In following Irma, I see that millions are without power. I hope Tammy isn’t one of them. It’s looking like her house should be okay, though, since it seems that the brunt of the storm has affected the west side more than the east side of the state.

The looting in Florida makes me sick. And of course it’s by blacks. What a surprise, huh? Some people really never do change, and burying ourselves in a sea of political correctness won’t change them either. It simply makes excuses for them. Some people simply can’t be changed, though. They are who they are and they would still be that way even if every person in the country turned against them.

I was kind of annoyed with Tammy and Sarah as well as with myself yesterday. I knew Becky injured her jaw but I didn’t know it was wired shut and that she’s been on a liquid diet since the accident and will continue to be for a couple more weeks. Tammy misunderstood and thought that I was sending flowers, not a fruit and sweets package. I totally regret not sending the flowers because Sarah has helped herself to most of it. At first, I was like, you little pig! I can see her eating some of it, especially the fruit since it would go bad by the time Becky could enjoy it, but a little willpower in saving some of the candy for when she could eat it would have been nice. I’m like, come on, you’re nearly 300 pounds and you’re not even 30 yet! She’s heading for real trouble in life because if anyone knows how much easier it gets to gain weight and how much harder it gets to lose it with age, it’s me. She’s going to end up diabetic for sure. Then again, her sister’s weight is seriously out of control as well. But yeah, I wish we’d spent a little less on flowers instead of shoveling out 80 bucks for Sarah to stuff herself with. No wonder she was so delighted when it arrived and posted a picture thanking us. It was a surprise treat she knew she could have all to her gluttonous self. I overindulge at times too, but 80 bucks of candy in less than three weeks?! Good, God!

My sister is a shitty writer with poor reading comprehension skills (or so it at least seems most of the time even though she’s an avid reader), but I could’ve been responsible for some of the poor communication as well. All I remember is showing her pictures of the treat basket and the flowers and her saying she’d love it and thanking me for my support, but I thought she was talking about the treats, which I thought I had told her I was leaning towards wanting to do something different than flowers and send something that would last longer. But apparently, Sarah has proven that candy won’t last much longer than flowers.

I slipped Becky a note apologizing and explained that while I knew her jaw was injured I thought she could still eat albeit slowly and carefully. She said it’s no problem and that it’s the thought that counts. While I’m glad that someone got to enjoy it rather than have it go to waste even if it wasn’t the intended recipient, I still wish I’d sent the flowers. Hopefully, there won’t be a next time to get it right. It’s sad that both of them at been in the hospital and they’re only in their 20s. Except for the time I had a breakdown and landed in the psych ward, I haven’t spent a night in a hospital since my teens and I don’t intend to until I’m old!

I had a snippet of vague dreams. In one of them, I was in a house with what may have been Tammy and I seemed to be afraid of some guy that was lurking about. Then I was tossing balls or rocks on some grassy knoll with a few people.

Then I was lying in bed in my cousin Lori and Lisa’s house. I was in Lori’s room, thinking that the room was squarer than I remembered it to be, and how noisy it must have been once upon a time with two little girls living in it and two little boys later on. In reality, I don’t know who moved in once they moved out, but I know that the door to the master bedroom wasn’t where it was in the dream.

In another dream, we were back in our Maricopa house. I awoke one day when Tom was at work and spent the day coloring in my pajamas in the room I used as an office. I then headed into the master bedroom because I was going to use the bathroom off of it when I spotted a truck with a small trailer attached to it driving by the bedroom window. Like right outside of it. I worried at first that vehicles going that close to the bed would wake me up but then I tried to console myself with how quiet this one was.

I stepped outside (still in my pajamas?) and found the land to be larger and devoid of vegetation than it actually was. I noticed workers just beyond the back property line and walked down to them to find they had dug a huge trench along the property edge. I asked what they were doing and they said that the trench would soon be home to over 500 chickens.

“Wouldn’t that stink?” I asked.

They gave some incoherent answer and then snickered.

I muttered something like, “Real fucking funny,” and left.

So glad Tom is as good as he is at fixing things because now my keyboard tray sticks out a lot further. Before I could only pull it out barely halfway. I don’t type nearly as much as I talk now but I still type enough.

He also fixed the bobblehead on one of the solar toys, but it still doesn’t work well. Oh well, what can I expect from a cheap toy from China that only costs a few bucks?

No blasting TV for the last three or four nights now, but of course we have to hear that insanely loud car several times a day.

Still liking the new phones a lot better, but there are a couple of standard features I’m surprised to find don’t exist. Most have a little microphone icon for speech-to-text yet Tom had to go through quite a bit to get it to appear.

There is also no blinking light to notify me when texts and messages come in. I tweaked some notification settings last night, but there was still no blinky when I got a voice message.

Voice messaging is really cool because it prints what the person said and if you still want to hear it there’s an option right there to click a speaker icon. We no longer have to go into our VM, enter a password, and then listen to it that way.

The memo app is really convenient for dream notes. If I wasn’t a writer and into collecting pictures, I could see myself getting by just fine with just a phone. It’s just not ideal for watching movies on, even with the bigger screen. Writing wouldn’t be so hard because of speech to text but editing would be a pain on the phone.

Speaking of editing, I have a few more chapters to go through and then I will submit the new version of A Rainbow in Munich for publication. Then I’m going to stain my hair again. :)