No pill today, no anxiety. Gee, what a coincidence. Seriously considering if not quitting the shit altogether then scaling back to 50s. I still say most of my problem is the meds and very little of it is the peri. I probably would barely notice the peri, if I’m really even in peri to begin with. Having five periods so far this year makes me wonder. Plus, the doctor did say I still had good estrogen even though that might’ve been over a year ago. Marie is a year younger and she’s already gone a year without periods, yet mine are still going strong. The only difference is that the last one was surprisingly short for being so heavy. It lasted between three and four days instead of a week.

They’ve got tons of different color chalks marking the roads throughout some of the park, one of which runs behind the house. I was expecting to hear all kinds of racket yesterday as they dug up the roads for whatever the fuck it is they’re going to dig up, but they haven’t started yet. Really hope they get to it while I’m still on days. Seriously there’s always, ALWAYS something going on in this park! I could hardly stand to sit out on the patio yesterday because all the landscaping sounds around me were driving me crazy. It just never fucking ends. Even on the holiday, I could hear the sounds of saws and wood chippers buzzing away.

On the fourth, we watched the parade go by with Jim, Bob, Virginia, and some woman who told me I had beautiful hair, which was worn in a braid going down my back that day. I asked Virginia if she knew what they were going to do with the roads, and where I would have guessed it had to do with water pipes, she was suspecting cable. Everything of ours is underground here, including the electricity.

Anyway, the parade didn’t last long. There were maybe about 25 golf carts going by, and a few kids on bikes, along with a few cars. Tom was kind enough to make sure the woman, whose name I forgot, got home safely. She was very old and frail and used a walker. She lives a few houses down from ours, heading toward the cemetery.

I guess Bob and Virginia must have serious AC issues because I’ve seen a heating and air conditioning van working at their place about four times now.

Here’s something interesting. A long time ago I sent a message to a Randy H on Facebook who worked for the post office and lives in Klamath Falls. It was hard to tell from his picture if it was Randy the mailman that I knew or not, but I kind of doubted it. The months went by and I figured he never got the message or chose to ignore it. Eventually, I forgot all about it until yesterday I was surprised by a reply. He said there was another Randy that was probably the one I was looking for and that he thought he was still working there, but he himself was retired. He suggested I call the PO. Instead, I filled out an online form requesting to make contact because I would love to exchange hellos. I was told that my email address was passed on to him, so hopefully, I’ll hear from him soon. It would be nice to reconnect after a decade. The only thing that kind of sucks is that once again it’s me reaching out to a long-lost connection and not the other way around.

Between Randy H and the research I did, I learned his name is Randy D B. He’s 62 years old and has lived in California, Idaho and Arkansas.

The solar hula dancers arrived yesterday. They’re so cute. The one in blue dances on his dresser and the one in pink is in the kitchen.

Later…

Shortly before 9:30, I headed down to the clubhouse to check out the arts and crafts group. I thought it was something that you pay for and that they give you the supplies to do various projects with. As Tom said, I might as well spend the money I’ve been carrying around in my purse on something sooner or later. But it isn’t that kind of a “class.” You simply bring whatever you want to do and everybody hangs out doing it until 11:00. It can be knitting, coloring… Anything.

Not having my coloring books or colored pencils with me, I headed back and ended up chatting with Bob and Virginia. They were sitting out in front of their place, and Virginia was surprised at how easily I could make the steep step onto the grassy area, which has a little retaining wall alongside it.

“Bowflex power,” I explained.

She asked if I was out on a stroll, noticing that this time I had my purse with me. It was already getting hot out, so I wanted to take some water with me and thought it would be easier to stick it in my crossover purse rather than carry the bottle. As I told them, I don’t know how I survived 12 years in the desert. LOL

I told her I checked out the arts and crafts group to find out what it was that they did, and then we got to talking about whether or not we were going to do our roof anytime soon. As I told them, we’d be smart to do it since if we could go from water stains in just one year, we could go to actual leaks in just a year as well. That was when I mentioned that we may move sooner than originally thought. Virginia looked surprised and even a little disappointed. Bob was a little harder to read. He usually either smiles or has a rather stoic expression.

I still think we’ve got several more years to go, but even if there were just a few, that’s a few rainy seasons we could get leaked on. If we wait another year, there’s a type of solar roofing that should be more readily available that would really cut back the electric bills, but it may not be enough to really add to the value of the place if we’re just going to leave in a few years. Instead, we might simply be spending money more for someone else’s benefit than our own. Really wish we could know exactly when we could move, but again, we don’t want to go about it the stupid way a third time.

We also talked about levothyroxine and lorazepam, which we both take. Like me, it’s only normal for her to experience anxiety if something bad is going on in her life. As I was telling her, I’ve had my share of stress and worries in life, but never had a problem with anxiety that borders on fear until I started this medication, and I know it’s the damn medication.

She said something about one of her kids going through a tragic divorce, losing a very dear friend, and not being able to sleep well.

Bob left at one point and we started talking more about female stuff. I told her I was going through perimenopause and that I didn’t think much of the anxiety was coming from that. I asked her if she noticed any changes with anxiety when she went through that and she said no. I’ve honestly never heard of anyone being affected by such debilitating anxiety just from perimenopause. Knowing my body and what’s normal for me, it’s a no-brainer that it’s chemically induced. She said her ex-daughter-in-law had a procedure done in Florida, and she mentioned that she lost hair and stuff like that. As soon as she said that I knew she had to be talking about Hashimoto’s, which is what I’ve got. She said she thinks that’s what it was but it isn’t what she has. She’s just simply hypo and not because of an autoimmune disease. Anyway, she wasn’t sure what they did to her ex-daughter-in-law, but she said something about them making an incision which makes me think they removed the thyroid gland altogether. My old endo said I would not need mine removed, however, which is probably a good thing as I would think that would make me worse. I have to skip doses to back the anxiety off, yet I still have some life in my thyroid, so when I do it’s not like I’m completely depriving myself of thyroid hormone. If I didn’t have a thyroid, though, then I would be.

Right now I’m more concerned with how the hell I’m going to continue to take a medication I’m intolerant to but that my body needs. There’s simply no other alternative, but to either skip doses or stop altogether. I don’t think I need to go as extreme as quitting entirely, but I can’t take 75 mcgs every single day. It doesn’t make my heart feel like it’s going to explode in my chest like the 88s did, and also like this dose did a few years ago when I was still having pockets of activity flaring up in the gland. But it still makes me feel positively shitty enough. No one could understand without having it themselves, but trust me, it’s no way to live. It’s nothing you can get used to or adapt to or become comfortable with in any way shape or form. Some side effects we can live with, but others are way worse than the disease itself can ever make us feel. I’m worried, like I said because there’s no other alternative to this drug. So I either have to be at least somewhat hypo or take something that would make me a total zombie to counteract its effects. But even if I could take something that would make me a zombie, I would likely still feel the effects of too much thyroid meds, and why would I want to be a zombie so I couldn’t do the things I enjoy doing? So it’s a no-win situation for me right now and probably always will be. :(

The only dream I remember last night had my parents and brother in it. Figures, huh? I told Virginia that too; that I lost both parents and my brother all in 2012, and that it was the first time I was actually glad we weren’t close. Anyway, one of us found what looked like a roll of really fat tape in the dream, and I somehow knew it was medical-related. Like maybe x-rays or something like that. So I called the local hospital to get the address in which to send it. My brother kept talking to my dad, making it hard for me to hear the person I was talking to. “Shhh,” I said, but the person was giving me this long, strange address I couldn’t make sense of anyway.