Another VZ challenge came out. Part of me wishes they would space them out a little more. Seems that as soon as one ends, another one starts. But I do love the challenges, so reaching Canada will have to wait a bit as I do this 112-mile challenge with rides in SoCal, Mexico, Argentina, and Italy.

Slept well and got my highest sleep score ever of 95 but didn’t get enough deep sleep, so I took a short nap. I think I only slept as soundly as I did because of the cocktail of drugs I took the night before: half a clonazepam, Zyrtec, and even a couple of ibuprofen.

Listening to fireworks for a few hours now. Luckily, they’re not nearly as obnoxious as July 4th. Sipping Chardonnay and doing some editing. Tom crashed at his usual time. Watched the ball go down too, and as always, part of me wished I were there.

Added more songs to my Spotify favorite list and did more name checks by the month on PB using Gemini.

Deleted Eileen. She’s ignored my messages and has pretty much gone Arteaga on me.

The Toni who’s my neighbor definitely doesn’t seem to be around. Just don’t know if she’s staying with someone or ill in the hospital.

So what will 2026 hold for me? More of the same old never-ending health issues? More sleep disturbances? I really hope not! I really hope this is the year I get my energy back so I can be more active more consistently. I don’t want to give up my life. I just want to give up suffering. Some days are really, really hard on me. Very debilitating physically and therefore puts me in a shitty mood emotionally. I really hope this trend can end and that the next long-term problem isn’t so damn debilitating. When it comes to anything that interferes with either your breathing or your sleep, you’re pretty much fucked.

My stomach has been gassy, bloated and nauseous lately, and I think it's the B-12 gummies I've been taking. It isn't the B-12 so much as the fillers in the gummies from what I read. Fake sugar is not kind to my stomach. Meanwhile, Tom gets the kind that dissolves on your tongue for free through Medicare. So I'm gonna take some of those because he gets more than he can take anyway. I was worried at first because the dosage was so much higher, but then I learned that it's water-soluble and the body only uses what it needs, sort of like vitamin C.

Later...

Another wonderful day of feeling absolutely miserable, thanks to sleeping just as miserably. The first part of my sleep was fragmented, and the rest of it was disrupted by allergies/nasal valves. My God, I am so, SO fucking SICK of this shit! It has to end soon. It just has to. Somehow, some way. Either the doctors have to help me or I have to end it. I would still prefer not to give up my life and abandon Tom. The problem is I’m not able to really enjoy and live that life if I’m exhausted out of my fucking mind so much of the time. What good am I to him if I can’t even help myself? The fatigue is totally wearing me down, both physically and emotionally.

Been having stomach issues as well. I’ve got bloating, constipation, diarrhea, and a little bit of nausea, and I’m still not sure what’s causing it.

Even though Ray and the honker's vehicles were here, they didn’t appear to be home last night. Tonight, however, the dark truck is parked in Ray's driveway, and he’s parked in front of his lanai. Really, really hope to hell they don’t do windows while I’m sleeping!

Believe it or not, the honker didn’t ride or turn on the motorcycle once last month. I’m still expecting him to make up for lost time soon enough with the projects and the motorcycle, though. Tom isn’t surprised, saying people tend to ride less and less as they get older. Well, right now, Ray is more of a concern than the honker.

Deciding I judged Vanessa a little too harshly, I told her she could text me whatever was going on with her whenever she wanted because, after all, I’m just a boring, aging retiree with nothing but health problems. She still reads me at times, although I didn’t mention that, of course.

I started the VZ challenge, but since I’m so tired that I don’t know if I can make any progress today.

Anyway, I’m just really frustrated and feeling hopeless where my sleep is concerned. I’ve been saying I’m going to sleep elevated, but I haven’t yet because I just don’t like it. That’s got to change starting tonight. I’ve got to start with the small wedge pillow and see what happens because it’s the only way I’m going to know. If I still have problems, then I’ll jump to the large wedge pillow and test that out next.

Meanwhile, I looked up foods, drinks, and medications that can interfere with deep sleep and cause fragmented sleep. Rather than drive myself crazy pouring through a long list of things to avoid as it gets close to my bedtime, I decided to just keep it simple and make sure I stop eating and drinking everything but water and herbal tea 4 hours before I think I’m going to crash. It will be 6 to 8 hours for caffeine. I think that taking my steroid nasal spray before bed was a dumb idea because it came up on the list of possibilities for causing fragmented sleep. Another thing was benzos. They help you fall asleep but can cause frags.

Really worried about my nose and allergies. I don’t know for sure that they would be willing to do surgery on the valves, and I still can’t believe there’s a medication that could help me since I’ve already tried the gold standard treatment for this kind of shit and it’s done me little to no good. Plus, there's my sensitivity to consider. I worry my only option is going to be what isn't an option—to get out of Florida. First, I don’t have the energy to move. Secondly, the only thing we could afford if we moved to a drier climate would be an apartment. Why would I want to trade allergies waking me up for the people around me waking me up?

So I’m at the point where it’s come down to do or die because I can’t live with this kind of sleep deprivation and fatigue for the rest of Tom’s life. They either help me or I’m gone. At this point, there simply is no happy medium because I’m not willing to accept a life of feeling like shit most of the time. No matter how good your life is—and mine is just fine—you don’t really have a life if you don’t have your health. Anything that interferes with either your breathing or your sleep really makes one’s life hell.

Well, I don’t know what, if any, kind of an afterlife awaits us when we die, but I’ll be ready to find out if my health doesn’t improve in this life because I’ve had enough. To survive eight years of hardcore anxiety just to get hit with this for the last half a decade or so makes me feel totally beyond cursed.