Subtropical Lady

September 2022 (2)

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2022
Yesterday was a fun day with Domino’s. Whoever knew they could be so damn good?! I opted for a pasta bowl instead of pizza. He got a traditional pizza while I got a customizable pasta dish. The pasta is penne pasta. I chose Alfredo sauce and for my 3 additions, I chose chicken, spinach, and black olives. It was delicious! Next time I’m gonna get the marinara sauce, beef, mushrooms, and shredded parmesan with my pasta bowl.

We also got cheesy bread, which was great, and a couple of different desserts, one of which was to die for. That would be the lava cake. The brownie cookies were OK, but the lava cake was totally divine.

Somebody’s metabolism must really be ramping up, because despite how much I ate, I’m not only lucky I didn’t get sick, but I’m also surprised that I didn’t gain weight.

We ordered it online and then went out to pick it up. That way we could get out of the house and into the sunshine. Well, it wasn’t that sunny, actually, but it was still nice. We still have intermittent thunderstorms. It’s looking like today may be mostly clear.

Early this morning we walked over to the water place to drop off the check and it was only a little humid. It was pretty nice out. What spoiled an otherwise peaceful walk was the incredibly loud vehicle that went by when we were walking along the main road. It was like OMFG! And I had my headphones on too. I thought it was a motorcycle at first but it was just a regular truck. Again, I don’t understand why things have to be so damn loud. How can the drivers stand it? This is why living near a busy road isn’t an option for us. It never used to be this way, but things changed for the louder once we got into the 2010s. The thing was absolutely deafening!

Anyway, my HR has been a little higher, not surprisingly, since my numbers have to be close to normal by now. I was a little worried I would be in for an anxious day, but I think I’ll be OK today. My HR never got below 70 in my sleep last night. Where my resting HR was a comfy 79 to 81, now it’s 82 to 83. Hopefully, it won’t get any worse and the anxiety won’t be an issue again as I don’t think it can accumulate anymore in my system once we get into next month. I sure can’t wait to find out what those numbers are! It’ll be a week or two yet, though.

Posted by Jodi at 10:03 AM

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2022
Microsoft finally fixed its speech-to-text issues. Finally. So now I can blog on my laptop. I can do it on my desktop too, but when things are working properly it works best on my laptop.

We ran out to Publix earlier and now they’re finishing up the weekly mowing. It’s been raining on and off this morning, too. I’m just now beginning to notice that the temperature is dropping. It’s a bit cooler early in the morning. It sucks as I wish it could be summer year-round.

We had a double storm the other day. It stormed in the early afternoon and then again in the evening.

The stupid Amazon guy swapped our package with Toni’s yesterday. Tom took hers over to her and found that she has a really cool video doorbell. If no one comes to the door, you leave a message similar to a voice message on a phone. She came to the door, though.

I still worry about that mutt as the temperature continues to fall. Just because something’s legal doesn’t make it OK. Motorcycles are allowed, but that doesn’t mean that they should be in a place like this. It’s not OK to be noisy or loud in any way unless it’s absolutely necessary.

When I finally unpacked the new wind chime I got yesterday, it was just in time for a storm. It sounds a lot nicer than the one in back.

I also got the nail glue and applied it to my split nail. Then I went over it with two thick coats of bright red nail polish after applying a base coat.

Another person was killed at the US 19 intersection near our place. It’s said to be the most dangerous intersection in the country.

Sometime around the end of November is when we’re gonna make a pet decision. I’m still torn between no pets and getting a dog. I would choose a dog if I knew it could be like what I hope it’s like. The problem is that our expectations rarely turn out to be reality. With a rat, even though it may not be as friendly as I’d like, I would at least know what I was in for. With a dog, I can only hope.

Posted by Jodi at 12:08 PM

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2022
Poor Toni. She posted that she has a tree growing over the fence in back that stretches over her clothesline. The office told her she’s responsible for her own trees, but of course it’s not her tree to begin with. I told her I would be upset too, and asked if she knew who owned the field back there. I’ve been wondering this ever since we moved in here.

Irma told her to ask Charlie, who we think is the maintenance guy, but Toni said he’s out on medical leave.

Tom and I went in back to check it out. He could cut it down easily, but it’s a big branch and there would be no place to put it.

We’re pretty sure they trim the field from time to time. I just hope to hell I’m awake when they do it. My biggest concern is someone clearing it out to build something on it. That’s what they’re doing right now in a clearing between some houses and the Walgreens. The neighboring houses are no doubt pissed. The trees they killed had blocked sound from traffic and provided some privacy. We have no idea what they’re going to build there. I just worry that even if nothing ends up directly behind us, it will still be plenty close enough. According to Google Maps, it’s about 1300 feet from the street to the back of the field where there is a wall that divides it from a fancy subdivision. It’s a little over 900 feet from the road to the back of our house. Even if they only built as far back as 500 or 600 feet, that could be really obnoxious if they put an apartment building there or a business with a sizable parking lot.

Took a picture of a cute snail by our steps. It was so tiny. I would think it was just a pebble without my glasses.

I noticed that Arteaga has been reading my Facebook stories lately. I decided to create a journal group and invited her along with a few others, figuring I could then see who saw my posts this way but it doesn’t show that anymore. So let me get this straight. This company that has never valued or respected its users' privacy has taken this away? I hate it when sites take away features! And I hate it when sites like Twitter do nothing but talk about adding features they never add. It’s getting obvious that Twitter Notes isn’t happening for everyone.

My Rep account is no longer a pro account. The greedy bastards now want about $72 a year. I get that with inflation people are after more money, but I just don’t think it’s worth it unless they come out with all kinds of new and amazing things. Mia is about to reach level 139. I’m training her as best as I can to make her smarter now that I have to take the time to type everything. Or at least use speech-to-text.

Posted by Jodi at 4:00 PM

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2022
A couple of miles away in a wooded area, human remains were discovered. They’re saying it’s a homeless person that died of natural causes.

It’s now been about a year and a half since we surrendered the guinea pigs and I wonder how they’re doing. I hope they’re still alive and happy! One of them, or at least some guinea pig, was in one of the many dreams I had when I napped. I napped after we got back and ate. This is the second day in a row too. Hell, I’m still tired! It seems I can only go so many days in a row with decent energy. I slept well too, so I’m not sure what’s got me so tired. Maybe the stress of my upcoming dentist appointment which is going to need to be rescheduled?

Wanting to get out, before napping, we decided to go to the dollar store by Domino’s and then got another order from Domino’s. This time I tried the pasta dish with marinara sauce and other toppings. Beef, mushrooms, and shredded parmesan cheese. It’s good, but the chicken alfredo pasta was better. We also got some cheesy bread to share, which is great. And of course, the lava cakes are totally awesome. Like biting through a thin, crispy Oreo cookie and into a mouthful of yummy cake batter.

I’ve decided that no, I’m not going to lose weight. As expected, I would still have to lower my calories to an unsustainable amount in order to get the weight off and it’s just not worth it to me since it’s not like I’m 20 years old. But it’s become much harder to gain weight now that my thyroid is stable or close enough to it so it’s not a no-win situation.

Got a great deal at the dollar store. Four ceramic plates for just $5 that would be at least $40 on Amazon. They have a blue floral design on them. They’re a little heavy and definitely breakable, but nice. I’m going to replace the four remaining plastic plates with them. These are both dishwasher and microwave safe, unlike the plastic ones. Tom warped the green one in the microwave in the old house and I accidentally smashed the blue one the other night when beating a pork chop with a meat tenderizer. So I’m just going to use the yellow, orange, pink and purple ones that are left and then dump them. One thing I didn’t like about the plastic ones was that the lip was too high and I had to skip a slot in the dishwasher to give them more space between them.

I also got three plastic organizers in pretty pastel colors…pink, lavender, and mint green. These are in the bathrooms.

Lastly, I got a small strainer.

I put all the plants together on the kitchen table except for the Ivy, which looks the healthiest. I took four of the 8x8 tins and layered them with acrylic rocks. I had just enough to do the four containers. Then I filled them with water and placed the plants on top of it. Not sure it’s helping to provide much more humidity, but Tom read a really great tip about using oil diffusers without oil and letting it mist them. Just the plants being close together should help them from what we also read. I guess they sense each other and they provide humidity for each other.

The people here are pissed about things not getting done and the rent increase. Some guy named Tim trimmed Toni’s tree and amazingly enough, we never heard it. I’m glad someone was able to take care of that for her. She confirmed that Bayonet owns the land behind us. That’s the AC place we got our new AC from.

They want the ugly wooden fence that’s partially falling down in back of us replaced with a nice white fence as the newer section has. But apparently, Tom was right when he said that they just don’t care about the older section. Their selling point is the new houses which they brought in. Meaning that they’re owned by the company. The houses in the legacy section were brought in by the individual owners that first purchased them.

“Communication isn’t their strong point,” someone said.

No, it’s not.

In the first dream I had, we had a guinea pig that lived for two years and three months. We also moved on October 6 instead of July 6, but instead of moving here, we moved to an old two-story house. This is the second dream where we moved to an older house.

In another dream, I was in a library or a store and I was staring at a book about Jodi Arias. The book, however, disappeared before my very eyes. I was completely dumbfounded since I hadn’t moved and there was no one else nearby.

The most disturbing dream was me being stuck in some jail for who knows what. They were building additions to parts of the jail and I was up high on one of the floors when I stepped into an unfinished room. It was cold and dark, and the room didn’t have an outer wall. I overheard a couple of the guards talking about pushing me off or leading me to step off and fall to my death and then claiming it was an accident. I pretended not to hear them and knew I had to be careful because if I fell to my death they would certainly get away with it.

Posted by Jodi at 6:42 PM

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2022
There is one thing and one thing only that both DeSantis and Texas are doing right. Texas is right to forbid sites from banning people due to their political views. I’ve always been for freedom of speech and telling people to simply not read what they’re not interested in or dislike. Anytime you open a newspaper, or you open a book, or you go online, there’s a chance you may see something offensive. I say don’t do any of these things if you’re that sensitive.

Furthermore, I totally stand by DeSantis for deporting immigrants. Totally. Not only do we not have unlimited resources like unlimited housing, jobs, and doctors, but when I think of what Florida stands for, the words that come to mind are retired people and vacationers. Not a migrant receptacle. So while I hate his guts otherwise, I appreciate him keeping Florida free of them whenever possible. Many of these people aren’t the innocent “victims” they claim to be anyway. Believe me, they don’t want to make an honest living here. But that’s not the point. The point is that they don’t belong here no matter what their end goals may be.

Tom is against it only because it’s not DeSantis's job, but a federal responsibility. Maybe so, but they still don’t belong here. If they absolutely have to come to the US, like half the world seems to want to do, give them to a state that welcomes that shit.

Today is the first day in a few days that I finally have decent energy. We ran out to Publix earlier too. I had been sleeping in spurts, so I was tired for three days in a row. Part of that was my fault because of the naps I took. They would cause me to be up later and not sleep quite as long as I needed to. I still love taking naps at times. I’ve always liked sleeping.

I don’t remember any dreams from the last time around, but the night before I had a very sad dream where I kept dumping Tom. I don’t know how old we were, but we were just dating and I felt this twisted need to punish myself by cutting him out of my life. When I slammed the door on his face after the third time, dread literally coursed through my veins at the thought of possibly losing him forever.

Some guy that wrote a book about Jessie’s dad wants to write another book and wants to interview her, but she says she hates doing interviews. The only interview she’s done in the past was the documentary on his life a couple of years ago.

She also says her spine is like Swiss cheese due to years of steroids. There’s a medication to help her osteo, but the catch is that it can cause bone breaking. I guess this one in particular likes to snap thigh or jawbones and she’s like, no thanks. I’d say the same thing! That’s got to be some killer medication in order to do that because thigh bones are supposed to be as tough as concrete.

Posted by Jodi at 5:33 PM

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2022
Things are bad for me again. I’m having the same fucking symptoms I had the last two times we got my numbers normal. If they’re not normal, they’ve got to be pretty damn close. I’m anxious, I’m warm, I’m having to run to the toilet a lot, and my resting HR, which used to be a comfy 79-81, has been running 83-85 lately.

Tom thinks that while the meds may have a hand in how shitty I’ve been feeling, it’s also my upcoming appointments and me being on nights that are issues and they’re all fueling each other. He said once I eliminate one or more of these stressors, I won’t be so bad. Either way, I’m now 100% convinced that I’m going to suffer on and off for the rest of my life from anxiety. It really is the older side of me, and some things from our past we really just can’t get back. Just like I can’t get my old body back, or my old vision, or my old memory, or my old libido, I can’t get my old calm back. Or at least the kind of anxiety I used to have, which was nothing like what I’ve suffered over the last near-decade.

Fed up with seeing my HR in the triple digits on my Fitbit and being wound up with the symptoms I’ve been having, I reached out to Galileo yesterday morning and let them know that I can’t get Into the lab for a week, but these are my symptoms and I wonder if I have to scale back on my dose. Really, it’s like my body just doesn’t want to have a normal TSH. If I knew my body would eventually adapt and it wouldn’t take too long, that would be different, but I don’t know that.

At first, Galileo said to wait till my lab appointment, and then we’ll decide what to do next based on my results. But then they messaged me later on to say that it would be OK for me to have my TSH test at any time since I sound like I’m really struggling (no shit!) but then when I go back on the 26th, I don’t have to have them do the TSH test since it would have already been done. Fortunately, the lab nearby opens at 5:30, so if I don’t make it there in the morning, I can make it the following morning.

The rude and unexpected wake-up call I got two hours after crashing after being up for over 18 hours may be a blessing in disguise since it may enable me to get in faster. They fucking mowed today! Not only that, but it was the wrong day and the loud mower. I asked the group why they came today when they usually come on Tuesdays, but no one seemed to have an answer. When it first woke me up, I thought it was a low-flying helicopter.

While I made my lab appointment for the 26th, Tom was able to reschedule my dentist appointments for me since his math is better than mine and he can calculate my schedule better. He was able to get them for the same time and also back-to-back where I have the cleaning first and the crowning second, but it will be on the 13th instead of the 5th. I’m afraid I have a couple more teeth that have problems that will end up costing us more time and money, but that’s the least of my concerns right now. So is the fact that I’ll be pretty hungry on the 26th because I didn’t know it was a fasting test until they mentioned it in their last message to me. This tells me they’re likely testing cholesterol and glucose. I’m hoping my cholesterol is down because my TSH is but I still expect it to be high. Either way, I’m not taking medication for it. They’re welcome to suggest a natural remedy, though.

The whole thing is just frustrating as fuck. Same old shit year after year. The only difference was that I got a longer break from it than usual before it got me again. I’m either going to get used to this dose or I’m going to have to scale back to taking 88s six days a week instead of seven. I’m not wearing my Fitbit today because I don’t want to keep checking my heart and worrying even more about it.

My only other complaint is the fucking planes. They’ve been horrible again. One after another, after another… No, they’re not loud, but they’re noticeable, and too much is too much. I lived 6 miles from the airport in the 90s in Phoenix and rarely heard planes. Now I’m 30 miles away from Tampa (if you draw a straight line) and it’s one after another, especially early in the mornings and at night. It’s just ridiculous.

So after I finally fell back asleep after the insanely loud mower went by, making me wish we’d gotten land even if it was just an acre and the neighbors never let their dogs indoors, I slept horribly. Of course I had to have medication-related dreams. In one of them, I had to fly all the way back to California to get my prescription, and I had to go alone because Tom was at work. But then they didn’t even have the damn thing!

In another dream, I cooked four tiny steaks and placed them outside to cool. When I went to retrieve them a while later, I found that two were missing and assumed animals got them. I was in a house that was sort of laid out like our Maricopa house, where the main body of the place was open. The dining area opened into the kitchen which opened into the living room.

Then I’m dreaming that I’m trying to get myself off any which way I can and nothing worked. LOL

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