I now officially have two sleep disorders, one treatable and one not. Yes, as expected, I have mild borderline sleep apnea. I’m going to be fitted with a CPAP machine soon enough. Probably not till the end of the year because my next appointment with a pulmonologist isn’t until October 3rd.

When I updated my docs on that and let them know I’ll be seeing the GI doc on the 10th, I asked about the Melatonin receptor. They frustrated me by asking why I was interested, and whether was it because I was working nights. So I reminded them that I have N24 as I’ve mentioned many times before and told them that regular melatonin and full spectrum light therapy hadn’t done me much good in the past and that’s why I was inquiring about the melatonin receptor the FDA recently approved. I’ll let you know what they say.

Yesterday I slaved over making scalloped potatoes and even though it took an hour or more it was totally worth it. The results were truly delicious! I’m glad I got this set of three Pyrex casserole dishes after all. At first it seemed like the biggest one which is 9x13 was huge and something I was unlikely to use. But it was perfect for the scalloped potato recipe I followed. I used 9 large potatoes to make it.

Finally decided to remove the clumps of artificial leaves that were atop the kitchen cabinets to make it easier to dust up there. Besides, artificial plants are said to bring bad luck. The ceiling slants down low over most of the cabinet tops but there was one in which there was enough room to place the beautiful vase Tom got me for our 8th anniversary or something like that with a lovely cactus-theme design.

Because Jessie’s been too sick to really do anything, she’s been bored. Although not the greatest writer, I suggested starting a journal and she said she may consider it.

While I will never have any regrets about not having kids, something Jessie said made me worry about what the hell Tom and I would do if we were both ever incapacitated. Her daughter moved down, so she was able to fetch the groceries they needed and leave them at their door. David has COVID-19 now too, so they can’t let her in to get it as well. She’s already had it in the past. There’s Walmart delivery but what if we ever needed a prescription we were too sick to get???

Tom got an airbrush from Amazon, and it’s pretty cool. We definitely plan to have fun with it.

I'm starting to wonder and worry if I'm going to regret gallbladder surgery the same as I came to regret ear surgery. It was stupid of me to think that getting rid of it would be an end to the problem. I haven't had any nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea but my upper stomach has been bloated and a bit sensitive and now I've got cramps worse than when the gallbladder was there. They started yesterday and picked up quite a bit last night. I read that it can take a few months for problems to kick in after gallbladder removal. The question is if it's my digestive system because of what I've eaten as Tom thinks or if it's something with my liver. I don't have jaundice or a fever so that much is good. I just hope I'm not going to suffer from stomach issues for the rest of my life worse than when I had the damn gallbladder.

In better news, I’m loving the Biolage shampoo I got from Liz. My scalp feels cleaner and my hair feels softer. She recommended using conditioner regularly too, and washing in warm water while rinsing the conditioner out in cool water.

Tinkerbella has this adorable thing she does. When she’s on the floor and wants to be picked up, she stands up and grabs hold of our forearm.

Kim waited a whole day before sending me a reply and she did send her message, journals, and stupid story in one email. Of course, she went and made up for the lack of numbers by sending me five emails, each with a few pictures of where she works, as if I care.

When I asked Tom why she wasn’t given more to do, he did have a good point by saying there really isn’t much more she can do. What is a 300-pound nut job supposed to do with her time?

I know I sound mean as hell to most people, but I like to think of it as being brutally honest. That’s why I have multiple blogging platforms and try to keep them separate. I don’t want to offend anyone, of course, but I also want to be able to speak my mind.

I’ve been enjoying the daily thunderstorms we’ve been having and am glad I’ve been up during them, even though I know that’s going to change with my schedule.

Liz did a good job cutting my hair. This time I had her take it to just above my shoulders. It’s not only thickened up, but it grows faster the more my thyroid normalizes. So much easier to dye!

I feel bad for Jess right now. She got really sick from accidentally eating gluten and had to go to the ER to be pumped with fluids and steroids. While she was there, she contracted covid.

I swear I had dreams about dying in 2037 and it’s weird because shortly before we moved, I had a strong feeling come on saying I would live to 2038. I don’t put any value in it, though. There’s no way to know when and how I’m going to go at this time. Could be in a year from now if a meteorite crashes into the house. Could be from cancer, a heart attack, or a stroke in 10 years. Could be that I kill myself in 20 years because he dies.

There’s a regular user in the VZ group from Germany, and she’s excited now that Google’s Street View is finally going to map Germany. That country fought it for over a decade because of privacy issues. Assuming she’s still there, I have a pretty good idea of where Nane works. I’d love to know where she lives so I could create a trip from her place to work and see exactly what she sees along the way. It’s a pretty ugly country overall in a climate I would hate.

Finally got a chance to write, and I have a lot to update on as well.

So we met with the pulmonologist on the 25th. He explained that there are varying degrees of sleep apnea, which makes sense just like there are varying degrees of hypothyroidism. He confirmed that having a TSH of about 8 wouldn’t affect my energy levels to such a degree. He looked into my throat and said it was very “crowded.” This was what my old dentist was asking me about. I guess because I have such a narrow throat there isn’t as much space between the top of my tongue and my throat. Packing on the middle-aged weight is probably what brought on the sleep apnea. I did start getting pretty heavy around the time I started having issues with fatigue but I wrote it off to a combination of perimenopause/menopause and being woken up so damn often like I was at the old place.

Then things got interesting when he tried to tell me I had delayed sleep phase and that sighted people couldn’t have N24. Well, not only did the sleep specialist I saw in Cali say that wasn’t true and that I do have N24, but plenty of research online will tell you that, as well. With delayed sleep phase, which is another type of circadian rhythm disorder and what Andy may have, you have trouble falling asleep, but you’re still getting up around the same time. This is caused more by external factors, whereas N24 is internal factors.

Ugh, here goes the fucking motorcycle. It used to be mostly weekends, but now it’s every single fucking day.

Took a break to eat breakfast and do some other things and in a little while I will be going out to get my hair cut. I booked an appointment with Liz online. I want to take it back to the shoulders. It’s been 14 months since it was cut. Maybe now that I’m not using the cheap box dye, it will grow out healthier. Even though it’s not overly long, it’s very hard to manage. Thick curly hair tends to be harder to manage anyway. So it will not only be easier to manage with it shorter, but it will be easier to dye too.

Continuing on with the pulmonologist…at home, we looked up the difference between N24 and delayed sleep phase and I swear I could have written the article on N24 on Sleep Foundation! It described exactly what I have. Exactly. Delayed sleep is mostly for people who have gotten their circadian rhythms thrown off from things like working certain shifts or traveling through different time zones or things like that. What I have is more built-in and less treatable.

We like to read up on N24 periodically to see if anything new comes about, and a couple of things did. A while back, I was telling Tom that I swore my schedule jumped faster when I was on days. I asked him if he noticed that as well and he said he didn’t. Yet sure enough, the article talks about the jump in schedule speeding up when on days. It does seem to jump closer to two hours when I’m on days and one hour when I’m on nights.

The other thing is that there’s a new melatonin receptor that was recently approved by the FDA we didn’t know about. This might be worth asking my doctors about once it’s confirmed whether or not I have sleep apnea. Personally, I think it’s too good to be true and nothing’s ever gonna get me on a schedule. I would love nothing more, even if there would be a few negatives to it, like never having any alone time or breaks from having to listen to planes and helicopters every few minutes. Ah, but it would make scheduling appointments so much easier and then I wouldn’t have to worry about being woken up by noise as much!

The receptor has side effects, of course, but nothing too scary that I could see. If I could stand the side effects, I wonder if the drug would keep on working indefinitely or lose its effect after a while as my body got used to it.

So the pulmonologist gave me this thing to sleep with, saying that it needed to record at least 4 hours of sleep. There was a strap that had to go around my chest, a thing you stick on your finger, and a tube with two prongs you stick up your nose, similar to an oxygen tube. It was a little uncomfortable since I was unable to lie on my stomach, but I managed to sleep on and off from 9 to 3. At 3, I got up to pee and took the stuff off before getting back into bed for another hour or so of sleep. Then when they opened at 8:30, Tom dropped the thing off while I waited for the groceries. They told him they were able to download everything, so I’m confident that they got sufficient data to analyze. I just don’t expect to hear back about the results until next week.

With increasing evidence saying that blue light can cause insomnia, I’m going to make a point of limiting how much time I spend on my phone before bed. This is especially important on days/nights when I have fairly decent energy and am more likely to have insomnia.

I did get the results of my pap which I forgot about, and everything is normal. Tom said he heard they now suspect cervical cancer is linked to HPV.

The cheap gel inserts I have don’t help as much as the suppositories. Revaree is too expensive, though, so I may get something cheaper but with the same ingredients.

The pouncer painting brushes arrived yesterday, and the next time I do a Temu order, I’ll have more silk screen stencils.

We’ve now been in this house for exactly two years. Too small or not, no real beaches close by or not, everything seems to suggest that this is it for the rest of our lives. I don’t have the energy to move anymore, and I don’t want to settle. So unless we got rich or ever needed to go into assisted living, then yeah, this is it. Not perfect, but close to ideal.

Met with Helen yesterday, but there isn’t much to say about that. She thinks we can wrap it up in about 6 to 9 more sessions. All these sessions later, I’m still not sure whether or not she’s that helpful. I asked myself if I should have gotten a different therapist, or perhaps no therapist at all.

In a little over two hours, Kim replied to my last message with the usual long rambling reply. I knew she was gonna say she wasn’t much of a Tony Bennett fan simply because I said I wasn’t. She just doesn’t get that it’s okay to have different likes. I don’t understand why she’s got to be such a copycat any more than I understand why the mentally ill are so damn sociable and needy of constant attention. Before I even read her message, I knew she was going to claim that she wasn't much of a fan, even though she sent me an email just to ask about him along with a pic of a signed photo of him she collected. A classic example of how the stupid think others are stupid too. A celebrity stands out in my mind enough to email someone about their death and to show off my signed photograph from them yet I'm not much of a fan? Yeah, right!

Then she goes and thanks me for understanding if she can’t get back to me right away as if she does this regularly and I’ve complained about it.

Because I haven’t been feeling bad, I decided I would only take one of the 75s this week as the doctor and I discussed. Except for my hair, the scale says I’m still quite hypo. I doubt my TSH is lower than a 7 or an 8. Might even still be a 9 but a low 9. My hair, however, is like wow! It’s thinned out on top and at the sides due to age but I still have a lot of hair in back. When I was looking at it with two mirrors yesterday, I was like wow, where did all that hair come from? It’s thicker than I thought and very curly too. I didn’t realize I had that much curl and that much hair. That explains why it seems heavy and thick when I gather it back into a ponytail. It’s not thick like it was before my 40s but I still have quite a bit of hair.

I couldn’t get a good angle holding the mirror so I could see the back while cutting my hair. I would need a third hand for that. Fearing I would screw it up anyway, I decided I’m going to have my hair done sometime soon. The cutting sheers are still good for trimming my bangs and things like that.

Ended up getting some decent rain on and off yesterday. Of course, that didn’t stop the weekend motorcycle charades down the street.

Another new golf course came out. It’s called Laser Lair. Some of the holes are tricky because you have to shoot the ball with perfect timing to avoid shooting lasers that “burn” your ball if it hits it. I found about half of the missing balls so far. Not very colorful, except for maybe one of them.

Finished chapter 6 of my book. They’re short chapters, so I’m barely over 5K words so far in total. The deeper I get into the story, the more I have to write on my own. That’s fine, though, because I only want the AI to give me a basic skeleton and not write the story for me.

Got a 5-minute burst of rain earlier, the first in a handful of days.

I made accordion potatoes and while they did taste good, they’re definitely not worth the work. There are plenty of simpler ways to make potatoes.

I’m waiting for some hair-cutting scissors I ordered. To save money, I think I can cut and layer my own hair. I watched a few videos and got different ideas. Worst case scenario, it doesn’t come out good and I let it grow out.

How am I supposed to be compassionate of the mentally ill when almost every single one of them that I’ve ever dealt with has been a problem in some way shape or form? Yeah, it's time for another round of Kim bitching. I almost dumped her yesterday and I’m getting closer to doing just that. I’m going to make one last ditch effort to get her to back off and quit overwhelming me with 6 or 7 emails in between my messages to her which I try to space out every five days or so, and remind her that the more she sends me, the longer it’s going to take for me to catch up because I don’t have all the free time she has.

The thing is that this nutjob is 100 percent unteachable. The two things I learned about Kim are that she doesn’t learn from her mistakes nor can she admit to them. She’s totally unteachable and never holds herself accountable for anything. As Aly used to say, nothing is ever her fault. More than likely, she’ll behave for a week or so and then she’ll be right back to the same old shit, hounding me with long rambling repetitious messages in which case I’ll probably just ghost her and be glad I never gave her this address. I just have to block her number on my phone as well because she does have that. She may have her sister get a hold of me but if she does, I’ll tell her sister exactly why I ghosted, and I have no doubt that she’ll understand.

My God, I can just imagine the hell June went through! Her sister and I talked about that too and how Kim was eventually forbidden from seeing her and slamming her with tons of postal and digital mail. She had a thing for June but not for me. So if she’s sending me all she’s sending me, I can just imagine how utterly overwhelmed June must have been.

This lunatic doesn’t get the definition of “too much is too much.” Half a dozen times I’ve had to tell her to slow down. I’m done with her, mentally ill or not, if she can’t respect my wishes and she’s got to be that selfish. She’s been nothing but a nuisance and sometimes more than that the entire time I’ve known her. Yes, I feel a bit guilty at the thought of cutting ties with her but sometimes we have to look out for ourselves and I think it’s okay to be selective when it comes to who we associate with.

Why are the mentally ill so incredibly sociable and so attention-needy? If they’re smart or at least stable you hear from them a reasonable amount of times or hardly ever. The lunatics want to see, chat, and message you every waking moment without realizing that just because they don’t have a life doesn’t mean that other people don’t.

Due to the lack of mentality and intelligence level of a 5-year-old, it’s hard to really consider her a real friend to begin with because I can’t have any deep meaningful conversations with her or ask her for meaningful opinions and advice and things like that. She says she reads my books and she tells me when she supposedly finishes one of them and requests another but I doubt she’s reading them. I think she’s downloading them, opening them, and skimming them but that’s about it. She reads what she wants to read like stories she’s in along with people she knows and celebrities, but that’s okay because so do I. I just skim her silly, unreasonable, and unrealistic fantasies.

You can’t have problems with people if you just avoid them altogether.

Tom’s lab results came in yesterday. A little low on platelets and good cholesterol but his TSH is back to normal. Great, but how? I didn’t know thyroids ever normalized on their own like that. Besides, he’s been having a hell of a time losing weight. This reminds me that most older mammals are fat and they don’t all have bum thyroids. It’s just an age thing unless you come from incredibly good genetics.

Love the Temu stuff we just got! Tons of colorful satin scrunchies and other things. The puffy ball hair ties aren’t what I thought they were but they’re still nice. Love the hat wig! It looks more realistic than a regular wig and is so much more comfortable too.

The carpet runner feels so nice under my feet. I just have to see how well it stays in place and if the Roomba can handle it.

I now have the same shiny sink stopper that’s in the other bathroom. Love how you just push the button in the center to plug or unplug it.

The size 7 rainbow glitter ring is too big for my fingers but it fits great on my right thumb. A little loose on my left thumb.

We also got the three stackable cabinet organizers for the kitchen. They’re not quite as big as I’d like and I would prefer white doors instead of clear but they’re definitely going to help us spread things out so we don’t have so much crap jammed into the built-in cabinets.

The single stencil I got from Walmart was a waste because it bleeds through on canvas. I can still use it for other things and it cleans up easily. Looks like what I want is called a silk screen stencil that’s self-adhesive. I saw a video on Amazon of someone sticking it to a shirt, spreading paint over it with a painting knife, peeling it off, and getting absolutely no bleeders at all. If they can do that on fabric, I can do it on canvas.

Getting really sick of Google putting some of my posts behind content warnings. Especially posts that have existed for years. Just who am I writing for, them or me? If it’s them then they need to pay me. I complained to them and told them to knock it off already. These are posts that have been around for ages, and when I’m asked to change things, then I’m writing for them and not for me. I’ve edited and requested reviews on the ones they’ve complained about and they’ve accepted all but the last one. So I simply deleted it and reposted it with minimal editing. I’m not going to play this game with them and edit my own damn journal for the tastes of others any more than I would on any other platform. I write for me first and foremost. That’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it’s always going to be. I don’t explain or defend myself either. This is purely hypothetical, but if someone wanted to argue with me about something I think or believe, I don’t bother to engage in a debate with them. I either ignore or block.

Sure came close to blocking Kim! Good golly God! I just asked her to shorten her messages to me a bit and what do I get less than 4 hours after spacing out my last reply to her by 5 days but another long rambling message. Unless I send a message when I know she’s going to be asleep, she almost always gets the message right away and immediately gets to work on a reply. Again, why do they let her have so much free time? She said her sister says working for pay is a no-no, and full-time is too much for her. Too much how? Nonetheless, I told her never to feel obligated to respond right away and that I totally understand if she’s busy, tired, or just not in the mood and it takes her a few days. I’m hoping she’ll take the hint but somehow I think it will fly right over her head.

Then I got another brief message and then a message containing part of the stupid story she’s working on. Let me guess…even though I asked her to keep it to a few messages at a time, like one for her message to me, another for journals, and another for stories, I’m going to have one or two more messages before I respond to her last one, right? I swear that talking to her is like talking to a wall! I’m not sure if she just doesn’t get it or if she really doesn’t care one way or another. Probably a mix of both. Regardless, I never wanted to be friends with a 5-year-old even if it lives in a 42-year-old body. I’m so tempted to ghost or block her email but I know I would feel guilty and worry about Karma getting me for it. Karma bit me in the ass for dumping Andy the two times I cut ties with him, toxic or not, and I know life wasn’t good to Aly during the 17 months she wouldn’t talk to me. So since she’s only annoying and frustrating me and not literally harming me, I’ll just continue to space out my messages to her and skip the repeat questions I’ve asked her a million times not to hit me with.

Tom had blood drawn yesterday and a chest x-ray. He said the hearing test was a waste of time because all they wanted to do was try to sell him an expensive hearing aid he couldn’t afford. He said maybe he could get cheap ones on Amazon once we paid down some of our debt. How are we going to do that if he’s unable to work because he can’t hear? And why the fuck doesn’t Medicare cover hearing aids?

They’re going to cut the cancerous spot on his forehead out soon.

My sleeping has gotten a bit erratic the last few days, making it harder to hope to make my endo appointment in a few months. Tom says don’t worry about that until it gets close but I do, even if I don’t think she’ll be of any help.

I woke up after just 4 hours of sleep after being up 18.5 hours since I slept a long time the night before and had good energy. So I was still tired and went back to sleep and that’s what’s causing my schedule to jump faster than usual so I’m hoping I’ll have a few days/nights where it holds for a few days/nights which is also common.

During my second sleep, I dreamed we were living somewhere, although I don’t know if we just moved in or what, that seemed to be a pretty big house with multiple floors and a decent-sized backyard. The unfortunate thing was the large family that moved in next to us. Their driveway literally passed right by the wall of our house, like barely two feet away. We seemed to be in a rural area. I watched them drive this huge loud tractor up their driveway alongside our place and then further back. Then a motorcycle went by and one of their kids moved this strange-looking vehicle to the side that was as loud as a motorcycle.

I eventually went out into the backyard which the back half of their driveway ran alongside. Suddenly, our refrigerator and pantry were outside against the back of our house and an older woman I guessed to be the mother of one of the parents seemed to be interested in storing extra stuff in it since there were about three adults and at least three kids and therefore a lot of food. I told her that any time there was extra space go ahead and store what they wanted but try to use the top shelf of the pantry since I was short.

I then complimented the woman on her pretty sundress and was just about to tell them that because I had health issues that meant I needed to sleep in the daytime sometimes and ask how often they expected to pass by our place with loud vehicles when the dream ended.

Ugh, just wondering when Kim is going to get that too much is too much. Why is it so damn hard for her not to overdo things? I could lecture her on letting me catch up on her messages before she hits me with more be it something she wants to let me know, her silly stories, her silly character descriptions, poems, etc., but I know it won't sink in. I thought that by spacing out my messages to her it would slow her down but it really hasn't made much of a difference. Since there's no getting through to her I'm just going to keep spacing my messages out and will probably start ignoring some of the content the autistic child-woman slams me with.

She sent me a message a few days ago saying she was so emotional that her sister had to give her a sleeping pill to help her sleep all because her boss's mother died. This is a woman she never met and she's only known her boss for a few months. She says they've become good friends because they like to play trivia games with each other and I guess that's not unethical since she only works as a volunteer part-time. Still, that's quite a reaction over a complete stranger, though that's fine that she's supportive of her boss.

I've got an abstract stencil coming tomorrow but I think it may be a waste of money because it seems like the only way to prevent paint from bleeding under a stencil when you're working on canvas is to get a sticker stencil and then use a pouncer brush which is basically a sponge. I have a sponge I could use, though.

I also got a saltwater mouth rinse and a special foot and body wash that's supposed to be good for toenail fungus so I'll see if it makes a difference at all.

Nothing from Christiane in real life. That's no shocker. I never hear from her unless it's in reply to when I reach out to her. I'm still determined not to reach out to those who never reach out to me first. I get they are how they are and that’s fine, I just think it's only fair. I don't want to feel like I'm in a one-sided friendship. 

Not much else going on. Gonna do a little painting soon.

Been tired tonight. Gee, what a surprise, right? Still managed to get another painting started. It's going to be a flower field.

We're ordering these things to put on the bottoms of doors that keep drafts out that will hopefully keep the rat from slipping under them as easily. She can chew thin door sweeps, the little stinker. He still has to figure out a way to block the dishwasher too.

Just like in Maricopa and then Citrus Heights, my logic is at odds with my vibes. My logic says we're never going to be able to afford to move and that this is it. My vibes say otherwise and I can't help but wonder why being the naturally curious person that I am. Are we going to stay here until close to the end of our lives and go into assisted living? Or is there money ahead neither of us can see? If there is, then one of us is going to win it or sue someone.

The Mexico trip was just there but I'm loving This Turkey ride and all the twists and turns in the roads as I cruise along the coast of the Black Sea. That water looks so inviting that I just want to step off my board or skier and dip in. I should be out of Turkey and off to the Canary Islands soon, also with curvy roads. After that, I'll be ending the challenge on the coast of Oregon.

Not this time around because I want to hurry up and finish the challenge so I can finish my Spain to Norway trip, but in the future, I was thinking I might switch between the board and skier. I was thinking I would ski through the long trips I create that are thousands of miles and do the challenges on the board. There are pros and cons to both. Skiing is obviously faster and I can keep a consistent pace too. But the views are much better on the board. With the board, I can stop instantly to check out the sites around me. The board is better for going through cities where there’s more to see. Then again, it's nice to be able to stop easily out in the middle of nowhere too, or in the wilderness in the safety of home.

I used one of the three sample inserts you use every 3 days for dryness. The only thing I don't like is that I have to wear a liner which isn't good for you because they're not breathable. But what goes up eventually comes down just like with the Monistat inserts we wasted time and money on along with antibiotics and the Diflucan. At this point, I'm pretty sure I never had a yeast infection or a UTI. It's looking like my problem could be due to dryness down there and even though I've only used one insert, I'm not burning as much today. They're too expensive, though. I don't want to pay 60 bucks every month for a month's supply. It really sucks being a woman and it really is expensive to be one too.

Jessie said she used estrogen cream at one point but doesn't remember if it helped. My only concern is it making me horny. If testosterone cream can make Andy horny, couldn't estrogen cream make me horny? Well, I don't want to be horny with a husband who isn't horny. Even if we were both horny as hell, we're not exactly in good shape for playing around. I wouldn't have to do much but I think it would be very hard for him being morbidly obese and in his mid-60s. He could barely perform in his 30s, so how is he going to perform now? And this isn't meant to be a cutdown against my husband but just me being honest and telling it like it is. There's nothing wrong with us being who and how we are.

I also hesitate to mess with any kind of hormonal replacement therapy. That's what Levothyroxine is and look at all the trouble that's given me.

Now let me do some Kim bitching. I don't want to ghost her but I swear if I could go back in time and undo Kim M, I would, LOL. Her latest journal entry was basically her email exchanges with her boss. She totally overdoes everything. I can see where she would have driven June absolutely crazy because she had a thing for her. Well, she doesn't have a thing for me yet she's sending me way too much. I get about 15 messages with pictures, 2-3 containing journals, and 2-3 messages, and that's just too much. I reminded her again to keep it to no more than a few emails a week; one for her message to me, one for her stories and poems, and another for her journals. She always overwhelms and just never seems to get it. No matter how many times I tell her not to hit me with too much at once, it's only a matter of time before she's right back to the same old shit. What part of “too much is too much” does this dumb shit not get?

And why oh why do they let her have so much free time? She's only volunteering a few hours a week, has a couple of Taekwondo classes a week, and that's pretty much it. She spends almost all her free time at home on her phone. I get that she’s like a 5-year-old and is limited as her sister said but you wouldn't give a real 5-year-old this much free time, so why her? I still think she would be better off in a group home where things are a little more structured and she could be given more activities. As long as the place wasn't run like a prison and the residents weren't abused, I think she would really thrive there just like Aly once said. Even if she was only there in the daytime. Then she would only have evenings and weekends to slam people with tons of emails.

I'm so pissed because I stupidly drafted my entry on PB instead of Google Docs and forgot to save it. So I figured I could pull up the voice recording of the entry I talk-typed in my Google account but wasn't able to find it. So here I am starting over even though there really isn't much to say.

Got a bad feeling that my yeast infection isn't going away. The burning is picking up again. What am I to do if I can't get rid of this fucking thing or it keeps coming back? Between the fungus in my nails, the occasional thrush I get in my mouth, and now this, it's like I'm a walking fungus. I don't understand what the hell is going on. I looked at the possibilities but none of them seem to fit me. My best guess is some kind of hormonal imbalance. I've got good hygiene, I'm not diabetic, so I don't see what else it could be.

UPDATE: My results came back negative which leaves me even more confused and convinced I never had a UTI despite what the home-testing kit said. Their lab never tested me positive for a UTI, though, so the antibiotics, Monistat, and Diflucan were all a waste. What could be causing my symptoms then? Is it just dryness? She mentioned an estrogen cream you stick down there, and I have the samples for dryness. I'll start using them tonight. The burning isn't the worst thing in the world but it's slightly annoying.

The lack of alone time is getting to me again. Because he's different, coincidentally or not, I don't think he understands that everybody needs a degree of space. It isn't that I don't love his company but sometimes I want to be alone with my thoughts and doing things I do best alone, particularly writing. I just don't want to bring it up too much because I don't want to hurt his feelings. It annoys me that he wants to schedule his walk-in appointment for his chest x-ray when I'm sleeping. He says that way he'll know for sure he's doing it when I don't have appointments but as I told him, it's good for me to be alone in the house every now and then because that way, if he ever does return to work, it's not that much of a shock to me. I don't think he's going back to work, though. He says he hasn't yet because he's deaf and there are no jobs. That's another thing he's scheduled while I'm to be sleeping is a hearing test because he can get cheap hearing aids from Medicare. It isn't that we can't pay our bills. We can manage our monthly expenses just fine. It's that we're in debt. The thing is he would have to work full-time for a while to put a dent in that debt and neither of us wants that. I don't want him gone as much as he was in Cali. I need a good balance of together time and alone time. I guess I should quit complaining about my sleep disorder because if I was always on days, then I would get even less alone time. There will be more jobs when the snowbirds return.

I had to write most of chapter 4 myself because ChatGPT wouldn't give me what I wanted. It was writing as if Christiane and Marion were the ones who had problems in the past and not Marion and Natasha. I still find it a helpful tool.

The rat is a real little devil, LOL. She now jumps on my lap when I'm at my desk in the walk-in closet and then walks all over the keyboard. She asked ChatGPT a bunch of gibberish and it responded with: I'm sorry, but I don't understand the input you provided. Could you please clarify or provide more context?

LMAO.

I even found her walking across the top of the closet door. When the door is open, the shoe rack touches the clothes. She shimmied up the clothes, hopped onto the shoe rack, and eventually up onto the top of the door. She's getting better at finding her way back down but when she gets stuck I just hold my pillow over my head and she hops down onto that.

Got caught up on sleep last night, and the thunder was kind enough to wait until after I got up. It was great to finally feel energized. It was raining pretty hard on our way down to the GYN. I was just glad I wasn’t feeling as shitty as I did yesterday when I was tired and breathless and my heart felt like it was racing a bit. I was surprisingly calm too.

I had almost no waiting time and met with the same nurse. They were going to charge us $50 because I came in with a problem. But since it was time for my well-woman exam anyway, we will be reimbursed. So she did a pap and a quick breast exam.

Sure enough, the yeast infection is back so the pap was painful, thanks to the irritation, although only for a few seconds. She called in Diflucan and I wish I had waited until bedtime to take it because it’s making me drowsy. I definitely enjoyed those hours of energy while they lasted!

I really hope I’m not looking at regular yeast infections just like with nail fungus! I told her I had a Monistat kit at home but she said to just take the pill.

She gave me an order for a mammogram, which I’m not looking forward to.

She said she wants to hold off on talking about estrogen cream for down there until the results of my pap come back but she did give me a sample of inserts you shove up there to help with dryness.

His biopsy results came in yesterday. It’s not squamous but basal cell carcinoma. That’s potentially less serious but still needs to be dealt with. Or maybe not. They might have got enough of it out when they did the biopsy. No one has called him about it yet, so it can’t be urgent.

Had quite a powerful session with Helen yesterday. Since 2014, fear and anxiety have been overriding any anger I’ve felt throughout the years. Therefore, she thought it would be best to start the EMDR there. When Stacey did it, she was focusing on the panic attacks I was having back then. This is basically to help with fear and anxiety. Ironically, it was on the 9th anniversary of the event, too. Eventually, we’ll branch over to the shit with my mother. The main idea is to help deal with any negative emotions.

She gave me a link to a site in which a long, skinny bar stretched across the top of the screen. In it was a circle that moved back and forth and made a little beeping sound as it reached the end of each side. I followed this motion with my eyes when instructed to.

During the first run, I was to recall the scariest moments during that time. That was definitely when my heart first started pounding and I ran down the hall to call for help with my fingers shaking and feeling horrible and totally terrified that I was going to die.

For the next run, I was to tell myself what I didn’t know then…that I was going through perimenopause, sensitive to my medication, but that I was safe and would be all right, even though I had a long road ahead of me.

I asked her if it was a bad sign that I was still teary-eyed when remembering that day in such vivid detail after all these years, and she said that it was simply a sign of it being a traumatic event. She had me visit Rainbow Beach in between.

The Summer Slam challenge has begun. It consists of four coastal rides in Mexico, Turkey, Spain, and Oregon. They total about 320 miles. I’m in Baja, Mexico right now.

The AI thought Chris was a guy, so I changed that to her full name; Christiane. I know a lot of writers aren’t happy about this awesome tool but I find it incredibly useful. It’s both educational and motivating. I was hesitant to use it to assist me with stories at first, fearing it wouldn’t really be my story in that case but it is. I still have to edit, add, and change many things. So with that and the fact that I feed it keywords and names, it’s still a bit of work and it’s definitely my story. After all, it’s not like the AI came up with everything all on its own and pulled stuff out of thin air. It just gives me a skeleton that I have to slowly flesh out.

This rat is a major little devil. She can get underneath the dishwasher, Tom found, so now he has to block that too. For now, she has plenty of room in the bedroom to run around.

I’m a little tired today because thunder shorted my sleep by an hour or so. Yeah, these afternoon/evening storms are coming in the morning lately when I happen to be asleep. Gee, what an amazing coincidence, right? So I’m wondering just how tired I’m going to be when I meet with Helen tomorrow and even more so with the GYN the next day.

I felt weird at times today and yesterday. I’m not exactly anxious and my heart isn’t racing, but I feel something that’s hard to describe. I don’t know if I’d say wired or on edge, but I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the new dose. I also get so tired so easily at times. This is doing things that shouldn’t wear me out so easily and I wonder if I’m in such horrible shape or if there could be something up with my heart. And of course, there’s my thyroid and possible sleep apnea and maybe even chronic fatigue to wonder about. It’s so frustrating not knowing what’s sucking the energy out of me! Maybe someday I’ll find the answer, but I haven’t yet.

It’s been a quiet day today. I thought they’d go crazy with the motorcycles but they haven’t.

We’ve been moving to some shitty places in my dreams lately. I don’t know what would be worse…dreaming of living in wonderful places and waking up to wish it wasn’t just a dream or moving to these horrible places in the mainstream and usually with awful weather, too.

Last night, I dreamed we were so broke that he needed to look for full-time work, and for some bizarre reason, he decided we should go back and look in NorCal. Not the Sacramento area where we were, but way NorCal where it snowed.

As we were traversing scattered patches of snow while running errands, I told him we ought to call the park here and tell them we were in California since we still have our house here. I complained that it was all a dumb idea, and we should at least consider a cheaper state if we were going to do this.

Then we stepped into the house we were renting and the landline in it was ringing. I answered the phone to find Gloria Estefan on the other end. She asked me how things were going, as if we were friends and I said, “Well, I would rather be back in Florida.”

Then I woke up and later napped for a couple of hours and had a very long, vivid dream. The kind so detailed it makes me wonder if it was another dimension.

I got up one night in a small old one-story house we recently bought. Tom was in bed. Through the darkness, I reached for my phone and found an automated voice message from Mia. I laughed knowing it was because of something I signed up for which had generated it.

Then there were several messages from Andy which I thought was weird since we keep in touch with Messenger. I could barely make out a word he said because I could hear heavy static in some messages and blasting loud music in others. I wasn’t sure who I felt worse for; him for taking the time to leave me all the messages I couldn’t make out or me because I was so frustrated.

I put down the phone and stepped into the kitchen and tried to get Alexa to turn on the lights but she wouldn’t listen. So I stepped into the living room and tried to get the light on in there but she still ignored me, signaling that the Internet was out.

Next, I was aware of music playing and realized it was coming from close by. I thought I saw the flashing lights of a cop car when I observed alternating blue and red lights through the sides of the shade, but when I crept up to a single front window to the right of the front door, all I saw was a car parked in a somewhat wooded area across the street.

Then the wind started howling and I was surprised by the fierceness and suddenness of it and wondered if that was why the net was out. Then I glanced again out the same window and saw that the car was now gone.

The music was still playing and I peered out a set of double windows on the side near the front window I had been looking out. This was on the side opposite the bedrooms. I knew it was coming from the large two-story house just a few feet away on that side. I thought it wasn’t that bad for being a windy night but if it was calm outside, it might be annoying. Suddenly, I saw someone walking from the back of the house around to the side and quickly jumped back so they couldn’t see me.

A split second later, the wind stopped and it was daytime. I saw two young girls in their early 20s giggling and heading toward the car that was parked in the driveway. Their driveway didn’t run between our place but it was still close enough. I wondered why they were dressed in sleeveless sun dresses when it was chilly out.

After they left, I walked to the opposite wall on the other side of the house and looked out the window. There didn’t seem to be much to see at first. The grassy space between us and the other neighbor(s) appeared to be just wide enough for a car to drive through even though their driveway was on the other side of the house. Then I noticed something and my mood soured fast. There was not only a boat on a stand that was in this small section surrounded by a partial wooden fence that I knew would make quite a racket getting in and out, but a motorcycle as well. I thought how it was much closer to the bedroom in that house than where we used to live.

Tom then came walking into the living room, appearing energetic and in the good mood I wished I was in.

After giving it names and keywords and the basic idea of what I want, I’m writing an AI-assisted story, and it’s amazing how helpful it is! I still have to change, add and edit things in general there’s no way it would know to come up with that I want or don’t want to be part of the story.

Today I’ll begin the second chapter of a story idea I’ve had for a while where I visit Christiane in Germany (I’m calling her Chris and me Natasha). Nane, whom I’m calling by her first name of Marion, is both intrigued and unhappy by the fact that I’m visiting Chris. It’s one of my reality-turned-bullshit stories where I figure out a reason to go over there without harming Tom, of course, since I don’t want to jinx-write anything bad happening to him. I also exaggerate my cyber friendship with Chris, which really wasn’t much of a friendship since all she really did was respond to most of what I sent her. We were never actually friends. But we become friends in the story and that’s going to irk Nane/Marion. Eventually, we meet up somewhere and I end up blackmailing her to let me stay with her. We also end up getting along well, even though it’s pretty platonic, and travel to different places throughout Europe.

I do some stories for Kim too. Those I don’t edit. I just feed the AI keywords and let it do its thing. Believe me, she’s not worth putting story-writing effort into. LOL. But I know she really gets a kick out of them. As per one of her suggestions, I married her off to David Hasselhoff.

Tom added a door sweep to the other bedroom so the rat can’t get in there at night when he’s asleep. Instead of climbing up on the closet shelf, she managed to shimmy up the clothes and ended up in a canvas bag I have hanging along with other bags/purses. LOL.

Because she’s so small, he’s also putting a little strip of wood to keep her from going under the oven.

It’s been a nice stormy day. The bitch’s boyfriend with a motorcycle came to stay with her last night. So I guess he’s spending the weekends here now. The storm is doing a good job of keeping me from having to hear them tear in and out, although they did start the engine of one of them for a couple of minutes just for kicks.

Ran out to Publix earlier and picked up some veggies to make my favorite Mediterranean dish with. I already have the chickpeas and shredded cheese. I also got some watermelon and yellow potatoes.

I felt lightheaded for a while, so I don’t know if I got a little dehydrated or what. I took my blood pressure three times, and it was surprisingly good.

They just played gun-it again. What’s the point of having stormy weather to control them if they’re just going to do this shit in the carport? I can just imagine what tomorrow will bring!

I’m so glad that I was on days during the fencing and the street milling, especially the street milling. Trying to sleep yesterday would have been bad enough, but trying to sleep through the week they were working in the streets would have been downright impossible. So sometimes things really do have good timing in life. Except I’m not so sure about the upcoming storms. They typically come in the afternoon and evening, but coincidentally, they’re going to be coming in the morning when I expect to be sleeping. Unless the forecast is wrong, of course, and it often is.

Two park projects that I’ve heard inside the house in two years is pretty damn awesome compared to the old place. I can just imagine all the tree-cutting and millions of other projects requiring all kinds of power tools that have gone on since we’ve been there.

I’ll be seeing the GYN on Tuesday. I’ve decided not to use the Monistat until I see her. If I have a yeast infection, it’s not going to go away. This is the only way I can find out if I’ve got another infection or if it’s just the way I am now. So I’m only using the prescription cream for the irritation. Hopefully, most of that will clear up before I see her.

Tom texted me from his appointment yesterday afternoon which took a while because the place was packed. I told him I suddenly had a feeling come over me saying they weren’t going to treat him that day. Sure enough, they just ended up doing the biopsy. We’re pretty sure it is cancerous, though. The big question is how they’re going to get rid of it. Apparently, this kind of cancer has roots. It’s not a simple precancerous thing on the surface like what I had. My biggest fear is - and always has been - him needing to be in a hospital overnight or driven home. I know he could Uber home, but If he ever had to stay in a hospital for more than a few days, it would be hard for me to visit him. Uber would end up costing a fortune, I would think. I’m sure I could ask a neighbor for a ride, but I would hate to have to do that. I think I would rather that, though, than Uber.

The burning down there is back. It’s gone right now but that might be because I used the cream the GYN gave me for irritation. It comes and goes. I finally decided to message her too. I told her I had a discharge a couple of days ago and started using the Monistat, the discharge went away, but I still have burning on and off, and asked whether or not I could be infected and need Diflucan again or if this is just part of menopause. I have a feeling she’s gonna tell me to get a regular exam. I hope not because it would be twice as painful with the irritation.

Guess who woke up gasping for air last night? I was sleeping on my stomach and my face may have been jammed into the pillow edge and mattress too much depending on the angle of my head. I might have been dreaming about gasping for air, but I definitely woke up and had to suck in a huge breath. So I would be almost as surprised if they didn’t tell me I had sleep apnea as I would have been if they told me my thyroid was fine and my schedule was just a bad habit I’d acquired.

They're finally replacing the fence in back! What luck with the timing too since I'm on days now. We're guessing they'll be done today or tomorrow. It's going to look so much better. I shared a pic of the progress so far with Irma.

Not surprisingly, I never heard back from the office about the motorcycle complaint I submitted. I tell you, in the other place they spited you for complaining and here they just ignore you altogether. I had to sit and listen to their shit three days in a row, including during my meeting with Helen. Looks like her little boyfriend might have moved in with her too. I haven’t heard anything today yet but it’s getting to be a near-daily annoyance. I guess the best I can do is be glad it’s not right next to us. If that driveway was between her house and ours, I would go crazy.

It's been surprisingly quiet for the longest time since I’ve been here as far as commercial planes go. They’re still flying, but not as much. It would be nice if I didn’t hear it as much from them during the summer like back in the old place. It would be even nicer if we could go back to the days when you only heard them once in a while but that’s not gonna happen. Not in this location. I’ll take and appreciate whatever break I can get from them. Every 10 minutes or so was a bit much, even though it wasn’t that loud.

Tom has a doctor’s appointment today with a dermatologist with what we suspect is a squamous spot on his forehead that they’re going to probably want to remove. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as the AK that I had which simply needed to be sprayed with liquid nitrogen. I’m guessing they’ll do something similar to when they removed my ingrown toenail and freeze the area before cutting it out. I read that it’s usually not life-threatening, but it can be aggressive. I’m just glad it’s not melanoma because that’s the most dangerous.

I stupidly knocked the modem and some other thing off the shelf when I was dusting yesterday. So the net was sluggish for a while. He had to work on it for a bit to get it up and running right again.

The additional mattress pad is comfortable but does make me warmer. I’m going to give it more time before I decide if I want to try it alone, or just stick with the mattress pad that was underneath. I should have just gotten the one I got before from Amazon, and not have been lured by the price on Walmart. Walmart is famous for false advertisements.

I’m a little tired today because I woke up a lot last night, and I’m not sure if it was just because or because of the fireworks. They say you can be woken up by noise and not remember it. Tom said there were a lot of fireworks too. At one point, nature sounds stopped and I had to restart it. Hopefully, it will be consistent now that we tweaked the net. I still can’t believe how many fireworks there are in a place with so many old people.

Tom checked and didn’t see any discharge today, so I think I’m doing a good job of fighting the yeast infection on my own. I just won’t be dumb enough to use scented toilet paper again in the future. I still have some irritation, though, so I’m still using the Monistat and the prescription cream. I want to give it a little more time before I consider messaging the doctor. It’s not like I’m suffering or anything.

I’d love to have a smart air mattress, but I think that’s just a dream like most things in life are. That and the upgrades I wanted to do to this place just aren’t going to happen. I could save up for a smart air mattress, but it would take forever. I think I’ll go back to saving for the next-generation Quest headset.

Got to improvise within our budget. I want to eventually get carpet runners for the bedroom and an aerial rug for the living room. As for a mattress, I’ll just sleep on this one as long as I can stand to and then replace it with another cheap one for a couple of hundred bucks. I haven’t had any backaches in a while and it’s not uncomfortable, so I’m sure I can use it a while longer.

Made it to Sweden yesterday, and I have 500 miles left to go. I’ll be doing about 300 of them in Sweden. And then the last 200 in Norway.

This rat who we continue to absolutely adore is one serious little devil. Because she’s so small, she can climb easily. First she mastered how to shimmy up my clothes and run along the tops of the hangers. But yesterday she managed to get all the way up to the top shelf of the closet. LOL.

We also have a new game we play when she’s on my bed. She takes her paws and grabs hold of the cord dangling down from the ear cleaner, which means she wants to climb up to the top shelf of the headboard. I put my hand under her back feet, and she shimmies up like a rope climber. It’s so adorably cute!