If it doesn’t work then yeah, we’re going to have to get a house on a quieter, less traveled street. There’s A, no cure for CRD, B, seemingly no cure for light sleepers either, and C, way too many motorcycles in this mistake of a state. I would really rather not have to have the hassle of moving, though, as noisy as it is here. I would still prefer to stay here for the 6-10 more years he’ll be working and then just leave the state altogether.

Poor Tammy, though, LOL. Would I really be that much fun if we were neighbors when half the time we’d be on opposite schedules? Then again, we wouldn’t expect to see each other every day and I’m sure she’d understand, especially being a person with medical training, but no matter who your neighbor is, it’s a very debilitating thing to live with in general. Anything is better than anxiety. Anything. Literally. No joke. I’d rather be sleep-deprived every single day than anxious once in a while. But the schedule(less) part of it makes life rough. You can’t work a regularly scheduled job, it’s often a fight to get on schedule for appointments, and just an overall pain in the ass. The only good in it is the peacefulness of the nighttime when I’m up during those hours. All I hear right now is the semi-faint hiss of freeway traffic.

In my last entry, I mentioned the old kick-ass air cleaner that sat on my headboard shelf up in Oregon. It was not only kinda loud, but it vibrated the frame of the bed, which helped mask the car stereos. Yeah, here it’s mostly motorcycles. There it was mostly car stereos. I doubt many people have motorcycles there. That was a climate that almost made New England seem toasty in comparison. For some reason, the elevation aggravated my ear, which I now know is jaw joint arthritis, and Tom had trouble breathing at first because the air is thinner that high up at over 5000 feet.

So vibration… the missing element to my multi-sound machine setup. And what did we do? Well, after researching better earplugs (there aren’t any), we decided why not “shake” things up a bit? For 50 bucks you can get this thing you put under your mattress that makes the bed vibrate, LOL. Tom thinks it would be really cool to have regardless. So did we order it? Well, of course! A couple of technology junkies with money; a vibrating bed is a must, haha. I don’t know if it will run indefinitely, but we’ll hardwire it if it doesn’t. That is, assuming it helps. Even if there were no motorcycles, all it takes is one thunderously loud car like that fucking Firebird that just has to come and go no less than 2-3 times a day. I was sitting at my desk when it left on its last run of the day and I could feel the vibration under my feet, and this is with them resting on a Wii board since my legs are too short to rest comfortably on the floor, even with the chair as low as it will go. Then I was lying in bed after a long workout resting up and I could feel the bed vibrate when it roared by the bedroom. I miss being on concrete foundations!

After 6 PM, I walked the entire perimeter, which is approximately 2 miles and it took me 36 minutes running about a third of the way. There was a light drizzle when I first went out that stopped after a few minutes. Directly overhead were rain clouds, but off to the south, the sky was clear and blue. About 20-25 minutes in the rain pummeled down on me, but I didn’t mind. It wasn’t any colder than the air. By the time I got back, I was half-drenched and my hands were cold, but it was still fun. I’m just glad I didn’t straighten my hair, LOL.

There’s this house that has this cute little miniature wooden bench hanging from a pole, and every time I pass it I’m tempted to pull an old Barbie doll out of my retired collection and sit her on it when I’m out late some night as the weather warms up. Give them a real WTF? moment. LOL, I may retire my doll collection but my mischievous side will never retire. Grins wickedly

Last night I dreamed that I let this girl stay with me (I guess I had been living alone). Then Andy came by who turned into Maria R. I let her in and then I later went out for a while. When I returned I found that she’d stolen my laptop along with some other things.

The other girl was still there and I demanded to know if she saw Maria take the stuff and she said, “I’m not going to tell you that.”

I then said that Maria would not be allowed back and neither would anyone else. “In fact, I want you to leave, too,” I told the girl. “I’ll give you a few days to find a place and then you’re out of here!”