No nightmares when I slept, but I may as well pull the soundproofing material out of the window so I can have light in that room when I want it since it’s pretty worthless. It may cut down the sound a tiny bit, but not enough to make enough of a difference to be worth it.

Got some Amazon goodies coming. A couple more running T-shirts in raspberry and grape, a long-sleeve purple dress like my wineberry one that’s too big on me, but very comfortable, and some white platform jelly sandals. This should give me a 3.5” boost, but with only a 2.5” incline since the platform is 1.5”.

Burke is quite a climber for a rat that’s gotten to be as fat as he is. He and Dumbo were out last night for about an hour (Simon still rarely wants to come out), and after turning away from my monitor I looked across the room to find him climbing the Bowflex, LOL. Yeah, Burkey boy, you could stand to lose half a pound.

Last night got a little worrisome because I was on the border of being anxious and was afraid I was heading for another month or more of it being a daily thing. I felt better once Tom got up and we got out of the house, even though it was just to Walgreens, and even though some very weird people are out in the middle of the night.

Tom was on the other side of the store when I was moving down one of the aisles towards this guy who was muttering to himself. Then he saw me and said something about it being a nice time to shop. I smiled and said something like, “Yeah, no screaming brats.”

Then he goes on muttering something inaudible. Not sure if he was talking to me or himself, I politely said, “What was that?”

“They’re not brats,” he said before he continued with the inaudible mumbling. I don’t know if I was just deaf or he was afraid to say certain things loud enough for me to hear.

For a second I considered saying something like, “Hey, you’re the one that came up to me. Maybe you shouldn’t talk to strangers if you can’t handle what they might have to say, and just keep your fucking mouth shut.”

But I wasn’t about to argue with a perfect stranger, risk losing my temper and getting arrested for assault. Push and provoke me far enough and I have just as much chance of hurting you as you have of hurting me.

I don’t regret not wasting my time on him since he didn’t threaten me, and I can kind of see one with kids automatically thinking, “Hey, my kids aren’t brats,” but sometimes I think people take things too damn personally. I was referring to kids in general and not anyone’s kids in specific.

I do regret, however, politely smiling and saying, “Just joking,” before heading to a different part of the store to look for something I wanted because that’s leaning towards people-pleasing. I try not to say things just for the sake of appeasing someone’s feelings, especially someone I don’t even know from a hole in the wall. He’s the one that came up to me and whether you want to call them brats, kids, rugrats, children, or whatever, I wasn’t joking and therefore I wasn’t obligated to babysit his feelings and be so damn nice about it. I should have walked away in silence. Really, what did I owe the guy, this perfect stranger that came to me? People should consider that when they make a statement or ask a perfect stranger a question out of the blue, they may not like that person’s answer, and therefore they should be prepared to deal with it or just keep their mouth shut.

Speaking of brats, we tried this new potato chip flavor, Beer ‘n Brats, and it was kind of weird. All it did was earn me two new zits anyway.

I also got some Summer Rain bath bombs and some nail polish.

Tom starts his new position in the new department tomorrow. In the beginning, he’ll be leaving at the same time, 5:30 AM. But instead of coming back at 5:30 PM, he should be back a little after 3 PM. Or so they say. This department doesn’t do Saturdays, but it will be interesting to see if they keep their word about the weekday OT that they’d gotten way carried away with in the other department. I guess he’s going to be working with just a few other people, too. We’re looking forward to fewer hours despite the income cut. There’s so much that’s been neglected around here and that he’s wanted to do for so long, but simply didn’t have the time for.