Subtropical Lady

June 2020 (3)

6/19/2020 Saturday 12:13 a.m.

My lymph nodes have me worried again. The one in my groin got so sore when I was visiting Dixie that I had to take a couple of Ibuprofen as soon as I got home. I can still feel a bulge in my neck as well. After I get my fillings done on the 30th and Tom sees that that doesn't fix things like he suspects it will, then I'll make a decision as to whether or not I think I should get into Doc A sooner.

It could still be a nodule in my neck and my groin could be a pulled muscle, ligament or tendon but then what about the soreness I sometimes get in the side of my boob where another lymph node is located? You have hundreds of lymph nodes all over the place, but I guess those are the main spots along with under the jaw. Those have yet to give me any shit.

Swollen lymph nodes usually mean you have an infection or some kind of inflammation but I recently had a round of antibiotics so that leaves one other possibility and I really hope to hell that isn't it! Lymphoma is the last thing I want to have to deal with! Really, I'm tired of one health issue after another! I would definitely like to know what the hell it is but that doesn't mean I want to treat it if it requires treatment. If there is a health curse on me, I've got to stop giving in to it. I can't keep running around treating this and treating that. So far, I'm not in the kind of excruciating pain I was in when my tooth got infected, and of course I don't want to spend so much time and money constantly having to fix myself, so I’ll decide what to do in a couple of weeks.

They finally made masks mandatory in Cali as they should have months ago everywhere until a vaccine is available. The overall US death count is going down, though, since those most susceptible are likely dead by now. Mandatory or not, Tom and I are smart enough not to go anywhere unnecessarily and to wear masks when we do. Just ordered an adorable reusable mask with a photo of a guinea pig sitting next to some yellow pansies.

Dixie called late in the evening and said she was sitting out front watering and asked if I wanted to come down and chat with her. Diane was already in bed. So I went down and while she flooded the yard and made it hard to hear her soft voice over the water running and other noise, she told me she was woken by her motion sensor light a few weeks ago. Then she said she heard the sound of water dripping or something like that. Then, supposedly without seeing anyone, she became certain that someone decided to pee in her carport, so she called the police. The pigs said her hose was dripping and they thought that was it, but she says it was on the wrong side of the house.

Like someone is going to jump over the fence of a fancy gated community in the middle of the night just to pick one out of 500 carports to piss in? Somehow, I doubt that! I think she's just losing it or has become incredibly paranoid in her old age. She doesn't always remember things, switches subjects rapidly, and often forgets what the hell she's talking about or was about to say, so I kind of doubt her story, LOL. It was still nice to see her.

Before she called, I could hear the annoying sound of a small plane or helicopter circling round and round. It was even louder when I went down to her place since we were outdoors, and we could see a helicopter circling around. We could also hear what I'm guessing were the cops talking through a loudspeaker, so I guess they were trying to catch someone. I can't wait to get away from all these planes and helicopters! The commercials still haven't been as bad and neither has traffic. But still, next year can't come fast enough! Even Dixie agrees it’s noisy. I just hope the virus doesn't hold us back or anything with my health! I don't have any bad vibes right now, but something's got to be setting my lymph nodes off if that's what it is.

Dixie said she's had soreness in her groin node before but again, I can’t always count on what she tells me.

She tells me she worries about having to go out with the virus still around and as I told her, I don't understand why she's going out for groceries. Why go out unnecessarily when she can get a $15 monthly subscription for unlimited free delivery as long as she gets at least $30 of stuff? So I gave her the link to the Walmart grocery store. We spend $400-$500 a month and that’s lower than the national norm.

Because she's over 65 and so many restaurants are going out of business, she gets free meals delivered daily as well. But to go out grocery shopping is too risky.

Since Pinterest obviously doesn't want its users to be able to download their boards for reasons I'll never understand, I've been dragging pins into files on my computer one by one, a little at a time. Then I weed out the blurry ones. Quality images should look good even on a big screen.

Norma finally answered my message asking how often she gets woken up by thunder and she said she was used to it and that it rarely wakes her up. Why can't I get used to sleeping through things???

And why can't I have fun dreams more often? The kinds that inspire story ideas. It's usually the same old depressing themes. Had a dream I couldn't help but send an email or two to the corrupt pig-turned-family businessman. I don't know what I said but I was suddenly worried that it may cause repercussions for me.

It seems there was some kind of legal dream last night as well (or yesterday in my case). I don't know why I have these types of dreams so often when I haven't done anything remotely illegal and I don't intend to. My worst “crime” is not always agreeing with the majority on certain issues. Other than eventually sharing some journal excerpts with the termites (maybe), I don't want to make trouble for anyone simply for fun or because they may not want anything to do with me.

But the fact that I've been a law-abiding citizen doesn't explain why I have so many dreams revolving around legal issues and being stuck in strange “jails.” But then I guess not everything we dream about has to do with our real lives since I've had a few dreams where I was with my former PO, yet I never had an ounce of attraction for him in any way. So I don't know. Maybe this shit is going on in other dimensions.

The weather has been hot and dry. I guess the pool is open now, yet we have no desire to go swimming. Who knows if we'll ever swim in this state again?

Been having an anxious week. I was borderline on the 14th and 15th. I cut my pill on the 16th and was fine. Had mild anxiety the next day, cut my pill the next day and was borderline. Today I cut my waiting time in half and feel a little on edge now. Depending on how I feel tomorrow, I may skip Sunday’s dose altogether. If I'm right about it having to do with the medication building up in my system - and I've always thought that - then I really need to get more of it out of my system once and for all so I can feel better faster. Yeah, I knew it wasn't gone forever and it never will be any more than my on-and-off TMJ pain will one day vanish forever right along with my extra weight or other things I've been dealing with for years.

6/21/2020 Sunday 1:39 a.m.

I've always felt that there's a difference between bad luck and curses just like there's a difference between good luck and blessings. I've always wondered…if you happen to keep getting particularly unlucky in a certain area for so long, could it mean something up there could be cursing us with it? Same with if we happen to get lucky in a good way more often than normal. Does that mean we're blessed with that particular thing? I don't know, but I sure as hell have wondered if my sleep is cursed. I've had problems with it all my life. So much so that it definitely seems to go beyond simple “bad luck.”

Yeah, I'm having another exhausting day. I fell asleep in the late morning only to be woken up by my damn phone ringing which I later found to be a voice message from Dixie asking questions about Walmart’s grocery delivery service.

My first thought was that it was my own damn fault for not leaving the phone on the bathroom counter before bed. I always turn on the Do Not Disturb because I throw the phone behind me on my headboard shelf. But the ringing woke me up over the sound machines easily because it was right by my head.

So I grabbed the phone and turned the volume all the way down and then after what took me forever, I fell back asleep. Then a couple of hours later she woke me up again! By then I wanted to strangle her, even if she couldn't have known and it wasn't her fault, and then smash the phone against the wall.

It turns out that when Samsung did a huge update, it messed up those settings. I'm surprised Skype didn't wake me up too, which makes a loud whistle of sorts whenever a message is left. Maybe the update only caused the ringing of calls not to be disabled. Nonetheless, this is why I usually fight updates; because they always break something. So I enabled all notifications once again and the phone will no longer be allowed in the bedroom. You would think these things would be a lot simpler by now!

It used to be that whenever my sleep would be disturbed or shorted, I’d perk up 3-6 hours later. Not anymore. The only thing that's going to fix this and refresh my energy is sleeping without interruptions until my body is ready to wake up on its own. That's the problem with circadian rhythm disorder, too. We rarely fall asleep earlier even if we're tired. Instead were usually up a little longer each day and we make up for lost sleep by sleeping later the next day. I can't even nap most of the time no matter how tired I am. It's almost like something wants me to spend so much time tired. So if that isn't stepping beyond shit luck to downright cursed, I don't know what it is. I have to edit this in spurts that’s how utterly exhausted I am. It’s like it’s become so debilitating that you would think I was sick and not just tired.

Then something hit me. If I'm going to have to spend so much time exhausted anyway, why not do it in the daytime when it's more convenient to do whatever, including going to appointments? So I decided that once my schedule gets back on days, it's into bed by 9 or 10 to read for an hour or two and then I stay there until 7. At 7, I must get up no matter how tired I am and remind myself that I likely would have been tired anyway. My sleep isn't always disturbed by other people, though. Sometimes I just sleep shitty. I keep waking up for no reason, I'll have a nightmare, etc. There's always something. So even though the days aren't as peaceful and I won’t get much alone time, if I'm going to have to be tired anyway, why not at least do it during the daytime? I know the sleep experts recommend against CRD people doing this since it can lead to heart problems and other health issues, and also say that you can’t train your body to need less sleep, but it won't kill me to give it a try. We'll see how much more sleep-deprived I end up. If I'm short on sleep 5 days a week instead of 2 or 3, then maybe it's not such a good idea. I'm going to wait until after my dentist appointment. It's going to take me until then to flip my schedule anyway.

Since Florida is likely to be the state we move to, I did some research and found they have an average of 90 thunderstorms a year, typically in the afternoons. So if I were asleep during half the storms, that means 40-50 times a year they’d wake me up. I could lower the number if I forced myself to be up during the daytime when the storms were more likely.

Traffic used to wake me up here about 3 times a week but by tweaking the sound machines, I was able to bring it down to about once a week, along with the virus, of course.

Another thing that pisses me off is that most people could be woken up by their phone and fall back asleep at least relatively quickly and not be so damn exhausted the next day. I don't know why lack of sleep is so hard on me, but it is. It seems to get worse the older I get. The only thing it doesn't do is trigger lung tightness and asthma attacks at times like it would when I was a smoker. Makes me hungry, though. Like the days before periods used to be where I could eat all day just to stay hungry.

I think some of those “gunshots” I've been hearing are actually firecrackers. Of course we have to start with the fireworks weeks in advance of the fourth just like we had to act like Father’s Day was just days away a whole month or more before it actually arrived. *Rolls eyes*

They're opening the pool on the 20th but limiting how many people can be in it at once, and of course social distancing is still mandatory. I don't know if I want to go to the pool in that case. If I've got to pay attention to how many people are in the pool with me and how close we get, that may take the fun out of it.

I noticed Bob and Virginia's garage light on earlier and Tom said he saw a different vehicle there. One of these days soon enough I'll get over there and find out what's going on. I just hope to hell they don't move before we do!

Got mild soreness in my groin today. Tom thinks my lymph nodes are swollen simply due to stress, but I don't think so. Why would they wait until 2017 to start reacting to stress? That's about when I first noticed the one in my neck.

Besides investigating Florida's climate in more detail, I learned that 1 in 29 people in Citrus Heights has a chance of becoming a victim of a violent or property crime. Therefore, this city is deemed not very safe. This didn't surprise me at all. What did surprise me is that 1 in 30 has a chance in Stuart. I thought it’d be more like one in hundreds if not thousands.

Venice, however, has a much lower chance and is the 12th safest city in Florida.

Little Miss Curious here found that Alyssa's husband is a personal trainer who owns his own gym. Damn! Together they must bring home at least a quarter mil but probably closer to half a mil a year. Of course, I couldn't resist dropping a comment on his Facebook page. There's nothing there other than his profile pic, and I'm surprised he allows anybody to comment. Slipped him a quick message as well. It's gone ignored, not surprisingly, assuming it's even been noticed.

6/22/2020 Monday midnight

Still no luck with getting my loyal New York follower to step forward and introduce themselves. I even said that if I had any followers that I hadn't heard from in a while since I know not everybody is good with leaving comments, do step forth! But nothing. Nothing at all.

The strange thing is that they're just as interested in the comments I get as they are in my entries. They checked yesterday since they got up which seems to be around 6 a.m. my time and made their last check at 9 p.m. my time.

I'm still clueless as to who they are but it's got to be someone connected to Valleyhead if not a distant relative. Definitely can't see any relatives being interested. If it was an ex or an old neighbor, I would think they would say something. Marie is my best guess but even she seems a bit iffy. Why would she remain so quiet, even in the days when we were connected? I just can't believe anybody is that shy or that lazy that they can't leave a quick note. Marie was never exactly shy either. Not to the point where she couldn't leave comments. So the fact that they refuse to speak up and are determined to remain silent makes me think of someone from my past. But who the hell would be that interested in both my life and what people have to say about it??? I still don't know what to think but if I absolutely have to guess, I would go with Marie. The only family I can think of that I know is in New York are cousins Sharyn and Deb. Sharyn once viewed a blog on Blogger that I used to have, and she even commented. I can't believe either one of them would be interested in my life, though, especially this often.

This is someone who's got an account. I don't always share links on Facebook either so they're not linking in but making a direct jump.

Sometimes I wonder if they have ill intentions and are hoping to get me with something I say and that's why they're so quiet, but they've been following me for years and haven't done anything to me, so I'm still betting on Marie unless they ever stepped forward. As quiet as they are, they don't seem to care if they show up on my tracker. Whenever I do track, though, I usually use the invisible one, so unless they're smart enough to think to check the source code, they shouldn't know it's there.

Anyway, no motorcycles woke me up, but I still woke up a million times. It was just for a few seconds unlike the day before, and it will be a great help when I one day have a bed that isn't uneven and lumpy. It's just that we don't want to get anything until we're sure we're going to stay in Florida. If we’re not and we end up heading for land in someplace like Texas, then we'll get the final touches like the bed and other furniture.

I'm not a hundred percent full of energy but I'm better than I was yesterday. Melons are definitely the best for energy. They say it's bananas and blueberries but nope. It's melons. I hope I can always get them year-round wherever we are.

I don't have the energy to go out riding or walking with the skunks, but I hit the Bowflex for a while and maybe I'll jump on the skier while I watch a movie.

Lost another pound but yesterday I didn't even have a thousand calories. I was hungry but too tired to eat. Still, my body is continuing to “act” like it's losing. There's that zigzag effect I always have, and it's always been a very slow process, too. Doubt I'll lose anymore, though. I'm just glad I'm not going to keep gaining uncontrollably as I feared I would for a while. So I'm down from 157 to 153. That's nothing for a young person with a normal metabolism and thyroid but it’s something for me. If I do lose another pound, I’ll zigzag between 153-154 for a few days or so. Then I'll drop to 152 and bounce between that and 153 before 152 sticks. This would take about 10 days. Can't see it happening though because I'm still going over a thousand calories most days.

Actually, it’s only been a week since I first hit 154, according to my calendar. Interesting.

I was curious to see what came up if I Googled my two childhood homes. I lived in the first one (Berkeley Dr.) until I was 13 or 14. It was built right after I was born. Couldn’t find interior pics for this house.

The second one (Birchwood Ave.), which they sold in the late 80s to move to Florida, was bigger and much older. It was built in 1919 and even though I like newer places better, I liked this house better. It had a very small yard that I would sometimes mow.

It’s amazing how much it’s changed since we lived there and how much remodeling and upgrading they’ve done. I can still remember what all the rooms were used for and who used them.

I also looked up nana and pa’s house which was next door to the first house. It’s also been mega-remodeled, and they took out a couple of sections of the wall. They’re wrong, though. It’s not a 3-bedroom. It’s a 2-bedroom.

I could superimpose the modern image with a mental image of how it was set up in the mid-60s to mid-80s when they died. Their console TV was where an upright piano sat.

They turned part of the cellar into a girly bedroom. In nana’s room was a bunk bed and I’d say it was a boys’ room based on the colors and decorations. Imagine if they knew an old lady died in that room. Her bed was in a different spot against the wall but that’s where dad found her dead after a few days of being unable to get ahold of her. Pretty sure pa was gone too, before the paramedics arrived, and look at the house number (44).

So the second house sold only twice in 31 years and I could see the 1989 sale. So yeah, with $163K, I can see where my parents could afford to get a place on Nettles Island, and that didn’t include her inheritance.

6/23/2020 Tuesday 4:22 a.m.

Why is it that when a woman is raped and has her trust of guys in general shot, she's never labeled a horrible sexist? But if a white person gets screwed by a black person(s) and has their trust in blacks as a whole dampened and knows it's going to take time to accept them again, they're automatically deemed this awful racist? This is just something I've noticed in general.

Since I like to keep track of things, I’m writing the word “tired” on my calendar every day that I don’t have enough energy for things like working out. Gives me a better idea of just how often it is.

The fact that I’ve had 5 days ranging from borderline to anxious this month alone is both awful and discouraging. Even right now I’m feeling a little iffy. Not as good emotionally as I could be.

Also, the tea tree nail polish was the bust I suspected it would be. I still have some discoloration and even more lifting. So it's got to be either fungus, nail psoriasis, or both. I'll hit it with Lamisil for a couple of weeks and hope for the best even though I suspect that won't work either. At that point, it's time to give up. As I've always said, there’s a time to try things, and then there's a time to accept that some things are simply meant to be the way they are. I can cover it with nail polish and I'm not in pain or anything. So it won't kill me to have ugly nails hiding under polish.

Vicky called yesterday to let me know that the dentist thinks she can hit all three fillings at once and has made time for it, so unless I have questions that cause her to run overtime, they should all be done on the 30th. At first I was worried she was calling to cancel.

I noticed that Christiane added the name Lisette in front of her name. So Christiane is her middle name?

Aly's kind of misleading me, however unintentional it may be, as to who she was referring to in the tweets where she spoke of making herself harder to find and that she often thinks of ghosting someone who brings little joy, comfort and understanding to her life. When I confronted her about it after giving her time to tell me it was or wasn't me or Kim (she at least said she wouldn't dump me without talking to me first), she said it was someone she knew in person. Then she told me about the problems she's had with Cam's SIL Summayah and I said something about now understanding “those” tweets. But she never said she wasn't talking about Summayah.

Yesterday I asked about her and whether or not she was trying to find her online. She said she wasn't computer savvy and she had her email address although never used it.

Okaaay, I can't force the truth out of anyone just like I could never get Tammy to own up to her part in her and Bill siccing the pigs on me and therefore the white/Jew-hating freeloaders. But come on! I know she was talking about me. I wonder, though, does she still think of ghosting me? Or at least dumping me with an explanation?

6/24/2020 Wednesday 2:12 a.m.

The sleep curser used two pops and my neck to wake me up. Besides these two mysterious popping sounds that seemed to come from the stereo speaker that definitely shouldn’t have, I got into a position that compressed the bulge in my neck and the discomfort woke me for a few seconds or so. I was able to go back to sleep all 3 times perhaps because it wasn’t some asshole with an insanely loud vehicle waking me up which pisses me off. Hard to return to sleep when you’re pissed.

It’s still almost scary just how cursed my sleep seems to be. I’m surprised I’m not tired. I’m not bursting with energy but maybe Tom has a point about the Benadryl. I considered taking it and then decided not to. Better to just lay there bored until I finally fell asleep. Drinking a little wine doesn’t leave me feeling that way when I get up, though I didn’t have any. Will pick some up this morning.

Declared my NaNo project even though it's actually a continuation of an old project (Roomies). Looks like writing groups stick around unlike the old cabins. So I guess Tom, Aly, Kim and I just pick up from where we left off.

My hair is still thick enough that I need to use two brushes just to get through it. First I use the detangling brush, then I use the paddle brush that will actually go all the way through to my scalp.

It feels like I haven't been out in forfuckingever that even I'm getting cabin fever and I'm generally a homebody. We still don't want to do anything risky. We're not going to start grocery shopping in person or anything like that, but we are going to run out to the Rite Aid outside the park when they open at 8. Unfortunately, the next time we're out for more than just a few minutes will be when I'm in the dentist’s chair.

Another pig dream. Not as in “guinea” pig but the kind that walks on two legs, wears a uniform, and often abuses their power. Only this one wasn't in uniform. It was a detective. They took my picture after suspecting I committed some crime again some woman (I think), but I don't know what it was I supposedly did to her. The detective later showed up again wanting to take another picture and I was trying to decide whether or not to play dumb and act like I didn't remember him or get a little confrontational and tell him to back off since he didn't have a case

I LOL to myself when I thought of sending the journal excerpts to the termites in a rather creative fashion. I thought I would send the messages as if I hit their names by accident. Hey, this happens to some of us at times with the way it's set up. I once flirted with the damn termite when I was supposed to be doing it with Nane.

So, I’m still going to wait till we’ve been gone a year, but then I thought I would write like someone else requested the excerpts and asked if they were bothering me or not and I would say nope, they haven't bothered me at all because they're dead. One got in a fatal accident, one had a heart attack, one killed herself, and the other was pushed to the ground in a fight, hitting her head and ending up dead. So no, they're dead as a doorknob, and since they no longer exist, they're no problem at all. But here are the excerpts you asked for on the details of their shit.

LMAO!

Ouch! I hate it when the pigs’ hay stabs my fingers when I’m pulling some out of the bag. Glad Rockefeller at least thinks it's funny enough to popcorn over.

I threw my bracelets in a silver pouch I had and then put some necklaces in the glitter pouch Aly sent me. I can put all the bracelets together but not all the necklaces. They would get tangled. Some will go in individual sandwich bags. I'm wearing one of my faves right now. Shiny crystals.

Heard something climbing on the glass table on the patio. Probably a cat or a skunk.

6/25/2020 Thursday 6:28 a.m.

Ended up napping for about a half-hour. Apparently, I can do that if I'm suddenly a little tired but not if I'm absolutely batshit exhausted.

Again I felt some discomfort when I got in a position that sort of compressed the left side of my neck. I could feel it spread toward the side, close to my shoulder. I think I'm likely going to have to get into Doc A as I don't think I want to spend another 116 days wondering what the fuck this is.

Then I went for a nice peaceful walk at the crack of dawn just like I did yesterday morning. My hips are a little stiff and sore for some reason.

At one house, there were 2 motorcycles, 2 cars and one pickup in the driveway. Definitely not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of retirement communities.

Would my parents even believe this place if they were still alive? Yesterday was kind of funny because I pulled an old picture of her parents out from the hutch and said to Tom, what should I do with Pa and the Wicked Witch of the East? LOL, he thought I should keep them, so they're sitting in the bottom of my jewelry box.

Maybe I should have accepted my mother's ashes as well as my dad's. Got to admit it might be kind of fun to make her go places that I decided on instead of the other way around, make her be places she wouldn’t want to be, and lock her in the closet or something. I will admit, though, that she never locked me in any closet. Just pawned me off on others every chance she got.

With my Bing points, I'm getting some incense. The fragrances will be: Sandalwood, Pine, Musk, Patchouli, Jasmine, Rose, Cedarwood, Amber, Vanilla, Green Tea, Lavender and Cinnamon.

Made one last-ditch effort to get my New Yorker to step forth asking about Mac desktops, which I know they have. Again, I got nothing. Strange. Really strange. Who ARE you???

6/26/2020 Friday 5:57 a.m.

Now my lymph node at the side of my neck is aching and although it's not visible, I can feel faint swelling when I touch the area. I read that multiple swollen lymph nodes could be a sign of cancer but I'm virtually positive I don't have anything dangerous. I just don't feel like I do. It's not what my gut instinct is saying. Plus, I don't have other symptoms like weight loss. We’ve had rats die of cancer that quickly wasted away. My weight isn't even slowly zigzagging downward anymore but climbing like two-tenths of a pound a day as if resetting itself. I don't look even remotely close to weighing in the 150s so there is no dire need to lose weight anyway.

I don't know what's setting off my lymph nodes, but I have two in the neck, one at the side of my boob, and one in my groin that are a bit sore and swollen. Maybe some faint soreness in the one under my jaw as well. All are on my left side. I don't know if I have some infection I don't know about or if my body thinks there's an infection or some kind of inflammation going on that the penicillin didn't get rid of. I don't have any tooth pain at the moment, and that was on the other side anyway, so I'm stumped.

My short-term memory continues to annoy me at times since it's definitely not what it used to be. But everything I read suggests that what I've experienced is common with my age and not a sign of dementia. So when you get in your 50s, be prepared to walk into a room more often and forget why.

Aly’s spoke of Cam’s SIL a few times. She said her name was Summayah and that she was a doctor in obstetrics. Well, out of curiosity, I Googled various combinations of the first name along with “OB-GYN” and the state, figuring that would tell me Cam's last name. However, nothing came up.

Yes, this is as strange as the fact that I've never seen a picture of Aly with any of her boyfriends. However, she definitely doesn't seem to be making these people up. I don't think anyone could play a pretend game like that consisting of multiple people so consistently, so detailed, so long. We'll see if Cam happens to be unavailable if we drive through Nebraska. Yes, it would be very hard on me to lose sleep for a week but at least it would be under different circumstances than when rude assholes wake me up here and I'll at least know what's going on and to expect it. No guarantees yet how we're going out of here, though.

Back to Aly. She did say she was tired of relationships that only last a few months and then voila! In comes Cam who’s been around for over a year. The longest relationship she had prior to him changed as well. I still say Cam’s real. Don’t know what to make of Summayah, though.

It seemed like Tom and I were on vacation somewhere in my dreams last night. We were going down a busy road with multiple lanes when he realized we were lost. He decided to stop, get out of the car, and fish some directions out of his pocket.

I looked in the rearview window and saw a guy walking toward us and hoped he wouldn’t try to rob Tom but was ready to jump out if he did pull anything.

But then the car began to slowly lurch forward, and I quickly reached a foot over and onto the brake pedal to stop it before Tom would have to run too far to catch up.

6/28/2020 Sunday 7:05 a.m.

Happy 63rd birthday to my dear hubby! I think this is the first birthday since the recession that he hasn't had to work. In the slow cooker, I'm making him quite a birthday feast. He doesn't like many foods and the few that he does are pretty simple so I'm making homemade beanie weenies for him only this recipe calls for adding chopped onions, bacon, and some brown sugar. I know he'll love it

We were just agreeing the other day that it wouldn't be a good time to be in Florida right now since they've been having huge spikes in cases. Worldwide there are over 10 million cases and over half a million deaths. :(

Looks like we now have another reason to be glad we're not in Florida and that's the Saharan dust cloud. I had no idea a cloud of dust could sweep across the Atlantic like that! I remember dust storms when living in Arizona, but this seems like nothing in comparison.

The incense I got isn't great. It's too smokey and some of them don't smell like what they're supposed to be. They also substituted cinnamon for lotus, although that one isn't bad.

Had a dream I was kidnapped with maybe two other women. Nothing bad seemed to happen to us other than that we were being confined in an upstairs bedroom. At one point, a female relative of the guy that owned the house came to visit. I wasn't sure if she knew we'd been kidnapped but I wrote a note that I was going to slip to her only I wrote it as one of the other victims for some reason. I was going to give it to her when she stopped by the room again on her way out. But then I noticed the rest of the place went quiet. I peeked out the door and saw darkness, so I knew the woman left and the guy and his possible girlfriend or wife had fallen asleep. I contemplated running downstairs and seeing if I could get out the front door but didn't think I had any place to run to even though I knew the house was on a busy street with several houses on it. Don't know why I didn't go after the guy or smash through a window, but I guess we don't act the same in dreams as we would in real life.

6/29/2020 Monday 7:28 a.m.

It's a chilly 73 degrees in the house right now. I don't like it under 75.

My lymph nodes have shrunk but they're still noticeable. At least the one in my neck is. The soreness in the one in my groin has gone way down. I still don't know whether or not I'm going to go to my doctor before October. I'm starting to think I won't because bumping it up isn't going to change things. I don't think it's ever going to get to the point where it's not noticeable at all and I highly doubt I'm in any danger. I think this is just one more annoying and uncomfortable thing I'm going to have to live with on and off for the rest of my life just like my ear.

I'm starting to think that the reason I lost weight and then started putting it back has to do less with age and genetics than I thought and more with my medication. I don't think I would have ever gone under the 150s, but I think I started going down because it was building up in my system and now it's resetting because of the days I cut the dose. It takes a while to build back up.

I swore I would never be one of those who struggle hopelessly with her middle-aged weight for the rest of her life, and I won’t. I totally accept it as it is and will only continue to work at not gaining anymore. However, I sure would love to be as titless as the actress in the movie I just watched!

I've read 36 books so far this year.

I looked up libel and slander statutes based on state and found it isn't just one year in the entire country. In most states it is, but some give you as long as three years to file. Even though the termites couldn't make a case out of the journal excerpts since I don't provide any sensitive info or anything they can prove detrimental to their lives in any way (plus, that's already been tried before unsuccessfully when they supposedly went to the pigs in 2009 complaining about what I had to say about them then), I'm still going to take that into consideration if I decide to give them the blog link instead of directly sending them the excerpts. In Florida, it's two years. It's just that Messenger won't hold italics. I still have plenty of time to decide what I'm going to do, though.

After hearing some sawing yesterday, my first thought was, I've had enough! I'm not going to listen to this every time it's under 85 degrees. I'm going over there once and for all.

But then Tom, who assured me he wasn't defending him and that I could do what I want, reminded me that people not only check the utilities for the last year of a particular place they're considering buying but often talk to prospective neighbors as well. Well, if they talked to Dahl and he mentioned me complaining about his racket, that may chase off potential buyers that like me, want to live in an adult community and not a fucking woodshop. So, because we have less than a year to go, I'll just listen to his fucking sawing, then listen to it for a few more months in the tester place before we pick a state and finally get back to country living. We’ll still hear shit there too and I'm sure we’ll happen to get the worst of neighbors, but at least they'll be hundreds of feet away.

So I visited next door briefly yesterday morning and to be honest, I don't even know if Bob knew who I was. It's like he's a whole different person from the Bob I've known him to be these last seven years, and while I certainly hope for the best, it's hard to believe much of the old Bob is ever coming back. I just can't picture him riding his bike again or even going for walks.

I knocked on the door and Virginia said she didn't have anything and that I could come in. I asked if it was safe to remove my mask and she said it was fine. Meanwhile, Bob was standing with a cane in the dining area. He looked at me but didn't say anything. Instead, he shuffled off down the hall. It's like the lights were on but I'm not sure if anyone was home. I could see right away that he lost a lot of hair from the radiation, which Virginia says he's completed. Maybe he shied away out of embarrassment, I don't know.

Virginia says she's worn out, understandably, and she was a lot like Dixie in that she was very chatty and sometimes struggled to come up with words and names. She mentioned their grandkids visiting and asked if Tom was working and what our “plans” were. Figured she suspected we were on our way out soon enough and I did tell her that yes, we were looking at leaving next spring. She didn't seem all that surprised. The Twenties probably mentioned it to people around here and it got back to them. That's okay, though. I don't care who knows we're moving.

I just wish I could jump up to that time and get the show on the road already! I also wish I could magically know where the best place for us to go would be. We may hire a realtor to help us. The most important thing is getting as far away from the street as we can, especially busy ones, and not having other people's driveways too close to us. It would kind of defeat the purpose to get at the end of a quiet little cul-de-sac just to find that the neighbor, whose driveway is just 10-20 feet away, has a motorcycle.

I think we're definitely looking at going rural no matter what state we end up in permanently. I'm sick of listening to all these projects and I can't believe it would be different in another park in another state. I think this is just what adult communities have become...full of projects, loud power tools, and motorcycles. Why bother then? Really don't see the point of these communities if we're not going to get much peace in them. I've heard circular saws dozens of times just in this place. Yet out of all the millions of other places I've lived in, I can't think of one time I heard that. I heard some hammering but that was it.

Back to Bob and Virginia. I'm not sure what to think but I don't think this is going to end well. I didn't want to come off as nosy and get too direct with the questions. But going by what she volunteered, it's hard to believe the outcome is going to be positive even though she said something to the effect of how things should be taking a turn for the better. That may be what she hopes for and what she wants to believe but I don't know if that will be the case. I sure hope so! At the risk of sounding horribly selfish, I don't want to have to deal with new neighbors before we leave even if it wouldn't be for long. I know they would be outdoors all the time with loud vehicles, loud projects, and probably some barking mutts and annoying company as well.

Here's the part of my discussion with Virginia that really bothered me. If she weren't so old at 87 and probably not all there at times, I would be really pissed. She said, “I haven't been exactly honest with you. I'm going to be getting testing for that COVID thing.”

I asked if she thought she had the virus and she said she has no fever, but she's been coughing more. She didn't sound congested to me and never coughed while I visited, but I realize that with all the people coming and going as they have been, it may have been a dumb idea to go over there. Today I woke up with fatigue and a hint of dizziness which could be due to my good ear. The thing is that if she's got it, he's going to get it and I would think it would kill him. I sure hope not!

Anyway, tomorrow is dentist day and then NaNoWriMo begins the next day!

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