Decided to drop my labeling project on Blogger because there are simply way too many entries to go through and I'm just not up for it and having to decide what's really worth tagging and what's not.

Rutabagas… yuck! I tried them earlier and for someone who likes just about everything, I can certainly say they suck.

I still have energy, but unfortunately, I do think it's because the Levo is building up too much for my comfort. For the first time in weeks, I felt wound up enough to take something for it, although the half a clonazepam I took didn't do much. I hate to skip 10 days before I go to the lab, but I'm going to have to tomorrow so it doesn't keep building up and get worse. The numbers just aren't worth the suffering. It will be interesting to see how much my energy goes down after making a few skips.

I forgot to mention in my last entry that I had a dream I was going to be executed for who knows what. There was a younger couple nearby who were also going to be executed, and I thought how sad it was that they had to die. Then I felt sad for myself and thought, I'm going to be reunited with my mother soon, even if in real life I'm not sure that possibility exists. Not a great dream to have, but I'm not too worried about it.

Even though this is jumping the gun because I still don't know that I'm going to have regular energy again, we've been talking more and more about the possibility of getting the hell out of the US. There's just no getting ahead here when you're retired unless you're rich. Portugal keeps coming up as one of the number one recommended places to go, and the thought is growing on me. The cost of living is low, and it has good health care. We could rent a house comparable in size and price to this one. In fact, it might be even more doable than getting land out west. All you need is to have no record, and you must show that you have a year's worth of minimum wage. All we would need besides that, which we could get from the sale of the house, would be money for plane tickets, to rent a place, and then to purchase household necessities since we’d have to leave everything behind. But this might be cheaper than purchasing land out west, even if it was only 15K or less, than buying a tiny house kit, installing septic, and buying solar panels for electricity, etc. If there were an opportunity to move out west in 2 years as opposed to waiting 5 years to move to Portugal, then we would definitely choose the first option. 

Research also shows that there's a lot less hate over there than here when it comes to GLBT+, women, and Jews, which is a definite pro. Electric cars are also more plentiful, and it's easier to travel there than here. I guess they have a lot more options for traveling around Europe if we wanted to go on vacation and add more countries to our list of travels. They seem to have way more trains.

However, there are a few negatives. Due to the Canary Current, if you're on the coast, the ocean water is pretty chilly. Worst is the dog and boom car stereo situation, especially the dogs. I thought they weren’t pets here! Well, from what I read, they're seldom allowed indoors and aren't considered household pets any more than they are here. Sure, there are some exceptions just like here, but I was surprised to learn that where barking is more commonplace in houses here, you would hear more in apartments there because they let them keep them on their balconies. Stray dogs are an issue there, and there's a lot of barking at night. Even though many of the houses there are made of stone, they otherwise have little to no sound insulation, which means you would easily hear barking coming from neighboring properties. I totally, totally would not want to go back to that chaos! But when I think of the money we could save in the end, it may be worth it. We would just have to see if the landlord would let us do some soundproofing, if only in the windows.

We also talked about US territories, which don't even require a visa to get into, but the problem is that health care is spotty, depending on where you go. Quality and availability can vary. I don't know that we'll ever really move there or even anywhere else in this country, but the idea is very appealing with the exception of all the barking we'd be in for. I guess no place is perfect.