Tom met “Santa Claus” the other day when getting the mail but forgot his real name. He has a business dressing up as Santa and looks the part too, with his long white beard. He’s skinny, though, and lives down the street. I think I’ve seen him. Pretty sure he moved in next to Jim.

I’ve been having issues with excessive hunger for a while now and while I know PMS and pregnancy can make you hungry, I couldn’t understand why I was hungry so often so I looked, and sure enough, it’s yet another symptom of going into menopause. I’m just about convinced that menopause causes everything except for one to get rich. I really am.

Ended up tossing down nearly 2,000 calories yesterday but surprisingly, I woke up the same weight as the day before. I wasn’t even very active yesterday either. Decided that weight gain, if that’s what’s going to happen, is worth ending my constant hunger so I’m just going to eat when my body feels it needs to and leave it at that. If I gain, fine. If I don’t, that’s fine too. I’m just tired of always having to hold back.

Read this article about how difficult it’s supposed to be to lose weight after menopause and when I think about it, I can only think of a few people over 50 that have lost weight and that was only because something was wrong. I’ve known it wasn’t coming off until I became old or God forbid ill, but being hungry all the time isn’t worth trying to keep more from coming on. So from now on, I eat when I’m hungry. No more holding out. My blood pressure may go up and I may not be as healthy and I may get the neck knockers I had last night, but at least I won’t be hungry anymore!

Aly and I were talking about this 10-year-old girl named Viv whom she nannies for at times and how her mother seems to be attracted to abusive men. Then she mentioned that Molly is the same way and seems to prefer those that treat her like shit. Well, I don’t know Vivian’s mother but it’s hard to feel sorry for Molly when she’s hurt so many people. To me, this is just karma coming back at her.

It was unusually chilly the night before last when we went out for a walk late at night. Another unusual thing for this time of year is that I can hear the freeway. It’s like summer just doesn’t want to stay. We’re in for triple-digit soon so maybe it will stick around a while then.

The planes have been horrible. We definitely need to get out of flight paths. What I don’t understand is why we became one after four years of living here. I would have noticed such excessive flying had it been an issue prior to that. The only things I heard excessively before that were small planes, military jets, and helicopters. The commercial planes didn’t start driving me crazy until last September. Early mornings and late nights are especially bad and the temperature doesn’t seem to have any effect on it. For some reason, they chose us to be a new flight path and I swear I wasn’t kidding when I said that each and every place I live in gets progressively noisier. It’s never been the other way around and it’s never held steady either. I just think it’s fucking ridiculous that we’re the only ones in the world that can’t move for years. Tom assures me there are plenty of others who can’t move right when they want to. For over half a decade, though? No, I’m sorry. This only happens to us. With everyone else, it’s weeks or months at the most. Not years. So as much as I’ve come to hate this country for a lot of reasons, we definitely need to stay in it. It would be hard enough to get back out of Florida if we decided we didn’t like it, so imagine how many years it would take to get out of another country! It’s like something up there has always been obsessed with me being in places I didn’t want to be in or had grown tired of. This started in my childhood…the Brattleboro Retreat, Valleyhead… Wouldn’t God just fucking love me if I stayed here forever? The thing is that I know that whatever’s cursing me with noise is going to ruin the next place, too. The best I can do is focus on a nicer climate and a newer place. Not what’s around it.

What I don’t get about the mama’s boy’s parents is why they ever moved here. Their son would obviously love to live with them for the rest of their lives and I think it’s safe to say they wouldn’t mind that at all. So why come here then? Tom says it’s because it’s cheaper but so are other mobile parks, including those for all ages.

For some reason, the year 2022 comes to mind as far as us moving. Had a dream a while back that suggested September would be the month but if it’s going to take that long, we may as well stay till he reaches full retirement on the 1st of 2024. Either way, we’ve got a long way to go.

I tested the last Echo Dot we got which is white, and this time it didn’t hiss on words with S sounds in them when reading my book, but the speaker sounds awful. It’s like listening to someone talk from another room. So I brought the Dot back into the bedroom and paired it back up with the remote.

The cocoon wasn’t really making much of a difference, and while it’s easy for me to say I don’t care what this place looks like anymore since it’s not our forever home, that doesn’t mean I want to see something that hideously weird and ugly looking either. So we’re thinking of adding a canopy to the bed because that way I wouldn’t have to move any soundproofing material or anything we draped over it when making the bed. I think that would look nice actually, and I could cover it with something more decorative. It would make the room look smaller but who cares about that?

Again I had another positive and detailed dream about my mother and again it makes me wonder. Another dimension? Her reaching out from beyond? Simply a dream? Nothing changes either way. I could never forgive her. Not even if she were suddenly alive again. As I said, if you dump me or give me a reason to dump you, I don’t do do-overs. Once you’re out of my life that’s the way it stays.

In the dream, I’m not sure if I ever knew Tom or not but I was definitely single. I was my real age but mom seemed younger. She’d just been released from the hospital and I ran up to greet her when someone dropped her off at her house. I told her I had been worried about her and she promised that she would take better care of herself from now on.

Then it was her birthday again and we were supposed to go somewhere where someone was throwing her a party. She was driving us there but then we ended up in a hotel.

It was in the evening and I had a cold and wished we could hurry up and get the party over with so I could go to bed. One of the guinea pigs was on the floor and hopped over to the door when voices could be heard out in the hall. I first thought it was the people throwing mom the party but then their voices faded away.

I told Mom that I wanted to ask her some personal questions when she had a chance. I was going to ask her about changing hormones and some things about how we change as we age.

Then it was daytime and we were at the beach in Connecticut. I sat on the shore for a few minutes and then slowly waded out into the water for a quick dip.

Then it was nighttime again and we were back in the hotel room. I still felt like I had a cold, too. Mom turned off the lights, put on some music, and lay down in her bed. I got up from the other bed to ask her what was going on next and she gently took my hand in the dark and said she was tired of waiting and wasn’t even going to turn the music down so she could hear the phone if anyone called.

Was just about to post this when Tom got up and updated me on Pawandeep. She had her adenoids removed before going home to India for a while. When she returned it was found that her TSH went from a 4 to 0, so she’s to go back down to 50s. I was surprised they’d up her to 75s from a 4 as it was. Even more surprised to learn she never had thyrotoxic symptoms as I did as high as a 3. She lost more weight too, but she’s young and her throat is super sore. Tom had his own adenoids removed when he was a kid and said it was horrible.