Subtropical Lady

February 2021 (2)

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2021

So I shared the link to my new LJ account on PB, hoping my New Yorker would pick it up right away and they did. Then I deleted it since I would prefer it if Aly didn’t see it. It will be interesting to see if NY visits regularly. If not, I'll be more convinced they're no one I know.

Speaking of her, I’m getting a little worried because I didn’t hear from her all day yesterday and I haven’t heard anything yet today. She probably just had a bad day, and she does do this every now and then so I would be willing to bet I’ll hear from her later on this afternoon. I would think that if something was really wrong, Cam would let me know if she was unable to and that if she didn’t want anything to do with me for whatever reason, she would tell me even though she did ghost Molly. Or so she says anyway. She hasn’t mentioned her or Kim lately.

Went out walking on this pleasant cloudy day and it’s nice to see all the apple and cherry trees in bloom already. Now I’m just waiting for the anxiety to hit. Yeah, it got me yesterday for a few hours. So out of the last 13 days, I’ve only had one day off. Decided to stop the statins and see how I do. Really don’t want it to be a brand issue but we’ll see.

Yesterday a guy that works for the park said they were replacing our water meter with something that will allow them to read it at the front of the house. Oh, so they wait till he spends all kinds of time and money trying to keep them from slamming the trap door and we’re down to a few months before the move to finally do this? Another classic example of how things tend to have such shitty timing in our lives!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2021

So I did hear back from Andy but first things first…I keep ending up liking and wanting to keep the diamond paintings I plan to send Aly for her birthday, LOL. So now I have two owl paintings that were going to be hers. I’m getting a two-pack of unicorns for her instead that I’m at least reasonably sure I wouldn’t want to keep for myself.

We’re going to be getting some frames for the big one I’m still doing. I should be finished with it in a few days or so. He saw a tutorial on framing diamond paintings where you get colored poster board to slip behind it in a frame that’s bigger than the painting and you have that color for a border. That way you don’t have to worry about a precise fit.

Tom’s been slaving away at the floor in the small bathroom. The foam tiles are coming up easily and the vinyl tiles are coming up easily, but the adhesive isn’t. There’s a horrible sticky film all over the floor that he’s slowly trying to scrape and mop up. It’s probably going to take multiple moppings. Now he’s trying the carpet cleaner on it.

I finally ran out of patience with long hair and cut it off myself. It’s barely to my shoulders but looks okay and is MUCH easier to manage. It poofs out a bit but I don’t want to layer it myself. I keep it in a ponytail most of the time anyway, and a salon can straighten it out for me in a couple of months or so. I just didn’t want to deal with the length for another couple of months.

Good to see the critical cases slipping under 100K for the first time in a while. We should be a month or two away from vaccinations.

Aly and Cam did The Return to Sender spell yesterday and I’m hoping it helps them the way it’s helped us.

I remained calm yesterday which is something I have mixed emotions about. Of course I don’t want to feel anxious under any circumstances for any reason, but I also don’t want it to be a brand issue either. It’s too soon to say for sure either way, though.

So I awoke to a few funny memes and a few messages from Andy which sort of surprised me. I mean it did, but it didn’t. He swears it wasn’t him that said, “Jodi gets free stuff always" or "Tom’s the worker bee silly rabbit,” on MD years ago. Unless he did and simply isn’t remembering it, the one thing he’s never been guilty of is being a liar. He’s actually always been pretty honest with me.

I guess it could have been anyone since, after all, a woman in the US is seen as bad for not working as a woman in India is for not having kids. It just seemed a little too personal, almost as if it was someone close to me. And the “silly rabbit” comment seemed like something he would make as well. Doesn’t seem like any family members would say that, and those currently in my life aren’t judgmental otherwise they wouldn’t be in it. IDK, maybe it was a random reader. I’ll never know. But women do get bashed for having kids these days and twice as much for not having a job outside of the house, even if they still work from home. Other than when there’s a lockdown going on of course.

He admits to being judgmental and that his family and I have accused him of being negative and that everyone seems to expect perfection from him. He said why not just accept him as he is? Also, the thing that would bother him most was when I expect him to agree with everything.

I never expected him to agree with everything. Just to keep in mind that sometimes there’s a difference between an opinion and a fact. I think, though, that we all can be judgmental and negative at times, so I can understand that much. I mean even if we don’t always voice them, it’s only human nature to form judgments and opinions on what we hear and see.

He apologized for pressuring me to be in constant contact years ago. Aly used to do that to me too. He says although he doesn’t know why he was like that, he realizes it was wrong and says he’s just as busy as I was then. Well, I don’t know if I was always busy, but I do try to keep myself occupied so I don’t get bored and out of shape. Still, anytime I feel smothered isn’t a good thing. We all need some breathing space.

He said what he loves most about me is my silly sense of humor and that no one else has ever made him laugh as much as I have. But in so many ways my mind is creative in devious ways, many of which he participated in and that scared him and made him question being friends with someone who was capable of being that way.

Oh, the deviant shit I admit I used to pull in the past without blinking an eye that I would never even think of doing these days due to either feeling guilty or worried about Karma getting me for it. Like writing “fuck you” on Andrea’s IRS statement that was accidentally put in my mailbox at the Vista Ventana before returning it. But never think that deviance doesn’t live on in my mind, though, for it does. Oh, the things I do to some people in my mind!

Regardless, he always remembers our history and that it dates back to the late 60s and loves being friends with people who knew him for that long. Precisely why I would never tell him that in many ways, Aly is the bestie he never was or could be. Because I know that would hurt since we’ve met face-to-face and go back to the 60s as opposed to a cyber friendship that goes back to 2008. But even though Andy will always be like family to me, I know which one I’d choose in a heartbeat if I had to!

2008 was the year he said Adam dumped him and he’s not sure he would ever want to resume a friendship with him but for some reason I’m different and he does want to be my friend. He said he visited Marla in 2018 and would have loved to take the train up to Sacramento once again. Yeah, I admit that would’ve been nice.

I think it would be good to keep in touch every now and then rather than be so all or nothing. I can’t say that I’ll ever consider him the bestie I once considered him to be but more like the bestie of the 20th century while Aly’s the bestie of the 21st century.

Oh, the obvious differences in their intelligence levels! He says he doesn’t know why I think he’s in Ohio. He’s still in Springfield, Massachusetts, and loving every second of it. Ah, but does he not realize the address on his cover photo? Obviously not, LOL.

He said he remembers when he sang me the song How Do You Do and I was so excited because I’d forgotten that song.

And again I forgot about that song, LOL…until he just mentioned it. We used to sing it to each other at the beach when we were kids, he said, although I don’t remember that much.

As far as that deviant thing goes, he mentioned a guy at the Vista that would call him a faggot and that I wrote a letter anonymously to say that I knew where he was and was going to come and get him, and then he moved in the middle of the night and we were laughing about it and all that. At first I had absolutely no recollection of who he was talking about. I’m still not sure I know who he’s talking about but it does sound like something I would have done. My best guess is the pervert that lived next to me when I had the ground-floor studio. Hated that bastard! And I hated the guy above me because he walked like an elephant. Andrea would end up worse than both of them, though. But he must be talking about Mark. Robert was the guy above me, but Mark…that must be the 6-foot-plus perve I, barely 100 pounds soaking wet at the time, must’ve scared off. Haha!

Mark was a definite hater, alright…gays, blacks, poor people…he hated them all. Didn’t we red-bra him, though? It seems like my parents sent a package and we took some of the things we didn’t want and left them by people’s doors just to baffle them, and I swear I took a red lacy bra that was too big for me and left it hanging on his door, LOL.

I mentioned putting the house on the market and he said with confidence that we’ll get a great offer in just one day because the house is beautiful, but I think he forgets that manufactured homes don’t have the value that on-site built homes have, plus it is outdated.

I would have had the answers if I’d just been able to speak clearly! I had the information in my dreams. I excitedly told the dream people our moving date but was so choked up with emotion and crying happy tears that I could barely talk. Right now I have a mild vibe about getting an offer in April and moving in June but it’s not as strong as the flying vibes and dreams I’ve had. He was comparing costs between flying and different ground variations and right now it is looking more likely that we will fly. If that’s true, it will be interesting to see if it’s first-class like in the dream and if the window is to my left.

Here’s the most interesting and amazing thing he told me. Well, we switched to leaving voice messages because it’s easier. He sounds great and very easy to understand, as always. Can’t deny that they put a big smile on my face just like when he would leave voice messages on the old-fashioned answering machines we had in our apartments back in the 80s. He thanked me for that classic laugh of mine.

Anyway, back when he started popping up in my dreams, I remembered how he once told me that people that know each other sense when they’re on each other’s minds and he would often pick up the vibes when someone was thinking of him and vice versa. I wondered if him being in my dreams like that all of a sudden meant that he’d been thinking of me. Well, it turns out that he hadn’t thought of me in months, and then last October he started dreaming about me a lot and asking himself what the hell is going on? Is she thinking of me? Is she going to come back into my life? And then he told himself nah, she’s never going to contact me ever again. But now, here I am. Way cool but makes me wonder why the termites are on my mind every day. I certainly don’t miss them and I would never under any circumstances ever take them back into my life for any reason, but I wonder if it’s because they’re thinking of me constantly that’s got them on my mind regularly or if it’s just my anger that has them on my mind so much. Probably the latter. I’ll get things off my chest when I feel the time is right and that will purge some of the anger even though I’ll never forgive them.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2021

Nothing like begging a God that doesn’t exist (or doesn’t care to hear me) to please not let me be anxious just to end up anxious anyway. I’ve done everything I can think of to help myself yet it’s gotten me nowhere. The only thing I’m not willing to do is schedule an appointment with some foreign shrink that can’t see me for half a year to discuss drugs that are either addicting, have horrible side effects, or stop working after a while.

Yesterday’s anxiety was mild but it was still noticeable. Seems to be coming more toward the end of my day rather than the middle lately for whatever reason. That is, until today. Today I woke up feeling a mix of anxiety, depression, and fatigue but later perked up briefly. Was it cuz of the pot lotion? The anxiety oil? The dark chocolate? Something else? I wish I knew!

The darkness goes on with no end in sight. Every time I start to feel better, I get that weird feeling again. That anxious, depressive feeling. I just can’t believe I’m going through this shit and that I’ve become this way. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. It’s like something up there really wants me to have some form of long-term suffering or another. Just wish we could please go back to the days of it being external. If it wasn’t for this shit, my worst problems would be occasional boredom and noise.

Anxious or not, there’s still the stress of the upcoming appointments and plenty of stress over the move. So many things could go wrong, and well, things are never easy for us. Just rehoming the pigs may be harder than we thought. There are a surprising number of shelters that say they don’t take guinea pigs and there aren’t as many no-kill shelters as we thought there would be. We’re still going to contact a guinea pig rescue service but they may have to go to a shelter that will put them to sleep. Of course we would prefer for that not to happen but if God forbid it does, at least they won’t know it’s coming and they’ll die an easy death compared to a natural one. I wish we could all die by simply falling asleep, never waking up, and never knowing when it’s going to happen.

I still fear that this is more than changing hormones and am coming to doubt whether either medication is responsible for it because of the way the anxiety isn’t consistent. Oh, I still know I had problems with the thyroid medication when I first started it and I still think I did have some brand issues where that’s concerned but I don’t think the statins cause my latest round of anxiety. In fact, I went back on them tonight.

This is definitely the worst spell I’ve had in ages and it’s truly worrisome. It makes me wonder if there’s some other health issue going on that could be causing it. From what I read, not only can thyroid disease cause it but so can diabetes, heart disease and others. And again, it’s still possible I simply up and became this way and developed an anxiety disorder but I sure as hell hope that’s not the case and that it isn’t a forever thing. I try to tell myself that nothing lasts forever and that things do change, but that’s not a hundred percent true. My thyroid disease is going to last forever and so is my TMJ.

I’ve had 17 anxious days so far this year. That’s about half as many as I had last year! Something’s wrong. This is absolutely horrible. The anxiety is getting more intense as I write this and I’m scared. My mind keeps pinging back and forth between all the possibilities… the meds, the brand, hormones, an anxiety disorder I developed, my thyroid, some other health issue… I feel like I’m about to go completely insane! It’s like I just want to go to bed and never wake up. I’m trying to keep from freaking out because I just don’t know what to do anymore. It used to be easy even when it was hard. It was easy because I knew what the problem was be it poverty or problem neighbors or whatever. But now I don’t know what the fuck my enemy is and what to do about it. I just know I’m tired of suffering and not knowing what the fuck to do. I just tried tapping and nothing helps.

“You’re such a good detective,” Andy told me because he never noticed the address on his cover picture, and the reason it’s there is that it reminded him of Connecticut. LOL, that’s exactly where I thought it was, too.

He missed me laughing at his weather. That feel-good kind of laughter, he said that always put him in a good mood.

He said he’s still sober, clean, self-employed, and happy with his life and where he lives. Yes, winter sucks but he can’t handle the heat as well as he used to, he told me. Neither can I but I guess that’s because I’m not young and skinny anymore and definitely because my medication can make you sensitive to heat. I still tolerate heat a hell of a lot better than cold.

He said he thinks of moving to the coast of Florida someday but doesn’t know if he actually will.

He also says he’s working on his food addiction. Yeah, I thought he might have had a food addiction way back when. Food was all he would talk about besides God and Stevie.

I’m not at all surprised Trump was acquitted again. Really, why bother to have these “trials?” They’re about as pointless as protests. It seems some people really are above the law. However, as much as I wish Trump would just drop dead, he really isn’t responsible for other people’s actions. Someone can tell me to kill someone all they want, but if I actually act on it, I’m the only one responsible for my actions. Not anyone else. These were grown adults that should have known right from wrong. No one forced them to riot. They chose to do it on their own. Trump may be a shitty influence that deserves to be slowly tortured to death but not directly responsible from a legal standpoint.

Aly says Kim finally wrote her and had a COVID-19 scare but is okay. Yeah, I figured as much. I knew she would be just fine. As horrendously huge as she is, she probably won’t develop any serious health issues until the day before she dies.

The pair of unicorn diamond paintings, along with frames for larger diamond paintings, and a small amethyst healing stone with an indentation for the thumb are on their way. Of course I don’t think it will work but it was only seven bucks and I’m desperate as hell.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2021

So I got really bad last night, and then it stopped. Just stopped. I don’t get it. It was almost like the panic attack without the panic where it peaked and then fizzled out. Only I didn’t have the racing heart, shaking, or feel like I was going to die. Just ran and got a big mouthful of turkey which I had forgotten I had.

Tryptophan seems like it helps better than alcohol. I hadn’t had any wine for over a week just in case it might have been contributing to my anxiety even though I didn’t think it was. But I picked up some Moscato today.

I read a report on some studies conducted and there are a number of reports of statin users reporting feelings of anxiety and depression. Not as much as irritability, but still. We know that for some reason I’ve gotten sensitive to medication and certain brands as well. And it’s quite a coincidence that I got really bad after taking the statin I took last night. So I’m taking a break again and this time it’s going to be for a lot longer than just a few days. I still think there are multiple contributors to the anxiety, but I think that could be a significant source and I don’t want to take any chances. I’d totally rather not be on statins and end up dropping dead of a stroke or heart attack than take statins and feel so horribly bad. If I literally could have snapped my fingers and been dead, I wouldn’t have hesitated.

Thinking back to how bad I was when I first started on both drugs in 2014, it kind of makes sense. If I was on the brands that make me more anxious at the same time and going through perimenopause, I can see where that would have created the perfect storm.

I decided to layer my hair and it looks a little better. All I did was brush the hairs from the crown of my head straight upward and trim the ends.

It’s Andy’s 59th birthday tomorrow so I’m going to wish him a happy birthday soon.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2021

Yesterday I felt so much better. My day started off slightly borderline and then I felt great. I didn’t take anything at all yesterday. Today I took my levothyroxine and sure enough, towards the middle of my day, I can feel the anxiety picking up. I still think the statins likely compounded it, but for the millionth time, what the fuck is wrong with me??? I thought about it and came up with 7 possibilities which I’ve listed below.

Low thyroid
Medication/brands
Hormones
Stress
Developed anxiety disorder
Location
Something else

Okay, now let’s analyze them one at a time. The low thyroid itself seems unlikely because my thyroid didn’t fail the day before I was diagnosed. I’m almost positive it was low for a few years before they tested it.

As I said, the statins may have compounded it and I don’t doubt that I’ve had issues with different brands. But these thyroid pills are Sandoz, so it got me thinking about the inconsistencies I read about and how generic manufacturers aren’t as consistent as name brands. Could my anxiety be worse because I got an extra potent batch? It’s still ironic that my problems with anxiety didn’t start until a few months after I started this shit.

As for hormones and stress, it seems a bit much to be those things. I’ve never heard of any case of hormonal changes that a woman goes through at my age being this bad and even my doctor said she didn’t think it was only about that.

Also, I’ve been faced with MUCH more stressful situations than moving and having appointments, yet I never went through this before. Besides, you typically handle stressful situations better with age, not worse.

Analyzing the possibility of developing an anxiety disorder…possible but unlikely. People do develop different disorders at different ages in life, so I realize that it’s a possibility even if it still seems unlikely to me. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s my gut instinct that’s telling me that’s not it.

Then there is the least likely possibility and that has to do with being so close to a cemetery or something about this house or the general area itself. That would be the best thing it could be, but I highly doubt this one the most.

The last possibility I thought of this some other underlying health condition that hasn’t been discovered yet that could be causing this but that too, doesn’t seem likely.

I think the main culprits are connected to the medications and wacky hormones but hopefully not that I developed an anxiety disorder or that it’s become how my body reacts to low thyroid because if the last two are even remotely possible, then I’m forever doomed for sure.

I just wish I knew what things were having a hand in it and how much of a hand they have! Really starting to fear this is never going to go away no matter how postmenopausal I become.

If I absolutely had to guess right now, I would say the number one culprit is connected to the medication somehow. I think there are probably just inconsistencies from bottle to bottle and maybe even from pill to pill, I don’t know. Runner-up to that would be hormones still changing.

I may skip again tomorrow and see how I feel. If I feel better on days I skip, then that tells me something. I haven’t decided for sure yet. Of course I don’t want to be anxious, but I don’t want to be hypo either. But to think my life is going to be a constant battle of Would You Rather? makes me want to beat my fucking head into the wall.

The only good thing is that if I continue to feel this way after the move, then I can narrow the list down to 6 possibilities.

Tom applied for a few jobs and there was a casino job he thought might actually be fun where you walk around with a cart with change for people and all that. Yeah, but I’d hate for him to be around all that second-hand smoke and I also hate the idea of him working before he’s vaccinated. It would also take time away from the prepping and all that and dealing with realtors. Really hope he won’t have to work until after the move and only if he wants to for extras like going on cruises.

I don’t think Virginia’s home. At 9 o’clock I looked over there and there wasn’t any light on, yet she never goes to bed that early. I hope nothing’s wrong for her sake, almost 88 or not!

The frames came today, and we framed the palm trees diamond painting I finished last night. It looks great! Had to put purple poster board behind it because it was a little narrow for the frame. The length was perfect, though.

The two unicorn diamond paintings came today as well which I plan to do for Aly’s birthday.

Ordered a 12x12 painting of various mandalas for myself and a set of 6 Freshly Baked fragrance oils - Blueberry Pancakes, Caramel Nut Muffin, Butterscotch Cookie Dough, Cinnabon, Chocolate Fondue, Creamy Nutmeg.

My New Yorker checked out my PB journal but didn’t go to LJ, so now I’m more convinced it’s not anyone I know personally. I think it’s just a random reader with nothing to say because they’re either overly shy or they just don’t want to.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2021

There’s only one word to describe how last night was for me from about 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. when I finally woke Tom up. HORRIBLE. Just horrible. I felt horribly anxious that it was making me horribly depressed and I just wished I could drop dead right there on the spot. My HR was consistently around 100.

He said it’s very unlikely that I have an extra potent batch of medicine because of the way there are people that test all the medications to make sure they are what they’re supposed to be before they’re given to the thousands of people that take it. He said we would have heard about it by now and that he thinks it is still a factor but more because of skipping than anything else. Then why didn’t I have this problem before I was diagnosed? I asked him and he said because my thyroid crashed gradually while the skips are more severe. That does make sense to a degree.

I’m still going to avoid the statins for a while but decided to take the poison at night. I’ve tried this before and it probably won’t help but since the trouble seems to usually start around the middle of my day, I figured I would take it a few hours before bed so that it’s been in my system for 8 hours in the middle of my sleep. As I said, I don’t know if that will make a difference, but we’ll see.

He thinks it’s mostly stress and that the pill skips and my hormones are compounding things. Well, if this is how I handle stress these days then I’m going to have a really rough rest of my life. He still thinks it will go away someday but I’ve totally given up hope. I think that it’s either a case of ending my life or just accepting that I’m going to suffer on and off to try to enjoy the good times. Like right now. Right now I’m pretty stable. I woke up a little on edge not knowing what to expect but now I’m doing okay.

Being the wonderful, supportive guy he is, he’s copying my schedule during the times I’m most likely to get anxious. Aly’s been there for me as well. We went out for a walk as the sun was setting and I showed him some yoga moves. Because I’m so bad at yoga which I’m guessing is because I’m fat, I think he would struggle even worse with it, LOL. This guy is 100 pounds overweight and loves to eat. He may consider getting a lap band when he’s on Medicare if they’ll cover enough of it. Depending on how it goes for him, I may eat my BMI up high enough (in 5 minutes) and get lap banded as well.

I’ve got a pair of pink yoga blocks coming. These are to help control your range of motion. Because age and weight have caused me to lose a lot of my flexibility, the blocks help make up for what I can’t quite reach. I always plan and live as if I’m never going to lose the weight and therefore, I do what I can to improvise whenever necessary and possible. I know it isn’t all about my weight, though, because I’ve seen obese people more flexible than I am and I’m not quite obese. At least not from an inches standpoint.

The amethyst stone with the thumb indentation arrived yesterday and they included a free gift which was a polished piece of citrine. The orange-brown polished rock is ugly, so I gave it to Tom, LOL.

Again my ENT was in my dreams last night. Strange how often she shows up in them. I wonder why, too. I remember my discussion with Andy about thought vibrations and it makes me wonder if I’m showing up in her dreams or thoughts and that’s why she’s showing up in mine. Most of the time I don’t remember the dreams but last night I was commenting on how long her hair got and so fast too.

Ugh, just googled her to see if anything new came up that may explain why I’ve been dreaming about her and got “Doc N, MD, is permanently closed.” So does that mean she moved and I’ll see her there wherever “there” is, and assuming they tell me where to go, or do I have to see someone else? If I have to see someone else, again, why does everything have to have such shitty timing in my life? I just looked on Dignity’s site, and the appointment is still there at the usual place on Cole, so I don’t know what’s up.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2021

I’m so cold and missing summer so much that I don’t see how those stuck in the polar vortex can stand it.

Spent the first half of my day feeling the most normal and like my old self. It was great. Once I got past that halfway marker, though, I started feeling eh. Not bad but not great either. If I don’t get over this in another year or two, then that’s going to leave the medication or me developing a permanent disorder as a real possibility. Again I question the medication because then why did I go 11 weeks as I did at the end of last year?

Another possibility that I didn’t think of when I made the list of 7 possibilities was autoimmune flares. I don’t know if I still have those and exactly how they would affect me if I do but I wonder if that might be a possibility and would explain why I’m worse at times than I am at other times.

Since not taking my meds till the end of the day may not be helping me avoid not feeling as well once I get past the halfway mark of my day, I may go back to taking it in the morning.

What worries me about an article I read is how they mention suicidal thoughts being serious. Menopause shouldn’t make you feel that way. Just the way it mentions how it’s only an underlying health concern that will likely get worse without treatment if it’s this intense and regular makes me feel even worse. The problem is time and money. We need to be focused on getting out of here. It isn’t that I don’t want help but I just don’t know how to get it. I worry about all the time and money it may take and how many scary medications it may take before and if they find the right one. So I just don’t know if anybody can ever help me. I may be beyond help. But yeah, something is obviously wrong. I just don’t know what.

There’s so much anger either way. I’m so, SO pissed that I’ve had to suffer with such intense anxiety and for so long. Like what the fuck did I ever do to deserve such torture? Anything else I’ve ever experienced that was bad was a walk in the park compared to this. Hell, food poisoning is easier than anxiety! All I know is that if there is anything up there that could have prevented this, I will never ever forgive it. If I went 10 years without anxiety, it will always spark anger to remember these days. It’s just so unfair and so undeserved. I may not be a perfect person, but come on. You mean to tell me the lying, delusional nutjobs out there deserve better health and peace of mind than I do?

Another thing (as if anxiety isn’t enough) is that my weight is crying out to go up. It’s inching upward and I’m struggling like crazy to control it but don’t know that I can. Oh well. I did say I’d like to qualify for a lap band. Traditional diet and exercise haven’t done me any good for the last decade so that would be my only hope. Getting peanuts wasn’t a good thing. Thought it would help my foot cramps but bananas are actually better for that. I need to once again back off the carbs and drop the dark chocolate since it doesn’t always calm me anyway.

I emailed a guinea pig rescue group but don’t know if they’re taking pigs during the pandemic. If they don’t come through, we’ll contact Petco and see if they can direct us somewhere. If not, we’ll have to go to a shelter.

Couldn’t resist sending Donte, Alyssa’s husband, a friend request out of curiosity. If it’s ignored or I’m blocked, then I’m sure it’s because he knows who I am. Yes, there are people that won’t add anyone they don’t know personally but I think that’s more of a woman’s thing than a guy’s thing.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021

The last half of my day yesterday was totally shitty as hell. Again I couldn’t help but think of the potential diseases I found listed that can cause anxiety. Yet I don’t have heart disease, diabetes, or any of the diseases listed. Yes, I’m hypo but being hyper seems to make you more susceptible to anxiety.

I’ve also been cold as hell. I know it’s winter and part of being more hypo due to the skips I’ve made, but it does seem more noticeable lately. The instant I turned off the hot shower earlier, and I mean the instant, I was freezing cold again. I almost always have to sleep with a fan on, even in the winter. Yet last time around I didn’t need the fan at all.

But just like with the anxiety, I don’t have any of the diseases they say can make you feel cold other than being hypo.

So I thought of this long, horrible spell I’ve been having, and once again, it seems too extreme for wacky hormones. I think the problem is what it’s always been and what started, coincidentally, when I started taking the medication…the medication itself. I think where I went wrong was that I didn’t skip enough. When it creeps up on me, I need to not go back on it until I feel better for more than just a few hours or even a day. So I don’t know if I’m going to take my meds when I get up later on or not.

He thinks it’s mostly because of the skips, my hormones, and stress, but I just don’t know. Right now I’m thinking the meds built up too much in my system and I didn’t skip enough. I would rather have hypo symptoms than the anxiety from hell, so we’ll soon find out!

I woke up in the middle of my sleep for about 90 minutes and that caused a big jump in my schedule. Next week, I’m probably going to call the dentist and see if I can adjust the time of my appointment. I should still be okay for my other appointments.

Never did hear back from the cavy rescue group but didn’t expect to, so Tom will get in touch with Petco next week as well.

We went for a quick 15-minute walk at around 11. No skunk sightings although I got faint whiffs of them every now and then.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2021

We still need to finish the laundry and bathroom floor and then touch up the paint in some spots. Plus we have to pull out the old bedroom windows and really clean the hell out of the appliances. He’s going to take the oven and showers and I’m going to tackle the toilets and fridge. Oh, got to bring the shower door back in and put it in the master bathroom, too.

Once that’s done, we’re going to reach out to a company that isn’t exactly like Sundae but not quite like a traditional realtor and hope for the best. Tom’s researched them. You take pictures of the place and shoot video or something like that and they give you a quote.

Anyway, the anxiety tends to mostly be present during the second part of my day and I don’t know why. I’m still suspecting that one of the many factors involved in that my thyroid medication built up too much in my system and I didn’t skip enough earlier and that prolonged the anxiety. So I’m waiting until I feel better before I go back to it.

However, if there’s any shit later on today, I’m going to message my PCP again and tell her that I don’t have the time and money to focus on this crap right now since we’re about to put our house on the market and can’t make an appointment with a psychiatrist that can’t see me for months anyway. Therefore, could she recommend an OTC supplement for anxiety that may help?

I did some research and I’m wondering if I may have a serotonin deficiency. One of the things they recommend for that is Vitamin D supplements, so I’ve gone back to that. I’ve also seen things like ashwagandha and L-theanine online and in stores which I’ll ask her about. I would prefer to only take something when I feel anxiety coming on but if I have to take something every day as a preventative measure, I will as long as there are no killer side effects. Trying to avoid SSRI drugs because they haven’t worked for me in the past. I would prefer not to need one in Florida but if I do, I hope that it doesn’t take so many months to get into a psychiatrist there.

Decided to try that pineapple wine Aly told me about but what does this idiot do? She goes into Rite Aid after being up for a long time and grabs the wrong bottle. I saw the palm trees on the bottle which I could have sworn I saw when I looked it up, and the word “pineapple,” and somehow the word “Malibu” registered as “Maui” in my mind when I glanced at it quickly. But instead of being wine, it’s rum, LOL. It’s fine, though. It’s good mixed with flavored sparkling water.

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