What a frustrating day! We went to the lab and sure enough, they told us they couldn’t draw blood until after the first. Then she said something about calling the doctor to see if she’d okay it for tomorrow since I can’t make it on the first. So we’re going to go back tomorrow afternoon even though there is no guarantee that they’ll draw blood. The thing is that we made the appointment online and I don’t understand why they couldn’t tell us then that it was too soon. My schedule, my number one curse in life, is at the point where I need to be sleeping later in the afternoon in order to make my appointment on my birthday. There’s no reason I can’t go to the appointment if I don’t get to the lab beforehand, though. They’re going to call and let me know what the numbers are either way, even though I’ve told them a million times to leave them on the portal as that’s what it’s there for. While I’m thrilled that I was finally able to go six months without having to see Dr. A, I do want to ask her about my water retention and rash.

When we got home I sent her a message telling her that while I didn’t expect her to get the message before tomorrow afternoon, if she does, the lab may call and ask if it’s okay to draw blood tomorrow since I can’t make it on the first.

Sometimes I wish I could wash my hands totally clean of all labs, appointments, and medication, but the hypo symptoms would be very hard to tolerate at this point.

Yesterday we attached the beautiful tray with the cloudy sky over grassy hills to the treadmill and I ended up getting a total of 1.5 hours of exercise from 4 different sources… The treadmill, the Bowflex, the skier, and outdoors. It makes it so easy! I walk at a fairly normal pace. Nothing too heart-pounding. Besides, it would be hard for me to use the laptop if I was moving that fast so I usually keep it at 2.5 MPH. The time passes so much faster if I do work I normally do as the treadmill is otherwise boring as hell. The only negative is that I can’t use speech-to-text because the treadmill is too loud. Right now I’m on the skier as I talk this entry out because the skier is quiet.

Even though I’m not a holiday person, especially religious-based ones, I really like all the beautiful Christmas lights I see when out walking after dark.

As for the new sound machine, it seems like I might have hit the memory button which may be why it didn’t play long. Tom is testing it tonight by leaving it on while he sleeps. He says he had it going for many hours the other day. I put the old sound machine on the bed by the pillow and slept better than the night before. I have that going in addition to the white noise played through the stereo speakers. When I’m sleeping at night all I need is the stereo. It’s probably a long shot but I’m still hoping that someday the net will get more reliable and I can just use Alexa if we ever live on a quieter street.

Kim and I are a bit worried about Aly’s latest cryptic tweet saying that the health issue she had 4+ years ago is back and that she’ll be in a hospital in Lincoln for a day or two. We’re suspecting she could be referring to cancer. I know she’s had skin issues but I can’t believe they would put her in the hospital for that. But then she was once in the hospital for a month due to a skin-related issue, come to think of it. Herpes, I think it was. She emailed me about it because she was embarrassed to mention it in public. Maybe that’s what it is. I’m not going to mention it to Kim, though. It’s up to Aly to tell her what she wants to. I’m not here to gossip. I was under the impression they spoke every day and that she always kept Kim up to date but I guess not. Unless she really did tell her and she just doesn’t want to admit it. Whatever the case is and despite being less-than-perfect, I feel bad for all the suffering she continues to go through.

Last night I dreamed I was riding a bike over some grass which was kind of bumpy and then I pulled out onto a hilly road somewhere.

Then I was talking on the phone with a woman who headed the aerobics class here or wherever I lived in the dream. On my way to answer her call, one of the rats was out loose and it annoyed me that when walking toward him to get the phone he ran and hid as if I was coming to kill him.

The aerobics woman confirmed that the classes were still being held and I said something about them having considered canceling them but was glad they didn’t. Then I asked why they had considered canceling and the woman said, “To help Alex.”

“I would have been pissed,” I said. “If they had chosen to help just one person instead of helping all those who could really benefit from aerobics, I would have been pissed.”

I had 22 minutes of exercise by the time I finished speaking. I did some editing on and off and brought my total time to 55 minutes. The problem is that my calves are a little stiff because they’re not used to the extra activity yet.

After I got up today, the reason I injured my back hit me like a bell in the night. I don’t know why but for some reason I’ve totally been forgetting to do my back flies when exercising. After a few days of getting back on that and doing additional ab crunches, my core should strengthen back up.

My period continues to be light and I’m still caught in the riptide between my body wanting to go into a full-fledged period, yet remaining waterlogged and PMSy. I just wonder how many more fucking years this is going to go on. I’m tired of always being the one to get the short end of the stick. So many women stop younger than me and I don’t know that that many have had such severe degrees of perimenopause as I have. But when I hear this one’s getting a hysterectomy and that one’s hit menopause before they’re even 50, I can’t help but wonder when the hell I’m going to get any breaks. I never get off easy on anything, so it seems.

If I ever want to feel like there’s a God up there who actually listens, all I have to do is pray that I never lose weight, continue not to hear from Kathleen, get more periods, suffer anxiety again… and voila! Done deal it is. But then if I was crazy enough to actually want these things, of course I wouldn’t get them.

The kitchen rug arrived today and despite careful measuring, it’s a little too big. So I’m kinda pissed. I don’t know that this rug can be cut without damaging it or causing it to unravel in any way.

We attached the tray to the treadmill yesterday so I can hopefully increase my activity levels, but I’m at the point now where it’s so damn easy to gain weight and so impossible to lose it that I don’t think it’s going to do me any good weight-wise. I may reap the other health benefits it has to offer, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do about my weight at this point. It is whatever it’s going to be until they either come up with a miracle, I get ill, or I get old and start withering away.

In the final months before Dad died, he said they couldn’t eat as much as they used to. So I guess that unless something develops to rob me of my appetite if there are no breakthroughs, I could still be a good 20 years or so away from losing my appetite. What’s sad is that I don’t usually overeat. Meaning that while it’s obviously too much for me it’s less than what most people consume. I rarely go over 2000 calories a day. I have 1500-1700. I don’t know why 1200 is so hard for me to maintain but I still can get pretty hungry at times and some days that feels like I’m starving. That’s what it would take, though, day after day, month after month, for me to lose.

Anyway, I’ll walk outdoors for 15 to 20 minutes and then I’ll make up the rest of the time indoors. I’ve already been on the skier now for almost 10. They say 30 minutes is what you want to do to help your LDL score and 60 minutes for weight loss. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t usually do an hour of cardio but more like 20 to 30 minutes depending on what I’m doing. Indoors I now have three things at my disposal. The Bowflex, the skier, and the treadmill. So that right there gives me some variety even though my favorite thing is walking and jogging outdoors. I hate the cold but it’s better to be too cold out there than too warm. It’s supposed to get down to 41° tonight but I’ll be out there while it’s still in the 50s. It’s in the 60s now.

I slept horribly and it wasn’t because of traffic. I just kept waking up for no reason at all. After five hours of sleep, I got up and made some Sleepytime tea and that put me out for a few more hours. I’m kind of surprised traffic didn’t wake me up because every time I woke up I could hear something thundering by. I guess it’s just pre-lab/appointment jitters, even though it’s silly because I have no reason to be nervous about it. It’s just a schedule stressor, I guess. I’m at the point where I really have to push it and that puts a lot of pressure on me.

The park is alive with loud traffic, projects, and landscaping and they even had the water off for over an hour.

My sciatic nerve injury hurt like a motherfucker until a little while ago. It’s like it’s finally responded to ibuprofen which is good because icing it, which helps Tom when he injures his, didn’t do me any good.

My period continues to be light and I haven’t yet needed a big pad. I just dread the moment the anxiety returns and I know damn well it will. No sense in hoping that my periods will stop anytime soon or that the anxiety will be gone forever after all these years. This isn’t my last period, and yes, I will be anxious again at some point.

I’m really disappointed in the pillow sound machine because I didn’t realize that it was only meant to play temporarily until you fall asleep or while you nap. I can’t have it play for eight hours or so. It would have been great for hotels on the rare occasion that we travel to wherever. I don’t understand why they would make a sound machine like that to begin with.

I had a dream that I went to see my GYN and then I ran into her that evening somewhere. I then realized I left my purse in her office as well as some kind of notebook or journal. It was a Monday and she said something about bringing it to me on Thursday.

Then one evening she brought me the journal. Just as she was pulling away I realized she never brought the purse so I ran out and caught her before she could drive away. She said, “There was no purse.”

I began to ask various questions and she sort of leaned her head back against the seat’s headrest as if she were bored with my questions and getting impatient, revealing a tattoo just above one breast.

“Was there a cleaning crew that came into the office at any point?” I asked her.

She confirmed that there was and then I was back inside the house telling Tom I was worried about people using my social security number from my social security card that was in my purse.

In another dream, Tom and I were swimming in the middle of a small lake. I think there were other people around and there was definitely a duck swimming nearby. I asked him how deep he thought the water was and he guessed it to be 100 feet.

It’s looking like I now know which doll I’m going to get and where I’m going to get her from. I’m going to get her directly from a factory in China. Her beautiful Asian face is relatively new from what I could tell during my many months of research. She wears glossy pink lipstick and purple eyeshadow. You can see part of her upper front teeth, too. Chunghua is her ugly name.

When I first found her I didn’t like the body she was in. It was too tall and too disproportionate. Super tits with a 19-inch waist. But then last night I found a site where I could customize her, though she’ll still be a bit heavy. She’s made of TPE which is softer than silicone and she’ll be 5‘3” tall, 74 pounds, and her approximate measurements will be 34-24-34.

Tom was impressed with their site because you don’t even have to give them a credit card number since they do Amazon payments. I don’t like that she’s $1500, but I’ve been wanting one of these dolls since 2005 and this may be the only chance I’ll ever get.

It’s raining hard now, so we got back from the store just in time. Love how it’s keeping things quieter. Just as long as the roof doesn’t leak! We grabbed a few things from Raleys, plus browsed the dollar store. Didn’t find anything there, though.

The bad news is that not only does my back still hurt, but I had a little more than just spotting. Still haven’t needed a big pad, though. I’m too old for this shit! It’s a reminder that just because something hasn’t been around for a while doesn’t mean you’ve escaped it forever. I suppose the return of the anxiety is next.

Realizing I never actually researched the accuracy of the pullout method, I decided to Google it out of curiosity and was surprised to find that it’s more effective than I thought if done properly, and of course, Tom didn’t “pull out.” He simply didn’t cum. It’s 76% - 98% effective. So that led me to wonder once again, was he the one that kept me from getting pregnant or was it really the DES or something else? Nothing can change the past but that doesn’t mean I’m still not curious about things. I’m also still glad we never had a kid in the end as I know I would have hated motherhood. I just regret the emotional hell I went through. I’ll never be okay with that any more than I’ll ever be okay with what my mother did to me, being denied normal sex/lust, what the people in Arizona did to me, the unnecessary poverty trips, my sleep disorder, or the physical and psychological torture of the last few years. It was never okay and it never will be no matter how much things may change or improve.

But then he did cum a few times, and while it was only a few, some of those times were when I was mid-cycle. So it’s one of those things I can never know for sure.

Heard from a couple of people I haven’t heard from in a while, Tammy and Eileen. It was nice to hear from them. Eileen said she avoids Facebook because it sucks up too much of her time. I basically use it just to check for messages and collect pictures, as I told her. Too much negativity, political rants, and people/shit I’m sick to death of hearing about. She asked for my address. I’m guessing she’s sending either a birthday or holiday card. I’m going to be making and sending her incense along with my sister and nieces.

Maria and her damn chain messages! I love it when the God fantasizers automatically assume you share the same fantasies. It doesn’t matter what it’s about, though. God, puppies, cupcakes, roses… I’m just not into the chain message thing. If she does it again I’ll block her from messaging me without actually blocking her altogether. I don’t want to dump her, I just want her to stop sending me these things. It’s the only time I ever hear from her anyway is when she wants me to forward a chain message.

Tammy was ill and they had to take Max to the vet. He’s getting old. Becky still has issues with her arm and Sarah’s been working like crazy. Hopefully, their luck will turn around soon. If all good things eventually come to an end, so can bad things.

She was reminding me that communities equal noise and that I’m used to the boonies. I told her, yeah, people equals noise. But then I thought about it and we’re people, yet 98% of the noise we generate no one hears but us. So if we can keep our noise to ourselves, why can’t they? It’s just ridiculous the amount of shit I hear here. The “flippers” were running something loud earlier. We’re not sure what it was but it sounded like it might’ve been either some kind of generator or air compressor. Whatever it was, we hear enough shit during the week that it really sucks to have the weekends spoiled with noise as well. I just wish we could drop it to a few days a week instead of every single fucking day. That’s a bit extreme no matter where you are.

Somehow, despite being fit and strong I managed to injure my sciatic nerve while we were out running earlier. It started in the side of my lower abdomen and I wondered if I busted an ovary or something, but then the pain soon moved around to my lower back. I put ice on it but it didn’t seem to help much. I can feel it just sitting in this chair even with ibuprofen.

So only 15 minutes of exercise for me today which kind of sucks because I know it’s only a matter of time before I have sleep issues again and I’m too tired to workout.

The shittiest thing is that Tammy was right, after all. I’m having spotting. As watery as I got and as sore as my boobs were, I’m not surprised. I figured that PMS to that degree could only end with some bleeding, but hopefully it won’t turn into a full-fledged period. I read that it’s not unheard of to have spotting after 5-6 months of not having a period. Someday, though - someday - I have to be done with this shit for good, right? If it isn’t this year or next then I’ll have to get into Dr. G to find out why I’m still having this problem when so many women are done with periods younger than I am.

The loud car visited on Thanksgiving and it was here this morning. Still hoping it doesn’t actually live here and that it didn’t just go away somewhere for a while. Thanksgiving was the first time I heard it in a couple of weeks.

Did someone get a frog machine? I swear I’m hearing frogs, which you only hear in the rain and more in the country than the city, but I’d rather that than saws, hammers, blowers, movers and other loud shit.

Tom trimmed the second shrub in from the back corner yesterday, and today he’s doing the bathroom sinks with Drano because they were a bit sluggish.

I had a dream we were either vacationing or living on the coast somewhere. It couldn’t have been Florida because it wasn’t flat. I was standing in some small business (a burger joint or ice cream parlor?) Gazing out its side window which took up an entire wall. The shoreline was practically right there outside the window. The waves were small, though.

Then it was nighttime and I was on some beach when I decided to climb down some rocky cliff and mountainside. Partway down I realized it was too dangerous since I couldn’t see in the dark, so I began to pull myself back up. For a split second, I panicked when I lost my foothold and my feet were dangling in the air and I realized that if I wasn’t strong enough to pull myself back up, I could easily fall to my death. Yet I manage to pull myself up in a way I never could in real life despite being a “Bowflex babe.”

In the last dream, I was riding a bike down the street and came across a couple of other bikers. They were too slow so I passed them, realizing how much easier it was to pass bikes as opposed to cars.

Just thought I’d do an entry while Tom is out vacuuming leaves and trimming the second bush in back. We went walking for 22 minutes and 1.1 miles. The sun was almost a bit warm. I’m enjoying this warm spell while it lasts because the cold and rain are returning soon.

Along our walk, I saw what I thought was Ray right between a couple of houses further down Astronaut. It’s hard to tell for sure which houses are which when you’re looking at them from the Astro side versus the Radiance side. I turned my head away for a split second and in that split second I thought to myself, watch. He’ll see me and then he’ll quickly disappear to avoid me.

When I looked back a second later, sure enough, he was gone, assuming it really was him. I didn’t get a good look but I think it was him. Again I can’t help but wonder why he’s avoiding me but I’m not curious enough to walk down to his place and ask. No need to make him uncomfortable and put him on the spot like that when I’m here to live and not make friends. I also get that some people here have dementia. If it isn’t about some misunderstanding or false rumor/belief then he’s likely got me mixed up with someone else that pissed him off or he’s just not all there. Whatever, dude.

Yesterday I was surprised and disappointed to hear landscaping twice on top of all the car doors from people’s company.

I don’t remember my dreams from last night but a couple of nights ago I was washing my hands in a sink that had a motion sensor soap dispenser only it was hidden under a flap in the front corner of the sink. Then Larry was there washing his hands in dripping water all over the counter. I said, “You’re getting water all over the place,” and threw him a towel.

Then I was speaking German and running down a long hallway somewhere where my parents were in some room along with a bunch of coloring books.

Even on Thanksgiving, there are Facebook posts about race and politics. rolls eyes People just can’t seem to take one single day off. So what if today’s supposed to be about being thankful instead of bitching about what’s wrong with the world, right?

I’m surprised there isn’t tons of company yet at the neighboring houses, but I’m sure there will be soon enough because everyone has to come here. They can never go anywhere else for the holidays.

We went out for a walk that lasted 11 minutes and waved hello to Bob on the way back. Took a different route this time. We walked down to the clubhouse, around the pool, over the bridge, and down a sidewalk that winds between a couple of houses (I would hate that as it was so close to their windows) and out onto Daisy.

Tom and I were discussing technology and we both agreed that it would really be nice if people could get over their paranoia and fear of being spied on because then there would be more done with Alexa and other voice-activated devices which would be so cool. It goes to show just how many people must be up to no good to be that paranoid. I mean, just what is it that they’re saying that’s got them so worried? They’re also worried about things like their phone calls being monitored and again I can’t help but wonder why. Are they plotting to kill people for God’s sake? I still say that if you’re that paranoid, then you must have something to hide. People have asked us if it bothers us that Alexa is “always listening,” and no, it doesn’t. We’re not sitting in here discussing illegal activity, we don’t recite our Social Security numbers, so why should it bother us if there is an off chance that someone connected to the government may hear me ask Tom to help me change the rats’ cage or he telling me that it’s supposed to rain in a few days?

People also got all freaked out over Google Glasses for fear of their picture being taken. But they can already be taken easily enough by phone. People’s paranoia is both shady and silly.

We reasonable people are taking advantage of the fun and convenience that voice-activated things bring and our home is getting “smarter.” We ordered a couple of switches for the kitchen and plugs for the bedrooms.

Also included in our huge $700 Amazon order will be light-medium brown Just for Men hair shampoo which is supposed to be similar to the too-dark stain I was using, rat leggings (Kathleen and my dentist oughta love those) and “white oak” foam squares for the laundry and second bathroom floors.

I also got 10 1-oz. oils… Honey Vanilla Love Dust, Hot Buttered Rum, Magnolia, Chocolate Lovers, Chestnut Brown Sugar, Sea Salt Caramels, Buttermilk Pancakes, Sweet Patchouli, Pink Sugar & Candy Corn, plus incense-making supplies… punks, bags, cutter, and foil baking pans with lids for dipping the sticks in.

We got an 8x8 eggplant purple square rug for the kitchen which is a nice color and dark enough to hide stains and spills.

I got some flavored coffee…butterscotch swirl, chocolate marshmallow, mint chocolate chip, and Vienna mocha chunk.

Got a tray to attach to the treadmill so I can use the laptop while walking. The design I chose was a blue sky with puffy clouds and grass.

I got a zen poster with wet bamboos and a pink orchid.

Lastly, he got several things he wants like an Echo Dot for his office.

Today is one of those days where I’m not sure how I feel. I’m not anxious but I’m not calm. I’m not tired but I’m in a lazy mood. Still making a point of ski blogging as I journal. So I’m skiing away to this entry. The only thing is that I really don’t have anything to update other than the dream I had of going to live with Maliheh of all people. I just don’t have 30 minutes or so of journaling to do. It takes me longer to edit than to speak out the entry but editing can’t be done on the skier.

When I get done I’m going to take my laptop into the bedroom where it’s easier to drown out the inevitable noise that’s just minutes away from starting. Right now all I hear is the roar of the freeway.

Looking forward to ordering incense-making supplies later on and we’ll be doing a big Amazon order as well in a couple of days. It will probably be a few weeks before the new bedroom windows are installed. We’re also hoping to replace our ancient stove within the next few months, and then there’s the silicone doll we’ll use our tax refund for. I’m actually considering TPE instead which is softer than silicone.

Since I can’t even think of five minute’s worth of blogging to do, I’ll call this an entry for now.

Every now and then just to either confirm my belief or to surprise myself with being wrong, I do a little prayer experiment. So I chose 3 things I’ve struggled with in which to pray for and I made sure they weren’t easy prayers like asking for the sun to rise and things that are so obviously likely to happen anyway. I didn’t ask for anything off-the-wall and totally impossible either. I asked for things that were very reasonable. One of them hasn’t happened for about a decade, another hasn’t happened for a couple of months, and one of them has basically never happened. So I prayed every day and I gave it what I believe is sufficient time.

Not a single prayer was granted. So yeah, if there’s anything up there it’s either me it’s not listening to or you guys are praying for things that would’ve happened anyway. I’m not saying there is or isn’t anything up there. I don’t know the answer to that. But I can say for sure that for me personally, prayer is a joke. So maybe it’s time to ask yourself… would the things I prayed for that I was granted have happened anyway? Could they have?

And please don’t say that things “happen in their own time” because it doesn’t count for much to ask for something now and not receive it for 10 years.

Prayer number one was something I’ve done before. Live without anxiety. I prayed for it not to return. Well, yesterday I was anxious enough to have my coffee 15 minutes after my meds today.

Prayer number two was also something I’ve done before. Lose weight.

The last prayer was to hear from Kathleen.

I haven’t been able to go more than a few months without anxiety, I haven’t been able to lose weight without getting sick in a decade, and I’ve never really had a friend like Kathleen. I don’t know if the anxiety will ever be a thing of the past, but I’m obviously never going to lose weight, and I’m not going to hear from Kathleen either. You know how it is, some things really never do change. Especially this late in life.

When we can ask for anything we want, far out or not, and get it when we ask for it (or close enough) then I’ll believe in prayer. But when I ask for perfectly reasonable things and don’t get them, what can I really think? You can look at things through the eyes of wishful thinking, denial or desperation. Or you can look at things through the eyes of logic and experience. Not trying to persuade anyone one way or the other, just sharing my own individual experience.

Moving from fantasy to reality… the people who make the custom soundproofing windows want $800 per window so that’s a no-go. That’s fucking ridiculous! How do they expect to stay in business with prices like that? I’m guessing they mostly do businesses. They would need it with all the damn car stereos and since the law obviously isn’t going to do the right thing and ban them, I can see where businesses would really need these. These days it’s not just loud music that’s an issue but loud vehicles to begin with. From what I gather it seems to be more of a problem in the west than in the east. Just the rise of pickups using diesel these days which makes them sound like huge semis is truly mind-boggling. I think it stems from the same reasons that people feel the need to blast their music for anybody and everybody whose ears they can possibly force it on… a deep-seated sense of insecurity and desire for acknowledgment. Everybody wants to put on a show and be noticed. I don’t need to be a psychologist to know that it obviously makes them feel like they’ve got some semblance of power and control if they know they’ve made you hear them.

I slept well last night. Oh, to be able to sleep at night every night. but for some of us, some of the simplest everyday things are too much to ask for. There’s still a chance of being woken up at night if a motorcycle roars through here at midnight but it’s definitely less likely. But still, if I could sleep at night I would sleep better overall and then all I would have to bitch about would be the daytime noise. There’s plenty of that… loud engines, car doors slamming, landscaping, planes, etc. At least the barking and the screaming kids are left out of the mix, and what car stereos I do hear are coming from the freeway.

Started learning Swahili on Duolingo. While it seems easy enough, there are no sound files for that language because that course is still in beta.

Last night I dreamed that I had a rat and when I called it, it emerged from a hole in the carpet. Yet when I put my hand into that area I never felt a hole in the floor beneath the carpet.

Then I had a dream about Tammy and some cat but I don’t remember the details.

Next was a dream that Tom and I were driving on a dirt road through a wooded area and I was saying something about how I looked forward to hearing from the new friend I recently made, even though she seemed kind of youngish. Then we were walking through the woods and after a while, I got tired of walking and asked Tom if we were there yet. He said something enthusiastically and then I replied to that with, “But we’re not going anywhere.”

In the last dream, I was walking up to an apartment building. Some guy was sitting out on his front patio leering at me in a way that made me uncomfortable as I fumbled with the key in the mailbox.

Okay, now that I’m fairly recharged once again I’m doing this entry from my skier. I moved it closer to my laptop so I could be closer to the microphone and improve the accuracy of the speech-to-text.

I crashed in the late afternoon and woke up one hour later at which time I had some turkey and tea. I fell back asleep an hour or two later without taking the melatonin I considered taking. Nothing woke me up. I just woke up just because on and off and then I took my meds at 12:30. I got up for good at 2:30.

I’m taking advantage of being mostly recharged and doing as much cleaning as I can because the back-and-forth cycle I’ve been on means there’s a good chance I’ll be exhausted tomorrow and have to waste the day laying around again.

To ask if I’m sleep-cursed is like asking if water is wet. The answer is more than obvious. The reason why is not. The only time I slept well was between something like 1986 and 1990. Looking back at the pattern throughout my life it’s clearly obvious that there is a pattern. First I struggled to fall asleep and get up for school, then when the 90s began I started getting woken up a little more and then I was woken up like crazy when 1992 came around and I hit the NHA in Connecticut. Then I continued to sleep shitty in the Phoenix apartments with my sleeping improving once I got into the house. Then I slept worse in Maricopa where I had pigs, sonic booms, and dogs that would come barking onto the land and waking me up. Then I slept really shitty in jail and on the Oregon mountain between his movements in the RV, the rats, my airbed springing leaks, the freezing cold, my sound machine making a strange loud sound when its batteries would be low, and then whatever the hell that wild animal was that would bang around underneath the RV. Then I slept a little better in the hotels and duplex, though not great, and even better in the house. Then we changed states again and once again my sleep was worse, remaining that way until we hit the trailer. Then we came here and it’s the worst it’s been since we lived attached to others in either apartments or duplexes. A retirement community is the last place on earth I would ever have expected to be woken up so damn much. And just when I was doing better!

Our goal is to install new windows and turn the loud vehicles into Laubsaugers, as I still call the loud blowers the park uses, thanks to Nane. Those are pretty loud and yet the sound machine drowns them out. If the new windows and everything we have planned can reduce the noise from OMG insanely loud to just loud, then if anything steals my sleep it won’t be the traffic. It’s one thing to ruin my peace and another to steal my sleep. I would rather double up on the kinds of sounds that can be drowned out by the sound machine and sleep better if I had to choose.

Speaking of sounds, I wonder how many more months they’re going to be prepping that house for sale. He thinks they could be done by Thanksgiving. No way. I say it will go on at least until the end of the year. There’s no doubt that I’m going to have to listen to a new roof being banged down on top of all the other projects they’re doing. I’m sure they’ll want to repaint both inside and out and install new carpet, too. I’m just so sick of how there’s always something going on around here. Always. Like I said, before coming here loud vehicles, constant landscaping, and regular projects weren’t an issue. The last two were a little bit of an issue in the Phoenix apartments, but that was nothing compared to here.

I was so rundown and exhausted yesterday that I thought I could take a nap, but as Tom pointed out, I was more tired than sleepy. The new sound machine came and soon I will experiment with it and see if it will help or not. This is the one you stick inside your pillowcase. The only thing is that it’s a bit high-tech compared to other sound machines I’ve had and it’s cycling through the sounds rather than remaining on one sound. I haven’t figured out yet how to stop this.

We also measured the bedroom windows which are standard width but 15” longer than standard to replace them with custom soundproof windows. We’re waiting for price estimates, but if they’re too expensive, then instead of replacing the old windows, we’ll put a new one in, in addition to the old one for extra barriers since 90% of sound does come in through windows. You can get a standard window for about $160. We’re willing to pay up to $300 per window but my guess is they’re not going to be under $450.

Early yesterday morning we went to the IHOP and I ordered the same thing I had last time. I just wish I had been awake enough to enjoy it more and that the music hadn’t been blasting. I get that the music is so you can’t hear other people talking but if you need it that loud then you’ve either got bionic ears or the person would have to be shouting at the top of their lungs.

I’m behind on several things. I still have to finish my book which I hope to do today and I’ve still got journaling to do. I dumped a lot of content off of PB because it definitely did seem to slow it down.

I’m borderline anxious today but hopefully things won’t escalate to the point where I’m feeling as shitty as I did at the end of last year. I’ll skip doses if I have to. I just hope I don’t have to make any skips so close to labs. I think part of what’s got me wound up and that’s interfering with my sleep is my upcoming lab and PCP appointment. Today I will be canceling the shrink. I can’t believe there isn’t a convenient way to cancel online. That was the only thing better about Sutter; their online portal was much better.

My boobs are now really sore and it’s hard to believe I won’t have a period within a week or two. Even though I’m coming up on five months without a period, you know the past always has a way of returning to haunt me. Also, I still can’t be sure that the anxiety will ever be gone for good. I still may struggle with that on and off for the rest of my life. I sure as hell hope not, though! Yes, I would rather be exhausted.

I got a couple of weird emails, one confirming my subscription to a gay forum I never subscribed to, and a Lisa asking why I’m bothering her and sending her so much stuff. It was also sent to other people. I showed it to Tom and he thinks it’s just a phishing scam and not anyone trying to mess with me personally.

I’m expecting the screensaver to kick in and disable the speech-to-text any second because it does this every nine minutes. It still makes the time on the skier so much less boring and it goes so much faster this way, too. Every day that I have the energy to do so, I want to work out at least an hour a day to help lower my LDL score. It doesn’t burn the kind of calories that running does but at least this way I can’t say I sit too much.

Although I still don’t know what it is, Ray definitely has something against me because he never messaged me directly. At least not intentionally he hasn’t. It’s still on him, whatever it is, but I wonder if someone complained about him or someone he knows and he thinks it’s me.

I still also sense Carolyn isn’t too fond of me maybe because I’m liberal. Or because I’m younger and smaller? Because they got complaints about their shrubs and we didn’t? Just like with Ray, it’s on her. I’m just the curious type, as always.

I’m really getting tired of being ignored and blown off by Tammy. It makes me wonder how much she really wants to be a part of my life. On the other hand, less contact, less opportunity for misunderstandings or any drama like that.

As for Aly, I’m okay with whatever she chooses to do in the end. That too, is on her. I apologized for my mistakes, and while I wasn’t the perfect friend, I think I was still a pretty good friend overall. That’s all I can say and do. The rest is up to her. I do appreciate, however, reconnecting with Kim and I hope we will continue to get along. Should our friendship fall through a second time, though, I would like to think she’d handle it differently by not stalking and harassing me.

And now for the dreams I’ve had the last few nights. Two nights ago we must’ve been living in the country again because Tom parked his car down the end of a long winding driveway in the woods.

Then I dreamed he Skyped me that he would call and cancel A. I hope that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be able to see her but right now it’s looking good.

Pretty sure I also had some dream pertaining to Kathleen who didn’t seem as eager to see me. That pretty much tells me something I already figured.

Then some younger woman who was driving me somewhere seemed to really like me. A split second later we were out of the car and she was starting to kiss me or something like that.

Then there was something about Mary sleeping over (the one from jail). I was living with my parents again and she was to spend the night in my room and in my bed next to me for the kind of sleepover one would have as a kid.

Then I was walking through a large room in a house in which I could see into a smaller corner room that was off of it. I looked in and at the back corner of the room and thought it looked so far away.

I’ve now done 25 minutes on the skier. I never would’ve had the patience to do that if I was reading, watching a show or listening to music!

Okay, we seriously have to find another place to live. I’m a person with CRD and who’s a light sleeper. I can’t take this being woken up half the time anymore. The exhaustion is killing me. I’m losing too many days of work and exercise due to being forced to just lay around because I don’t have the energy to function. I can’t even update my journal as much these days.

Vehicles are loud and getting louder as more and more loud vehicles are produced because of people “like” that. Well, I’m tired of having their cries for attention and need for acknowledgment forced on me to the point that it’s affecting my life. This is utterly batshit fucking ridiculous that I can’t sleep because things have to be so insanely loud… motorcycles, cars, trucks… I lost NaNo due to it and sometimes I’m too tired to workout and even clean the fucking house. My sleep is cursed enough without people’s inconsideration adding to it. Like the motorcycle that woke me up just a few hours after crashing. I was too pissed to fall back asleep right away, so I got up, bitched to Tom about it who was supportive and understanding, took melatonin, and then I fell back asleep. Although it jumped my schedule ahead which will help for my birthday appointment, I’m hungover because of the melatonin to the point that I almost may as well not have gone back to sleep.

My biggest fear is that my sleep is somehow cursed no matter where we go. Can’t help but wonder if it’s a coincidence that they started letting motorcycles in here the year we happen to move in. Same goes for the rise in loud vehicles since that loud car left. Retirement communities just don’t stand for the quietness they used to stand for and be all about.

If there is a God up there that picks and chooses things for us I hate its fucking guts just for this. CRD is incredibly debilitating. It’s a sure way to have many doors in life slammed in your face before they can ever get a chance to open. So many things I could have done and been, but no, I just had to be cursed with CRD as if I’m some undeserving piece of shit. Getting to appointments is a struggle, trying to stay asleep during the daytime is a struggle, LIFE is a struggle.

I wish to hell I was like Tom who can sleep through anything. I used to be a heavy sleeper until my early 20s. I don’t know how or why I got to be the way I am, but I do know that the sound machines can only drown out so much. A good third of the vehicles today are too loud and too close to the bedroom and they just can’t mask or override the sound. As it is, I have the sound machine I’ve been using blasting and that’s still not enough. So if the sound machine that’s arriving today doesn’t cut it, we’re out of here for sure, even if we have to rent a tiny little dump. I need to get a bedroom that’s not right on the street.

Although I got eight hours of sleep, it wasn’t without interruptions. Twice, as I was first knocking off, traffic would wake me up. Then I woke up just because. I don’t know why things are back to waking me up like they have been, but I do feel a little better today. Just a little dizzy, especially after I came back from my workout. De-waxed my ear again and that seemed to help. Being on the Amberen and this far into the peri, makes me think it’s more likely my ear than anything else. Especially since I feel better after the treatment.

I’m doing laundry now and Tom will probably be up soon.

They were supposed to turn the water off at 10:00, but it was still on at 11:30 when I crashed. It was definitely off later on, though.

Kim is continuing to whine about her sister and SIL. Her sister does have legal custody of her as I figured. She’s never had her own place and she said something about not being able to work because she’s collecting her father’s pension. Some things she said don’t make sense like how her sister criticized her for going upstairs on two legs instead of one or something like that. She’s such a shitty writer so I don’t know what she really meant. She’s so heavy, though, that she couldn’t even hop on one foot across the floor let alone up and down stairs.

She perceives them as being overly critical and strict and they probably are, though they tell her they think they’re helping her. I doubt they’re doing anything illegal that could get them in trouble. Kim doesn’t want to get them in trouble but she sure wishes she could earn her own money and get her own place. She says they treat her like a child and she’s sick of being told what to do. I guess they punished her by taking her tablet away for lying about having her charger on her. Not sure what that’s about but she still has a phone and she sneaks online from time to time.

I don’t know what I can tell her other than to continue to be a sounding board for her since she herself doesn’t know who can help her. I know for a fact that Kim does lie because she’s lied to me and maybe I shouldn’t feel bad for her with all she put me through five years ago, but that was five years ago and she didn’t cost me a whole shitload of time, money, lost sleep and freedom like the sickos in Arizona, and I do know what it’s like to be stuck living with people I don’t like.

I might have been too tired to mention this, but I bailed out of NaNo a few days ago. Partly due to lack of ideas and partly due to not feeling well. When I felt like shit yesterday and the day before I was glad I didn’t have the pressure of that on me anymore. At least one of the two books I planned to write this month will be finished. It’s just a question of when.

My boobs are still sore and yesterday and this morning I was so crampy that I was so sure I had my period, but now the cramps have backed off.

I wanted to do this entry while skiing but I’m just way too tired. Fucking traffic woke me up. Again. This time it was at night. It’s totally fucking frustrating to be going through this year after year. Since knowing Tom I have slept the absolute worst in this place of all the places we’ve lived. Making one last-ditch effort to try to combat the problem with a $25 pillow sound machine but if that doesn’t work, then yeah, we’ve got to find a quieter place to live. Even if there was more noise in general, as long as it wasn’t so close to such a busy street it would help tremendously if this new sound machine proves to be a bust. It’s a Bluetooth speaker that you can hook up to a phone, tablet, laptop, whatever.

This is my third day of sleep deprivation and it’s really getting old fast. We really are like batteries that need to recharge, and I’m tired of getting my charging cord yanked out too soon before I can fully recharge up to a hundred percent. I’m like a car with no gas. You don’t realize the tremendous amount of energy it takes just to sit up and talk out a journal entry until you’ve had your sleep cut short.

My first thought was that getting rid of that loud car (if it really was me that got rid of it) was pointless after all if other things were just going to steal my sleep anyway. But I’m still glad it’s gone because I really got tired of having to listen to it come and go six times a day. I might’ve put up with it if it could’ve come and gone once and sometimes twice, but coming and going all day and all night was overkill in something that loud.

Nothing actually woke me up yesterday but I didn’t sleep as long as I should have and I was up a long time, too. I’m just not sleeping the usual eight hours or more as I used to and that’s causing my schedule to roll a lot slower. Instead of an average of 1.5-hour jumps, it’s now about an hour and even or less when I’m woken up. Starting to wonder if I’m going to make it to Doc A.

Anything is better than anxiety, but I would rather be stuck in a tiny snowy dump and able to sleep and do things and live my life than to live here, not be able to sleep and therefore not be able to function at my fullest. Lost sleep can really ruin your entire day. It was a struggle just to order the fucking groceries and change the beds. It’s like being ordered to go on bedrest since all you can really do is lay around most of the time. So, so glad I don’t work! I’d have been fired from one job after another with my sleep issues, not to mention the peri.

Yesterday I almost felt like I had a cold minus the coughing, sneezing and congestion. My head had that fuzzy kind of feeling we get when we have a cold.

This is the second day that I’ve been unable to work out due to lack of sleep and I’m asking myself the same question I’ve been asking all my life… why? Why is my sleep so fucking cursed? It’s bad enough not to be able to keep a schedule, but if anything up there cursed me with this, did it really have to add insult to injury by also making sure that I was the lightest sleeper on earth as well? I don’t understand why I can’t sleep through things like I did when I was young and like most other people can. It sucks even more when you’re not awake enough to do much of anything, but you can’t get back to sleep or nap either. I’ve heard that if the body is tired enough it will sleep. So then why won’t mine? Either way, I’m sure I’ll be up 16-20 hours and sleep just 7 hours when I feel like I could use 10-12 right about now. If that’s all my body really needs then why am I left feeling so exhausted? I really wanted to finish my book today and start upping the exercise to help at least lower my LDL score if not my weight.

Anyway, it was quiet yesterday due to the rain which has made the house stink of that old rotted wood smell I used to smell in the trailer. My lungs are a bit tight, too. Today I’m sure it will be quite noisy with both traffic and landscaping. Never have I lived in a place where those two things have been such regular issues. I even slept with all the loud stereos in Oregon. But then we were further back from the street and I had a loud air cleaner that vibrated the frame of the bed. I think that vibration was important, but we haven’t had any luck with the vibrators we’ve tried so far. I think the main problem is that there are simply way too many loud vehicles these days and we’re practically right on the street. I don’t understand why we don’t take advantage of today’s technology and make all vehicles as quiet as ours. Our car is not rare. There are still enough quiet vehicles, so it goes to show that it’s not impossible. But at least a third of them are very loud and I don’t understand why. Is it the need to get attention or something? The thought of living here for another 5 to 10 years does not sit well with me, but past patterns have shown that there will be a problem of some kind no matter where we go. But I know we can find places where I’m not woken up as much, even if I have to listen to all kinds of shit when I’m awake because we’ve lived in them before. Oregon was just as noisy as this place. The only difference was that there it was music and mutts, here it’s motors and landscaping. But I could still sleep there more often than I can here.

Running out of juice to keep typing so I’ll finish up tomorrow.

Manson’s finally dying. I thought that guy would never die. The two things the media loves to do most are lie and not give the full story, so I can’t say why he’s dying. Apparently, he was in the hospital earlier in the year because of intestinal bleeding and the doctor said he was too weak to be operated on so he sent him back to prison. What really probably happened is that the doctor refused to spend his time and the taxpayer’s money on operating on the bastard, not that I don’t agree with this. I know doctors are sworn to save lives but not everyone does what they’re sworn to do. If that was the case then a lot more cops would be serving and protecting instead of bullying and abusing. The prison personnel must be thrilled not just because of who he is but how he is. Dealing with crazies is not an easy job at all.

Once again my health is interfering with my life as it has for much of the last three years. I feel really rundown and I don’t know if I could describe the feeling in my head as lightheaded or dizzy but it’s sort of like my head feels compressed and fuzzy. Like there’s a strange vibration almost within my head. I feel a little weak and sometimes I go from hot to cold. I don’t feel like I have a cold but I don’t know if it’s connected to PMS or if my good ear could be infected. I’ll have Tom help me treat it with both earwax removal stuff as well as peroxide and alcohol when he gets up. I just feel so damn rundown that all I want to do is lay in bed. My biggest concern is that the anxiety might return. I still have no reason to think I’m over that since I only last felt anxious a couple of months ago. It is promising, however, since it’s been just over four months since I’ve needed lorazepam. If only I could get to next spring without anxiety!

It’s been raining steadily since I got up nearly 5 hours ago. The winter sure is off to a wet start. I figured it would be. It’ll dry up once we get the new roof.

I may officially declare myself a NaNo loser because I lack the energy and the ideas for the second book I had planned. The first one is a done deal, though. It’s just not long enough to win.

Jon said Ray didn’t know how he managed to send me the Messenger invite. I thought it was weird to get a thumbs up and a Messager invite in response to my question, so I sent the guy another message saying that Jon said it was sent by accident and that I was confused at first by his response but not to worry about it. Lastly, it was still nice to have an incentive to download Facebook Messenger.

He got the message but ignored it, so I guess that yeah, he has some kind of issue with me that only he knows about. My only guess is that it might have to do with me being annoyed by the racket Bob used to make. I don’t care what his problem is, though. It’s on him, not me.

Although it means a lot more editing to be done, I really like using speech-to-text for blogging when I’m on the skier. It makes the time on it pass by quicker as opposed to when I’m reading, listening to music or watching shows. I’m just trying to infuse my body with some energy so I can do things, but I’m not having much luck after 10 minutes of skiing. I just hope whatever the hell’s going on with me doesn’t go on and on for weeks, and I really hope this December isn’t anything like the last one. I felt like shit throughout most of December, mostly due to anxiety. I’m calm so far, but there’s no saying how I’ll feel later on.

My weight is really beginning to reach some scary levels. I was 157.8 at one point during my day yesterday, and just now, after eating a fish meal, I’m 159.2 with shoes and clothes. Ugh!

I created a makeshift skier desk by wrapping rolls of sticky foam-like tape around the still handles of my skier in which to rest my keyboard. Then I stacked two stools to my side for my mouse.

I’ve definitely been sitting too much and I need to move more. On Amazon, I saw a laptop tray attachment that should be able to attach to the treadmill. So that’s an option, too. As long as I’m sitting less and moving more. The only problem with the treadmill is that it’s loud. On the other hand, it would make a good sound machine to help drown out the daytime noise. I want to start being active at least one hour a day. I’m also cutting calories as well. Sprinting is the best way to kill a lot of calories in a shorter period of time. The only problem with that is you can’t keep going for long periods of time.

Chances are nothing I do will get the weight off and I’m probably going to keep gaining all my life. But I’ve got to make one last-ditch effort to try to reverse this shit because the extra weight is really starting to make life hard for me. It’s harder to run, it’s hard to bend over far, it’s harder to do anything.

Gave up on Happy Valley. I just couldn’t get into it. I would only watch when I eat, anyway, but I can find something else to do while I eat like maybe proofreading.

Still exchanging messages with Kim and not hearing from Aly. My first instinct is to say I’ll never hear from her, but I sure never thought I would hear from Kim, so who knows?

Aly said something about fighting an infection and also that she may be admitted to the hospital. I still can’t gauge how serious her health is and I’m not getting much from Kim about it either.

I messaged a guy named Ray P who’s friends with Jon & Carolyn and lives a few houses down and asked if he knew whatever became of Hazel. Not so much because I was curious to know, but for some reason, of all the people I’ve met here, he seems the least friendly. If he’s got any kind of problem with me that I don’t know of, then that’s just it… his problem. But I was curious to see if he would blow me off or reply. He replied with a thumbs up and a link-invite to download Messenger to my cell. I do miss having that app on my android but when I went to download it I got a message saying there were files that could harm my device so I’ll have to have Tom check it out.

Did the first of the two shit tests. They want you to do it twice because blood isn’t always present in every single dump you take if you’ve got cancer or whatever else blood can be a symptom of. But that’s what they’re looking for…. blood in the shit. It’s simple enough. You just brush the shit with a little brush and dab it onto a test strip.

Stopping shaving and switching deodorants haven’t done my rash any good, as expected. I definitely want to see a dermatologist, though they’re probably going to tell me the same thing; it’s Hashimoto’s. Autoimmune diseases bring rashes. Gotta just live with it.

I’m using speech-to-text to do this entry while I ski. I can barely see the monitor from where I am but I can see enough to tell that I’m going to have a lot of editing to do.

Although I feel rested enough and I didn’t have any nightmares, the fucking traffic woke me up twice. Twice! And this is with a second sound machine and an earplug. I’m so sick of this fucking bullshit year after year. I could tell it was a large vehicle, its engine grinding as it was either turning around or backing up.

We talked about going ahead and replacing a few of the windows in here after all, but this will probably be just talk. We only have so much money to do so many things with. We do want to experiment with drywall in a section of the hallway, however, because as Tom said, the only way to know what it’s like to do it is to actually do it. We’re considering this our practice house so we can hopefully get things right when we move. As I told him, I want to assume the next place is going to be it. Therefore I want to be able to get in and make the place what we want it to be from the start rather than do things a little at a time. By then we’re not going to have 30 or more years in which to do things.

Getting watery again and wondering if a period is on the horizon. Especially since my boobs are sore.

So it’s taken me 12.5 minutes to do this entry thus far according to the skier’s timer. Every little bit of activity helps. I’m not going to be doing it all on the skier, though. I’m still going to go outdoors, use the Bowflex, and do Alexa’s 7-minute workout program.

Editing would be virtually impossible with my current setup, so I guess I’ll go sit at the desk now and do that. I just like having a setup that enables me to switch back and forth from sitting to standing easily enough. My chair and the skier are not as easy to move on the carpet as one might think.

Okay, I’m now up to 14 minutes!

OMG, gross! A part of my dinner came up in my throat and then it went down the wrong pipe. I had to cough up the puke. Disgusting!

“Your girlfriend apparently lacks the instinct for self-preservation and she’s obviously not going to fight back. But I’m not your girlfriend. I may not win but I definitely do hit back. Of that much I can promise you,” I told the psycho in my nightmare last night.

It seemed like I was alone with him and his girlfriend in some seedy deserted motel somewhere. As I stood there assessing the guy and trying to guess whether or not I could take him if I slammed a fist in his throat as fast as I could (an area that causes more pain and that few expect you to hit), he turned around and started slamming his head into the wall. The wall had these little metal spikes scattered about in different lengths and thicknesses. After a few hits, specks of blood began to fly from his face.

“Fine,” I told him. “You keep doing that while I go down and call the cops.

Not having my cell phone with me I went down to the lobby and found an old-fashioned rotary phone. The ‘9’ circled around fine but I began to panic because the ‘1’ didn’t move as smoothly. Nonetheless, my call went through. After I filled the dispatcher in and asked him how long it would take for help to arrive, he didn’t give a precise time frame but made it sound like it could be a while. Being that I was supposedly in a small town, I was a bit surprised.

In another dream, I was on a boat somewhere listening to a talk show. When the host asked the audience questions, you could answer out loud because it had some kind of voice recognition installed and enabled.

“No,” I said when asked if I wanted to upgrade to a premium subscription.

Then I was in the talk show host’s home. I knew he worked from home and figured it would take quite a mansion to have room for his business and his family, but as I could see, the guy had an ordinary-looking home and plenty of space. I sat in a darkened area in which he worked, and looking out into the rest of the house, I could see there was enough space for a living room, kitchen and bedrooms.

In one of the dreams I had the night before, I seemed to be sitting on a cot in a little tent. Something dangled nearby but I’m not sure if it was a decorative piece of some kind or a plant. My dream self thought I should spray it soon to keep bugs out.

Then that evil witch Donna A was going through a bunch of books somewhere. I happened by and asked if there was anything good to read even though I did all my reading on my Kindle. I picked up a mystery book about a little girl who had been abused somehow.

In real life, I got one of those things in the mail for a shit test. Tom’s done them before. Instead of having a colonoscopy, you just brush the shit and dab it on a testing strip, then mail it in. Poor Joe! I guess I’ll go ahead and do it this year. Pretty surprised to see the lab it’s going to is in Kansas. I guess in this case the shit really does “fly” since I doubt it will go all the way from Cali by ground.

I’ve had a hell of a time finding decent shows and movies to watch. I love Lifetime movies, but the few I haven’t seen on YouTube are low quality, and a lot of what’s on Netflix and Amazon Prime is foreign stuff. I’m an American in America. Why would I want to have to watch foreign stuff and read subtitles? Even with the languages I know, why would I want to still have to read subtitles because of the damn accents?

I just settled on a series called Happy Valley, but sure enough, it’s in England. I think that’s where it’s filmed, anyway. I just can’t get into anything else, so hopefully I’ll be able to get into this. I have to deal with the accent, though the English accent is my favorite and they don’t usually blast background music like American shows and movies do unless it’s pertinent to the scene. This makes it less distracting and easier to hear the actors.

Being up all through the night still has its pros and cons. It’s quieter but that’s when I’m more likely to experience any kind of anxiety or at least find my mind wandering to dark places. Like death, dying, wondering who’s going to be there for us in the end, if there’s an afterlife, etc. The usual shit.

Both of us slept the day away. We did take a walk down to give the ducks the rats’ old bread.

Kim shared some pictures from her karate class’s tournament. This was the first body shot I ever saw of her. She is still huge. Like over 200 pounds like my nieces. So if she’s lost over 100 pounds then she probably was over 300 pounds just like I suspected. She has to tie her white belt under her belly close to her hips because she doesn’t have much of a waist unless she loses more weight. Her “waist” is right below her tits.

My sister’s ignoring me again and my nieces continue to do so, further making me question just how close I want to move to them. I don’t think my nieces are even following me probably because they figure I’m not following them. You know I can’t stand any reminders of Bill and even if the bastard had been a sweetheart, seeing posts about “daddy in heaven” every few days gets old. They really need to move on. Not forget, not “get over it,” but stop dwelling every few days on his death which is basically just what they’re doing by posting this shit over and over again. That can’t be good for them.

I probably won’t hear from the girls until my birthday, if even then. Then, unless I contact them first, I don’t expect to hear from them until their birthdays in June and September. Not unless there’s some serious crisis between now and then.

I had a couple of dreams involving water. In one of them, I was on a deserted beach and I was just stepping out of the water when I noticed a snake about 20 feet away. It was maybe 2 or 3 feet long. Normally I’m not afraid of snakes but this kind of made me hesitate because I’d never seen this type of snake before and so I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know if it was venomous or not. It doesn’t take a big snake to be pretty toxic.

Then things got really weird. It kept slithering toward me. No matter where I moved, it followed. Right, left… it followed. I started to panic and splashed water on it. But then it somehow rose into the air and hovered over me. I froze in fear for a minute and then I ran.

Then Tom and I were swimming in some river. I hopped off a concrete ledge of some kind and into the water which had a very strong current. This didn’t surprise me since it sloped down and around a bend. Tom said something about it leading over the waterfall. I couldn’t see it from my vantage point but when I swam a little bit towards the right I could clearly see a large waterfall. It was wide but I couldn’t see how far the drop-off was.

Then Tom dove off the ledge and disappeared for a few terrifying minutes. Minutes that were actually seconds but that seemed like minutes. I was afraid he jumped out too far and got pulled down into the fall but he eventually emerged much to my relief.