Today we got a blue male Crowntail betta fish. It’s a very lovely fish with a navy-black head and a deep rich turquoise color for the rest of the body. There are slight traces of red on the sides as well. He’s beautiful and is in a large clear vase right now with a small 4” bamboo. We’re going to get him a larger tank with a heater and a filter, something we probably should have done today. Well, at least we remembered the food and the net!

I learned the hard way that it would also be better to get traditional fish tank gravel rather than these colored acrylic rocks because the food falls down between them and out of reach of the fish.

Yesterday I got caught up on my sleep so I’m guessing I’m going to sleep shitty next time around because I seem to go back and forth with that. I just hope there are no insanely loud projects too close to the bedroom that could override the sound machine between now and the 20th! Don’t know for sure yet if I’m going to make the eye appointment on the 20th but I’m definitely going to get to my endo on the 15th.

I slept pretty shittily last night as I seem to do every other day or night depending on when I sleep. It’s like if something up there can’t use outside sources to wake me up, it uses my own damn body. The neck knockers woke me up a few times and then I woke up when my MP3 player’s battery died. My first thought was power failure till I realized the sound machine from the stereo was still going.

I hadn’t overdone the sodium the day before but I did have more sugar. I don’t know if sugar can raise my blood pressure but whatever it is that’s causing these random spikes is starting to get old, especially when they wake me up.

Really hope the dream I had isn’t a sign of anything! I was telling Stacey how upset I was to discover I began to spot rather heavily because I had just gone nearly a year without a period.

Anyway, it’s a damn good thing I got up when I did because Bob and Virginia had a tree cut down in back of their place. Fortunately the loud saw and wood chipper didn’t even last an hour. At first I thought they were working in the road again when I first glanced out the window. Tom feels sure they’re not going to resurface the roads around our house but I still say they will by June. If not, they’ll find some other reason to tear up the roads.

I really need to stop jinxing myself by saying how I haven’t heard that loud car because as soon as I wrote that, it came in on Friday.

And so did Karen, the old lady in Texas. This is only the second view in quite a while that I’ve gotten from her. She’s usually pretty consistent but not anymore. Who knows if it’s even her?

The vigilante stopped by as well but didn’t comment. First time in a long time she’s come around.

I got my kitties figurine today and it is absolutely adorable! It’s 11” long and made of resin. It’s two sleeping kittens cuddling together. One’s a gray tabby and the other is an orange tabby. I’m definitely more into figurines than dolls these days.

We went to the Goodwill earlier and I got another wig for the dolls. This is a long wavy wig with bangs and a mix of light blue and lavender hair.

The only other dream I remember having had to do with a robot that was more sophisticated and advanced enough to fold laundry and take on other household chores besides just vacuuming. I wish! I’d love one for dusting.

I absolutely love, love, love the lotus bamboos! They’re so big but beautiful. Someone in one of the reviews said they look like mini palm trees and they kind of do. One person has a betta fish in with theirs and I thought that was such a clever idea that I may pick up a beta over the weekend. I always liked the blue ones.

Was thinking of Kathleen again and while I’m almost certain she’ll never call, I wonder if she would have asked for my number had I not brought up her retirement.

I also wonder if Dr. A knows I’ve been looking in on her on Facebook. Facebook doesn’t let people know who visits their profiles and they don’t allow third parties to do so either, but I’ve come to suspect that checking someone out may make you appear on their ‘people you may know’ list. Even Becky H-Hale says it’s quite possible and she’s quite knowledgeable when it comes to Facebook.

So far, blocking Andy has stopped Aly from getting the perverted questions she was getting. As a test, I anonymously asked myself if I missed him while claiming to be him. I want to see if he comes to his own defense. I doubt he will, though.

The fact that he harassed my friend shows he hasn’t changed. Never once did I harass anyone he knows so his doing that only serves to remind me that as much as I may miss him at times, I’m better off without him in my life. Once you involve third parties, I definitely want nothing to do with you.

Marie says they’re still trying to straighten out her medication and that she’s borderline and bipolar. Maybe the fact that they’re still trying to “straighten” it out means they can’t or they shouldn’t bother. I realize Marie has a genuine illness that she can’t always control, but maybe she ought to grow up and move on once and for all by taking charge of her own life and emotions without resorting to drugs. If anyone’s learned how hard this is to do at times over the last few years, it’s me. But it isn’t impossible even if my situation was entirely different. She doesn’t have to be a mental case stuck in the past all her life. She said something about every day being a real circus in her head so I guess there are some things she really can’t control. The thing is that if she’s 52 years old and they still haven’t been able to help her, will they ever? I ask the same thing about my anxiety as I sit here and worry that it’s going to come and go all my life.

Aly was in the ER due to an eczema flare-up. I haven’t heard back from her yet. She tweeted while she was in the waiting room and texted me.

I had a dream I met her parents in a hotel room with pretty pale pink walls. I disliked her mother right off the bat but I liked her father.

Then I had some dream about spraying a can of rose-scented air freshener that looked like a doll with short straight hair.

Then some woman falsely accused me of calling her fat and went to make some phone calls that I knew would get me in trouble. Not about to go down for her spiteful lies, though I don’t know why she was trying to spite me, I grabbed the phone from her and I knocked her out with it. Then I put my ear to the phone and heard someone make a quick whistling sound as if to get the attention of someone nearby. I stayed quiet, not wanting them to know who I was. Then I thought I better hang up because I didn’t want them to trace the call either.

In the last dream, I was worried I’d ingested something bad but then someone that may have been Palma was holding my stomach contents and assuring me I was fine. The “stomach contents” looked like dried pieces of rocks and driftwood.

I’ve got to add some parts to the Revenge story that I forgot to add which means I’ll have to go around and update all the copies. I was reading blogger’s rights as I do from time to time to keep up on things and not much has changed. No threats, no sensitive info, and no lies that can be proven detrimental to a person in any real way.

Interestingly enough, it also said that you can’t usually make a claim on something that’s been published for more than a year. Well, with the exception of a few things that will be created and published by one of us when it’s time, there are several copies that I’ve already published; they’ve just been published privately. So when I turn them from private to public, they will have certainly been published way more than a year ago. LOL

I see that Miss Vigilante has visited me for the first time in quite a while but I’d say something’s definitely up with Karen in Texas.

I was so damn tired today. All this fatigue has actually caused my schedule to back up a bit but Tom assures and reminds me that it’ll jump over the weekend as it usually does. Good, because I don’t want to be up forever on Dr. O day. It helps make it likelier for me to hit the eye appt., though. I took not one but two naps today! They weren’t long, though.

I’m not surprised news of Bill Cosby’s sentencing isn’t all over Facebook as it no doubt would be if he were white. No one wants to say anything bad about a black person even if it’s true lest they be not so politically correct and deemed racist for doing so. SMH

Got through the day yesterday with no anxiety and so far I’m good today as well even though I’ve only been up a couple of hours. I’m just tired. I was tired yesterday as well.

Went out walking and met a frail, petite but friendly woman named Melanie. We passed each other on the way down to the street before the lake and then again as I was walking back up it. She liked “all my pink.” I had on a pink cap with sparkles, a pink shirt and pink sneakers. Pink panties too, not that she could see that, LOL. Her favorite color is pink too, as I think is most women’s.

I realize I’m never going to be able to lose weight, regardless of the effect it may have on my medication’s effect on me, as long as I keep getting stuck and my body automatically resets its weight every time I lose a few pounds. I also realize I’m far from alone. I did a little research and found that numerous people have the same problem. But still, it’s like my body absolutely refuses to let it go under about 152 or 153. I may have to not eat at all in order to change that once I’ve gone a day where I haven’t shit, but I don’t think I could do that so I think losing weight is forever out of the question if I’m going to just keep going into auto-reset mode.

I would ride my bike more often in the daytime when it wasn’t too hot if this place wasn’t so hilly. This terrain is even more mountainous than New England. It’s just that it really helps to get a running start up the hills and I love to fly down the hills as well, which isn’t as safe in the daytime. So I mostly keep the bike for at night but the nights are too cold now. Maybe things will be different when we’re on flat terrain if I can deal with the humidity and all that.

I haven’t heard that car in a while now which is nice, not that there aren’t plenty of other loud vehicles to make up for it. But that one was especially annoying so I’m fine with it not coming around. Maybe I’m still a better “influencer” than I realize and I sent it into an accident or caused it to break down so bad they can’t afford to fix it.

Pondering mysteries is what I love to do. I love to think, analyze, speculate and wonder. And so I wonder just how much Kathleen may know about me from browsing around online. I realize not everyone is as curious as I am but it’s still hard to believe she’s never Googled me. I can’t believe the dentist had her cop husband check her patients’ backgrounds, particularly mine, or else my case would have come up, and vindicated or not, I would think she would have mentioned it to Kathleen. If that had been the case, I don’t see why Kathleen would want to be friends with me.

I also wonder if she’s crazy because of the way she seems to be interested in me, regardless of what way that may be. I know crazy comes in all shapes and sizes and that they can often blend into society and appear as normal as ever. I get that. Anyone can be crazy. Even someone who can hold a decent job for years. She’s certainly not crazy in the way Kim, Molly and Marie can be. It’s just that other than Tom, I’m used to attracting crazies for friends regardless of what they look like. I still say I’ll never hear from her which would be easier and potentially less trouble but if I do it’s not likely to be this year. She may wait 6 months until she would have seen me anyway had she still been working when I had my next appointment.

I decided to start using my other Twitter account again to promote my Bubbly voice posts. To draw attention to my account I’m leaving comments on trending issues but it hasn’t seemed to work so far. You know how it is, if you’re not famous or infamous, no one’s interested.

I had some dream that my parents were alive and I went to visit them, and as usual, mom was full of complaints. After returning home, I was sending them an email saying I was sorry I wasn’t what they wanted me to be and that last winter passed by fast because I spent much of it indoors but that this winter I was determined to be out and about more often. Yet it must have been springtime because when I looked at the trees, the cherry blossoms were just popping out and noted to myself that it was March 10th.

YES! Although it’s decades too late and the sentence isn’t nearly long enough, I’m so glad Bill Cosby will be going down and that the judge wouldn’t allow the bastard to race card himself out of being held accountable, something that happens way too much in this country, rich and famous or not. Kudos to the judge for seeing his crime and not his color. Now while the sicko’s incarcerated he can be with his preferred gender since he obviously hates women. I hope he takes one up the ass real good too, but I would be willing to bet the perve will be segregated.

The Super Green fertilizer came yesterday and I decided to try a single drop with one bamboo stalk just to see how it takes to it. I’m paranoid after what the Green Green did.

Half a bottle of Green Green has been dispensed into the outside cactus pot since I figured it would be better for that.

After a total of 10 skips in nearly a month, I was finally able to take my meds today without ending up anxious. I feel great actually, just a little tired.

I had some weird dreams last night. In one of them, I must have been a mom because I was carrying a newborn down a flight of stairs in a building somewhere and it seemed to be mine. Another me in another dimension?

Then I dreamed we had a house near the woods. I saw a tiger or a lion chase a bear into the woods. I hoped one would kill the other so I only had to worry about one of them lurking around the house. But then they somehow got inside the house and my dead cousin Boo was there, too. She was as tall as the ceiling.

Although this constituted a nightmare, I wasn’t scared at all by this dream I had of some guy chasing me into the woods. I hid by wedging myself under part of a boulder that protruded from the hilly ground. If anything, I was so pissed that I was just about to jump out and attack the guy for chasing me into hiding but then I realized it was now dark and I had been lying under the rock for quite a while. So now that the guy was gone my new concern was finding my way out of the woods and back to the main road.

In another dream, we seemed to have a traditional bathtub and were installing a mural around the tub walls. Tom left the room for a minute and I peed in the tub. Then I rinsed the tub and realized I wouldn’t be able to explain why the tub was wet since I was embarrassed to admit I peed in it rather than the toilet. LOL

Meds… Took my pill on Saturday, started off a little iffy, and then I felt great for the rest of the day and had good energy.

Yesterday, however, after taking it 3 days in a row I started off okay and then I later felt wound up which morphed into depression until Tom cheered me up when we chatted. He believes Dr. O is going to be helpful and while I want to believe that because she was helpful before, I’m losing hope. I know I say this feeling has gone on for 2 years but I actually think it’s always been there ever since I started having problems yet because I was so much worse overall it sort of masked this particular feeling. My issues early on were more about my heart racing and pounding which would have naturally made me feel anxious. These days my heart doesn’t race as much when I take the meds. There’s just this feeling of anxiety sitting in my chest that comes and goes in waves.

I skipped today, and coincidentally or not, I’m fine. So that’s some placebo effect. I still say there’s a very real problem with the medication and Tom does agree. He just thinks there could be other factors as well. Yeah, well, I really hope there isn’t anything else wrong with me we don’t know about!

Me… Just like always, I went down a couple of pounds to 153.4, stopped shitting, and now I’m 155.0. Why does my body do this? Every time I drop a few pounds it automatically resets itself by holding onto its shit. What does my body think it’s trying to protect me from by holding onto its weight?

Andy… Aly told me she was getting gross food-related questions and intimate questions on Ask and asked if Andy could be behind them.

Absolutely. But there are tons and tons of perverts out there so there’s no way to know for sure. She blocked his account so we’ll see if the questions back off, not that he can’t create a new account to come at her from. But if it’s him, why mess with her and not me as well? He can’t mess with me from his old account since I have it blocked but he could always create a new one to do it from if he really wanted to. So far it doesn’t seem like I’m worth the time and effort and I hope it stays that way. She said two of the questions disappeared when she blocked him but Ask is notorious for being glitchy to begin with so that doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. The celeb and “hairy guy” talk and asking if she’d lick food off a lover, with random nouns capped that usually aren’t capped, does make me wonder, though.

Kim… I also got some questions that made me think of Kim, as innocent as they may have been. Just the topics and writing style, but I don’t know. She is secretive at times and will sometimes create accounts without telling anyone.

That’s part of the fun of Ask, though, guessing and wondering what could be from who unless they make it that obvious or choose not to be anonymous.

Molly… I asked Aly what time Molly went to bed and she said she’s in bed by 10:30. The Dallas visitor was in between 1:30 and 2 a.m. so can she sneak online in the middle of the night? Because if she can’t then it wasn’t her and the timing between that visitor and her tweet was solely a coincidence.

The park… When you look at the roads that wrap around our house you can see they really are pretty ugly with their square patches which are distinctly darker than the rest of the road where they didn’t do any work. Tom says that all that matters is that the roads are smooth and not to worry about them resurfacing them but I say they’ll resurface them soon enough because this park is obsessed with appearance. We can’t even go a month without someone doing some loud project here that’s hard to drown out even with the sound machines. If this park wasn’t obsessed with looks, there wouldn’t be landscaping every single day, would there be? I say they’ll redo the entire surface by the end of the year, late spring/early summer at the very latest since we are coming up to the rainy season.

Shopping… Yesterday we went to Goodwill to do some treasure hunting and I sure made some great finds! With Halloween coming up, they have all kinds of wigs in every style and color imaginable. I got a shoulder-length dark purple wig with bangs and one with long hot pink ponytails with neon orange at the ends. The orange isn’t that noticeable unless you really look for them and you have good lighting because they’re a similar shade to the pink. I put the wig on Gia and it looks fantastic on her! I put the dark purple one on the mannequin head.

I also got a little figurine of a black girl in a blue dress walking barefoot and holding her shoes in one hand. Her original price tag of $16 was still on her base. I got her for $3.

The best thing I found was a 26-inch all-porcelain doll by Dianna Effner named Hilary. I’ve had some of her dolls back in my days of regular doll collecting. This doll has very realistic eyes despite being a weird color of dark grayish-green. Except for the feet, the doll is pretty realistic looking overall, especially the hands. She had no wig and came in dumpy old stretched-out clothes with stockings and dirty shoes. While I was still in the store I went to the smallest-sized children’s clothing I could find and got a beautiful bright sleeveless dress for her. The dress has a solid pink liner with a white and hot pink lace overlay. I did have to pin it in back a bit to keep it from slipping off her shoulders but it looks adorably cute.

I also put a long wavy black wig on her that I had and was thankful I didn’t throw out. She sits on the living room floor by the window by my desk which I only use when I’m on nights because it’s quieter in the bedroom. Traffic is bad everywhere but it’s a little harder to hear the landscaping in the bedroom so that’s my daytime office. I dumped the shoes and outfit she came in.

Hilary ranges from $50-$100 but I got her for $6.

Yesterday my new mascara arrived along with the cutting board with the poppies design. It’s a lovely cutting board that can sit on the counter.

Tom… He put the new door stop on the front door so I could hold the screen door open when carrying in any heavy or bulky packages. I used to hate it when I’d have to struggle to hold the door open with one arm while wrestling boxes in with the other.

Kathleen… I can’t remember much in the way of dreams lately but it seems I had a positive dream about Kathleen last night. It seemed to be a happy, fun dream. A sign I’ll hear from her eventually? I still have my doubts. So many people make plans they don’t follow through on.

I still can’t figure her out. There are things she’s said that go against the theory of her liking me but more things that say she does. She’s just a little too “physical” with me not to and while she may be a very friendly person overall when it comes to most people, I can’t believe she would hug and put her arm around that many people either. The way she’d look at me, the things she would say… I would see it in her eyes, you know? There were a couple of times I remember her looking at me in that way.

Yet the way she pointed out how Tom and I make such a cute couple when we were talking on the phone and has yet to follow through with even contacting me online sends some waves of doubt through me. But hey, regardless of how she may like me, I’m not worried about it. She won’t harm me.

While it’s hard to believe she doesn’t have a Facebook account, she could very well be telling the truth about that because before they went and hid it, I never found her on Shannan or Holly’s friend list. They’ve got everyone else they work with on it so why not her? There is a chance they’ve hidden her or that Kathleen blocked me but I don’t see why she would do such a thing.

On the other hand, maybe she hasn’t acted yet because she was waiting to retire. She knew all along she would be retiring soon enough, so maybe she’s been waiting until there was no more business connection. Maybe she does hope to start something in her mind and maybe that’s why she hasn’t contacted me online and has waited until she retired. This way, when she calls (unless she blocks her number which I doubt), all I have is a phone number but nothing else. No last name, no address, no online connection.

She would know I could talk to those at the dentist’s, but unless she plans to keep a close friendship going with them or something, nothing I could say could come back to haunt her if anything went wrong. There’s no job connection and I know next to nothing about her. Maybe that’s the whole idea?

Anyway, while I may love to ponder a good mystery and speculate and guess all kinds of possible scenarios, ridiculous or not, I still say I’ll never hear from her again. That would be okay too, as this would be potentially easier and 

Lots to update on, so going in order of events, I heard back from my dermatologist’s office and they said that this ointment shouldn’t cause anxiety. I didn’t think so but it was still good to rule that out for sure.

After making a total of 9 skips since August 22nd, I woke up incredibly exhausted yesterday. I could barely get anything done around here but did what I needed to do. Just not much of what I wanted to do.

Took my thyroid pill this morning for the second day in a row and I’m hoping that the next round of anxiety is weeks away, even though I was borderline earlier. I just don’t understand what the fuck is going on or when and how to fix it. Tom still thinks it’s a combination of things… The placebo effect, the meds, hormones.

I’m just amazed at how tired I was yesterday! Makes me wonder if I would slip into a coma without it for a month. I did talk to this person once online, however, who had a thyroidectomy and sometimes goes months without taking their medication. They said they don’t feel any different whether they take it or not.

So Kathleen retired yesterday and I’m happy for her. I just wish it could have been Tom instead! The office just won’t be the same without Kathleen in it anymore. I wonder if she was happy, sad or a little of both? I wonder even more if I’ll hear from her but I have my doubts. She will always be a wonderful memory, though.

I’ve been worried about Tom because he’s been having kidney pain but he swears it’s no big deal. I hope not!

That dreaded day has come. I knew it would, too. I’m just surprised it took this long. When I got online after getting up, I checked my stats and found 35 minutes’ worth of views from Dallas, Texas. I could see the person was a member of Prosebox because they had me bookmarked. I was just a little surprised they only read my public book which has yearly recaps in it rather than my current day-to-day book with my journal because if you’re a member, you can see that one. Right away my gut told me it was Molly and that even though she’s in Austin, she was looking for past mentions of herself from years gone by. I’ve blocked whatever accounts of hers I could find there, so that may be why she didn’t hit my daily journal. I’m surprised she didn’t peek in on Blogger.

So I jumped over to Twitter and sure enough, she tweeted that she knows we’ve had our differences but wants to make amends and she’s sorry for what she said to me online.

Not only am I sorry I didn’t stay private, but now my mind is bouncing between playing dumb and saying I don’t know who she is to totally ignoring her to thanking her to blocking her, etc. I decided to go with the “thank you” then the ignore option. I was worried that totally ignoring her might fuel her like it did the first time around. I just hope she doesn’t get the wrong idea and think my thanking her means I want to be friends with her because I absolutely don’t. Aly may be into crazy but I’m not. Worst case scenario I just block her if she bugs me. I could always deactivate too, but would rather not do that.

I just hope Aly won’t discuss me with her. I think that the more I’m brought to her attention the more she’ll think of me and the more she may want to reach out to me. Remind the cat of the mouse’s existence and it may be more determined to pursue it. But I know Aly. If she can discuss Kim with me as much as she does there’s no reason she can’t discuss me with Molly. I also told her I hope she won’t share links to Ask if she hasn’t already.

Speaking of Ask, Aly asked if Andy has been active there and if he would ask gross questions about food and intimate questions about sex.

If he’s active on Ask it’s either anonymously or from another account but as to her second question, absolutely yes. He loves to gross people out and he’s a definite pervert. As I told her, he’s even a registered sex offender. I gave her his link on Twitter and asked that she block him.

The only thing is that if he’s fucking with her, then why isn’t he fucking with me too? Maybe he thinks I can track him since I know how paranoid he always was.

I asked her to tell me if the person has a habit of capitalizing nouns. He used to do that all the time and I would tease him about being German in a past life. Speech-to-text will do that at times but he was never the speech-to-text kind of guy. She did say there were random caps and she’d show me later. She’s not feeling well right now. Her thyroid’s gone a bit hyper so she’ll be starting radioactive iodine today. Hope it helps her both physically and mentally WITHOUT side effects!

I don’t know if it’s funny or sad that Kim’s sister and SIL use her gullibility to control her. They told her that if she eats too fast she’ll get pneumonia and she automatically believes it just like she believes everything she’s told. She never thinks to Google anything on her own.

We went to Sam’s Club earlier and now I’m finishing up the laundry. He wiped the windshield which was dirty and we also changed the rats’ cage.

Due to Alexa getting confused between “rainbow room” and “rat room,” we changed “rat room” to “Mavis.” I picked this name from a random name generator site.

Last night I dreamed it was 134° in Florida and I guess I must have been able to keep a schedule because I was waitressing somewhere. For some reason, I was having my mail delivered to the restaurant and one of the managers was stealing some of it, particularly coupons. I confronted her and she said, “Like you need them.”

I said, “Actually we do but there are some you can have.”

She asked if I could work “hyper-extended” shifts. I nodded yes, knowing this meant that I would come in later in the morning.

Then there was some vague dream about Tom having to stay somewhere else and me locking a door and then pulling out a blanket to sleep on a couch with.

Got a lot to update on so I better get with it before I start forgetting things. Very tired now. Yes, the fatigue has set in from all the pill skips along with brain fog.

Or has it? That’s the thing…as Tom pointed out, I’m quick to notice every little random thing these days and wonder if it could be connected to the medication. Or maybe not. Well, I have had fatigue when taking the poison regularly, so I don’t know.

A part of me wishes that if I absolutely had to suffer a traumatic event it could’ve been something like being held hostage in a bank for a while instead of from a medication. It would be a lot easier to avoid banks than medication your body needs.

Although the anxiety started before I started the ointment, it has been a lot worse and I’m surprised that after 8 skips I’m still dealing with it. I’m fine today because I didn’t take it and I didn’t use the ointment. Tom thinks it’s my brain being paranoid and that while other factors may contribute to my anxiety, be it the medication or settling into menopause, he thinks that knowing I took the pill makes me anxious since I’ve been calmer on days I don’t take it, and that’s not how this medication works. You shouldn’t feel better in just a day. That’s what makes me wonder if there’s something about the medication itself. Like maybe something in the fillers. But then why isn’t my anxiety consistent? I just don’t get these things. I can take it without fail for weeks at a time without incident and then BAM! The anxiety gets me again. So if it’s psychological, why isn’t that consistent as well? Why don’t I get anxious every time I take it due to worrying about becoming anxious?

Questions, questions, questions but never any answers and resolutions. Tom thinks I’ve always had some anxiety but since the trauma, I’m much more aware of it. Well, my past anxieties and stress were definitely a joke compared to what I’ve been going through these last four years.

I still want to rule out the ointment as a possible culprit, and anxiety is listed as one of the many side effects, so I left a message with my dermatologist’s office asking about it after explaining that I have had issues with anxiety for years now. Amy isn’t in her office today so it could be a day or so before I hear back from anyone. I don’t know why I had to spell out the name of the ointment for the girl who answered, though, who said that medication wasn’t in my chart. Why wouldn’t it be?

Anyway, yesterday was what will hopefully be the last of the ferociously loud roadwork for a month or so. The jackhammer was the worst of it, of course, but where I finally did get a break was when we left for the dentist. Monday they worked alongside Bob and Virginia mostly. Tuesday they worked right behind us and on the corner. Yesterday they worked between us and Jon and Carolyn and in front of our place.

Tom says this is normal and that the economy being bad for so long caused these things to be neglected and now everybody’s making up for lost time. I don’t know about that, though. It still seems too extreme. Not saying there aren’t other places like this or worse, but if you can’t even do away with your sleeping earbuds at night because you’ve got motorcycles roaring in and out after midnight in a gated adult community, where the hell can you get a peaceful night’s sleep if you’re the light sleeper I am?

I’m convinced that there is a noise curse of sorts on me, though I don’t know who/what put it on me or why. I just know I’m tired of trying to run from noise I can’t escape so I may as well just accept the fact that I not only may struggle with anxiety for the rest of my life, but I’m not going to live in peace either. This really is the modern world for the most part. Vehicles aren’t going to get any quieter and people are going to do landscaping every day in most places like this, including projects. The world gets noisier, not quieter. Things are never going to be the way they were 30 or 40 years ago when there were fewer than half the people there are now.

I was talking to Bob earlier and even he said, without me bringing it up first, “Hopefully it will be quiet today.”

So far all I’ve heard are the usual annoyances. It’s the shit I can’t drown out that is the hardest to deal with. Nothing can cancel out a jackhammer just a few feet from your house. Same goes for street pavers, wood chippers and certain types of saws.

Was also talking to Jon and noticed one of the workers left a water bottle as well as a bag of cookies lodged in the branches of the tree on the corner of our place. I dumped the cookies and gave our potted cactus the water. I also gave it a bottle of the Green Green that killed a couple of my bamboos and noticed baby cactuses at its base. Hope the Green Green doesn’t kill it! You turn the bottle upside down and drive it in like a stake into the soil. It then slowly dispenses a drop at a time.

I pulled out the dead Lucky Bamboo I got a few years ago. Plus, a small one died in the large bunch I recently got. I removed that as well. I had a trio in a couple of mugs which I grouped together along with the baby bamboo to create the group of seven they say is necessary for better health. That’s in the center organizer. I’m going to be getting these really cool-looking pygmy bamboos that sort of look like mini palm trees and I’ll put those in the side compartments. They come in groups of five, so one will have two and the other will have three, which is the most common group.

I also snipped off the very top of the dying bamboo which was the only part that was still alive. Knowing it would be a hundred percent dead soon enough, I took that and threw it in a small bottle of water but I don’t think it will root.

Worried about Aly because she’s been having daily headaches, nausea and rapid weight loss. She’s 37. You don’t just lose weight at that age. At that age, you’re struggling to keep from gaining and when you’re not gaining you certainly aren’t losing. She’ll be seeing her PCP today.

Okay, now for the promised update on the dream I had where my dentist was in a different location telling me she was retiring soon, and then I got a phone call in real life saying they moved a few weeks ago. I went to see her yesterday and while the waiting room looked similar to what I saw in the dream, the overall layout of the building didn’t. The dentist herself didn’t come out and tell me she was retiring, but Kathleen did! I knew she was retiring but I thought it was sometime next year and not tomorrow. So… some interesting similarities.

“How did you remember?” Kathleen asked me.

LOL, I still remember some things even if I’ll never have the impeccable memory I used to have.

So it’s definitely easier to get to this place because we don’t have to jump on the freeway. The place is bigger and brighter. The reception area isn’t quite as sunny and open but that’s good because the sun would really be in my eyes a lot when we would go in the afternoon to the old place. The old place was sandwiched between other businesses so the front was the only place that had windows. This place is on the end so there are more windows, and Holly said the rent was better there as well. I figured as much. She had the same furniture and decor, too.

So I walked in and Kathleen wasn’t there. Some tall dark-haired woman that may have been Jackie was at the desk. Tom and I sat on the loveseat to the right of the door and there were a couple of old ladies to the left of the door. Just minutes later, Kathleen entered the place after what I assumed was her lunch break. She walked up to the ladies and greeted them and then she turned and came over to me and we hugged.

Tom and I both agreed that she looked a bit frail. She’s always looked frail but it’s like she didn’t have as much energy as usual. She still looks good for her age. She wore a long flowing dress that looked good on her, especially being tall.

She asked me how I was doing and I told her it was up and down but I was surviving.

So then I went in with Holly and fortunately, I don’t have any cavities. I just need to start flossing the bottom I-teeth again because I had some build-up. I told her I had become paranoid due to pulling that crown off but I don’t have any crowns in that area so I can manage to floss there. She didn’t give me the fluoride varnish she usually gives me nor did she thread the floss through my bridge but she did take some X-rays. No gum probe, though.

Holly is a sweet lady but no wonder she runs late at times. She never shuts up! Sometimes she’ll completely stop what she’s doing to tell me things, like about the trip she took a couple of years ago to New Zealand, her 35th anniversary, scattering her 90-year-old aunt’s ashes somewhere, etc. We talked about different places we’ve visited and want to visit as well as places we’ve lived and want to live. She’s lucky, though, because they’re not allowed to make loud sounds on Sundays where she lives. Sure wish I could have that one day off each week to look forward to but instead, I continue to hear it seven days a week, sometimes more than once per day. It’s ridiculous. I don’t understand why people feel the need to keep doing the same damn areas over and over again when they only need to be done once a week or less often.

The dentist then checked me over and asked how long rats live. I had shown both her and Kathleen my ratty tote earlier.

“No fair,” she said when I told her they only live 2 years.

At the rate Simon and Dumbo are going, they’re never going to die, LOL. Leave it to such timid rats to be immortal. If they were exceptionally friendly they’d already be dead, but then Burke wasn’t the greatest rat we’ve ever had and he’s already gone.

Anyway, right as I got out of the dentist’s chair and stood up, Kathleen was there. She put an arm around my waist and walked me down the hall and back toward the reception and waiting room area.

“So is this goodbye forever?” I asked, and she said no and asked for my number. I gave it to her but I don’t expect to hear from her because she’s never followed through yet. Could be she was just waiting until she retired and had more free time but I doubt it. Despite giving every indication to believe she likes me just by the way she hugged me and put an arm around me as she was walking me out, which seems a little beyond just friendly, I don’t expect to hear from her. I sensed from the day we met in 2015 that she liked me, but I don’t know, the woman is hard to figure. She doesn’t seem like a gamer either. But then I never would have expected what happened with Stacey either so I don’t know what to think. Whatever happens, happens. I’m not worried about it if I don’t hear from her, and I’m not worried if I do or how she may like me because she’s harmless.

If I don’t see her I will definitely miss her at times, but will always appreciate and remember the few years I knew her. In March I’ll find out who the new Kathleen is.

Doing some diet and medication experiments and the results are as expected but not what I hoped for. Yesterday I took my meds and had anxiety. Today I skipped and have no anxiety. There’s absolutely no doubt that my main problem is the medication. I just wish getting it to stop making me anxious was as easy as bringing my blood pressure down! All I have to do is cut back the sodium, and I have, and the systolic number goes back down. So sodium and cholesterol must be avoided as much as possible.

Going to take my meds tomorrow and if I have any anxiety I’ll probably quit until I see my endo. She’s got to either switch me or lower my dose. Something’s got to be done. Something. The thought of having to choose between taking a medication my body needs and feeling horribly anxious versus not taking it and suffering the consequences, which could eventually be deadly, makes me want to beat my head on the wall. I would probably choose the latter. Until they do kill me, the hypo symptoms are annoying while the anxiety is scary. I always believed, though, that my anxiety was too extreme to be mostly due to diet and hormones. I’ve always known it was mostly the medication. I can see getting heartburn and lactose intolerant with age and even the high blood pressure from the sodium but not the extreme anxiety. So unless there’s something else wrong with me we don’t know about, I say the anxiety is on the meds.

I read that potatoes aren’t good if you have LS as it can aggravate it. Well, two days ago I had potatoes and noticed later on that I began to have more irritation. I also had some yesterday and I still have more irritation than usual. I’m not having any today. I’m hoping it’s just a case of me not applying enough ointment to the area because I’m always paranoid when it comes to drugs, even topical ones. We’ll see if it gets better and then worse again after I have potatoes again at some point.

Meanwhile, it seems like almost everything is bad for me somehow. Too much sugar, too much cholesterol, too much sodium, too much something. But I’m still leaning towards the meds as much as I would love to believe it’s still my hormones settling in despite going nearly 10 months without a period.

Just when I was thinking how wonderful I feel today, I’m getting hit with neck knockers again and my BP is climbing too. Read it could be heart valve issues. Great, just great. I try to remind myself I gotta die someday anyway. The sooner I go the sooner I get out of life’s drama… And hopefully not speeding my way into something worse if there’s an afterlife.

Anyway, I found Marie’s latest account which was in the ‘people you may know’ section. When people go through multiple accounts in bogus names it’s usually because they’re doing something wrong, running from something, or trying to hide from someone. I began to suspect that she was a lot sicker than I realized and was quite delusional and paranoid. Sure enough, when I explained to her why I hesitate to keep adding people because I never know who they really are, not to mention how annoying it is, she said that running from herself wasn’t doing her any good. Well, good then. Now maybe she’ll stick with one account in her real name or at least just one account. I made her tell me her nickname I could verify that it was indeed her and not some hacker, impersonator or someone that cloned her account, as is something to be concerned with when people change accounts like we change underwear.

Yesterday I was so pissed off because again I had to listen to roadwork going on. I’m only grateful that I was on days at the time and that I knew Spanish because I got more information when speaking Spanish with one of the workers. Comcast fucked up by cutting into conduit so I had a deal with listening to them correct their mistake as they cut up sections around the house. Then I started worrying all over again that a separate company would return to pave in what they cut up and risk fucking up my schedule but they already paved in what they had cut. Tom said they were just finishing up when he got home right before 4, and I had crashed right before 3. The earbuds are a definite lifesaver but I can still feel the vibration of loud and heavy equipment if it’s close enough to the house.

I worry that the next road project is going to be resurfacing the entire roads around us because they’re pretty ugly-looking with all the “patches.”

The guy said today would be the last day working by the house. Why the fuck couldn’t dentist day be yesterday or today? Again, quite a coincidence that there’s never anything going on while we’re gone.

I know I’ve said it a thousand times but I am just SO sick of all the fucking noise I have to deal with almost every single fucking day here! Projects, landscaping, planes, loud traffic, water outages…the list goes on. This is by far the noisiest place I’ve ever lived.

I filled in Carolyn with what was going on along the way, too.

I told Tom after they wrapped up the last round of roadwork that we won’t even make it a month before they’re tearing up the roads again. I’m sure we won’t make it to Halloween before there’s some insanely loud project going on again, in or out of the street.

Definitely seems to be a mistake to have gotten that Green Green because a few of my bamboos are dying. It sucks even though I have so many and can always get more. Going to try Super Green next. If that backfires, I’ll go back to Miracle-Gro.

There was a 10-year-old girl in my dreams last night and even though it was never stated that she was my niece, I knew for a fact that she was. I can remember what the girl looked like very clearly with her long straight blond hair and very light eyes, and I can tell you she looked absolutely nothing like my real-life nieces. Also, blonde hair does not run in my family. These are the types of dreams that definitely make me wonder if I could be glimpsing into another family in another dimension and time. My “niece’s” mother, who seemed to be my SIL, was in the dream and I didn’t seem to like her very much for some reason. She didn’t seem too happy with me either. I really wanted my niece to spend time with me but she was going to camp instead.

There was also something about Kathleen but I’m not sure what because it only lasted a second. She said something and I smiled.

Then I was in a store inspecting a doll that was wearing blue and might have had blue hair too, that I’d seen before and contemplated getting. Deciding not to, I then went through some clothing.

Then Tom and I were sitting on a couch watching TV when I glanced toward the left at a black rabbit that was sitting on some piece of furniture. I asked Tom how old the rabbit was now and he tried to figure it out. I told him I would look it up in my journal.

Then there was this dream with a very detailed house Tom and I lived in that I could practically draw a floor plan of, and again, it makes me wonder about parallel lives. The house was similar in size to this one but maybe a touch smaller. Tom had set out three or four lamps before work that I was going to set up for something. The lamps were pretty stylish too. Before I had a chance to set them up I went out the back door, which was off the kitchen and was gone for a while. When I came back through the same door, I immediately knew that someone had broken in and stolen the lamps. I also knew that the front door had problems with locking and that sometimes the lock didn’t catch. First I quickly went down the hall and checked the bedrooms to see if the intruder was still there. Then I went to the front door and was able to open it easily, knowing that that was how they got in.

Still with the neck knockers. BP is still in the 140s. I can feel it knocking away just sitting here. Not sure why I still have this. Yesterday’s popcorn? That’s the only thing I can think of that I had that would be high in sodium. Oiling the shit out of my ear in case there’s a connection but I don’t think there is.

After having to skip seven times since August 22nd, I’m hoping this will be it until I see Dr. O and decide where to go from there. I’m armed with chamomile tea which definitely seems to help relax me. When it gets really bad, though, nothing I do seems to help at all.

We went to WinCo last night and we weren’t impressed with it. The store was dingy and smelly and the prices weren’t really all that much cheaper. I like that they weren’t blasting music but one of the forklifts was constantly beeping loudly.

I did, however, cook us an awesome meal when we got back. Baked pork chops and diced fried potatoes with onions. It took a while but was an oddly calming task.

Dyed my hair medium golden brown and it definitely looks a lot better even though I’m not nearly as gray as I thought I was after not dying it since late May.

Skipping my meds today, the 6th time since 8/22. :(

In a few hours, we’re going to go check out WinCo. If we don’t like what we see there we’ll jump across the freeway to the Walmart.

Again the rude asshole that sometimes tears in and out on a motorcycle after midnight is back to their shit, whoever they are. They live behind us somewhere, probably on the dead end. If there’s any good to the weather slowly cooling down it will back off the motorcycles for a while.

Yesterday we had about 3 minutes of rain followed by a burst of thunder. That was an unexpected surprise even though we still had to water. What came down didn’t even come close to wetting the ground. We’re probably still a few weeks away from any real rain.

What I don’t get is all the fireworks I heard around 9:30 as if it was New Year’s or the 4th. There really is no getting any peace around here, sometimes not even at night.

While it’s nice to hear from family and I will always love them, there’s no denying that we do have our differences at times. Therefore, it’s great to be in touch every now and then but not connected on Facebook. At least not for a while. This way I’m not reminded of things I’d rather not remember and they don’t take something wrong that I may post.

Woke up to find a “thank you” from Tammy to my group message. Not sure why it took her a day to respond since she saw my message yesterday but that’s cool. I also saw that she checked out my Blogger blog.

I’m going to be bringing Blogger back up to date in light of Prosebox running snail slow and never able to get their shit together for long.

When I read that Aly is to get 5% of whatever her late grandfather’s house sells for that’s in the East, I had mixed emotions about it. Of course I want to see her get all she can get, however she can get it. She’s in debt and she could definitely use the money. But the house is probably worth quite a bit from what her research shows and it just reminds me of how unfairly I’ve fared when it comes to money. Lust, sleep, noise and money are areas I’ve definitely been cursed in. I can’t work for money and I’ve spent much of my life struggling for the damn stuff, and then I was reminded of how I got so little from my parents when your average person gets much more. I try to tell myself it’s silly to stress over it since we got enough to get a place of our own despite the noise here and we have enough to survive on which is what’s most important. But still, I’m sure she’s going to eventually come out and tell me she got more than I did.

I finally finished running all my journals through Grammarly, and while they may not be perfect and 100% devoid of errors, they’re much better. Got about a dozen more stories to run through, though.

Safeway was an hour and 15 minutes late with delivering our groceries so we don’t know if we’re going to continue using them. We may go back to Walmart, though he would have to pick them up.

Using the full spectrum light for when I wake up in the dark. I’m curious to see if this helps perk up my mood. You would think I would be better at night since it’s quieter and he’s home but I actually tend to be worse off emotionally at night. I also don’t sleep as well when I’m on nights either but the last time around I slept okay. Just not quite long enough.

The bamboo is starting to root, yay! Noticed it 4 or 5 days ago actually. Going to order some more to dispense in the organizer I got.

Slept shitty last night. Took a melatonin and woke up a few times with the neck knockers. A few days ago the earbuds slipped and traffic woke me up once or twice but they have otherwise continued to really cut down the traffic wakeup calls. So that much is good. But I’ve been overdoing the sodium again and it’s got my systolic blood pressure number back in the 140s and me very aware of the pulse on the left side of my neck.

Ordered groceries to be delivered this evening and I made sure to reduce the sodium and increase the fruits and veggies. I just wish I didn’t hate to cook so much! I wish I were as good with that as I am with languages. I can’t avoid sodium, cholesterol and sugar altogether but I did my best to get a better balance of things that will be healthier and boost my mood.

Even though I skipped my meds, I was still a touch anxious. I was actually more depressed than anxious. It’s a reminder that the medication isn’t the only culprit and that my hormones are probably still fucked up and that my eating habits haven’t been good lately. I know I was feeling good between most of July and the first part of August. Wish I could remember for sure when I stopped eating healthier. I know I started before I saw Dr. A because she commented about my blood pressure being down and I told her it was because I revamped my entire diet. I need to stick to things longer and stop slacking off.

Even Tom sees that I feel better emotionally during the daytime, probably because there are more distractions to piss me off and divert my attention from my troubles. But this doesn’t mean that things still don’t need to change because they do. My medication needs to be switched, the dose needs to be lowered, or I need to do automatic skipping on set days no matter how I feel as a preventative measure. I just wish I could know which one would work best for me without putting myself through any more possible chaos beforehand!

I wished Sarah a happy birthday in the family group message on Facebook and expected to be ignored. Well, I was ignored by both Tammy and Becky who saw the message but then I was surprised with a “thank you” from Sarah, saying they were doing well and she hoped we were well too.

This was nice to get because while we may always be very different in many ways and they’ll always have traits I dislike, it’s good to at least get along. I’m getting too old for enemies or to bicker with anyone. I don’t want to be buddies with them, but I don’t want to fight.

So now they won’t get 40 pages of old journal entries as well as current thoughts I might have shared with them anonymously in one of my bogus blogs giving them a piece of my mind as I planned to do in a couple of weeks if they continued to ignore me. But I’ll save what I’ve gathered just in case.

In one entry I had written about how upset Lisa was when she was down in Florida and my mother, Marty and Ruth badmouthed me right in front of her. That’s totally something they would do too, and it’s a reminder of just what kind of people they were. It’s bad enough to badmouth your own daughter to your in-laws but with your granddaughter around? Really, Dureen?

Last night I dreamed that the phone rang and it was Andy. “Look outside your window,” he said.

I was sitting on the edge of a twin bed and looked out the window to my right at Bob and Virginia’s place which looked different. All I saw was a solid wall. No windows or anything else.

Then Andy began talking and I said that I was looking out at Bob and Virginia’s place and that while he pissed the shit out of me big time I really missed him.

A part of me wishes I could say this was true but I don’t. I just don’t. I’ll always cherish the fond memories of our younger days together but other than that, I don’t miss his insensitive, arrogant and hurtful ways.

Feeling emotionally off and am not sure how to describe it or what to do about it. Not sure I feel anxious. Not sure I feel depressed. But I definitely feel if not tired then at least lacking in energy, as well as a touch lightheaded. So that brings me to the same questions I’ve been asking for fucking ever… is it the meds? Is it because I skipped 2 days? Is it because I took melatonin before bed? Is it because I’m not eating as healthy as when I was eating mostly fruits and veggies? Is it because I’m on nights? Is it because I haven’t had Amberen in a few days, though I’ve kept up on my multivitamins and vitamin D?

And why do they say to wait 4 hours after taking this drug before we take vitamins? But there are vitamins in our food, including the shake I just had.

Last night I dreamed we were living in a house that looked like it could’ve been in New England. Pretty sure it had at least two stories. The houses were close-set and the driveways ran between the houses which aren’t as common there even though there are some places like that.

One evening just after the sun had set, I was sitting in the dark by a window on one side of the house. We just got new neighbors on that side. I heard them pull in and was annoyed by the glare of the headlights and how they lit up the room when I just wanted to relax in total darkness. I noticed that this wasn’t the first time it took them forever to turn the damn car and lights off. When they did, I heard the guy introduce himself as Nathan to another neighbor who lived somewhere on the street. He said he moved in with his two teenage boys, and I was worried they would blast music when Nathan wasn’t around.

So my perfume is still not here. If I don’t get it tomorrow I’ll contact the perfume people and tell them I didn’t get it, give me my money back, and cancel my subscription. I’m not going to go back to the days of fighting to get things delivered to me. In Arizona, I had to work at getting dolls delivered to me. In Oregon, I had to fight to get the prizes I’d win. Here, I’m not going to fight for perfume.

I’ve got skin tag remover coming tomorrow but I think we actually did succeed in killing my skin tag earlier because it’s shrunk into a little hard knot. It was hurting before when I would move my arm a certain way. It’s just starting to get better now, though.

All I remember for dreams last time around was being in this huge pool by myself. I think it was an indoor pool. It was huge but not very deep. You could walk across it.

There were some trees at the sides and I looked up at one of them to see what appeared to be a large cat of some kind. Like maybe a bobcat. At first, I thought about how realistic it looked but assumed it was a sculpture. I splashed some water on it and it seemed to move its jaw a little. Then it was on the other side of the pool in a tree in which it slipped out of and into the water below. Now knowing it was really a big cat, I went running out of the room as fast as I could. But then I realized I left my purse by the pool and was wondering if it would be safe enough to dare to venture back in to grab it.

The “stroke” house is doing what they do best, blasting their fucking TV. They do this every night till around midnight or later and it really does get old. I can’t make out what the people are saying but I can hear the faint drone of it in here if I don’t have any fans or air cleaners running. It’s fucking ridiculous that one’s TV can be heard in a place like this of all places and from that far. I realize they’re probably deafer than deaf and don’t even know how loud it is, but still. There’s always fucking something to annoy me day and night. I’ve never lived anywhere this noisy. I hate to say it, but this place even puts Phoenix to shame in a lot of ways. Yeah, I heard a lot of shit there but not nearly this often.

Just put the fan on and will just deal with it because I know how sensitive people are. You just never know how they’ll react and of course, they’d tell everybody if I asked them to turn it down regardless of how they take it, and then there will be more Rays to frown at me and badmouth me to others and act like I did something totally rude and unreasonable. That’s just how it is in the west and I don’t need any shit for the rest of the time we’re here. If it could be heard over things running, then yes, I’d be over there and I wouldn’t give a shit how they took it or what anyone else thought either.

Yesterday I felt horrible. I was very anxious though I didn’t have a racing heart. Today and tomorrow I’m skipping my meds and already I feel better. I know damn well it’s that poison that’s been causing the bulk of my problems. It just takes more than one skip to drain the shit out of my system enough to back the anxiety off. Dr. O has to either switch me or lower my dose!

Mrs. Twenties told me that her 9 carloads of visitors would be here every OTHER Tuesday. I swear they came to honor their imaginary friend last Tuesday so why are they here tonight? I guess Fantasy Night is going to be every Tuesday now?

My Jimmy Choo perfume finally showed up today. It’s just so-so. The scent fades right after you spray it. It’s very mild and I definitely don’t smell the patchouli in it either before it fades.

We signed up on the new patient portal but I still couldn’t message my doctors if I wanted to. I’m sure it will be screwed up for months and then right when they finally get it running smoothly enough, they’ll go and fuck things up by changing things around again. You would really think that by now they’d have this sort of thing down pat. They’re making it way more complicated than it needs to be. Got appointments for eye exams on the 20th of next month but I may not make it. It’s going to be tight schedule-wise.

I checked the program and will be getting up a half-hour after my appointment with Dr. A is supposed to begin so I’ll have to reschedule that. God, I’m sick of this shit! Just 3.5 months left of the year and I still have 5 appointments to go. And this doesn’t include any that may spawn from any of these 5 appts. I am so, so sick of all the fucking medical crap! The doctors, the medications, the appointments… I swear I’m ready to wash my hands clean of it all and walk away for good! If only I could have just my dentist, the ENT, and eye docs to deal with. If only! I’m so tired of dealing with PCP and other specialists. When am I ever going to get a break! Every time it looks like I may have about 3 months between appointments, I get hit with something. I wish I could just toughen up and learn to simply live with whatever life throws at me.

I don’t miss Jesse, his mutts or his trailer but I sure miss the seclusion and how much quieter it was there, and I definitely miss not having appointments or needing medication. Well, I needed it. I just didn’t know it. But hypo symptoms are annoying while anxiety is scary so the thought of quitting altogether really is appealing. However, I’m going to take the damn poison tomorrow and hope for the best.

Last night I dreamed I was at the dentist and again it looked nothing like the old place. It didn’t look like anything in the last dream either. I was sitting on a couch in the waiting room and Tom was in some other room talking to the staff, probably about billing. I realized I’d forgotten to pluck my facial hair and put on any makeup.

Then Kathleen walked into the room and sat in a chair nearby and said something about either a or dream or a feeling she had about me or something going on in my life. I told her I didn’t know anything about it, however, and said, “I sometimes have vibes and dreams about you too. I know you know someone named Monica. Do you?”

She said no.

Then Tom came into the room as I got up to use the bathroom. The bathroom only had an opaque piece of plastic hanging in the doorway. I sat on the toilet and realized I could see through it easily and that I could no doubt be seen as well. So I quickly stood up, flushed the toilet, and stepped out just as Kathleen was ready to lead me in back to an exam room. I was embarrassed at the thought of her knowing I hadn’t washed my hands afterward even though I hadn’t actually peed cuz I felt too uncomfortable because she would have heard the sink water running.

Went walking for 15 minutes. Wasn’t the greatest walk either because it was too warm and the air was dead still. There wasn’t the slightest hint of a breeze.

Saw that skunk again on the retaining wall behind the fence, and again it followed me.

Emotionally, I felt more anxious and depressed yesterday and my HR was elevated for a while, but today I haven’t had a racing heart. I’m not too bad but I’m not great either. Really worried it’s just the “older side” of me just like being heavy is a thing of being older, and that nothing I do will ever resolve this. I’m so fed up that I’m even contemplating quitting my meds altogether depending on what Dr. O says. I’d rather be hypo than emotionally off. Perimenopause or not, this problem didn’t exist before I started the poison.

Tom thinks that my hormones fluctuate more than I realize and that they just happened to test me on a day that the numbers were down and that it won’t be until I pass the one-year mark of my last period before I start to feel better. I wish I could believe this, but this late in the game I’m losing hope. I think it’s connected to the medication, as always. It may be too late for me to get rid of it by stopping the medication but I will definitely consider trying if Dr. O can’t help me.

I’ve been tired the last couple of days and I’m not sure why. Could be the medication skips or maybe the Melatonin I took the last couple of nights before bed. I ended up going down for a short nap earlier.

Overall I’ve been sleeping surprisingly well despite being tired. The earbuds are definitely saving my ass, though I haven’t been hearing the loud car lately. Could be coming in early in the morning while I’m sleeping. I don’t know. Until I’m staying up into the early morning, I won’t know. I didn’t get up until later in the afternoon today so all I’ve heard are some semi-loud vehicles. Right now it’s just the fucking planes. I’m sure I’ll also hear faint traces of that TV blasting when in the living room.

Tomorrow I will finally get my perfume after it was routed to the wrong PO. So I have that to look forward to plus we ordered some stuff from Prime Pantry. Tom is trying a new diet he devised starting tomorrow where he goes by a strict menu. He used the bins that he used to load groceries into when we would go pick up groceries at Walmart that the employees would pick for us. So it’s sort of like one giant pillbox only each one contains the food he plans to eat for that day. So he has a week’s worth of boxes in the dining area.

I forgot to mention that Lana is actually a pretty girl and she’s quite feminine. Don’t like the blue hair and she would definitely not be my type relationship-wise because she’s too flaky and impulsive from what little I can tell. She’s also not into commitment and I’m not sure how stable she is. Right away, however, I realized that she would have hated me had we met in a club 30 years ago because I’m so feminine. I can totally see where she would want to sleep with someone like Aly who is far from butch but has short hair and definitely isn’t quite as feminine as I am.

I hesitate to get too close to anyone Aly is associated with because I know how fond she is of unstable people. She is definitely as drawn to them as some women are drawn to abusive men. Although it’s easier to block cyberbullies nowadays, the last thing I want to do is be chased and stalked online by yet another nutjob of Aly’s.

It was interesting to hear that Kim went to Yankee Candle Company and the Cracker Barrel that was next to it for her birthday. That’s within walking distance of where I used to live in South Deerfield! Mom took me there when she came to visit.

I had some very long detailed dreams last night after several dreamless nights. First, I was about to have ear surgery on the bad ear, though I didn’t know what they were going to do. I had a little round wire inserted in the opening of the ear. The doctor told me not to worry if it fell out. It was the weekend and close enough to surgery which I guess I was having Monday morning, so I pulled the wire out and threw it in the recycle bin because it was uncomfortable.

Then I was hanging out with a younger woman with long blonde hair. She hugged me at one point and said, “I just think you complain too much.”

While she was talking to a couple of guys in another room, I suggested we get together for a beauty night where we pamper each other with massages and do our hair and nails and all that stuff.

Then I was in our kitchen which looked nothing like our kitchen and noticed the sink was spraying water in a funny way and Tom was using a dish strainer for something weird as well as washing bags of treats in the dishwasher.

Next, I was walking down Tandy at night which is a curvy road. For some reason, I was pushing the trash and recycle bins and they were on wheels that allowed them to run quite a ways over the road if I push them hard enough. One of them shot out quite a ways after I shoved it a little too hard and I worried that a car would come around the corner and hit it before I could run ahead and grab it but it didn’t.

Then the bins disappeared and I heard birds chirping which told me it was later than I realized. Then a second later it was hot and sunny out and there were people out and about. I was so warm that I took off my white button-down blouse which I had a halter on underneath. I draped the shirt over my head to protect me from the sun. I saw some women with children and thought it was weird that the kids were wearing winter coats.

Then I was in some car with three or four women, thinking they were driving me home when they really drove me out of the park and to this building. The building was mostly empty but they were having some kind of meeting in a small windowless room with other women. So about a dozen people in all.

I realized I left my shoes and purse in the car and then I turned and asked the others if they had a phone so I could call Tom to come and get me because I didn’t have mine on me.

No one said a word.

So I left the room and soon ran into a few younger people and asked if they had a phone I could use to make a local call to have my husband come and pick me up. But then I got frustrated because I realized I didn’t have his number memorized. So then I had to hope I could find my way back through the maze of corridors to the meeting room and wait until I could be driven back home.