#but I have noticed that I eat more fruits and veggies now because I buy stuff i like

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

Ways I get fruits n veggies in me:

- putting oranges and peppers on the counter where it’s easy to snack on while I make other food

- buying frozen strawberries for cheap to make smoothies which are cold on a hot day

- buying 100% fruit juices or 100% fruit popsicles so I have cold juice to drink on a hot day

Ways I do not get fruits n veggies in me:

- buying frozen veggies I don’t really want to eat because I think they’re healthy

- buying fruits I don’t really like because I think they’re healthy

- buying fruits or veggies which require prep time to eat in a way I like

- getting upset at myself for not eating enough fruits n veggies

Notice how the ways I eat the fruits and veggies have a built in incentive to eat them?

- peppers n oranges on the counter are easy to eat and require no prep time. If I want a meal, or I’m just I the kitchen, they’re easy to grab and munch on.

- I get bored and distracted when I cook. Having something to do with my hands, like peeling an orange, keeps me busy while keeping me in the kitchen near my food. And then I peeled the orange so I might as well eat it.

- smoothies and cold juice/popsicles work because the weather is hot and I already want to cool down. The incentive exists naturally because I like how they taste and I’m already looking for something cold.

- smoothies/juice/popsicles also have a consistent texture, which unprocessed fruit and veggies do not have. Texture is a big driver of what I eat or don’t, so having a pleasant/consistent texture makes me more likely to choose something.

If u prep ur own food and are worried ur not eating enough fruits n veggies, it might be time to go through how you usually choose what to eat and what’s blocking the fruit and veggie choices. Usually there is something that makes the alternate choice you make more appealing (including not eating anything, that is a choice that you make too).

Does having to cut/peel an orange take too long, so you pick the easily openable chips? That’s great! You have chips! But if you want fruit too, maybe get something you can just pick up and eat, like an apple or pear.

Does having fresh veggies sound great, but they’re not warm and you’re already freezing, so you pick the warm tater tots you can make in the oven? That’s great! You have tater tots! But if you want veggies too, maybe make some warm vegetable soup, or get a microwave pack of steamed green beans or broccoli.

Do you feel like you want to add more vitamins to your diet, but you don’t like the taste of vegetables or fruit, so you just stare in the cabinet and then don’t pick anything? Get something that has what you need that tastes different. Maybe that’s a supplement (talk to your doctor first, those still can interact with other meds or general health), maybe that’s a protein bar you like, maybe it’s chopping veggies up real tiny and putting them in your pasta sauce. It’s okay if it’s not the most “economical” or “healthy” solution; if it results in you actually eating more of what you’re trying to eat, it’s worth it.

This applies to other foods too; I need more protein in my diet, so I buy protein bars and oven-bakeable orange chicken, even if there are “healthier” more protein dense foods. I don’t like kale or beans, eggs and I are frenemies, and steak (my beloved) takes a lot of time and attention to cook properly. I need to drink more water, so I buy powdered lemonade and sparkling water. Maybe you hate chicken and protein bars and sparkling water and lemonade. You’re not me. What do you like? What do you need? What makes your needs more likeable? Go buy/make/do that.

[stevieschrodinger]

Steve is vaguely aware that Robin is watching him. He knows she's there, at least, but this right now is more important. He's hoovered, he's washed every blanket in the house, he's wiped ledges and dusted furniture and scrubbed the skirting boards. He's on his second day, getting sweaty moving furniture to clean under it.

His grocery list is nearly two pages long, but he keeps adding to it every time he thinks of something. He can't miss anything, this has to be perfect.

"Steve?" Robin asks, as he's on a chair dusting the fancy light fitting over the dining table. It's not quite a chandelier, but it's not far off either.

"Yeah?" He answers absently.

"So, we've established that you're nesting pretty hard."

Steve doesn't answer. He doesn't need too, they've been over this a couple of times already, and Steve knows he's nesting, he's actually very very aware of the fact, but that doesn't mean he can stop doing it, not with how his instincts are roaring at him.

Eddie's been out of the hospital for two weeks now, and Wayne's working a night shift tonight. Normally, Steve would head over to the new trailer and sleep on the couch, getting up in the night to check on Eddie.

But Eddie's feeling better now, and asked if tonight, when Wayne goes to work, he could come here instead. Could sleep with Steve, who unlike Eddie, has a bed which could comfortably accommodate two full grown men, one of which needs a bit of space because he still has healing injuries.

Tonight is different. Eddie's a bit better on his feet, he's feeling stronger, so tonight he's going to sleep here, for the first time, Steve has agreed. Steve's going to go and pick him up. Steve's going to feed him.

Steve's Alphas been pretty insane ever since, trying to make his home as appealing as possible for Eddie.

"Maybe we should go get groceries? I think you need a break Steve."

And that's not a terrible idea. Buying food so that Eddie has a selection of things to eat appeals to Steve on an even more base level than the nesting, so he agrees easily.

Steve tries to fill the cart with bright arrays of fruit and veggies and quality meat and fish. Robin pulls a face and asks, "have you even met him Steve?" Before dramatically swiping half a shelf of chips into the cart.

Steve doesn't mind. He wants Eddie happy. He wants to show that he can provide.

"You know he won't care, right?" Robin tries, yet again, "this won't register with his Beta brain-"

"It matters to me," and Steve stops loading the car when he realises he's snapped at her, "sorry, I just. It matters to me. It really matters that I do this right, okay?"

"I know, I just don't want you to be hurt when he maybe doesn't appreciate all of this the way an Omega would. Hell, maybe even the way a girl might, you know? I just worry about you, I've never seen you like this before."

Steve sighs, and nods, because she's right and logically, he knows that Eddie Munson is not going to notice that Steve cleaned at all. He's not going to bat an eyelid if that house is sparkling clean or filthy dirty. He won't care if Steve cooks or orders take out. These instincts are ALL Steve.

But there's nothing he can do about it. Because of Eddie's injuries, all they've done is Steve scenting Eddie gently on his wrists, mostly to placate Steve's protective and possessive streak. Eddie let's Steve suck a mark onto his throat when he gets desperate. He NEEDS, on a visceral level, for people to see Eddie and know that he's taken. For Eddie to stink of Alpha, of Steve, so strongly that people will think it's Eddie's scent. He's never felt like this about anyone before, and he's at a loss as to how to explain it.

Eddie's on the phone when Steve gets there, Steve letting himself in quietly like he does every night, catching the end of the conversation, "don't worry Rob, I've got it. Yep yep. I know, I get it. Message received. Yeah, I'll call you."

Eddie finally hangs up, turning, a little surprised to see Steve, but then smiling big and for Steve it's like the sun coming out.

"Hey there, big boy," Eddie immediately tilts his head back, an open invitation to Steve's Alpha, and Steve forgets all about the conversation Eddie was having with Rob in favour of scenting Eddie and leaving some fresh bruises on his throat.

When they get to the house, Eddie compliments the tidiness of the kitchen, the neatness of the lounge, how fresh the place scents. He eats what Steve gives him and tells him how tasty it all is, how perfect and filling. He touches blankets and says how soft they are, how perfectly chosen. Steve's preening, so puffed up with happy Alpha pride that it takes days for Steve to realise what had happened, what the phonecall must have been; Rob had coached Eddie.

Steve expects to be hurt, for a second, but that feeling never comes. He's just happy one of his pack is looking out for him, and that his mate is happy. And he knows Eddie is happy. Eddie might be a Beta, but he still smells subtly of fresh cut grass when he's happy.

[cocaineverr]

is eating too many carbohydrates going to make me gain weight? i stay in a low intake deficit but i noticed most of my macros are from carbs. are there any setbacks to not prioritizing protein?

hii anon! Thank you for sending an ask! ❤️❤️🙂 also I am sorry I am late on this response 🙁🫡I’ll try to be better!

TL;DR : your BMR can slow down .

So regarding a high carb diet it is what a lot of muscle builders / weight lifters use to keep their energy and strength up through the day. That’s only because they eat in an excess. Now there isn’t really a benefit to prioritizing fat or protein really because when you eat more of it and less of other macronutrients then it will get stored as fat, especially protein. That’s harder to loose because it weighs more and you’ll have to fast for longer to tap into that muscle/protein reserve.

If you’re in a low intake state then there really is no benefit to eating too much of one macro, especially carbs. If you’re a student or someone who deals with having to retain information then this is very helpful. Of course it depends on what kind of food you’re eating because straight junk will not do any favors.

If you want to do high carb, here are some healthy foods to help support this:

whole wheat bread

whole oats

Starchy vegetables

Starchy fruits

whole grain pasta

legumes

HOMEMADE grain/oat based sweets

Avoid ultra processed foods. Avoid sugar being the first listed ingredient (that means it is what the product is mostly consisting of). Avoid foods that claim to be “whole wheat” because they often are scams. Instead try to make your own alternatives, especially to foods like cookies, granola bars, pastries, salad dressings, and fruit snacks.

If you want to do high protein, here are some healthy foods to help support this:

whole eggs (including yolk)

cheese

skim milk

cottage cheese

lean cut chicken, salmon, fish, and beef

home-cut deli meat

certain legumes (such as black beans)

Avoid products that claim to be low fat, high protein. Avoid products that claim to be plant based if you are omnivorous. Avoid products that have too much sugar compared to protein, specifically YOGURT. avoid any ultra processed meat, and try to buy meat raw when you can. You can make your own high protein snacks at home.

If you want to do high fat, here are some healthy foods to help support this:

Starchy vegetables

Avocado and the oil

EXTRA virgin olive oil

Flaxseed and other nuts

coconut

sardines

nut butters

full fat yogurt

dark cocao

High fat is good for those who like to fast or workout, or if you are having a hard time with binging because of the flavors. Avoid foods that have sugar loaded into them. You can make your own high fat options at home in your kitchen , ranging from prepping and roasting starchy veggies with olive oil to spinning your own almond butter.

If you prefer to not prioritize protein, as i do, you will loose muscle mass. Muscle mass weighs more therefore it has more calories. When you loose muscle mass your metabolism slows down because it isn’t burning as many calories to keep up with it. You won’t feel full and at some point will develop an intolerance to any protein rich foods. You will start to dislike the taste of meat and your body will have a hard time producing the enzymes needed to break down other foods, so you will become constipated. When you do eat protein, despite the bad reactions, you will feel fuller.

I hope my post could help you! Please stay safe and stay healthy! ❤️❤️🙂

[luvdzu]

[TXT DREAM WEEK 2023] HARIN'S TMI

q. what’s your phone background right now?

🐝 a photo of the members

q. what are you going to do or eat this evening?

🐝 i’m going to eat out with a friend~

q. can vs can’t deal with piled with kakaotalk messages?

🐝 i leave them on read and forget to respond...

q. what’s your current muscle weight?

🐝 it's enough

q. what artist are you into lately?

🐝 tubatu

q. what’s a snack you can’t live without?

🐝 #1 is always fruits

q. if you could go on a trip right now, which country would you go to?

🐝 tanzania

q. whats something you make sure to do before leaving the house?

🐝 check whether i have everything i need

q. what’s the maximum number of days you can stay only indoors for?

🐝 21 days

q. what do you order the most on delivery?

🐝 tteok? beef soup?

q. what’s your current phone ringtone?

🐝 normal setting one

q. what time did you set your alarm for and what time did you wake up?

🐝 i have it on 6:30 but i wake up at 5:00?

q. which sock do you put on first? left foot? right foot?

🐝 left?

q. your own unique way of enjoying ramen

🐝 i don't add the dried veggies

q. what do you say the most these days?

🐝 “let's do it one more time”

q. what’s a meme or slang you learned recently?

🐝 top rizz? good rizz?

q. what’s the most memorable comment you saw recently?

🐝 “you're the most lovely, harin”

q. what’s the most repetitive color in your closet?

🐝 blue and white

q. what’s the most recent delivery that arrived?

🐝 lip balm

q. song that you listen to the most recently?

🐝 tinnitus

q. what’s your most rebellious escape?

🐝 skipping cram school to practice taekwondo and go to seoul for practice

q. if you could live as a different person for just a day, who would it be?

🐝 i want to do my brother's work for a day, going to university and then sell fruits

q. whats something that disappeared and made you sad?

🐝 sugar rush ride promotion period

q. what’s the movie you’ve watched the most in your life?

🐝 i don't watch movies...

q. where do you sit on the dining table and the sofa, at your dorm?

🐝 i like the floor the most

q. when do you think were your prime days?

🐝 i think i haven't reached my prime days... hopefully soon hehehehe

q. what is a mistake you made on stage that nobody noticed?

🐝 voice crack because i slipped

q. if you could get on a time machine and go somewhere, where would you go?

🐝 choosing between cram school, taekwondo, and trainee practice

q. what’s something that always needs to be there in your fridge?

🐝 fruits, specifically grapes

q. what’s the most useless thing you bought lately?

🐝 i don't really buy things that often

q. what do you absolutely need to eat along with pork belly?

🐝 rice and fruit

q. what’s the most recent thing on your phone’s notes app?

🐝 recipe

q. what’s your own small but certain happiness?

🐝 helping my brother in my free time

[saddie-to-baddie]

1.26.23

I'm so tired. Eating more veggies has made me so ravenous at work, the other day I ate my entire lunch on my first 15 minute break. Then for lunch I went and got a wrap from a salad shop, told myself I only would eat half and save the rest for the next day since it was pretty big. Nope, I ate the rest at my desk for my last 15.

🙃

And yesterday was an absolute joke. I slept in too long, so I only made my daughter lunch and I completely spiralled, I skipped breakfast and had fast food for lunch and dinner.

But I have notice that the skin on my hands is very red and itchy, I'm wondering if that's a new flare symptom, I used to notice it a lot before I had been diagnosed and always just assumed my skin was dry/cold weather but it hasn't been especially cold and I've been lotioning myself up like crazy with no change.

So today I'm starting fresh, I'll pack some fruit for break/breakfast since I have no intention of cooking this morning because my mornings are honestly always so chaotic. And for lunch I'll walk to the grocery store and just grab a salad and sparkling water.

On a more positive note, my hair seems much healthier recently! I'm sure it's just the fact that I'm actually conditioning it and using a clip instead of the tangled mess of a messy bun.

I had gotten a little collagen sampler pack to see if I wanted to go that route, take care of the whole "hair, skin, nails" of it all, buy geez they are disgusting in water. I even waited to look up reviews because I didn't want to influence my self. 🥲

So now I'm considering taking some prenatals or something with collagen or biotin in pill form because those drinks are NOT the jam.

I know my hair has never been, and likely will never be, super thick and luscious but I keep seeing this girl at work and she's totally hair goals. I know for sure I can at least improve where I am, especially since I've found out that a side effect of the medication I plan to be starting is hair loss.

[jodilin65]

FRIDAY, MAY 31, 2019 One way Aly has found me was by googling journal excerpts since I often drop copies on multiple sites. Plus, I use the same titles. So I decided to not only use different titles but I searched for an online paraphraser and it’s so funny what it came up with but it makes more sense than that blog bot did!

So I blocked her from my second PB account which I’m hoping she won’t notice since, as I told her, I like to sometimes share things anonymously as I’m curious to see who/what comments I may get and keep things separate from those I know. Anyway, the paragraph below is how I wrote it. The last paragraph is how the paraphraser wrote it.

How I wrote it: Sending the Bose buds back. They’re just too uncomfortable. I wasn’t kidding when I said that whatever’s up there that’s been cursing my sleep for whatever reason would be determined to bypass anything I did. Will use the other sleeping buds. They’re only uncomfortable if I don’t dewax my ear regularly and at least they’re louder.

How the paraphrasing tool wrote it: Sending the Bose buds back. They’re simply excessively awkward. I wasn’t joking when I said that whatever’s up there that has been reviling my rest for reasons unknown would be resolved to sidestep anything I did. Will utilize the other resting buds. They’re just awkward in the event that I don’t dewax my ear normally and in any event, they’re more intense.

Alexa really is a helpful one. :) She said one’s diet should consist of between 45%-65% carbs, so if you have 2000 calories, at least 900 should come from carbs. Well, I really need to up my carbs cuz I’ve been super hungry.

Yesterday I took the bike down to the lake and then looped around the circle once and was fine. Earlier, however, I went down Oak and had a hell of a time coming back up because the winds were pushing against me. I’ve heard plenty of windchimes, planes and freeway noise tonight.

Anyway, when I got back I was pretty winded. Knowing I couldn’t get all the way up Oak without walking a lot of the way, I turned down to the lake and came up Tandy.

Almost feel like I’m a touch anxious but not quite. God, please don’t let me be on the verge of another round of anxiety! Especially after nearly 8 weeks. Please let me break records and be done with it!

I’m definitely hypo. That much is for sure. It’s 78° in here and I’m cold.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2019 Sending the Bose buds back. They’re just too uncomfortable. I wasn’t kidding when I said that whatever’s up there that’s been cursing my sleep for whatever reason would be determined to bypass anything I did. Will use the other sleeping buds. They’re only uncomfortable if I don’t dewax my ear regularly and at least they’re louder.

I don’t buy that food study he and I recently read about at all. Not everyone has Hashimoto’s but I’m proof that it’s not what you eat but how much you eat that affects body weight. Been eating healthier for days now and I’m still the same. That’s okay, though. I’m just glad not to have to deal with as much head pressure or those annoying neck knockers.

Healthier or not, it’s been leaving me hungry because there just isn’t enough substance to this kind of diet so I’ve added some carbs. Fruits, veggies and a little meat just aren’t enough. Made some white rice earlier and it was bland as fuck even with margarine, green onions and a hint of garlic salt. So since I’m already burning and itching down there for some reason, I had a potato.

I’m glad I’ll be seeing Amy in a couple of weeks because I almost feel like I’m regressing down there. I don’t know if it’s just a typical autoimmune flare or what.

Was chatting with Aly about privacy issues and things like that and I think that if I’m ever going to be more public (besides what I intend to leave behind when I die), it won’t be until after we’re settled somewhere. Right now, when we’re expecting to move within a few years, I don’t know that I like the idea of perspective park managers being able to peek into my life. Even when we’re settled wherever I’ve got to consider people like doctors and neighbors. Do I really want them to be able to look in on me no matter how innocent and harmless my words might be? I could go MO but it only takes a second to sign up most places.

Continuing to play dumb to Aly finding my other account, I used the story of Facebook friends in Austria finding me and all that to see if I could get her to come clean and also what else I might learn from her. Well, the closest she came to confessing was saying that if she stumbles upon a “secret” or “anonymous” account by accident, she doesn’t tell the person she found it, but instead goes away and respects the person’s privacy unless she finds shit about her as she once did with Kim. I guess Kim signed up somewhere, bad-mouthed her, and didn’t tell her about it. This is totally something Kim would do, too. I learned years ago that she likes to show her true colors either anonymously or at least without telling anybody about a particular account.

Maybe Aly did stumble upon it accidentally. If she didn’t then if I was dumb enough to use similar titles/excerpts she could have Googled it. Pretty sure I did share a lot of similar stuff there. Another way would be to look me up on a paysite. Finding me accidentally still doesn’t seem likely unless she was going through the user list since I hadn’t used that account in a while and it’s not like I had an entry on the front page at the time she showed up on my visitor log.

Aly seems to really like to prove me wrong on things because ever since I mentioned not being used to hearing from her after 8 PM, what do I do? Yeah, I start hearing from her more. But no matter what she may like to prove and no matter how she found the account, I do still appreciate her friendship! :)

The mama’s boy came in an hour earlier this evening and left just a few minutes later. I figured a few minutes wouldn’t be enough time to cling to its mommy but it didn’t come back, much to my surprise.

It’s turning out to be a pretty quiet evening overall. Soon I’ll be going out on my bike.

TUESDAY, MAY 28, 2019 The Bose bud was still irritating but not as bad as the night before. No one woke me up but it’s still too soon to really say if it’s going to be all that helpful or not. I only slept till after 10. It’s when I’m sleeping all day that the real test will be.

Used the bud last night during one of the times the fucking punk came and went (without the stereo as well) and could hear him loud and clear. Really doubt I’ll get much sleep when on nights until we move, and even then it’s iffy. While I did sleep well enough last night, it wasn’t as well as I have been sleeping. Whenever I get close to appointments I don’t sleep as well because of the stress. Not the stress of the appointment itself but the stress of worrying that I may wake up too soon or sleep too late as it gets close. So I don’t expect to sleep as well for the next week or so.

Last night definitely wasn’t very peaceful until after 10. The punk was coming and going. A small plane circled round and round. Today, I’m not at all liking all the commercial planes I’ve heard since being up. Makes me think I could be in for a noisier night when you can really hear them better. At night and early in the morning I like to turn things off and enjoy the peace and quiet during the hours when there’s less traffic and no landscaping but the fucking planes won’t always let me.

Prick just came in. I’ve noticed the new trend is to visit from just after 6 PM till around 7:30. My God, can it really not stay away from its parents for that long?

Today I grilled a beef patty in a small skillet in Caribbean Jerk marinate and added green onions. Came out great! The sauce is a no-no because it’s processed but I wanted to finish up what was left of it.

Then I sprayed butter spray on some sugar snap peas and baked them in the oven at 425° for 10 minutes. They too, came out great.

The next thing I’m going to learn is how to sautée mushrooms. Seems simple enough from the vids I checked out. You can put oil or butter in the skillet and pretty much add whatever you want. I think I’ll add butter, garlic salt, and green onions and maybe even a little Worcestershire sauce to it, even though the sauce is another condiment I’m not supposed to use. I’ll just have to learn what I like best by experimenting.

The healthier eating seems to be helping with that head pressure I was getting upon standing up and the bounding pulse, but as expected, it’s not affecting my weight. It may make it harder to gain but not cause me to lose. So far I don’t see any significant effect on my blood pressure, especially the systolic number. It may simply be a matter of age that’s got it elevated or it just needs more time.

The only thing is that this new way of eating has me hungry as hell due to the calorie drop.

Yesterday was 7 weeks anxiety-free. The critical testing time is just about here, and yes, I’m very slightly on edge but not enough to call it anxiety. Hopefully, it’s just due to the typical stress of upcoming appointments and entering that crucial zone.

Watching S3 of Slasher on Netflix. A gruesome and violent but nice treat for the end-of-the-day boredom I sometimes get. The only thing I don’t like is the usual shit in modern-day shows and movies and that’s the constant reference to race. I noticed right off the bat that they portrayed the black and Muslim characters as being just wonderful while the whites were all screwed up. Typical modern-day stereotypical portrayal, too. Promote the non-whites and make the whites look bad. Blame them for the world’s problems while you’re at it, too. The correct way for the producers would have been to make some of each color and race good and some bad because that’s reality. So not very realistic in that sense but entertaining nonetheless if you like that genre.

Speaking of blacks, I told Aly I saw a very scrawny black child with an afro hairstyle that would soon be a part of her life somehow. Well, part of this came true. The child she’ll soon be nannying for is very skinny and has “poofy” hair but she’s white.

We both swore off-road trips for life. He hates to drive and I hate being cramped in a car for hours. But the fact that he learned the trip would be free is very appealing to us! It’s called The Arc, and in that arc, you can charge an electric car for free. I-80, which runs from Nevada to the coast, is the area it covers. We could go to Reno or we could go to the one other place in this state I haven’t yet been to but wouldn’t mind visiting…San Francisco! Been to most of the highlights of SoCal (but not San Diego) and I wouldn’t mind visiting Alcatraz. Tom’s been to SF but not Alcatraz. He’s seen it from across the Bay, though. I know Aly’s been there, too.

He said I’d also like Fisherman’s Wharf since it’s a seafood place, but we don’t know for sure if we’ll go. Maybe after my appointments when I’ll have another 3 months off from them, assuming I don’t get anxious and see the shrink after all. We could leave on a Monday, which means we’d be gone during the noisiest day of the week, Tuesday. Then return on Wednesday or Thursday so we could put the trash out. This way we wouldn’t have to tell anyone we’re going or to put our trash out, and we wouldn’t be leaving the animals for too long.

A mini-vacation would be nice even though traveling is usually a pain in the ass. It’d be nice to get away, though, from the same old, same old sights and routines. No cleaning, no devices, no LV! Okay, so maybe I’ll take my phone so I can read or play some games on the road. Either that or my laptop.

Last night I dreamed I found Rosemarie, even though I never knew her last name.

Then I dreamed we visited Miss Perfect and I gave her the same cold, snotty demeanor she once gave me when she and Dave visited us in Maricopa, only I started getting rough with objects I handled in the dream, making myself more than obvious.

I was definitely too nice back then the way I would simply smile and pretend I didn’t notice her shit. I should’ve told her that if she really didn’t want to be there she could get the fuck out. She wouldn’t have come in the first place if it weren’t for Tom, of course.

MONDAY, MAY 27, 2019 Had problems tweeting sweep links for credit to my health account, so I probably won’t bother to use Twitter for sweeping anymore than I use FB. Just Instagram. Damn, do I miss the days when you could simply enter to win and that was that without having to do this and do that and so on and so forth! Sometimes I can get something to tweet, but for the most part, my health account will mostly be used for logging when I get up and when I take vitamins. So Unsplash shares for wakeups, RTs for vitamins.

Still have my main Twitter account for friends, plus one that’s private. As I learned, if you don’t want it found, keep it private.

Disabled WhatsApp’s ‘last seen’ feature. Sometimes I accidentally hit the wrong icon on my phone and Aly wonders if I sent anything she didn’t get. Furthermore, it’s no one’s business when I was last on. This way I have a bit of privacy and can read/reply on my own time and on my own terms. Aly’s not liking replies when her messages are read is just ridiculous. At least to me, it is. Sometimes I like to sit and think of my reply. This way she can’t know when I’ve read something.

No racy heart since cutting out sugar. Yeah, I think the sugary treats I had Saturday and Sunday played a huge role in that along with low thyroid.

Not surprisingly, the mama’s boy is checking in now. I’m surprised it skipped yesterday. Would love to see if it could once again survive most of the week without its mommy and daddy. Really don’t think the Bose buds are gonna cancel him out or anything else that’s insanely loud. Slept with them for the first time last night and found them to be very uncomfortable. If I lay on my back or left ear, it was fine. It was when I lied on the right ear that they were in that thing’s got a little uncomfortable. Thought my outer ear would ache all day but luckily it was fine once I pulled the thing out. Even if I get used to them, and I think I will, we still need to do something to make them a little louder. They’re not quite as loud as they need to be. Tomorrow will be a better test for them, though. I’ll be sleeping later on a day when traffic gets annoying as early as 7. Today I was up a little after 9, and with the holiday and all that, nothing loud had gone by yet.

I was surprised how much landscaping there was even on the holiday but then I guess I shouldn’t be. It’s an everyday event here. I’m glad we weren’t by the front gate because they were cutting tons of trees in the area by the ditch that separates the park from the mainstream.

We got a lot done today. We took care of the pigs and rats and went out to Rite Aid just to get out. I got mini bottles of Merlot and Rosé and some neon green nail polish. He got himself some treats which I refrained from getting.

We also put up the tan screen along most of the carport and it looks nice. More privacy this way.

He made progress with his program by incorporating ads into it but he’s having trouble with Europe because you can’t just force ads on them there like you can here. So he has to figure out how to implement this thing that requires them to give their consent or only offer them paid versions.

SUNDAY, MAY 26, 2019 I slept well and am well-rested but not feeling great at the moment. My HR is elevated again today even though I took a full dose. May have to take another one tomorrow. I would really love to know what my TSH is right now! The thing is that I don’t know if the liothyronine experiment canceled out the effects of the levothyroxine altogether and that was why I was in the thirties, or if that’s just where 50s leaves me nowadays rather than the teens. I don’t even know for sure that that’s what’s causing the raciness but my endo did say that it can race if you’re too low or too high on thyroid.

Wish I had my Fitbit working now to see how steady the raciness is or if it’s changing speeds. Sometimes it’s annoyingly noticeable, and then I forget about it for a while. Is it speeding up and slowing down? I just don’t know. I’m guessing not too drastically.

My Bose sleeping earbuds arrived and they’re charged and ready for testing. The real test won’t come until I’m sleeping in later. I’ve already heard a dozen loud vehicles even though it’s Sunday but the real test will be sleeping during weekdays. That’s when things are really rocking around here. Really can’t begin to guess whether or not they’ll work. They’ll certainly help but some things are just so ferociously loud that the sound I’m pumping into my ear has to be ferociously loud as well and this thing only goes so loud. I can see where it wouldn’t mask snoring, as one reviewer wrote.

Even though the cocoon is virtually ready to go, we’re going to put a hold on it because as Tom said, he doesn’t see how it could not work since it’s like a sound machine in your head. Well, it definitely seals up better than the other earbuds and I can see where it would be less likely to irritate your ear because you don’t push them in like you do the other ones. Going to start with the Warm Static since it’s got the best pitch for masking louder vehicles. Low-pitched sounds are harder to block and therefore, those are the sounds I need to play. I like those with a wide range of frequencies, actually, even though the lower ones are the most important. With a wider range, if someone’s using a circular saw nearby or something like that, it will likely be drowned out. I’m hoping that eventually, I won’t need to play white noise on the stereo in addition, but I think that’s getting a little too hopeful for a bedroom so close to a high-traffic street.

Tom signed up to be a Google developer and next comes incorporating ads into his game. Still hopeful that it will be out by our anniversary but there are no guarantees. The guy still has to work full-time at his regular job.

As they did with the last of many problems, Ask said they would turn the issue of being redirected over to their developer team, but I don’t expect any changes. They like to fuck with their users. That much is obvious.

I thought the reason Aly hated weekends was due to getting bored easily or reminding her of her single days, but she says it has to do with things done to her on weekends while growing up. Of course she didn’t elaborate, but at 38? Okay, I know we don’t just “get over” shit that happened to us and that we can’t just forget things at will, but usually, by that age, I would think you’d be a little less impacted by your childhood no matter how many horrible memories you still harbored. I guess everyone’s different, though.

Had a dream I was standing on the shore of the beach we would spend our summers at as a kid. But instead of looking out at the faint outline of New York, I saw tons of modern buildings with all kinds of lights and knew they were hotels and casinos and things like that. They didn’t appear to be as far as Long Island Sound either.

In another dream, I was vacationing somewhere and walking around someplace by myself. I looked down and realized my low-cut dress was a little too low-cut. Like down to my belly button, LOL. I was braless and realized that I should probably go back to my room and get a bra. So I held the dress as closely together as I could and hurried back to my room.

SATURDAY, MAY 25, 2019 Got a pair of Bose wireless sleeping earbuds on the way! They’ll arrive tomorrow. Can’t wait to try them! We listened to their 10 sample sounds online and most of them seem pretty promising. :) Tom says that because they’re shaped differently than my wired buds, I shouldn’t get earaches. His Hearphones are shaped like Bose.

As I told Tom, if this and the soundproofing drape don’t work, we really do need to find another place to stay until we can safely get out of the state. I can’t spend another half a decade not sleeping half the time. Too many sleep disturbances are just way too hard on me in this day and age. I’m not going to keep spending so much of my time having to lie down because I’m too exhausted to do anything because people can’t shut the fuck up. When I’m constantly woken up, I can’t think straight, I have no energy, and it’s bad for your heart. Do I really need to put my heart at risk with my family history? I think not!

It’s not just such loud traffic so close to me that wakes me up when I’m on nights but just the stress of the wired earbuds irritating my ear or slipping and things like that adds to my stress and certainly don’t help. If I didn’t have to worry about that aspect of things, then I think that would help a bit.

Tom has more faith in the cocoon helping than I do, but we’ll soon see! We did a quick test and had me lay under it while he was talking and moving around it and it definitely does muffle sound. It’s just that because some of the traffic is so ferociously loud and I’m just a few feet away from it, I don’t know that it will be much of a defense against the loudest of the vehicles but we’ll soon find out as I start sleeping in.

That fucking car came in yesterday for a couple of hours. Luckily it left before I crashed. I’m amazed the bastard could stay away for almost a whole week and that it’s even stayed away today, too. I still wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it showed up before the long weekend was out.

Fuck. I just jinxed myself because the little punk just came in. Yeah, I figured it couldn’t go a whole 24 hours without its mommy and daddy since it’s the weekend. So once again I’ll hope the bastard leaves before I crash so I don’t have to wear my wired buds which are a pain in the ass. Even when they’re not irritating they either slip, I get tangled in the wires or knock them out.

Seriously, though, this cock’s too young to visit its parents more than the usual once a week. While I normally try not to judge others on things that don’t affect me, it does affect me. As long as he’s driving that piece of shit, it affects me, and I have a problem with that.

It’s Saturday night, for God’s sake. Go clubbing. Get laid. Visit friends. Do something most 20-somethings do! I can see if the parents were ill or disabled but they’re not. They’re just rude enablers is all.

Slept on the coil mattress last night and it seemed firm at first compared to the airbed but at least I didn’t have to worry about sinking. Didn’t seem as dented either so maybe standing it up for the week it was standing up helped it.

HR’s been elevated all day. It’s an annoying and uncomfortable feeling that may border on scary if I were alone. Fortunately, I’m not, though. We’re both pretty sure it’s due to me being low on thyroid, so just like last weekend, I’ll take a full 75 tomorrow. Since I’m coming up on my 7th week of not having anxiety, I’m thinking I’ll start with taking a 75 once a week. If all continues to go well then I’ll eventually take 75 on weekends and slowly work up to finding my ideal level. I think I can get pretty close to as if I were taking 75 daily, and eventually, I think I’ll be able to take 75 every day without issues. Especially once I’m officially menopausal.

The only good to the elevated HR is that I can eat more without gaining weight because it’s like working out all day long.

He went to Sam’s for things he eats during the week as well as for fruits and veggies for me and the rodents. Together we went to Walmart earlier for a few other things that were best to get there. Gotta go back tomorrow for his soda and pig food.

I’m learning more and more cooking techniques and YouTube has been helping, though I do still try to keep it simple. I look up videos on different things. Not just cooking tips but food storage tips as well. It makes sense that they recommend storing cauliflower in a container or bag of water or else it would dry out.

Learned that the best way to ripen bananas faster is to put them in a bag with an apple. Apples give off ethylene gas which ripens them faster. This is why they’re kept away from the bananas in stores.

I think going fresh/low sodium is definitely going to help my blood pressure and even that strange pressure I would often get in my head upon standing up. Yesterday I was scrambling to finish up processed stuff so I could be mostly unprocessed starting today. At one point, I jumped up and felt it strongly in my head and that’s when I realized that yes, it probably is tied to my blood pressure after all since I didn’t have that problem when I was having less sodium.

So I got bananas and cantaloupe for my smoothies and found a video showing a way to cut the cantaloupe that was much easier than the way I was doing it.

I have chicken, pork, beef and fish and a few different veggies to go with these meats. My goal is to have one smoothie a day, and two small meals which will consist of some type of meat and veggies. Then I can have popcorn for a snack. Once it gets close to labs, I’ll replace one of the meals with a smoothie to decrease my cholesterol intake. Plus, I’m keeping up with my ACV shots.

Today I made beef patties using the George Foreman electric grill I forgot we had until Tom mentioned it. Pretty sure it was one of my old wins. I know it’s healthier with the way it drains the grease but it also dries it out a bit and the thing isn’t as easy to clean as a skillet is. At least it still works and is an option if we want it.

The only bad thing to report is that the AC is having the same problem it had less than two years ago. If you lower the temperature right after it turns off, the compressor doesn’t come on and it blows warm air. I’m hoping that leaving it at the same temp will prevent this problem from happening. It seems like every fucking AC we’ve ever owned has been a problem! Really hope it won’t be another expense looming over us. It hasn’t even been two years since the capacitor was replaced.

FRIDAY, MAY 24, 2019 Today will hopefully be my last frozen dinner for a long time. Now the only processed things I have will be the rest of my yogurt, coffee creamer and fake sugar. Probably not even going to get alcohol for a while once I finish the few cans that are left in the 12-pack I got a couple of weeks ago of Strawberitas.

It seems that almost anything goes well with a banana when it comes to making smoothies. Added carrot juice yesterday and OJ to today’s banana smoothie. Really like adding melons to it, though. Definitely going to pick up some honeydew melon tomorrow at Sam’s. I limit myself to just one banana a day or else I’ll get too gassy.

I swear this rat could sit and watch the pigs for hours, LOL. He was out for quite a while. First, we played our chase and tackle games and then he sat with the pigs for a while.

Spotted Bob sitting on his patio yesterday and filled him in on Joy spiting us for complaining and said that I highly suspected she was personal friends with the people I complained on. I also told him I was worried about the idea of him complaining as well and getting spited too, but he said they didn’t do anything.

Being as intuitive as I am, I got these strange vibes from him. Oh, he was as friendly as usual and commented about the new car which I told him we loved, but when I left to pick up the mail, he got up a few seconds later and headed inside almost as if he couldn’t wait to share what I told him with Virginia. I don’t know what it is. I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s almost like he knows something. Something more than I realize he knows. Do I think he had anything to do with the complaint? Absolutely not. But I sense something going on nonetheless. My first guess is still that Joy spited me because she’s friends with Mel & Gerry. I mean look at all the complaints they’ve gotten yet they’re still here. That doesn’t happen unless you’ve got connections, does it? My second guess is that Bob or the Twenties mentioned it to someone who tipped the assholes off, causing them to complain, but I don’t think so. If that was the case, Joy would have inspected the cypresses and found that they weren’t dead or dying but just ugly. Besides, it was too fast. It was barely 24 hours before the counter-complaint.

But what was he thinking that he wouldn’t say? What does he know that I don’t?

Speaking of Mel & Gerry, their little slacker hasn’t been around since last weekend but I’d be willing to bed just about anything it will be this weekend. Congrats to the bastard for going a whole week without having to see mommy and daddy. Maybe it actually got a job or a GF to distract it.

Aly and I are fed up with the issues on Ask (being redirected to a scam on our phones, and vids on my laptop), so on Twitter, I told them that if they’re trying to lose users, it’s working. They asked for my username twice and after I told them I was tired of my answers being deleted at random, they swore they didn’t delete anything during May. I think they’re either glitchy and too stupid to know it or someone on their team is a prankster that’s randomly deleting answers as a joke. Even some of my questions don’t make it to Aly which is definitely not against the TOS or things she wouldn’t want to answer.

Then they asked me if I was sure I was the only one who used my account. Haha, how convenient. But then I thought about it. I highly doubt anyone has hacked me but Ask isn’t like Facebook, Twitter or Google where they automatically alert you if there’s a new login from an unrecognized browser. And who has wonderful hacking skills? Aly! Remember, she once worked cyber defense for some military thing (she didn’t talk much about it because she wasn’t allowed to) and she was a pervert analyst for the FBI. She’s complained about similar things, though, and I doubt she would hack me, much less delete my answers if she suddenly did have access to my account. More than likely Latvia just has a bunch of idiots living in it.

While I still like the airbed and am not ready to give up on it for good, it definitely has a slow leak. These things should only need to be topped off every 2-3 days. Not 3 or more times a day. I added air before bed, then woke up at midnight to pee, added more air, and woke up again right before 5 needing to blow it up again. I don’t want to take a chance of bottoming out completely with appointments looming right around the corner. It’s important I don’t do anything that could mess up my schedule when there will be enough risks to it once I’m on nights again, so back to the coil I go for now. Better to be dented/tilted than bottomed out.

I learned that this bed deflates differently than any other airbed I’ve had. The other ones deflated on their own and you had to put pressure on them to help push the air out. With this one, it literally sucks the air out of it.

Live chatted with Aly yesterday. Normally that isn’t my thing but the timing was perfect and I didn’t feel like doing anything else at the moment.

Blocked “Siren’s Cat” on PB, suspecting it’s a new Aly account. Well, one she created before they stopped allowing new sign-ups due to Korean spammers. Just thought it’d be the perfect opportunity to do so. :)

THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2019 Saw part of the pilot of Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists and wasn’t impressed at all. Started watching the Deadly Wives series instead since true crime seems to be the next best thing to “fake” crime shows. I’m just not into many other things like comedy, sci-fi, etc.

Do some of these dumbfucks actually want to be caught, though? I mean if I had to pull off the perfect murder and get away with it, I doubt I could as there is always some piece of trace evidence that could very well link back to me. A tiny fiber, a single hair, a microscopic weed even. But some of these people are so damn obvious it almost makes you wonder if they actually want to give up their lives and go to prison where all their meals are cooked for them, shitty or not, and they don’t have to worry about bills. After all, how stupid can you be to keep some of your evidence like incriminating emails? Some people are even plenty obvious just the way they talk during interviews and you don’t have to be good with people to see it. Yes, it’s true that everyone handles grief differently. But then there are some ways you simply don’t handle it unless you’re guilty of something.

Still sleeping well, but I think it’s mostly because I’m on days right now and able to sleep at night. They claim that this bed isn’t leaking and that it takes time to stretch and all that but I wonder if it may be leaking at least a little because it’s definitely losing too much air too fast. It’s still so comfortable, though! So what if I have to top it off a few times a day.

Both domestic and wild animals were pretty funny yesterday. I let the rats out and stepped into another room for a short while to do something. When I returned to the living room, kitchen and dining area, I found one rat trying to break into the kitchen cabinets and another climbing one of the dining room chairs, LOL. Yeah, those are rats for you.

I went out on my combination walk/jog yesterday, and going around the corner toward the office, I picked up my pace and started jogging. Before this, a group of turkeys saw me coming and picked up their own pace by walking faster. But then once I started jogging, they started jogging as well and we were all keeping perfect time with each other, feet slapping the pavement in perfect rhythm, hahaha. Those things don’t usually make me laugh either. The fugly fuckers love to hold up traffic.

I was surprised to see the park left a bright orange parking violation ticket on a vehicle parked up the hill on Oak Lakes. I thought parking on the outer side of that street was permitted. Maybe they complained on someone Joy was friends with.

The paramedics were here yet again for Ralph yesterday evening. He’s in either horrible shape or desperate for attention. Don’t know the guy, so I couldn’t say.

Went out walking this morning down to the lake and back which took 12.5 minutes. Of course, I mixed jogging in as well. The breeze was cool but the sun was warm. We’re finally crawling out of the wintry setback we had, but it’ll be winter again on Sunday. This rain and cold at this time of year is just too weird. It should be close to 90° now.

The planes were super annoying yesterday after being better for a while. Forget just being annoying for a few hours in the morning or a few at night. They were horrible all day long beginning at 5:45 AM. It wasn’t just them but small planes and low-flying helicopters as well. It was windy yesterday so maybe that had something to do with it. They’re annoying today too, but not as much.

Even though there’s one more day, we’re looking forward to not only all the overtime he’s racking up which is big bucks, but the long weekend as well. We have all kinds of plans, the biggest thing being working ads into his app. Most of it he can work on in chunks but he’ll need a few hours to do this particular part which is new to him. We’re hoping to have it out there by our anniversary.

Plus, we have to do some yard work. Even with the 12 cypress trees gone and a tiny lot, there are still so many damn plants on this property.

The soundproofing canopy has to be finished as well. We just weren’t in a hurry this week with him working so late and me being on days.

While he’s coding I will be working on finishing my story. I’m not quite to the end yet but I’m getting there. Then it will go through the final editing before it can be shared.

Had this strange dream about going down to Arizona and meeting his mom for the first time in years who was alive again and much younger too. She looked absolutely nothing like she looked in real life but I knew it was her. She was in her sixties and had short straight black hair. We hugged each other generously when we saw her at Mary’s house. I was standing in the middle of the kitchen a short while later noticing their odd but simple setup. In the kitchen was just a small countertop with not much on it; an oven, and two chairs by a table that had a couple of burners on them. I knew they didn’t eat in the kitchen and preferred to sit in the living room by the TV.

Then we were staying in some hotel and the guy that owned the place who seemed really friendly was willing to swap something pertaining to the bed for us. He said something about how he usually needs 5 hours’ notice but would swap something with his wife or something like that.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2019 The planes were worse this morning than they have been in a while but I think they finally shut up up there.

Slept decently enough, even though I woke up four or five times along the way. I have enough energy to function even if I’m not exactly bursting with energy like I did when I was younger. Even better was that I didn’t wake up with a backache.

Yesterday’s smoothie was a banana with four or five chunks of pineapple and coconut milk. Today’s had a banana, one chunk of pineapple, two chunks of cantaloupe, two chunks of honeydew melon and coconut milk. Both were delicious!

I don’t usually talk food because it can make me hungry but I have been doing pretty well with “unprocessing” myself. I did have a few exceptions yesterday but the only exception so far today that counts as being processed was the flavored creamer and fake sugar I put in my coffee.

I made fresh tilapia with roasted broccoli and cauliflower and later on I’ll have a pork chop with jasmine rice.

For lunch, I may have eggs or yogurt, and the yogurt will be processed as well. Forgot about that one. So, I’m a little high on cholesterol but cutting out meat cuts down a lot of my options and that would be boring.

Did a total of 40 minutes of walking yesterday and got in 10 minutes so far today on the treadmill. Now that the rain has let up I’ll probably go out for a while.

Almost anyone who ate as I do and exercised as I do would be thin or close to it, but with thyroid disease and being older, the best I can get from it is to not gain weight and I’ll settle for that much. Then again, I am still having close to 1500 calories a day, not 1000. ;) But I’m not gaining so that much is good. The most important thing to me right now is having sufficient energy and no anxiety!

Came in as a semi-finalist for another coffee contest where I get a fairly decent discount on K-Cups so I think I’m going to get an 80-ct of caramel macchiato. With the discount and free shipping, it will be about $10 cheaper than what I get on Amazon Prime in the same quantity.

Just got a notice saying I didn’t win a particular sweep but to take $22 off an order of wine. Hmm…

As expected, I’m receiving congratulations on other people’s wins which is annoying as hell. Some stupid law, I guess. The winner gets congratulated on their win and so does everyone else, as if we had anything to do with their winning. rolls eyes

It’s a good thing I saved my Instagram account that I created years ago for sweeping. This way I can follow people on sweeps that require you to follow them in order to be eligible to win without it interfering with the home feed as it may if I were active there with friends. I should have created a Twitter account just for sweeps as well, but since I’m using my main account, I’m much more selective of who I follow there so their tweets don’t flood the feed. I guess I could just jump on my friends’ profiles if I had to or add them to a list.

Aly’s relationship times have changed again. First her longest relationship was nine months. Then it became almost two years. The other day it was just over two years. So I’m guessing three years is next?

TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2019 After a long break from sweeping after having a “dry” spell, I returned to it just days ago. Then I dreamed I won a trip and remembered how I’d often have “win dreams” prior to winning something even if it was almost never what I saw in my dreams.

Yesterday I was notified I won a Keurig mini!

Still winning…still psychic… :) :) :) :)

It’s premonitions like this that make me worry when I have bad dreams about Tom. Most of my dream premonitions have been of a negative nature, after all.

I still worry about Tammy too. First I had the dream where she lost a lot of weight and then she did. So I still worry about the strong feeling I’ve had for a while about something bad happening to her when she’s 62. All I can do is hope I’m wrong since I didn’t really have any specific dreams about that. Sometimes it doesn’t need to be specific, though. With me, a dream doesn’t have to be right on in order for it to happen. It’s just dreaming about something that’s close enough. Like maybe I’ll dream someone gets into an accident and breaks a leg when in reality they break an arm. Or maybe I’ll get a strong feeling while I’m wide awake.

Oh well. No sense in worrying until and if anything happens. It’s the dream of Trump not getting re-elected that I hope means something!

I figured sleeping really well the first night on the new bed was just a fluke because it was the opposite last night, although I’m not that tired. I can still function and that’s most important. I woke up at least a dozen times. Once due to traffic and then for no apparent reason. I was able to go back to sleep right away, though. Tom thinks I might have gone to bed too early. Maybe I should try not reading myself to sleep till I’ve been up 15 hours rather than close to 14.

What sucks is that it seems like this bed is messing up my lower back. Guess it’s a good thing we never got another waterbed because it would probably do the same thing now that I’m older and need more support. Worst case scenario, I go back to the coil mattress. That never caused me pain. It’s just not as even as the airbed.

Another thing hit me about Steve. Did he think I was Jessie or someone else? The bitch I spoke to said I was a “lady who said she knew you in 1990.” She didn’t say my name unless she mentioned it after we hung up.

Oh well again. If he wanted to talk to me, he’d find a way with or without whoever that bitch really was. This may explain some of the past dreams I’ve had, though. In them, we would meet up in person somewhere and he’d never seem as happy to see me as I was to see him.

Had a million dreams last night. In dream number one, I was sitting in the corner of the living room on the floor with multiple pieces of something spread out before me, though I don’t know what it was. This living room had windows from floor to ceiling and a very bright light right outside. The light was so bright that it lit up the room very well. Some guy went walking by and he was even closer to the window than you can get here but he never noticed me.

In dream number two, I was sleeping on a couch at the side of a road somewhere of all places. The road was fairly long and straight and I was about three or four houses from the end of it where another street crossed it. it seemed like a residential street and my first thought was Bell Air Drive where my cousins lived as kids.

A motorcycle slowly came by and began slowing down close to me since it had to come in close to the end of the street. I started to feel a little uneasy but they didn’t seem to notice me either.

Feeling nervous and deciding not to push my luck, I got up and gathered my blanket and a leather messenger bag.

Suddenly, a big burly black guy was there telling me it was a nice bag and all that. I immediately felt uncomfortable and knew he was up to no good by the way he was leering at me. I quickly headed through an open door and down a long hallway and he followed me down. I tried being polite at first but when that didn’t work I told him he needed to leave.

The hall eventually opened into a room that was well-lit. What appeared to be an Asian girl with her hair in a ponytail that hung almost to the middle of her back, stood behind a counter in what might have been a kitchen. I told her to call 911 and she did immediately. Not sure if the guy left before the cops showed up or not.

In the third dream, Holly of all people was examining me down there telling me my LS looked worse than ever and I needed to make an appointment with my dermatologist.

In a split second, I was wearing what looked like a long tank top that barely covered my butt and I was standing by a parked car on the shore of a lake. Just a few feet away was the water’s edge in which I dipped my toes.

In dream number four, I was in an airplane and there was a lot of turbulence as we were preparing to land.

In the last dream, I was worried about poisoning my animals. I had a lot more pets than I do in real life and even more than rodents and fish. This dream was very vague but it had to do with something that got in their water and I thought of how horribly guilty and sad it would make me if it killed them. So I knew I had to hurry up and dump it out before they could drink it.

MONDAY, MAY 20, 2019 On the treadmill now as I make this entry. It’s too soon to know whether or not it was just a coincidence but I slept absolutely fantastic on the new airbed! And this is even with waking up with a coughing fit from a tickle in my throat. I took Children’s Benadryl to help me get back to sleep even though I figured I would wake up totally exhausted once I got up for good as is often the case when my sleep gets broken up, but I didn’t! I actually woke up feeling rather refreshed for a change even though I was up for about an hour after three hours of sleep. Slept a total of 8 hours when you add it all up and not once do I remember waking up other than when I began coughing. I get that one night won’t tell me if it really was the bed that helped or if it’s because I slept mostly at night that helped, but even when I would sleep at night, I still woke up a few times if only just because.

The only two negatives to this bed besides the fact that it won’t last forever is that for some reason airbeds don’t retain heat and feel cold to the touch. I was cold when I got up coughing and had to raise the temperature and throw on a flannel nightgown. Normally I don’t like to sleep in anything other than my undies because of the way clothes bunch and twist around me. This will be great for summer but during the winter I may have to either use the coil mattress or add some layers to buffer me from the mattress itself.

Had to add air a couple of times as they said I would because initially, the thing stretches. However, if I continue to sleep as well as I did last night, having to use a couple of mattress pads and other things because of the cold will be the least of my worries and I will definitely be sticking with this mattress until it bottoms out and I have to get another one.

Really hope Tom and Aly are right when they say that the abortion laws are unlawful and will be overturned before they can go into effect. The biggest thing is for Roe v. Wade to continue to exist!

I have never seen the country in such bad shape since Trump took over. Everything has gone to hell. I understand wanting to keep illegals out since we’re crowded enough and our resources are burdened enough, and I can understand wanting to keep radical Muslims out, but everything else he’s done has been absolutely horrible. He worsened the economy. He separated some families unnecessarily. He scrapped Obamacare so the poor and those without insurance could have zero options. He attacked gay rights. He encouraged hate crimes against Jews. Now he’s instigated a war on women, and again, I don’t see how a guy could possibly hate women this much and not be gay. I think he’s ashamed of his own sexuality and locked in a closet he just can’t get out of and because of it, he’s taking his frustrations out on women. This and the desire to control is usually why men rape and or try to deny women their rights. They hate that they can’t get into the gender they wish they could be attracted to and so they lash out at them instead. I understand that people in his age group weren’t exactly quick to acknowledge and accept their sexuality if they were gay or bi but that’s no excuse to shit on people just because you can’t handle it. If you want to be ashamed of your sexuality and live in denial, that’s your right. But why take your frustrations out on women because of it?

So, please! If you’re a woman, when it comes time to vote again, respect yourself! And if you can’t have self-respect for your own self, have respect for other women!

Melody checked in her account a few days ago, so I saw, but I don’t think either she, her enabling husband, or her bratty son have checked their messages. I still worry about what may happen when and if they do because they’ll know who I am, thanks to Joy. If not, they’ll certainly suspect me.

Speaking of Joy, I tried to see if Melody was on her friend list but she has the list hidden. For some reason, this doesn’t surprise me.

The punk came in twice yesterday. In less than 24 hours it just had to run to mommy and daddy for an hour. Then less than an hour later it had to run back for two more hours.

So we’re back to the twice-daily visits?

Later…

Well, that didn’t go over well at all. I called the number I found listed for Stephan and a woman who sounded mean, black and about his age answered. I asked if she knew Stephan and she hesitantly said yes.

I told her who I was and heard her tell him that it was a lady who said she knew him in 1990. Some words were exchanged which I couldn’t understand, though I think I recognized his voice, then she told me he wasn’t coming to the phone. I asked if she was his wife and in a snotty tone she goes, “None of your business. He’s not coming to the phone.”

So fine, fuck it. I don’t need that unnecessary rudeness from her or to hear from him if he’d rather not hear from me. Funny too, cuz Stephan, black as midnight himself, swore he’d never again marry a black bitch like that, having once said black women were “assholes.” My guess is he feels bad and that she’s a major control freak that has him wrapped around her finger, but that’s their problem.

All these years I hoped he’d found his ideal soulmate as I did but when I think about it, it’s hard for me to believe he could be happy with such a rude, defensive, hostile bitch, black or white. And I’d be willing to bet she truly was his wife too, or else she wouldn’t have said, “None of your business” when I asked if she was.

One thing that’s funny is that he’s got to be wondering how the hell I made it out to Cali, LOL. Well, he’ll never know!

Something hit me after I hung up, though. Did she hang up on me when I said, “Fine, fuck you,” to her rudeness, or did he take the phone from her right as I hung up? Just trying to remember if that was really a hello I thought I heard in the very last split second that might have been from him but it doesn’t matter because I don’t want anything to do with either of them at this point.

Also, maybe he doesn’t remember me as fondly as I remember him. I did bum a lot of smokes off of him when I was trying hopelessly to quit, and I was unable to see him the way he saw me.

But then he did visit on his own when I moved to South Deerfield and he did surprise me with 40 bucks in cash on his way out which I never asked for. I was grateful as hell for it but never asked for it.

I’ll never know what’s on his mind now and he’ll never know what’s on mine because even if he secretly contacted me, I don’t know that I could have a connection with someone connected to someone so mean. This totally sounded like the type of woman who would gladly run out and shoot me if she could. I just get the impression she wouldn’t want him to have any female friends even if they were on the other side of the country.

As I said before - and I should’ve kept my own word - to hell with looking for people. Let them look for me for once. My name was on the mailboxes, too. He could’ve remembered my name if he’d cared to just as I remembered his.

SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2019 Decided to do this entry while Tom was still asleep and before we get on with the day’s plans.

Been raining hard and steady since I got up at midnight. It should NOT be winter here now! It should be warm to hot and dry as a bone. Fuck having to be bundled up in my robe and slippers with the heat on!

Believe it or not, I’ve now slept well twice in a row. It definitely helps not to be crashing really early in the morning and especially during the week. Crashed around 3 p.m. and got up at 8 p.m. to pee. Was just getting back into bed without the earbud when I heard the little mama’s boy leave, so the timing was perfect. Still can’t believe someone that young would spend Saturday night at their parents’. If he never gets married again, I wonder if he’ll ever at least get some kind of partner to occupy more of his time? Haven’t heard him as much overall but that seems to be an on-and-off thing.

The new pillows I got also helped. For just ten bucks I got a two-pack at Sam’s Club and they’re much better for stomach sleepers like myself. Not as good for side sleeping but I think that in order to have a decent stomach pillow, it’s got to be flatter and therefore not as good for being on your side. So I use my old pillow if I’m just relaxing or listening to my book, and the new one to sleep with. If the airbed arrives before I crash, I’ll also be sleeping on a level surface which will be nice.

No longer caring what this place looks like, I’m going to lean the coil mattress against the bedroom window closest to the street. It would be best to keep it close by in case the airbed springs a leak. There’s room for it now that we’ve rearranged. We put the bean bag in the living room and I sat Suki on a chair in the bedroom by the bathroom. I don’t know if this is going to be a permanent setup. That depends on how easy it is to move the cocoon and if it works in the first place, which I highly doubt.

The cocoon may be delayed a day or two like all our plans usually are because he couldn’t find the saw he needed to cut the PVC pipe we picked up at Lowe’s before going to Sam’s. So he had to order one on Amazon. That will arrive today as well. The question is at what time.

My HR has been elevated for a few days now and I’m wondering if it could be because I’m low on thyroid. Therefore I took a full dose today but I won’t go back to doing that every single day because I’m not done with my experiment yet. Tomorrow I enter the critical zone of the testing. The next two weeks should tell me quite a bit. It won’t tell me for sure if it was a dosage issue but it will give me a good hint either way, depending on what happens and how I feel.

Also, I’m determined as ever to cut out almost all processed foods. Not because I think I’ll lose weight but because my blood pressure is too high due to the extra sodium, and the bounding pulse which causes what I call neck knockers gets annoying when you can feel and hear your pulse beating at the side of your neck like I sometimes can when I’m overdoing the sodium.

The problem is that I can’t cook very well because not only did it never really interest me but it’s just not something I’m naturally good at. So many recipes seem simple at first glance but then I find they’re actually a bit complicated, requiring a million ingredients. I figured it could get kind of expensive and wasteful if I get a ton of things that I only need a teeny part of here in there and then the rest of the stuff goes to waste.

Aly’s a good cook so I’ll ask her any questions I have but I’m basically going to do my best to keep it simple. I know I shouldn’t be having much cholesterol either but at this point, I’m mainly focused on what I can feel. If my arteries are getting any plaque buildup from too much cholesterol, I can’t feel that right now. But I can definitely feel when I overdo the sodium so rather than worry about cholesterol, calories and things like that, I’ll just focus on sodium which basically means sticking with unprocessed foods. I’m not going to give up my coffee creamer and my fake sugar, though. It’s mostly the frozen dinners I’ll be kicking out.

Now here’s some really good and interesting news. I’m the closest I’ve ever been to finding Stephan (Steve)! Everything he ever told me checked out. He really was from Chicago. I ended up on a site I’ve never seen before. I don’t know if it’s new or what but he’s listed as having lived in Chicopee as well as Springfield like Jessie told me. Also Holyoke, Plattsburgh, New York and Pensacola, Florida. The places he lived in had the dates he lived there next to them, and I could see that he left our apartment building the same year I did. I left in April and he left in October. The last date listed is 2000. If he hasn’t moved since then he should be in Chicopee right now.

There was also an email address present so I sent a quick message, as well as a few Facebook messages to possible relatives. Tomorrow I’ll call the number that was listed for a landline. Would love to reconnect and find out how he’s been all these years!

Poor Aly and Cam. Cam was admitted to the hospital after having pains all over and weakness in his legs. I guess the doctor thought he might have a tumor but then said it’s likely spinal stenosis. Aly said Cam disagrees, will see another doctor he trusts, but will be in the hospital overnight.

Damn! These two have more medical emergencies than most people I know.

SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2019 Fucked up fact of the day: More people accept and support Muslims than gays despite the utter atrocities Muslims have committed for centuries. So congrats to Taiwan for being the first Asian country to do the right thing…let ALL people marry who they want that is of legal age and consent! :)

Slept better and longer but I’m sure that the next time around I’ll sleep shitty. I seem to go back and forth. HR was elevated for a bit and I’m cold, too. Slightly fatigued but nothing beyond being older and hypo.

Still woke up several times but they weren’t “bad” wakeups. It wasn’t for traffic or nightmares. Just to pee and just because.

Love my pink glitter gel eyeshadow that I finally had the energy to try. :)

Can’t remember much in the way of dreams other than us driving through the countryside in another country. Maybe in Thailand?

FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2019 Needing heat at this time of year sucks! Hell, my buddy in Nebraska is warmer than we are now. Not. Funny.

And is my sleep cursed? Oh no, I just “happened” to wake up once to pee, twice because I couldn’t get comfortable, then because my ear hurt (thankfully my ENT appt is in 19 days), then because I was cold, then I stupidly took the earbud out hoping traffic wouldn’t wake me up by some miracle, and then I had a terrifying dream of him having chest pain.

I was standing in the doorway to the second bedroom in the dream chatting with him. As I went to turn away and walk down the hall, he rubbed his chest and I asked if he was okay. He said his heart really hurt today and my dream self knew this wasn’t the first time this had happened. I had been trying to get him to see a doctor to no avail. Then he slumped down at the side of the bed. Instead of a wall with a window in it, there was a huge sliding glass door with a padlock in the middle of it. When I looked through the glass, I didn’t see houses or buildings but the ground was definitely covered in snow.

Anyway, I’ve been tired ever since I got up and frustrated to the point of tears. If we can’t figure out how to get me to sleep better soon, then as much as I hate spending time and money on appointments, I may have to go back to my sleep/neurologist doctor and see if he can help me. Yes, I’m terrified of medication and prone to side effects but I wonder if I may need something to help get me into a deeper sleep and prevent me from waking up so damn much.

Then my HR was elevated in the 90s for a while and now I have a backache that came on suddenly. The middle of my back is aching so I’m probably going to take ibuprofen for it.

So definitely not a good day even though things could be worse. Shitty weather and shitty sleep which is making me grumpy. I still think the main problems are the traffic and the earbuds. The earbuds aren’t always comfortable and sometimes slip and allow traffic to make its way through.

I swear there’s something up there that does not want me sleeping. It’s like it finds a way to override everything I do to try to help myself. That’s what worries me, too. If there really is something up there actively and deliberately cursing my sleep, running to the doctor won’t help. If I could eliminate the traffic and the need for earbuds, my sleep wouldn’t be perfect but I think that would help a lot. But how??? I still have serious doubts about the cocoon working but what have I got to lose? The plan is to pick up PVC pipe tomorrow and basically drape sheets of soundproofing material over the top of the bed and down the side closest to the street. I have to have a way to get in and out and for air to circulate so the inner side will be open.

Another thing we’re looking at is an airbed. Not a high-ender like the one we had in Arizona but just a cheap 13-inch full-size air mattress which is the same height as this saggy coil mattress. They’re actually more comfortable than waterbeds and keep you cooler. We’re not in a position to spend money on a high-ender right now because we’re still in debt and need to get the fake grass and trellis as well.

Another thing to consider is wireless earbuds so I wouldn’t get tangled up in the damn wires.

All I know is that I’m tired of being tired and stuck in bed half the time because I have to do things in spurts. Well, I’m tired of spending so much time in bed or sitting down and not being able to live my life to its fullest! I’m not disabled for fuck’s sake! But we’ll be stuck here for years and that right there makes me want to scream even though there are no guarantees it’ll be much quieter wherever we move to.

I’m so tired so much of the time that I’m now looking for ways to cut down my workload. I redesigned the rats’ cage so I no longer have to wash shelves every day. Instead, I set up more hammocks and tubes which are easier to wash and clean than those big old shelves. I love my pets but sometimes I wonder if getting them was a smart idea since they’re both quite a bit of work. Sometimes we should do what’s best and not what we want. With them, I did what I wanted.

I can’t believe how shitty I’ve slept ever since we came here. I hate this place! How did sleep come to be such a struggle for me? How? It’s always been a problem for me but this is worse than some of the apartments I’ve had. All I want is to sleep decently enough. Why are the simplest of things so out of reach for me? Instead, I always have to wait till I’m on days to sleep a little better which goes too fast. My schedule would flip faster if I could always sleep better as I do at night. This is ridiculous. Just fucking ridiculous. Something’s got to be done cuz this is wearing me down to shit. I don’t understand why I can’t always go back to bed or nap on tired days. Something up there preventing me from doing so in order to keep me tired?

I asked myself if I wanted to stay here even if I could sleep, and no, I definitely don’t. It’s too cold, it’s too expensive, and I would prefer to be somewhere further from the road and where I didn’t have to hear landscaping every single fucking day. It’s going to take years, though. I just really hope to hell wherever we end up works out because if we get there when I’m 58 or so, we won’t be able to get back out until I’m 65 with the way something up there is obsessed with me being stuck in places I don’t want to be. The house is decent enough and the neighborhood is upscale, but the climate, costs, and noise are ludicrous.

I checked my journal and the longest I seem to have gone without the type of anxiety that started at the end of 2016 is 7.5 weeks. I went from November 23rd to January 15th without anxiety. Monday will be 6 weeks since I lowered my medication so we’re getting close to when the real testing begins. if I can get past June 3rd it will start looking a bit promising and also a bit disappointing, of course, since I don’t want the problem to have been a dosage issue. We’ll find out soon!

Because I had so many damn books on Prosebox, I decided to break up my journals by state rather than by year. Even doing that I still have 55 books, mostly stories. Only 10 of the books are journals and other things.

THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2019 Alabama women have just 6 months to enjoy freedom and control over their reproductive system and then a potential abortionist will receive a jail sentence far greater than any rapist will ever receive.

shakes head in disgust Sick. Just utterly fucking sick as hell. Sometimes I’m truly and honestly ashamed to be part of the human race. I really am.

Speaking of jail, I dreamed I did something to a couple of people, though I’m not sure what. I either killed or kidnapped them. Either way, it must have been pretty serious because when I asked this woman how much jail time she thought I would get since the cops were onto me and on their way to arrest me, she said 400 months. Even with my shitty math, I knew that pretty much meant I’d be locked up for the rest of my life.

Then I was trying to get rid of some kind of evidence, possibly the bodies, before the cops could arrive. Then I was eating stuff in a hurry in a pantry and looking for a way out of this huge house I was in. A younger woman was there as well and was trying to help me get out but she didn’t seem to know the layout of the place either.

In another dream, I was telling Tammy about a collection of things I wanted on Amazon and she suggested I go back to working the Turk for extra money. “Seriously, Turk every piece,” she said. Only I had to explain to her that the Turk wasn’t what it used to be.

Definitely feeling a bit more refreshed today even though I slept just as shitty. Well, almost just as shitty. I woke up a million times but was able to fall right back asleep, and none of the times I woke up was due to traffic because I made a point of really securing the earbud as best I could. I think it’s mostly when I can’t fall back asleep right away that I end up exhausted the next day. I didn’t take anything either, which may have also helped. No Benadryl, no Ibuprofen, no Melatonin, etc.

So I’m catching up on what I was too tired to do yesterday, knowing that having energy tomorrow is hit or miss, as always.

I feel like we’ve totally slipped back into winter. It’s mid-May and it’s been pouring ever since I got up 6 hours ago. I should be sleeveless and barefoot yet I’m bundled up in my robe and slippers.

Both rats were out earlier and were as cute as usual. They ran around and explored, they wrestled with each other playfully, and they went pig-watching as well. Blitz and one of the rats were giving kisses between the bars of the cage.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 2019 After being woken up by traffic THREE days in a row (along with other things), I told Tom I’ve had enough of the sleep deprivation that’s hindering me from living my life to its fullest and fucking with my brain since I can’t even think straight half the time and I want this house on the market and us gone by the end of the year! I can’t just stay here and not get much sleep for the rest of my life. That’s just not realistic. Fuck money, fuck insurance and fuck being trapped here. Really, I’ve never heard of anyone else who was unable to move when they wanted to. This only happens to us. I’m at the point where if we have to take only our computers, clothes and some kitchen stuff and live in a tiny, ancient RV for a while, fine. Love and health are much more important than money and material objects.

But even that isn’t doable for several different reasons. :(

Ugh, how can I not think my sleep is cursed?! Even if I wanted to think something up there wasn’t cursing it, I couldn’t believe that. It’s just too damn obvious. Something up there literally doesn’t want me sleeping most of the time! It’s one of many reminders that there can’t possibly be a God up there but only a devil. I’m tired of feeling like shit so much of the time because I’m not allowed to sleep! I knew yesterday’s energy was a rare occurrence and to enjoy it while I could as I would be denied sleep again soon enough. I miss the days of being woken up a few times a month instead of a few times a week. I’d be broke and sleep in a sleeping bag in the forest if that’s what it took to get my sleep! Seriously, I just want a place I can sleep in! Okay, so I know my sleep is cursed no matter where we live, but we can at least eliminate the traffic part of it someday, right? Right? And then it’ll just be thunder, my bladder, strange dreams, neck knockers and my ear waking me up if I don’t wake up just because, right?

But because only Tom and Jodi can’t move when they want to, Tom insists on building me a cacoon using the soundproofing material we’ve got, ensuring me it’ll block 80% of the noise. He’s mentioned this before too, so I said go ahead since I’ve got nothing to lose at this point, but I know it won’t do me any good. But how close you are to the soundproofing material matters, I guess. This makes sense, but I still have to see it help to believe it. The earbuds would actually be pretty helpful if they could just stay put and not irritate my ear. We’re just too fucking close to the road for as loud as traffic is these days for much to do me any good. Even after midnight, there’s traffic. What happened to the days of old people being early to bed, early to rise?

Other than being tired and stressed out, I haven’t had any actual “stabbings” but I’m definitely stressed out and almost feel like I’m floating up to the border where I might eventually become anxious. Right now my sleep is more of a problem than anxiety. Yes, it’s better than anxiety but still plenty bad enough. I’m missing out on so much life. I could be more active, spend more time with the animals, and do a lot more if I weren’t tired so much of the time. As it is, it’s taken me hours to do this entry which I’ve been doing in spurts.

Ralph is either the hypochondriac from hell or his own health is really going downhill because the paramedics are here for him again. No lights on next door so I guess they gave him a talking to about waking them up every time he has a crisis. They weren’t here long either. This time they came and went pretty fast. Got a feeling he won’t make it this time. Hopefully, we’ll be gone before there’s a chance someone can move in there with a motorcycle or other loud vehicle. Really, what’s the point of having adult communities if they’re going to be this noisy? Huh? What’s the point???

Now onto my intense hatred for 95% of the male population. I don’t know who I’d want to kill more if I could get away with it, the politicians that think they own women’s bodies or the rapists the “law” keeps setting free to re-offend.

I’m just so, so fucking tired of men telling women what to do. And don’t even think for a minute they’re banning abortion because they just love kids to death. No, these shitsters are doing it just to be controlling. If abortion isn’t eventually illegal everywhere, it will be in most of the country. Just so sad (and a bit frightening) to see the country get set back 46 years, and a predominantly white one, too. This barbaric shit is usually a thing in countries that aren’t predominantly white. I would have thought this was unconstitutional but I guess it was never part of the constitution in the first place since it wasn’t legalized till 1973.

shivers It sends chills down my spine to think of some poor teen raped by someone - maybe even a family member - and forced to have a kid that may come of it. I’d do all I could to induce an abortion for damn sure and I don’t care who may have a problem with me saying so either.

When it comes to most unfair/sick things, I can shrug them off and say, “Oh well, it’s not my problem.” It isn’t that I lack empathy or compassion but things just don’t faze me or get me as emotional as with many people be it due to being older or whatever. But as a woman, it’s hard not to take this shit personally and feel bad for the women it affects. Shit like this opens the door for other crazy laws that quite possibly could affect me directly. I just hope they can find good homes for all these unwanted kids or else they’re likely to be resented and abused if they stay with the mothers or end up in the system. I was actually “lucky” that I only got starved and threatened when in the foster system myself.

Haven’t gotten my glitter gel eyeshadow yet but my cat paw socks came. So cute!

Went out and checked the ground as best as I could yesterday morning and could only find 2 of 6 stars, not counting the one I stepped on the day we discovered them broken/cut. Tom will do a better search this weekend when he goes weeding and we’ll look under plants. I looked under the plant by the bedroom as best I could and didn’t find anything.

Here’s another weird thing I noticed. There was only an inch or two of wire hanging from the solar charger. That’s the same amount extending from the stars I found. Where the hell are the rest of the wires? They were staggered when new and ranged from 5 inches of wire to over a foot. Even when it’s windy there’s no way they could’ve simply blown away. But it’s still a bit hard to believe someone who happens to carry scissors around in their pocket just happened by and snipped them before pocketing them and walking off.

TUESDAY, MAY 14, 2019 Feeling more awake even though traffic woke me up once or twice and I woke up just because as well as to pee. I even went out for a short walk and it didn’t snuff the energy out of me either.

Had all 4 furballs out and the rats didn’t troll the pigs too much, LOL. Fuzzy was his usual self, climbing all over me and all that, but of course his brother kept his distance.

I’m still not sure what to make of the solar stars. I put an older, less pleasant-sounding chime where the stars were cuz I’m curious to see what may happen to it. Aly thinks the stars were probably cut but I don’t know. I just think it’s sad that in an adult community of all places, bikes get stolen, you can’t leave nicer hoses out, someone cuts Bob’s bush, and someone may have vandalized something of ours as well. Plus there’s the noise, the spiteful manager, water outages, etc. But no, we’re not leaving. I’ll always want to and have a part of me that regrets not leaving but it’s smarter and safer to stay put and replace this place. So this house is still temporary in my mind. I’ll still want to weed out stuff I no longer want or use too, in which case we’ll have to dump, sell or donate it since we’re not leaving. Just not sure how we’ll pay for a new place if we’re not selling this one.

Other things just hit me…where did all the stars go? I know one was on the ground cuz I stepped on it and broke part of it. But where are the others??? I’ll have to go check when it’s light but if they’re gone then yeah, I’d go with a cutter that kept them as souvenirs for some strange reason.

Also, I mentioned to Aly that the area they were in got more sun than the bottles but her dad has chimes hanging by wires that are always in the sun and they’re fine. Plus the one with the bottles is heavier and has been there longer, so we’re not sure what to think. I think we both are leaning toward them being cut.

I wondered if scissors would leave such a jagged edge if they were cut, and as she said, that would depend on how tough they were to cut. I’d think they’d be easy to cut being so skinny.

Once I search for the stars and see what happens to the chime I put in its place, that will give me a better idea of what might have happened. It’s cool that I can always share these things and count on her feedback. :)

Had a dream I won a trip to Italy. Funny too, cuz when I’d have win dreams when sweeping, a win of some kind would often follow. Yes, I entered some sweeps yesterday. More than likely, though, it’ll only get me spammed. You don’t have just a few hundred to a few thousand entrants these days as you did over a decade ago. I miss winning big like I used to but history is never allowed to repeat itself unless it’s in a bad way, so it seems. :( But damn do I miss those overnight letters! Smaller wins are usually just sent or you’re notified of them by email. Big wins typically bring phone calls and overnight letters. If you receive both at once, you have every reason to get excited. :) I’ll always remember returning from the store and seeing that FedEx envelope leaning against the door and the voice message with the cheery voice saying, “Hi! This is so and so in such and such prize department…”

One of my big wins was a travel voucher to Italy but we found we could use it anywhere and that was when we chose our best trip ever which was to Maui.

Damn, does OLS ever have more complaints than ever! I believe every single one of them, too. I saw much of the shit they mentioned with my own eyes when I was heavily into sweeping in 2005-2008. They do ban you if you complain or ask any questions that might be perceived as negative. Those running the site have always been very rude. If you accidentally post a sweep you shouldn’t, instead of explaining why it’s not allowed, they threaten to ban you if you do it again. One person said they’re right-wingers who will ban any liberals. Also, I don’t know if the owner is crazy or just plain mean and greedy but lately, those who pay for them aren’t given access to premium features! That’s new. Plus, there was something in the forum about trying to reach Brent. Did he up and abandon the site or something?

I only used the site because, despite the shitheads running it, it’s the best laid-out and best-organized sweeps site I could find.

Anyway, we were in Italy in the dream. The only part I remember all that well is riding on a tour bus and looking out at this green grassy field with gentle slopes and hills and thinking how lovely it looked.

The weird dream was being in Iran of all places. We were in a crowded restaurant and I was surprised by all the other white English speakers around.

At home, Tom and I were looking at our computers projected onto large screens and I was trying to figure out why there were breaks in text in one of my documents.

Then I dreamed Tom was mildly hypo and on 50 mcg of my poison. They had these home thyroid testing kits. After a test, he found his TSH had risen to 11. Knowing the uncommon but horrifying effects Levothyroxine can have, I was worried for him because I knew that meant he’d have to go up to 75s.

In real life, just like I did 2 nights ago, I feel very faint traces of being closer to borderline but no real anxiety. Again, I almost wish I would get “stabbed” so I could just go back on my full dose, but it’s such a god-awful feeling that I’d also rather not.

MONDAY, MAY 13, 2019 After giving it much thought, I’m going to try my best to follow my head and not my heart, be smart and just stay put. Since there is no perfect place or perfect climate other than maybe Maui which we could never afford, we’re going to make this our permanent home. Tom doesn’t mind where we live and I realize that I not only don’t have the energy I used to for making such big moves but moving would be pointless for the most part. Noise is everywhere these days and the only benefit would be that Florida would be warmer and cheaper. But why swap the winters for humidity? Why go from one noisy place to another? Why have to get new doctors, new banks, new stores, new everything?

This way I could still have fun customizing a new house. We’re pretty sure the park would let us replace this house with something new, even if it had to be one floor. This house is too old to be worth replacing windows, redoing walls, floors, shower stalls and things like that.

I know I bitch and complain that traffic wakes me up but that or something else would only do the same thing if we moved. The motorcycles are much worse in Florida. They were maddening in just the few days we were there. If most vehicles really ever are electric, this isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Plus, the boom stereos aren’t going away ever.

The only thing I don’t get is why I don’t adapt and haven’t gotten used to sleeping through all the traffic when I’ve been here almost six years. How many more years do I need to get used to it???

I also don’t get why everyone else can move when they want to but Tom and Jodi. Money held us back in Phoenix for years, the economy trapped us in Jessie’s trailer for years, and if we still wanted to move from here, it would be years before we could. Yet everyone else that has a problem with wherever they are gets to up and leave. I’m happy for them but what have they got that we don’t that makes them able to just split when they want to?

Anyway, my sleep has been cursed all my life in just about every place I’ve ever lived. To ask if it’s really cursed or not is a no-brainer. No one happens to have CRD and be the lightest sleeper on earth that’s not sleep-cursed so that much is obvious. Therefore, knowing this, why move? I barely have the energy half the time to walk down the street let alone move cross country.

Staying here may not be what I want but it’s smart and doable. Life isn’t usually about what we want it to be anyway but more about what’s best and or meant to be. Well, I definitely seem meant to be in the noisier places.

So what if traffic wakes me up? I can usually go back to sleep at some point. So what if it’s a bit too cold in the winter? Summers are gorgeous here. So what if there are planes? Planes fly everywhere (they’ve been quieter which may be due to the weather).

The only benefits to moving would be that we could go someplace warmer, cheaper, and probably to a smaller city where there’d be fewer people and less traffic. But Oregon taught me that fewer people and less traffic don’t always bring more peace. The loud vehicle craze hadn’t hit yet back when we lived in Oregon, but every other car there had a loud stereo. I was further from the street and had a really loud air cleaner to help keep me from getting woken up as often, but air cleaners that loud don’t exist anymore. Everything for inside the house has gotten quieter, not the outside.

The more I think about it, even if I had all the energy in the world, I don’t see how we could benefit enough by moving to be worth it. Yeah, I may complain about all the loud traffic, the daily landscaping, and regular projects, but there would only be both similar and new things to annoy me elsewhere. If traffic didn’t wake me up as much in Florida, the storms would. So what difference would it make? Why not stay where we’re safe from hurricanes and don’t have to worry about excessive bugs and alligators?

I don’t have the energy anymore to do much walking and riding around the park but when I do, I don’t have to worry about gators or major humidity. I don’t even have to worry about stray and possibly vicious dogs since it’s a gated community. Should I really give all that up?

I love adventure and change as far as experiencing new places and I’ll always wonder what it would have been like to live in Florida. No doubt about that! But there are other things to consider and be realistic about.

California has the Death with Dignity Act. Florida, like most states, will care more about a dying dog than a terminally ill person.

California has its share of car stereos but Florida actually promotes that shit under their so-called twisted Freedom of Expression Act.

California is liberal. Florida is not.

Also, if we stay in Cali it would be a lot easier to vacation in Hawaii if we could afford to do so and I had enough energy for it. It isn’t like I’m bedridden and can’t do anything at all, it’s just not as easy as it used to be and I don’t have an abundance of energy like I used to. I don’t know if it’s age, hormones, thyroid-related or something else, but it’s how I’ve been for the last 5 years or so, like it or not.

Later…

I don’t get the “guinea” part of “guinea pig,” but I definitely get the “pig” part. My God, can these things eat! The cute and funny little devils now ring the bell at the end of their wood chews and scrape their teeth on their ceramic bowl to get my attention as well as by screaming. Maybe they aren’t as dumb as I thought, LOL.

Managed to walk through a Greece puzzle. Such a beautiful country.

Today marks 5 weeks of no anxiety. Yesterday I almost felt like I was creeping a bit close to the border but it was nothing significant. Another week and I’ll be entering the critical zone of the experiment and will begin to get somewhat of an idea if I may be on to something or not.

I have PMS hunger. Thought I was done with that along with the huge water fluctuations but maybe I am having fake PMS. God knows everything is pissing me off.

The next Camp NaNo is just a little over six weeks away so I really hope my last NaNo project is done by then. I’d say I’m about two-thirds of the way through the story.

I have a couple of story ideas for July. If anyone sees this, tell me which plot you like better (unless you don’t have an opinion either way).

Plot Number 1 is where a female prisoner falls for the warden of the prison. I’m not sure if I’m going to have the warden be a woman or a man but they come to like each other quite a bit. The warden lives on the prison grounds and eventually sneaks the inmate into their home. Things head south quickly and the inmate is abused by the warden. The inmate then has three choices. She can either try to escape the prison grounds altogether and hope for the best. She can do nothing at all, stay put and continue to take the abuse from the warden. Or she can return to prison even if that means getting an extended sentence.

Plot Number 2 is a little simpler. An FBI agent (again, I’m not sure if it will be a woman or a man) sees a woman who’s either a witness or a victim of some crime giving a statement to the police. She then deceives the witness/victim into believing she needs to be taken to a safe house. Telling the witness that the safe houses are full at the moment, she offers to take her in. Then she finds herself in the same scenario the prison inmate does and has to try to escape somehow.

Now Norton’s warning me that it’s a dangerous site.

SUNDAY, MAY 12, 2019 Slept shitty for about 7-8 hours. Traffic woke me up once or twice, then I woke up to pee once, then I had the neck knockers, then I woke up a few times for no reason. I was so tired when I got up that I didn’t think I’d have the energy to go to Rite Aid or tend to the animals, but after coffee, food and a shower, I got a burst of energy. Then I ran out of steam for a while and now I’m so-so. Enough energy to write but not to jog around the park. Oh, shit! I was supposed to go sprinting, wasn’t I? Eh, I’ll stick to puzzle walks.

Got single-serve mini bottles of Merlot and Rosé, plus a rainbow wind chime that was on sale. This one isn’t just for looks. It actually sounds really nice, almost tuned.

Here’s the weird thing. I have wind chimes and other things hanging all around the house except for in back where there are no windows. Hanging at the end of the patio in the back corner of the house by the master bedroom were these solar chimes. They didn’t make any sound but they had these clear plastic stars that hung from thin wires and were supposed to light up after being charged by the sun all day. They never worked but I chose to hang them out there anyway.

When I went to hang the new chimes there, we noticed that all the wires were broken and the stars had fallen to the ground. Only the top couple of inches or so of wire was still hanging from the solar charger. I didn’t think much of it at first since the thing wasn’t any big deal to me but then it hit me…had those wires been cut? Actually cut? Tom said he didn’t know but said the wires could have broken off.

But then another thing that hit me and that’s the bottles. Same thing as the stars, only they’re color-changing bottles. They hang in the middle of the patio sort of between the living room and kitchen and work great. Well, they’re hanging from the exact same wire. Wouldn’t they have broken too, if the elements were bad for them? Plus, they’ve been there longer than the stars. I think they were likely snipped rather than broke on their own and the person “reached for the stars” because they were an easy target since they didn’t have to come further onto the patio and risk being caught.

Then I remembered Bob mentioning a few months ago that someone had been snipping branches off of a beautiful bush in back of their place not far from where the stars were. I wonder if it’s the same person? Maybe he already complained on someone or someone at least thinks he did, and like most people, they took it like they’d been screwed over and picked on for no reason at all.

Wish I knew when the wires were snipped, if in fact they were, but we’re rarely in that area. Meanwhile, just like I said before, we’ll never complain again unless threatened or in danger and hopefully Melody will be able to grow up and move on someday, whether it was Joy or a neighborhood snitch that tipped them off. But who knows? Maybe they really truly did break off on their own. I doubt it, but maybe they did. But if they didn’t, who’s to say Melody’s behind it?

Tomorrow, just in case it is someone fucking with us, I’ll move the new chimes to a safer spot and put something older and less nice there and see what happens to it. Damn, I wish we had cameras set up!

SATURDAY, MAY 11, 2019 I have a new experiment I’m going to try. I can only do it part-time because I’m tired so much of the time but instead of doing a few “puzzle walks” on the treadmill where I do puzzles while walking, I’m going to run 2.5 minutes every half hour. If I get up at 10 a.m. and I start doing this at noon and stop at 10 p.m., that totals 55 minutes. Plus, I burn more calories that way than I would if I walked that long. I want to see if this speeds up my metabolism. Might have to start with once an hour, though, till I get in better shape. I haven’t been running as much lately. Just walking with a little bike riding mixed in.

Unless a person is disabled, I don’t see how people can stand not to exercise regularly. Not exercising would be like being cooped up in a car on a long road trip with no way to stretch your legs.

Even though Tom’s thyroid is fine, his metabolism is way slower than mine, the poor guy. Usually, a woman has to cut her calories lower than a man when dieting. Not in our case!

Still not “dieting” per se but I’m making a point of taking it easy. Made my first caramel apple smoothie and it came out good but a little runny. I should use less caramel syrup and two apples instead of one. Later I’ll make one with plums, blueberries and plain yogurt.

The cypress killers came for their money before I got up, and he picked up the busted trim that used to encircle the trees, plus the water drip system. Not having the cypress trees will certainly save time and money. They’ll no longer have to be watered in the summer or trimmed constantly in the winter. Every time we would have a hard rain, branches would flop outward and look ugly.

I slept better even though traffic did wake me up a couple of times when the earbud slipped (these buds are too big for my ear) if I didn’t wake up just because. My energy didn’t last long, though. After tending to the animals and doing a few other things, I was pretty tired.

We’re thinking of getting one of those Purple mattresses but we both agree that while it may make me more comfortable, it won’t necessarily help me sleep better. Getting postmenopausal and the hell off such a busy street will help. I just wonder how long the loud vehicle obsession is going to go on. The street wouldn’t be as bad if there weren’t so many damn vehicles that were insanely loud. Really hope to get on some dead-end somewhere eventually if we don’t end up getting land. We’re still going to hear shit no matter which one we end up with because you still have neighbors even when you go rural. They’re just further away. You can still hear dogs, chainsaws, engine gunning, loud music and things like that. At least you could in Maricopa and Auburn, although we didn’t hear loud music in Auburn. Just everything else. 95% of it came from Jesse, though. I’ll settle for just not being on such a high-traffic street and so close to it, too!

Tom showed me how his game is now looking on an old tablet as well as his phone and it’s looking good but he got delayed with catching and having to fix a few bugs. The next step is incorporating Google ads into it but the app is probably not going to be available anytime soon. This part is totally new to him. He’s having to watch tutorials and stuff like that but we’re both self-taught kind of people so I’m sure he’ll figure it out just like I figure out languages and writing techniques.

I deleted Christine. I don’t know why, but she’s been ghosting me lately by ignoring messages as well as comments on her posts. Why bother staying connected then? Not sure what’s going on with her since we never had any problems but I don’t need any deadbeat friends on my Facebook list. I’ve always been picky about that. I don’t do one-sided friendships.

Had a dream Tom and I went to Massachusetts of all places and met up with Kim. Kim the former nurse. She wore a navy dress with small white polka dots and I thought it was so her. Stylish and pleasant looking but more on the conservative side. She had a baby too, and we were all in some store Kim and her husband owned.

Then Tom and Kim were sitting on a bench while he was explaining something to her on some device be it a laptop, tablet or phone.

Then I was inside her house and walking down a wide set of stairs carpeted with cream-colored carpet. The stairs were lit with little strips of light running along each one. I noticed the last two were burned out. I then stepped off the stairs and went into this room where Tom was overseeing a small fire. I then produced a couple of sticks I was holding and threw them into the fire and said, “Now they won’t get cold.”

Tom smiled with amusement at that one.

Then we were outside and it was really noisy with motorcycles and other loud traffic. I said, “My God, it sounds like we’re home. It was never like this when I lived here. I remember not one single motorcycle.”

Then I asked Tom if he saw a guy with a red bandana on the motorcycle that just passed by, thinking it might be Mark, Kim’s ex.

FRIDAY, MAY 10, 2019 All these attacks on women’s rights lately have me very angry and even more sexist. With a few exceptions of course. Do people realize that it’s this kind of shit that makes people haters? If you don’t want to be hated, stop telling women what they can do with their own bodies. If you don’t want to be discriminated against, stop playing the race card. If you don’t want to be seen as a thug, stop acting like one. If you don’t want to be despised, stop cutting people’s heads off. If you don’t want to be called a welfare bum, stop being lazy.

No one can please everyone. No one. But while I don’t care what others think (unless it’s someone I care about), most people seem to be pretty big on how others perceive them. So maybe if they thought their actions through more thoroughly, they could avoid some serious backlash. Again, no one’s universally loved or hated, but if approval is so damn important to so many people then why don’t they think before they act?

I’m afraid that things aren’t going to change without some serious violence on the part of women. When has a peaceful protest ever brought about change? The best it does is give those opposing whatever a chance to vent. Just like the LA riots worked for blacks and granted them more rights than whites, and many breaks in court because judges would rather be sworn at and threatened than be labeled racist, I don’t see any change as far as women’s rights go unless they literally storm some of these cocks’ houses and show them just what will happen when they try to trample on their rights. They need to go after these politicians directly. If these politicians feared for their safety or the safety of the general public (which is why Micheal Jackson was acquitted since they didn’t want a conviction to incite a riot), maybe they would think about that and remember that before deciding women’s own personal decisions for them.

Meanwhile, more women will die trying to give themselves abortions. I just don’t get why so many things are so fucked up and so backward in this world. Do people want life to be so twisted and unfair? Sometimes I wonder if it’s only as unfair as people want to make it. So many women these days are facing criticism when they get pregnant but damn if they’ll let them get rid of those pregnancies that were condemned in the first place! Now, how fucked up is that?

What worries me is that if things can be as fucked up as they are and these kinds of things can happen, even if none of it affects me directly, anything could happen. Something that very well could end up affecting me directly. For all I know, it will suddenly be illegal for a short woman to be married to a tall man. That’s how crazy this world truly is and this is a big part of why I would never want to live forever if I could. It’s part of why I’m kind of glad I only have 20-30 years left in this world instead of 50-60 as scared as I am of dying.

Wasn’t going to journal today but I just had to get this off my chest. Sometimes we really do have to trample on those holding us back in life as simply saying, “Hey this isn’t fair” or marching while chanting or waving signs isn't enough. Until younger women take some real action, they’re just going to keep getting stepped on.

I slept absolutely shitty. I kept waking up over and over again. I don’t know why I go back and forth with the sleep issues. For a while, I sleep okay and then it’s back to sleeping so shitty that I’m left too tired to do much more than what I need to do. I’d love to go out for a walk around the park tonight, but just like last night, I don’t have the energy. It’s too bad too because my metabolism is moving at a crawl during this experiment and maintaining my weight is getting harder.

My sleep has been so cursed all my life in one way or another and again I wonder why. This is where it’s hard to be a hundred percent atheist and not feel like something up there is fucking with it because I’ve had too many sleep issues for far too long to consider it coincidental. What the fuck does it have against my sleep? Really, if this is the case, why does it not want me to sleep well for the most part? Isn’t the fact that I can’t keep a schedule bad enough? Hasn’t it done enough damage and made my life hard enough just with that? So I should at least be allowed to sleep when I do sleep, shouldn’t I?

What the fuck is its problem??? Is this compensation for not having to wake up to an alarm 5 days a week? Not having kids waking me up? Something else? I really really hope Tom is right when he says he believes it’s hormonal because I have a bad feeling that I’m always going to sleep shitty no matter where we are. If it isn’t traffic waking me up, it will be thunderstorms, although no one woke me up this morning. I just kept waking up. Funny too, because before bed I took baby Benadryl thinking it would help me sleep sounder but it didn’t. After just three hours of sleep I woke up, and as exhausted as I was, I laid there for an hour or an hour and a half fearing I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep and that it would really screw up my schedule for appointments, but then I took more Benadryl and fell asleep for about 5 hours.

Why I woke up feeling so damn exhausted is beyond me. I guess it’s a combination of things… broken-up sleep, hormones, low thyroid. It took me several hours, but I finally mustered up enough energy to do sheets and laundry and things like that. Fortunately, the animals don’t need changing today.

Until and if anything changes when I’m postmenopausal, I think we might get a slightly quieter place but I don’t expect to sleep any better. And I’m still going to have mixed emotions about a park. I’ve had issues with almost every management company I’ve ever had to deal with. But then engine gunning is more of a problem in the country. So for every problem I can think of that parks have, rural has its problems, too.

THURSDAY, MAY 9, 2019 Couldn’t fall asleep until after 4 in the morning and at 11, I awoke to this fierce rumbling sound. My sleep-fogged brain came up with nearly half a dozen possibilities before I finally realized exactly what was going on. My first thought was that the trash collectors were making their way through until I realized it wasn’t trash day.

My next thought, as I got up to pee, was that it was an incredibly loud car stereo.

Then I figured Lawrence or someone down the street was running a woodchipper.

Next, I walked out of the bedroom and looked out the dining room window and my first thought when I saw two guys with this big yellow thing was that they were tearing up the roads again.

Then I realized they were on our lot doing the cypress trees and my first thought was that the park just couldn’t fucking wait until Saturday, had come to get rid of them themselves, and would then hand us a bill much higher than $900.

Deciding I wanted to go out and kill them, I ran to Skype Tom before I went out and dealt with them which I preferred not to be done in my birthday suit anyway.

I was then tremendously relieved to see a message from him saying they called saying they were here and ready to work. The Mexican guys we hired last week. He let them know he was at work so he couldn’t pay them and they said they’d come back for their money later. That’s some seriously trusting people even though they know exactly where we live.

Anyway, I slept through the cutting of the cypresses which they didn’t run through a woodchipper. They just put them in the back of the trailer. That would be the easy part. We could have done that ourselves but we don’t have a place to put twelve trees. When I peeked out, I saw someone pushing what looked like a large yellow lawnmower and another person holding a piece of plywood to keep debris from getting kicked up and spit at the house. That’s when I realized they were grinding down the stumps. They did a beautiful job and you’d never know they’d been there! Guessing the job took about 3 hours.

The weird thing is the strange smell. It’s almost a mix of a rubbery and poisonous scent. I don’t know if it came from their machinery or what but I’m sure it will fade.

Love how I can just walk through to the street without having to squeeze through webs and wasp nests embedded in the trees, but it seems so open and exposed now. Gonna probably get a lattice fence as well as fake grass.

As tired as I was and still am, I’m glad to have it done and over with since I’m probably not going to sleep well tomorrow either with the trash and recycle trucks coming around for sure. You know they don’t just come and go here. Gotta make a big 2 to 4-hour production out of it. And if the damn earbuds slip just a little and I don’t have a good seal, loud vehicles are free to wake me up.

Damn, do I hope the next place is a lot further from the street and that it’s a dead street compared to this one! We’re nowhere near done with our research and there isn’t much we can really do until we’re actually ready to make the move, but right now it’s looking like we’re going to end up in a park instead of rural because we just don’t have that much money. Unless his app takes off better than expected (it would be nice if he had more time to work on it), I don’t know if we can really afford much more than a basic setup. I would have loved to be able to pick out a brand new place and have two floors, but that’s not looking likely at the moment. We might be able to get something new after replacing an old dump in some park but it likely would have to be one story.

I still can’t believe Tammy’s moving to Ohio. LOL, I’d never have guessed it any more than I’d have guessed I’d spend a few years in Oregon.

The thing I notice most when I talk to her is just how “foreign” she sounds since she still has a distinct Northeastern accent and I’ve lost most of mine due to now living in the West longer than I have in the East, and deliberate practice for using Speech-to-Text and being better understood by the people here. My accent is getting more and more generic, you could say. There are some words that are tough to change but I “tawk” a lot more than I “tahk” these days. Don’t know what annoys me more, accents I’m not used to or those that jumble their words together and don’t speak clearly. I still understand big sis well. I did grow up talking the same way, after all. ;)

Anyway, the fucking park is turning off the water again for a couple of hours in the morning but hopefully, I won’t be up yet. And if Joy knows what’s good for her, she won’t pull any more shit with us! We wanted to do this anyway so if she thinks we did it on account of her, she’s kidding herself. She just gave us the inspiration. :) But if there’s any more shit, we WILL definitely put our foot down. First of all, she’s not our mother and we’re not children. Secondly, if we keep giving in, she’ll keep taking advantage of us.

Once we go to Sam’s this weekend, I’m going to change up my smoothie fruits and take a break from bananas and strawberries. I like variety so I’m going to get apples, peaches and plums. Today I made a smoothie with blueberries and strawberries in what wasn’t quite enough coconut milk since it came out a bit thick. Tomorrow’s a banana and peanut butter smoothie day with a boost of granola. I really should give the rest of the granola to the rats. It isn’t LS-friendly.

I rarely eat bread but every now and then I get a loaf of Jewish rye. The mayo just expired so I spread hummus on the bread before adding turkey and lettuce and it was pretty good.

Got some Kettle Corn popcorning seasoning and butter spray on Amazon, along with a day and night set of facial cleansers.

Love the bright colorful sink strainer I got from Walmart that has neon yellow and green. Should’ve gotten one for each side of the sink. Makes keeping the drain clear much easier.

I was super cold yesterday but okay today. Trimmed a bit less off of my pill this morning to make it closer to 60mcg rather than 50. Don’t want to go back to 75 just yet as I really want to stick this experiment out. I’ll go back when the anxiety returns, and since all my past experiments were a bust, there’s no reason not to think this one will be too.

Finished reading The Girl in Red by John Nicholl. Great book! Definitely gotta check out more of his stuff. I’m reading a Ben Cheetham mystery right now.

One funny thing before I go relax after doing everything I needed to get done - change the pigs’ liner, change the rats’ upper-level liner, wash them, load the dishwasher, gather the trash - although I’m not so sure the pigs found it funny. Rats love to chase anything and everything they can… People, cats, each other, whatever. The rats never hurt the pigs and the pigs don’t mind them when they’re just sitting there with them but when the rats get playful, the pigs get a bit nervous. Well, Fuzzy sure started trolling them today! He started chasing the pigs round and round the pen and while it was funny as hell to watch what’s a game to him, I don’t know if the pigs, being prey animals, got off on it very much. But they didn’t seem shaken up once I pulled Fuzzy out of the pen. I expected the teeth to be chattering a mile a minute but they weren’t. Yeah, the little bully can be funny with his chase games.

No longer babies and now full-grown adults, the rats are now on blocks. I filled their bowl with some and they hid them. Figured they would, LOL.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2019 OMG, this dose experiment has me absolutely freezing! Really hope my TSH isn’t in the 30s like it was when I took 50s along with Liothyronine. I thought the Liothyronine canceled out the Levothyroxine. But if 50s now leaves my TSH around 32 no matter what I do or don’t take with it instead of 16, then how could 75s still bring me down to around 6? Yes, I’d rather be cold than anxious but it would still be really nice if I could someday take the medication my body needs without some kind of bullshit along with it!

Having the curious and analytical mind I have, I can’t help but wonder if Christy knows. If Joy really is friends with the assholes on the other side of the circle, is Christy aware of this? My guess is no.

Although I slept better and I’m less tired today, the earbud slipped at one point and therefore traffic got the chance to wake me up around 7am. I can’t wait to get out of this fucking place! Worst place I ever slept that wasn’t an apartment.

I know I had several dreams but I can’t remember them. I did have a weird dream that I remember from the other night, though, where I went to see Doc A. I don’t know if I was flirting with her or doing something to see if she liked me but at one point she said, “Jodi, if you want to know if I like you or not, all you have to do is ask.”

I was doing random searches to get Bing points when I ran her name. She has some shitty reviews, too. Out of all the doctors I’ve seen, Doc O has the best reviews, not surprisingly. Many complain that she doesn’t “doctor” but refers instead. Oh, yeah, she certainly has referred me to plenty of doctors. Endocrinologist, dermatologist, hematologist, psychiatrist… Am I forgetting anyone? Oh, she almost referred me to a cardiologist, too.

TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2019 I’m SO tired today. Why does my dumbass body wake up if it’s still tired? :-(

Nice to read that Kirsten Gillibrand will choose Roe vs. Wade backers as judges before any more states can continue on this frightening and sad trend of stripping women of their rights. This is something that truly bothers me, too. Just because something may not affect me directly doesn’t make it okay. There are enough unwanted kids in the world just like I once was. There are enough people in the world. But I still have to see a lady prez to believe it in a country where women love men and men love men, too. Would love her or Kamala Harris to win!

While I rarely get as emotional as I used to (when my hormones aren’t going crazy on me) since I’m older and have pretty much seen it all, I think it would be hard not to if we ever do have a female president.

Also, while it’s easy to say I hate emotional people as that’s usually a sign of immaturity, instability or both, the day we move will definitely be pretty emotional for me. I’ll be going out of here with the same shock I went out of Jesse’s trailer but only for a different reason. There it was because we survived the recession. Here it will be because I survived the medical drama I went through. Still too soon to say I beat the anxiety for good, though.

I just hope there isn’t any more shit before we do leave. I know we’ll never know for sure, but I really think that the assholes on the other side of the circle are friends with Joy. I can’t believe Joy would give our names and Jon & Carolyn’s names to them just for shits and giggles. Jon & Carolyn complain and they get complained on? We complain and then we get complained on? I smell a friendship there for sure. The complaint came too fast for Joy (or a neighborhood snitch) to have given the assholes our name and then for them to have picked out something to complain about, run down to the office, fill out a form, and then for us to be notified. I think of all the shit they’ve gotten away with too, yet they’re still here. So yeah, definitely smacks of a friendship.

The mama’s boy was in last night for a few hours. I’m so fucking sick of his shit and this whole place in general and I know nothing’s going to happen to them. I think Joy had no choice but to make them get rid of the little girls only because that was just too damn obvious and she would have had to deal with too many people nagging her about it. But the punk and his car are more on the edge of allowed/not allowed. So as long as it isn’t blatantly obvious and or very against the rules, Joy is only going to protect them and spite whoever dares to complain.

I can’t wait to get out of here and stop sleeping in the middle of the street practically. Yes, I know I’m going to hear mutts, motorcycles and other shit regularly wherever we end up but I can’t imagine many places being this bad. I just can’t. It just sucks that it’s going to take a couple of years even if we do things as fast as we can without doing them too fast. But it gives me some comfort to know we at least got the ball rolling in the right direction.

I see way too many motorcycles in pics of places in Florida. It’s like every other person there has them. :-( The car stereos are probably also a nightmare there but hopefully we’ll like everything else about the state except for the bugs and humidity.

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2019 I’ve now had 4 weeks of calm since my medication experiment began. :)

Been addicted to my NutriBlast ever since I got it. Today’s energy/health smoothie has a banana, OJ, a few large strawberries, and a couple of baby carrots. Not a fan of carrots but they’re not noticeable this way.

Woke up to a very chilly 68° in here so I’m warming up right now on the treadmill.

So Harry and Meghan have had their first kid just as I knew they would. The one thing I have against the royal family is that they seem to set very primitive and narrow-minded examples for women. Are women only good over there for getting married and having kids? Well, what about just getting married? What about just having kids? What about doing neither? What about marrying the same sex? What about marrying the same sex and adopting a child or having artificial insemination? I thought most of Europe was supposed to be more diverse and open-minded?

But then Europe isn’t America which seems to be the opposite. Why can’t my buddy foster without being hassled about it? Why can’t so many women in this country have kids without being basically scolded and reminded that their sole priority should be working as hard as they can and making as much money as possible? I can see if they’re too young, unstable, broke, or on drugs, but why do there have to be “norms?” Why can’t people just do what they want with their lives and not get judged and criticized for it? I’m all for lowering the population, but I don’t think every woman in the U.S. should suddenly be expected not to have kids so they can work work work work. Hell, except for being childless I would fit right in in countries like India. Oh, they would just love me since I don’t work outside of the house and don’t drive, though I don’t know that India forbids women from driving. I know some of the really twisted countries do.

Had some thunder last night which is a bit unusual for this time of year. It sprinkled for a few minutes too. Fortunately, I was up so I didn’t get woken up by the thunder. I realize I could be woken up by that much more often in Florida but I would rather that than traffic.

There was a lot of company next door and while it was quiet except for a few vehicle door slams, I’m guessing it’s because it was Virginia’s birthday. Pretty sure early May is when it is. Guess she’s 86 now.

Death scares me. The whole dying process and then what may or may not lie beyond has always scared me as I think it does most people. At the same time, the older I get, I kind of like the idea of not having as much time left in such a fucked up world. Even the things that don’t affect me directly can sometimes bother me only because I hate knowing I have to live with people like that. With abortions slowly heading toward becoming illegal in this country, how can you not feel bad for women unless you’re one of the delusional control freaks that’s behind seeing that this happens? I’m guessing Florida’s gonna ban it next, but oh well. I’m just glad it doesn’t affect us personally.

It occurred to me that Tammy never mentioned any of the girls having breast cancer when we talked, so I’m guessing that was a lie as well. I think she was pissed at me or it was a way of trying to get my attention and me back into her life. Definitely not the way to do it. Jumping down someone’s throat and being all accusatory and hitting them with lies is not the way to go as opposed to how she went about it the last time. I’m probably always going to have mixed emotions where she’s concerned. I’m aware of her faults but being my sister, older and different or not, there is still a degree of a bond and connection there.

Kim has been reading me even on days she doesn’t do her own entry and I don’t remember her doing that in the past. Makes me wonder if Aly asked her to copy entries for her to compare with the ones I emailed her. Of course, I can’t ask her if that’s the case because it will get back to Aly and the truth is hit or miss with her.

A couple of nights ago I damn near bawled my eyes out. For the first time in years, it was actually in a good way, too!

We had our preliminary meeting of sorts as we slowly begin narrowing things down with lots of research as to where we’re going to move to. We’ve decided to make moving our top priority, so large expenses like permanent hair removal have been put on hold. At first we thought we’d have more options with him being retired and that it would be safer and all that, but now we’re thinking we might have more opportunities with him still working since we don’t expect to have as much money when he’s fully retired. My only concern is that many places want you to have had a job for at least a year before you move in but we’re looking into that and our different options. It won’t kill us to wait till 2024 if we have to but I’d rather not. Besides, that’s not a good year to move if you totally believe the number 4 is as unlucky as I believe it is. I’m not usually superstitious but I’ve had all kinds of bad luck associated with that number that I dread my next birthday. I’d skip it and go right to 55 if I could!

The first step was narrowing down the country and we decided to stay in the US. It would certainly be easier this way.

The next thing we both agreed on is that while Tom is oblivious to climate, unlike me, we don’t want to go back to extreme rural where it takes nearly an hour to get to civilization. I realize how risky that was even when we were young and healthy, but being naive as I was then, I didn’t know it. I guess ignorance really can be bliss at times. But now we know better and the last thing either of us wants is to fall down and break a leg and have to wait that long for the paramedics or something like that. Also, I have a higher risk of suffering a heart attack. Do I really want to wait an hour with chest pain if I ever had one when every second counts? No way!

There are other things, too. It would be easier with an electric car if we stuck closer to civilization. We’d be less likely to have to deal with wells and shitty internet connections. We really don’t want to have to give up streaming. We’re totally into Netflix and Hulu and things like that. I’m hoping that all I’ll need to sleep with wherever we end up is Alexa as she plays brown noise, so a reliable connection is essential. I’ve been pumping white noise out of an off-dialed radio station from a stereo I got in the late '90s which will probably be left behind.

I’m going to take the giant bean bag chair, just not with an 80-lb doll on it, LOL. He and I joke about leaving her sitting on one of the toilets with a clump of toilet paper in one hand and the middle finger of her other hand sticking up. Hahaha! Suki is a very beautiful and realistic doll but I just don’t need or want something that big and heavy sitting around.

Not sure if I wrote about this yet or not but several old books were left on the bookcase by the previous owners. In one of them, I put a copy of the complaint form. That ought to make for an interesting read for the next people unless flippers get the place.

Next, we agreed to go to places that we either think we’ll want to stay in or will end up definitely wanting to stay in. In other words, no temporary stops. So that right there ruled out cold climates, and to be honest, just one winter in a cold climate would kill me. LOL

We could still get out of Florida if we went there and it turned out to be a disaster or had some kind of a bad effect on our health that wasn’t as simple as taking Nasacort or whatever. The only problem is that then we would probably have to go to a dumpier park in a cold climate or maybe even an apartment. But at least there would be a way out if we absolutely needed it. This is part of why we decided against going to other countries. It would be a lot easier to back out of Florida than Costa Rica or something like that. Besides, I’m the one that can learn languages, not him. :-) Spanish is loads of fun and a beautiful language to speak but I don’t want to have to interpret every goddamn thing to him. Just doing that for a few months in jail got old, haha.

Next came the choosing of the state. It came down to Florida or Nevada since they both don’t have a state income tax. We don’t want to go as hot as Phoenix or Maricopa and while dry climates are more comfortable, I really hate the huge fluctuations you get out here between night and day. Having warm comfortable days and then dropping 30 or 40 degrees to wake up to freezing mornings like I did today, kind of sucks. I’m bundled up in my robe and slippers now but in a few more hours I’ll be sleeveless and barefoot. But the best we could get in Nevada would be something similar to this, just less rainy. No thanks. I don’t want to half-ass things again like we did coming here. I always thought we should have gone further south but maybe to someplace like Merced, not L.A. which would have more crowds and pollution and shit like that.

So…eeny-meeny-miny-moe, off to Florida we will go. We just don’t yet know where in Florida or when.

The next decision is - do we go to a 55+ park in Florida? Or do we go a little further north and a little further inland and grab an acre or two of land there? That one I can’t tell you yet because we don’t know. We’re looking at both options. I used to go back and forth in my mind asking myself if I would prefer a corner lot or not, but actually, I don’t want either. If we’re going to do a park, we’re going to do it at the end of a dead-end that backs up to either a lake or a canal. While it may be a spectacular view, I don’t know that I’d want to be right on the ocean like my parents were because the sounds of boats may very well make up for motorcycles.

I just hope whatever place we end up in has a bigger kitchen than this. This one is almost too small. I remember back in ‘99 when we moved into our 2100 square foot Palm Harbor home and thinking that the kitchen was ridiculously huge. For that time, maybe, unless you had the Brady Bunch living in it. But these days we have all kinds of gadgets that you didn’t have 20 years ago or at least that we didn’t have, so the extra counter space and outlets would be appreciated.

We also agreed to leave the furniture behind. It’s either old or not comfortable. The mattress is sagging and the couch looks good but is surprisingly firm. All we’re taking besides kitchen stuff, electronics and clothes will be just the things we really want. Several pieces from my doll and knick-knack collection will be left behind. I don’t know if we’re just going to leave things, sell them or donate them, but we’re not to that point yet.

Even the Bowflex and treadmill will be left behind. I can use my Pilates ring and my own body weight for strength training, plus the skier for cardio if I’m not walking or running outdoors. I will take the treadmill tray and get a new treadmill eventually.

We talked about the possibility of living on a houseboat but the monthly slip fee may be costly and I don’t know that I would like the constant motion. Besides, being in something mobile doesn’t mean you could just up and move if you didn’t like what was around you. If we ended up getting loud, partying neighbors on the boat next to us, we couldn’t just up and move without making arrangements to get a new slip first. But we couldn’t exactly be in the middle of the ocean either and not hooked up to electricity.

Here’s where I got all excited to the point where I could feel happy tears of anticipation well up in my eyes. We’re both sick of older places and therefore, the thought of getting land and a brand-new manufactured home is pretty exciting. I remember the excitement of picking out the home we wanted and customizing it and all that.

Here’s the interesting thing Tom found online which makes total sense. Rather than get raw land and have to be the ones to deal with getting utilities set up, you’re actually better off if you get something more established with an old dump on it, have it hauled away, and then get a new place pulled in. Or maybe we can have it dragged to the edge of the property and it will make it look like more people are there and provide extra storage space. Maybe also act as a buffer against sounds coming from neighboring properties.

Like I said before, I’ve pretty much given up on quiet. Quiet doesn’t exist for us. I’m now only focused on getting a place where I don’t have to sleep with an earbud jammed in my ear during the daytime. That’s all I want and will happily settle for just that much if I can get it. No more bedrooms being right on the street, a busy street. A street that rarely goes more than an hour or two without something passing by even in the middle of the night. So from now on, it’s either a dead-end or we’re out in the country.

We were checking out 3D-printed houses and they are so cool! It’s amazing how this crane sits on the roof and pours concrete into the walls. A concrete foundation and concrete walls would definitely deflect sound better than elevated wooden walls. Definitely. I’ve lived in both so I know this firsthand.

We may be able to get a new house either way because if we find an ideal lot in a park but it has an old piece of shit on it, we could have it yanked out and replaced with something new.

Manufactured homes have come a long way since we got one in 1999. Plus, we can look things up online that we couldn’t look up back then. She was just over 2100 square feet and her name was Millicent. I was heartbroken and in tears the day we left but I knew it was for the better and it wasn’t just about saving money, moving on, and being adventurous and experiencing new places. It was about our safety. We had to go underground. As soon as I was vindicated I felt like quite a sitting duck and I hated to wait around for them to start more shit with me that I may not be able to survive or get out of. A corrupt cop was involved, after all, and it was in a state that favored minorities that weren’t gay or Jewish.

There are a surprising number of two-story manufactured homes these days as well as modulars that come prefabricated. Once assembled, one would never guess they weren’t built on-site. There are models similar to Anna which I love that I think we could get. I’d love to have two stories since it’s been a while and I kind of miss running up and down stairs. It’s good exercise!

There are many other things we have to consider. Is the area riddled with crime? Is it near airports? So, lots more research to be done!

Last night I dreamed we were living wherever and were both sleeping in the living room for some reason. I was on a couch that opened into a bed and Tom fell asleep on a nearby couch watching TV.

The lock on the front door which was across from the foot of the bed wasn’t very secure. I don’t know if it blew open or it was pushed open but a young 20-something girl stepped in and was talking either to someone else or perhaps to herself. Behind her, I could see across to a tall apartment building and watched some people moving about through their windows. I seemed more curious about them than I was about this stranger who had suddenly invaded our living room, but just as I was about to ask what the hell she wanted, she left.

SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2019 Got 3 wine glasses, each with a different colored stem (pink, purple and blue), and 3 bottles of nail polish at the dollar store yesterday, also in pink, purple and blue. Got to use the stem holder for wine glasses for the first time in the dishwasher. I didn’t realize they could topple over so easily without it.

Following my buddy on a different Twitter account of hers. I was going to give up on that and Ask, thinking she wasn’t into either site anymore, but I guess she still is. :-)

Overall it’s been a surprisingly quiet weekend. Haven’t heard the mama’s boy since Thursday but I’m sure it will be back soon. It’s nice when someone’s shit actually turns out to be a good thing, though. I don’t know if Joy is simply complaining because I complained on Mel & Gerry, or if word got back to Mel & Gerry that I was the one to complain and they retaliated or what but either way, we’re kind of glad they did.

When Tom lost his keyring he was so pissed at first but that turned out to be a great thing because we love our coded door locks.

When the Caddy started having problems that too, turned out to be a good thing because we love our electric car and the savings we’ve already accumulated by not having to get gas.

And now we wish we’d done what we’re about to do a long time ago! The cypress trees are ugly, a lot of work to care for because they’re fast-growing and very old-fashioned. The damn things attract so many spiders, webs and yellow jacket nests. They were popular when this place was built and so they make the place look outdated. What we’re about to do should add a few grand to the value of the place.

Unlike the Twenties, who definitely seem to prefer older white men working on their place, we prefer cheap. So a few Mexican guys are going to come out next Saturday and lop off all 12 of the cypress trees alongside the carport and grind down the stumps for just $900. Really thought it would be a few grand! Not sure if they’re going to just cut and haul them or if they’re going to cut and chip them before hauling them away but unfortunately, I’ll be on nights at that time and sleeping through it so I won’t get to have the fun of watching it get done. Why does everything have to happen when I’m asleep? :-(

Even though the bedroom is on the other side of the house, it will probably wake me up because commercial equipment is insanely loud but at least I’ll know what it is and we’ll be the noisy ones for once. Although I only have so much control to begin with, I thought about tweaking my schedule a bit but that could throw off my June appointments so I’m not going to.

After the trees are gone, we were going to lay down gravel in that area but we decided on fake grass instead. I really like the way that looks and then we wouldn’t have to deal with weeds poking up between the gravel. I also hate how pieces of gravel often get kicked out onto the street when we’re coming and going in that area on foot or with the bike or rolling the trash bin across it.

People can’t help their pet peeves but sometimes I wish Aly didn’t have such a problem with people not replying to her messages once they’ve been read. Anyone who knows me knows that I never blow anything off. I always reply within hours, a day at the most. It’s just that sometimes I like to sit and think about my reply before I actually do so.

Been having this strange itchiness on my inner left wrist and I really hope I’m not getting “planused.” I don’t want to add LP to my LS but one of the places LP affects is that area as well as the ankles. I don’t see anything visually, but I might have a few teeny tiny bumps in that area. Hopefully, it’s nothing, but time will tell.

I’m now at the four-week marker of my medication experiment and still calm. :-)

We have a long way to go and a lot more research to be done but Tom and I have had our preliminary discussion as far as where we think we want to go and the way we want to go about it. I’m kind of tired tonight so I think I’ll save that entry for tomorrow.

SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2019 Been up a few hours and to my utter astonishment, it’s actually been quiet. Just a few semi-loud vehicles but it won’t last long.

My hair is really growing fast for one who is low on thyroid. Usually, it grows pretty slow when it’s short but it’s been noticeably longer as of just a couple of weeks after getting it cut. I’m sure it’s because I’m sick of long hair, LOL. If I hated it and missed my long hair it would be creeping back slowly.

I’m lying on the living room floor right now on my stomach speech to texting this entry on my phone and a big brown rat wants my attention. Yeah, Fuzzy’s out.

What just happened between these two, anyway? I was in the kitchen a while ago when I heard quite a scuffle and I thought the pigs were playing their chase games even though I haven’t seen them doing that in a while. They chased each other more as babies.

So I looked and saw the rats really going at it and while they weren’t squeaking up a storm as rats do when they’re scared or in pain, it seemed a bit rough for just playing, and these rats don’t play much to begin with. I yelled at them and they stopped immediately.

Now Fuzzy is trying to break into the pigs’ cage but I won’t let him because he’ll only bully them.

Even though I know the story pretty well, I watched the newest Bundy movie on Netflix yesterday. I don’t see how one person can take on that many people. No man is stronger than every single woman. No woman is weaker than every single man. With so many victims I would think that sooner or later you would go after the wrong one and get the tables turned on you. Either way, the movie broke up my routine a bit and gave me something to do at the end of my day which is when I tend to get bored.

We’re going to be having a huge discussion sometime this weekend as far as making plans to get out of here before he retires. Because our independence-obsessed country won’t go for universal healthcare, I guess they may be trying to get around that by lowering the age of Medicare. Well, the thing that’s been keeping him having to work a regular job full-time is the whole insurance thing. But if they can lower Medicaid and he can make some money with his app and drop down to part-time or something like that, that would help give us more flexibility.

I also made a list of the pros and cons of the city versus rural as well as cold versus warm climates. Unless there was a huge payoff that could somehow be guaranteed, I don’t think I could do a cold climate. It would have to be very temporary, and with life usually not turning out the way we plan it to be, we’re almost certainly not going to go in that direction. Unless someone gave us a free house that was practically new in the middle of 10 or more acres, I’m not interested in cold climates. I’m also not interested in going extreme rural again either where it takes nearly an hour to get to civilization.

I went to bed hoping I would get signs in my dreams, and I sure did. But was it really a sign or just because it’s been on my mind? Only time will tell.

I dreamed Paula and I were friends again and I went to visit her right before we moved to Florida. The last dream suggested we were going to Nevada so I don’t know what to think. I think that if I’m going to get any signs in my dreams it’s way too soon. No matter what we plan, we’re not getting out of here tomorrow or the next day.

FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2019 Realized the assholes may not yet have seen my messages on Facebook. Wouldn’t they have blocked me if they had? I just worry about their reaction when they do now that I know they’ll know it’s me.

Again there’s a part of me wondering if I should have taken care of them myself somehow just like I should have with the shitsters in Arizona. You just can’t always trust and rely on someone else to take care of things for you. If they were going to be evicted, they would have been by now. I just don’t know what I could’ve done that the park can’t/won’t do.

I just hope this shit ends with their little retaliation game because while it’s easy to say I’ll never complain unless our lives are threatened, sometimes keeping quiet can send the wrong message. That would make them think we’re now afraid of them and that we’re going to take whatever they dish out at us. I know how hard it is for some sickos to give up and move on.

For now, I’m sure the mooching mama’s boy who will remain jobless for who knows how many more years, will be zooming in any second for its daily visit. I wonder how long it will be before it moves back in. Hey, why not? All they’ll do is hand them a piece of paper telling him to get out which won’t cost them a thing, quite unlike in our case, even though Tom says it will actually up the value of the place. As I said before, yes, this is something we’ve wanted to do. Yes, it will make the place look much better. But I still don’t like being ordered around like children. Unless something is a medical emergency or something like that, we prefer to do things on our own terms.

My groin rash is coming back. Knew it would. The past always returns to haunt me. At least I have an effective tool for it. Will have to deal with it on and off all my life since I know I’ll never lose weight, if that’s really what’s causing it and not just the whole auto-immune thing which triggers all kinds of rashes.

Got a $124 bill from Mercy. sighs I’d say our chances of making it back to Hawaii before we leave are getting pretty slim. Too many things keep coming up.

After listening to 5 hours of landscaping on and off and over 2 hours of the trash/green waste trucks, maybe it’ll be quieter for a while. Maybe.

THURSDAY, MAY 2, 2019 What’s the point of having Roe vs. Wade, which is supposed to protect a woman’s right to choose, if one by one states are going to continue to nearly illegalize abortion?

Onto stuff that pertains to us directly… Retaliation has begun. Yes, I am so angry right now and I feel so guilty, too. I totally should have known better than to complain! Phoenix taught me well. It’s just that this isn’t Phoenix, the assholes I complained about are white, so I didn’t think the office would rat me out to them so they could counter-complain and have the park demand that we remove “12 dead/dying” cypress trees cuz they’re a fire hazard. First of all, we don’t have that many that are dead or dying and after we get some bids from an arborist, we’ll have them evaluated. That way we’ll have an expert to tell them they’re full of shit.

The only thing is that Christy really did seem genuine and sincere. Also, Joy has always been nice to me so Mel & Gerry could have found out by other means. Maybe they have a friend working behind the scenes in the office. I have imagined Christy and Joy giving our name over and over again in my mind, and I just can’t see it. I think it’s more likely that after I stupidly told the Twenties, who have already complained about them many times, and also Bob, they mentioned it to someone who tipped them off or to someone else who did. I’m sure it’s the last thing the Twenties or Bob intended or would have wanted but that just seems more likely in my mind even though we’ll never know for sure. I haven’t shared any info publicly and I’m back to being very private. I’m now FO only on PB and that’s the way it stays. I will only be sharing the full story with Tammy and Aly. Knowledge really is power and the more someone has on you, the more there’s the potential that it could be used against you.

I felt terrible and was telling Tom over and over how sorry I was that I ever bothered and that I should have just dealt with it and kept my mouth shut like I did for two years but he kept telling me don’t stress about it, we can deal with it, etc. He also pointed out that this is something we have talked about doing for a long time. The property does look like shit and I’ll be the first to admit it. But I would have preferred to do things on our terms and not be ordered around like a couple of kids. If there’s anyone that hates being told what to do, it’s me. How is it that so many people always have so much power and control over us while we couldn’t do anything to anyone even if we wanted to? And believe me, I don’t want to “screw” or control anyone. I just want to live in peace. That’s all.

At least we now know we don’t need a new roof and can use the money reserved for that but chances are pretty high that once we get done, our savings will be completely drained. This is going to cost thousands of dollars, not hundreds. I’m guessing about five grand. So while our complaints against them cost them little more than kicking their grandbrats out, ours will cost us thousands. Yes, I wanted to do this anyway. It is ugly. We do have to live in this fucked up park for another half a decade, too. But I still feel guilty. I should’ve learned long ago that Jodi S isn’t allowed to complain without consequences, even if she’s got a perfectly legit complaint, and that something up there always protects her perps. Always.

I’m still pissed at them too, and would love to run over and spill their guts and do things best left to the imagination and out of print, but never again will I ever complain about anyone ever again. Not unless our lives are in danger, we’re physically threatened, etc. All I can do is hope they’ll have the balls to come onto our property but I know they won’t do that. Besides, even if they did and I beat the shit out of them in self-defense on my property, that would be somehow used against me as well and I’d have to pay for that, too.

The thing that worries me is that now that they know who we are, as it’s unlikely that Joy happened to just now notice the condition of our place when she came in to deliver the complaint since she lives here and passes by it plenty of times, they’ll know I’m behind the Nicole account. I’m sure that will be brought to Tom’s attention sooner than I’d like it to be because I’m the one that can never get away with shit. Again, I should have known better.

When Tom goes to confront the office which I’m guessing will be after we get estimates and evaluated, he’ll be sure to point out that it’s quite a coincidence that the complaint comes in less than 24 hours after mine and that these trees have been in the same condition for years which is very true.

Now I’m a little worried for Bob and Virginia. If they did go ahead and fill out the complaint form I gave them, they could be retaliated against as well even though their yard is immaculate as always. If the office ratted me and the Twenties out, why not them too? Or, if there’s a neighborhood snitch, they could tip them off, too.

I asked Carolyn if they got complained on after complaining about the assholes and she said not that she was aware of but she’s pretty sure Melody knew they didn’t appreciate their son’s car waking them up at 6am and that someone did complain about their oleanders in back. They just don’t know who it was. I remember when that happened. She said they trimmed them back a bit and that was it. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was them that complained.

Found another account the punk has from when he was married. He’s had the piece of shit he drives for at least five years but also lived in Colorado and Afghanistan when he was in the army. He’s from California.

Tom got 90 bucks in overtime yesterday because they had a long meeting that went 3 hours overtime. This will help but we just don’t have the money most people around here do. We’re on one income and I can’t qualify for disability because I didn’t work long enough to do so and was only on disability in the '90s through my dad.

So yeah, I did have every reason to worry about something up there “punishing” me for speaking out which was my first thought when my heart went on the fritz, and well, now it’s pretty obvious.

I’m no longer documenting the times I hear the punk come and go because I refuse to help this park in this or any investigation from now on in case it was someone in the office that ratted me out (I’m sure the punk will move back in too, to spite people or at least come around more). As I should have told myself, people do shit in communities. If we were to complain about all the shit that goes on in the city, we’d practically be making a career of it. I should have just told myself that this is just city life. It’s the kind of shit you get when you live in such a congested area, and people do break rules all the time and quite often and get away with it. I’ve been hearing more car stereos in here and it’s just terrible overall. Totally regret coming here. Would rather be back stuffed in Jesse’s old trailer listening to Brandy and Whiskey bark up a storm. Regular water shut-offs, loud traffic, landscaping and projects every single fucking day, planes galore, and on and on and on. At least the planes were quiet this morning.

Wish there was a way to withdraw the complaint but it’s too late. No wonder so many are afraid to come forward!

This whole thing has made me long for rural even more. Tom doesn’t have a preference either way and is a lot more noise-tolerant than I am. Yes, I’d love to experience living in a tropical climate which is pretty much the only climate I haven’t experienced, but where there are people, there’s trouble. Oh, we’ll get a few good ones around like the Twenties and Bob and Virginia but people suck shit in general. They’re going to do what they’re going to do and to hell with anyone around them and how it may affect them. They’re in their own little bubble of oblivion, thinking the world revolves around them, and good luck trying to pop that bubble. On the rare occasion that this actually works, it’s only a temporary fix and then they’re either back to their old shit or someone else takes over for them in some way.

So I would definitely like to have no neighbors for the same reason my sister doesn’t want any. Can’t help but think that if adult communities were anything like this back in the 80s, my parents would have gotten the hell out immediately. My mother warned me that she didn’t think this was right for me and believe it or not the bitch actually knew what she was talking about a few times in her life.

The last “moving” dream I had we were headed to Nevada. Well, if we do go rural we sure as shit aren’t going to a cold climate. I just can’t deal with cold and snow. I’m not a fan of humidity either but I would rather that with warmth than dry and cold. Sundresses, tank tops, short shorts, bare feet with sparkly toe rings… That’s me.

I don’t think we’d be able to find anything too rural in Florida that we could afford. I think Nevada would be our best bet as it’s cheaper and then maybe we can keep the car. Damn, though! There’s a part of me that wants to just throw our shit in storage and live in an old beat-up RV for a while. Why not? I sleep shitty enough here as it is. But that would only be as a very last resort. Unfortunately, we can’t just bail out of anything because that would fuck up our credit and hurt our chances of getting something else in the future.

I’m hoping if we do go rural we can get something that’s still on the edge of civilization and not extreme rural where we have close to an hour’s drive to get to a store as we did in Maricopa and on Bly Mountain. If we went semi-rural, I wouldn’t worry so much if we needed to call the paramedics and he would be home more being retired which would make me more comfortable. The only problem is that land close to city limits can be rather expensive. The further from civilization you go, the cheaper the land. The only place in a community I’d go for is nothing we could ever afford. Like where my parents were on Nettles Island.

The only dreams I remember was that we still had Bob and Virginia as neighbors but the places looked totally different. I was shouting something loudly to Tom while outside our places and I heard Bob say, “Oh my God, does she have to be that loud?”

And then there was some dream where I stepped out of a room and into another where I was met with the shadowy silhouette of some guy that wanted to rape me. For some reason, I didn’t fight back and was like, well okay, let’s just get this over with. It was almost like he’d done it before, whoever he was. I sat down on the couch in which a stream of either moonlight or a street light filtered in on and said, “Let’s just do a quickie tonight.” Then I pulled the crotch of my panties aside, hoping I wouldn’t have to take them off.

I was also in some hotel somewhere, too.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 2019 Fuck! The planes are back in south flow so I’ll have to deal with the nonstop flights for the next couple of hours. Then again, no I won’t. I’ll blast some white noise through my wireless earbud and be glad I’m still mostly deaf in one ear.

Yesterday turned out to be a very interesting day. Maybe complaining does pay off in some cases. Wish I had spoken up two years ago! I mean other than in anonymous emails. But thanks to the freeloaders in Arizona who turned out to have the wrong kind of connections, the way they turned my life upside down in retaliation for complaining about their noise and vandalism really put a complex on me. I bitch and complain in my journal and to those I know but was hesitant to step forward. These people are white so fortunately, they can’t play the race card like the scum I had to deal with in Arizona. So I at least don’t have to worry that they’ll automatically be believed no matter what they say even though there are no guarantees in the end that they’ll be evicted from the park. The biggest thing is that the number of those complaining about them is escalating and that’s going to help, as I was told. There are still some afraid to come forward.

I called the office shortly after it opened and spoke to a woman named Christy. I gave her the scoop and any idiot with half a brain could tell by the tone of her voice that she was thrilled to hear from me and well aware of what I was talking about. I know the Twenties complained but she might as well have said, “Oh thank you so much for calling. Please, please come to the office and file a formal complaint! We would forever love you for it!”

So I walked down to the office. Christy was super nice and very empathetic. What I like in this case is that we have total anonymity. In Phoenix, even if we’d never talked to the welfare bums and asked them to tone it down to no avail before sending the city complaint in, they’d know it was us due to the layout of the area. Here, I not only have never spoken to Melody or her husband who Christy said was Gerry and not Al, but we’re not next to them either. So these people should have no idea who we are. Names are never given unless the police get involved. Then there’s a chance they could find out we were one of the complainers but I wouldn’t care in that case because if it ended up a legal matter, then it would be worth our identity being known.

She said they’ve been an ongoing problem and she brought up the time they were caught with the little girls there and how they solved that problem so I’m hoping the punk and the loud car will be solved as well. That I know of, the couple has a son and a daughter and the daughter is the one with 2-3 kids. Christy said people complained about the girls riding their bikes in the middle of the street.

Oh, I remember that and all their screaming. But that was nothing compared to their muscle car that’s worse than motorcycles.

She remembered the trailer that always used to be there but didn’t know about the dog they let come and go through a doggy door and was glad to hear about that because that’s not allowed, as she said. That too, was nothing compared to the car since it didn’t tear up our yard or bark outside our windows, but she asked me to add that to the complaint form so I did.

She felt really bad for me when I told her exactly where we were. “So you can’t miss it,” she said. Nope. It wraps all around the house. At least 3 sides of it, anyway.

The reason they put the house on the market had to do with previous complaints. She said something about how they used their daughter as the agent and they were doing it as a means of hoping things would blow over. I guess they thought the park would drop it if they thought they were moving. I don’t know the whole story on that but that’s not what’s important to me. Let them play all the fake moving games they want. I just want that car to stay out or for them to get the hell out.

She said that people were afraid to come forward and I admitted that I was for a while but as someone said on PB, we can’t get positive change for the better if we don’t speak up. I don’t know if this will do any good in the end but now I can’t say I didn’t try.

I walked to and from the office. When I got back my heart was racing as if I’d run a marathon. Realizing I had questions about the form, I decided to take the bike back down to the office and fill it out there with Christy since it could get me there faster since I can’t run 15-20 MPH. When I got back, my heart was really pounding and I really hope it was just a hormonal thing. This didn’t seem normal at all, though, I have no symptoms that anything’s amiss with my heart and all the doctors that have listened to it haven’t heard anything funny, so I guess it’s nothing serious. Maybe I’m just in worse shape than I thought, though I rode further barely a week ago and was fine. So yeah, probably just those crazy hormones. Maybe I’ll ride down to the lake later to give the ducks the rest of the old rat bread and see how I do. I definitely can’t blame 75s, since I’m on 50s, or flaring. Could be low thyroid but doubt it since I didn’t have this before I was diagnosed and probably hypo for 5-10 years.

Anyway, I don’t know why, but these complaint forms require you to list someone as a witness, so I listed the Twenties as they said I could a while back when suggesting I go down to the office and file a complaint. Christy gave me a copy of my complaint and a form to give to a neighbor if I wanted to. At first, I hesitated to go to Bob and Virginia as I wasn’t sure they would be up for the idea and didn’t want to make anyone feel they had to do something they might not want to do.

Then I heard Bob in his carport and decided the worst thing he could say was that he wasn’t interested. However, I was surprised with how understanding and just as annoyed he and Virginia have been and he brought up the kids living there for a while, too. He gladly took the form and I told him he could put me down as a witness.

Anyway, she’s going to run it by Joy and then I guess they’ll contact the district manager. No idea how this is going to play out but it will be interesting to see. I would think that after one has a certain number of complaints they would be booted. I mean why come to an adult community to live a mainstream life? Mobile homes are cheaper but there are plenty of all-ages parks.

It was funny when I mentioned keeping a journal for so long because she was like, “We’d love copies of it!”

I said it was full of swears.

“That’s okay. We don’t care.”

LOL, I declined because it’s mixed in with other things that have nothing to do with the situation and it would take me too long to isolate things pertaining to it. But I did tell her that from now on I’d be happy to jot down the times I hear the bastard.

She asked if he was living there and I said that he doesn’t seem to sleep there every night lately but sometimes he does. Every now and then I don’t hear him at all for a week or two. I didn’t want to lie and say I was sure he slept here every night. If there’s one thing I hate it’s those that lie and add in bullshit when they have a problem with someone. I prefer to “fight fair.” But the prick does come around plenty often enough and does sometimes live here. She asked if there was a pattern to his comings and goings, but no there isn’t. Just when there seems to be one, he veers off of it.

Now here’s where it gets really interesting. I Googled their address and finally found out their last name and then found them on Facebook. This part I’ll probably keep from Tom, unless they end up getting the messages and come to our door asking about them when he’s around because I don’t want him getting paranoid. I’ll eventually let him in on this because technically I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t swear, I didn’t threaten anyone, so I honestly don’t see how it could come back to harm me in any way should they ever find out it was me but unless they too, have the wrong connections, I don’t see how that would be possible. To help ensure this, this is part of why I’m telling absolutely no one but my journal. I’m not even going to share this part with Aly and Tammy.

I sent them a message from Nicole’s account without naming any names and gave them a piece of my mind about their rudeness and their lack of consideration and respect for those around them. The punk with the car is Joe G. I knew he was really thin and wiry but I’ve never actually seen his face so first I didn’t know how I would recognize him if I found him through his parents’ friend list. But then it hit me to look for the car. That car is his life, his obsession, his everything. I knew that he would be showing it off in multiple pics and he was.

Definitely got to stay away from the punk because I would definitely get arrested if he were to come at me or make any threats to me. Kid can’t be more than 120 soaking wet. I’ve got about 30 pounds on him and a vicious temper when provoked long and hard enough. Furthermore, the kid’s skin and bone. I’m skin, bone, fat and muscle. So I don’t see how I could lose it on him and not hurt him.

He blazed in at 6:30 yesterday morning and left an hour later. Probably too lazy to make his own breakfast. It’s coming up on 6:30 so I’m listening for him. He’s so loud he’ll easily come over the earbud blocking out the plains.

So Daddy apparently worked at a florist but I’m not really sure about Mommy and I didn’t really check much of her page. I did see that the parents and the Twenties have a mutual friend, Gayle W.

I focused on the main problem, the little shitbag kid. Shitbag is pro-Trump and he actually was in a relationship. Got divorced at the end of 2015 and served in the Army for a while. He has no current job listed and just as I figured, he’s jobless, loveless and childless. Spent some time in Hawaii too. Been hoping he’d at least meet someone if he doesn’t get a job but after going through a divorce and being in what’s got to be his early twenties which is very young these days for anything serious, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was single for quite some time to come.

I blocked messages after sending the messages and then did a test to see if they could still see them and I think they can.

What I love is how the parents allow anyone to comment on their posts. Can’t wait to do that from my real account after we leave…unless they get kicked out first. Don’t know how long it takes for them to hear about it after receiving a complaint. They may not yet know someone complained yesterday.

[nickgerlich]

Don't Panic

Well, that didn’t take long.It has been exactly one week since the national election, and already some shoppers are responding with fear…fear that President-elect Trump will actually impose the tariffs that were such an important plank in his platform. And if he does, many prices are most certainly going to rise.

So what’s a person to do? Simple. Buy now, even if you don’t need it yet, because prices might be higher tomorrow. It’s called doom spending.

If ever there were a prescription for inflation and/or product shortages, this is it. Some might argue they are acting rationally, but others would say that irrationality is causing this reaction. I get it. If Trump imposes 10-20% tariffs on anything and everything, except 60-100% on Chinese-made goods, it’s going to get crazy. And if you know you are going to ultimately need something, it might just make sense to buy it now.

As I look around my possessions, especially the things I buy fairly regularly, I see a bunch of trail running shoes, all sourced from Vietnam. They typically cost $150 a pair, so add $15-$30 to the price. And that new iPhone 16 I told you I was going to get? I never got around to it, but the 1TB Pro Max model could double from $1599 to nearly $3200, since it is made in China. Maybe I better also get a new MacBook Pro while I’m at it, right?

Perhaps you are thinking of a new car. The Ford Edge, a very popular model that you might think is made in the US, is actually made at a plant in Canada. Planning on a new 75” TV? Better hurry, because all the TVs we buy in the US, aside from a handful of specialty TVs designed for outdoor usage, are made overseas. The vast majority of our clothing comes from Asia and Central America. Most of our winter fruits and veggies come from Mexico and points south. Yesterday I noticed the bag of mini sweet peppers I bought at Walmart came from hothouse operations in Canada.

I could go on and on and on. The problem is the US companies, from retailers to manufacturers, cannot reshore operations at the snap of a finger. Furthermore, international investment takes a long time. It’s not like there are empty factory buildings across the country waiting to be fired up again.

What is most likely to happen is that companies will look for ways to shift production from China—if they currently rely upon it—to other nations where the tariffs would be lower. This has already happened in some sectors, long before Trump started threatening his tariffs. It’s a decent stop-gap measure, albeit not perfect.

And as I have intoned recently, the idea that we can absorb thousands of new manufacturing jobs at a time of extremely low unemployment is problematic. Manufacturers would drive up wages overall, and lure some workers away from lowering paying jobs, like fast food and retail. But then those jobs would need to be filled. We need more humans. Or robots.

Meanwhile, we are faced with the very real possibility of a run on popular products leading up to the 20th January inauguration. And if the tariffs are enacted, there would then presumably be a precipitous drop in sales. Well, at least until I wear out all of those shoes and need a new phone.

Panic buying is a phenomenon unto itself. We don’t normally see it very often, except in winter around here. Whenever the “S” word is invoked—meaning snow—it sends people rushing to the supermarket to load up on milk, bread, and eggs. You know. Because I guess they’re all going to eat French Toast for the near term. Come on. This is Texas, even way up here in the Panhandle. Whatever we get will probably be gone in a day or two. I’m pretty sure we will all survive. Then again, maybe the storm will completely fizzle, and then we will have all that food.

We also saw panic buying during COVID, and again this semester when the longshoremen strike was looming. It’s what caused people to hoard toilet paper and other essentials, irrational thinking by seemingly rational people who did not want to risk being caught without.

Think long and hard before you run out to buy things in anticipation of something that may not happen. For all the bluster our President-elect has, his threatened tariffs may pass to the south or north of us, just like a snowstorm that somehow managed to miss us. It’s hard sometimes to use restraint, especially when FOMO is a very real possibility.

I’m keeping my ear to the ground, and if I begin to sense all this saber rattling is going to become policy, I’ll be ready to pounce. But not until then. I’d much rather be out on the trail than on the trail of more merchandise to fill my house.

Dr “Keep Calm” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[curioussubjects]

I'm not a doctor, but I am chronically ill and I've spent a lot of time trying to find ways to improve my health despite food (sensory problems) and exercise (chronic fatigue) difficulties. I'm hoping my years of trial and error can offer folks in similar struggles some ideas to try.

Eating more plants:

I hate hate veggies. Can't stand the flavor or the crunchy texture (like dry mouth and trouble swallowing level, and that green plant-y smell/taste makes me nauseous).

My mom was actually really clever raising me because instead of fighting me over food, she decided to do something else: hide all the gross plants in food I liked. I'm Brazilian so beans are a dietary staple, and my mom used to hide all kinds of stuff (squash, beets, etc) with the beans, so I'd eat it while only tasting the beans themselves and the seasoning. I don't really enjoy that anymore bc of the texture, but I have discovered that I can hide a lot of veggies in stews and slow cooked beef/pork dishes no problem. Chinese food is also a way I add more veggies to my diet because a good lo mein will make me eat up all those carrots, bok choy, and been sprouts you can throw at me. Some plants I'll never eat even if cooked in something delicious (spinach, asparagus, brussels sprouts, peas), but some plants are better than no plants.

I'm also a huge fan of fruit, and it's worth venturing out and trying some if you're not a huge fruit eater and don't need to control your sugar intake too much. Buy pre sliced if you need to! It's ok! Also: if you're in the US and you have an international market with fresh produce near you, go there for your fruit. You'll get more variety.

The best thing you can do to add foods to your diet is experiment. If you problem is texture, is there a way to change the food's texture so you can tolerate it better? Is you problem flavor? How strong is the flavor and could you hide it among other flavors, so you don't notice it?

Here's a final example: I struggle eating enough omega-3s (hate fish, especially oily fish) and getting enough fiber. I also realized I need a lot of protein during breakfast. My solution was to make my own breakfast bar (read: throw stuff in a bowl, mix, bake). Now I regularly eat oats, flax and chia seeds, and almonds. I also add eggs to the mix to up the protein content. And to make the bar actually taste good, I don't stop myself from adding the sugar and choc chips I need to make it edible.

Getting more exercise:

Ok, so this one is really tricky and I'm still struggling a lot with it, but I've had some insights over the past couple years.

Here's the thing, between the POTS, the post-exertional malaise, the hEDS and the AuHD, exercising has been pretty damn miserable for me. I simply do not get the feel good endorphins from it, and instead just feel worse, which makes exercising even harder because my brain simply Will Not Want To Do It.

The best thing you can do if exercise makes you feel like crap is look into pacing (1, 2). I actually found it really helpful to attach my immediate symptoms to my heart rate when I'm exercising, which I then realized is close to what you find the anaerobic threshold in people with CFS/ME is (around 50%-60% of max heart rate for age group). Having a number to look at, makes it a lot easier for me to manage my symptoms so that I don't end up in a nightmare fatigue cycle. Getting a watch that monitors HR is key here, unfortunately, but a pulseox could help you get started.

I've also taken to practicing full body relaxation to help with muscle stiffness, which is the main source of my pain problems and an obstacle when I'm trying to do exercise recovery. I'm not huge on meditation, but I do suggest some guided full body relaxation to help you get started. My physical therapist recommended me this video, which I listened to a handful of times until I felt I got the hang of the process; now I do it on my own. Body awareness is good actually, who knew.

I still haven't found a way to add regular exercise to my routine, but I'm technically still in recovery from years of burnout and fatigue. I'm still very much working on rehabilitation with a physical therapist to work on my muscle weakness and endurance, but at some point I hope I can find some type of exercise that isn't The Worst. The solution here is probably much like the solution with food: find some kind of physical activity that is somehow enjoyable. Personally, I wish there were adult playgrounds near me.

Something else worth looking into: check out your what activities your parks and rec district offers. You may find classes like pilates, yoga, and dance at more affordable prices. It's also worth looking at brochures in nearby communities because even if you don't get resident pricing, non-resident is still cheaper than a gym membership or studio fees.

A lot of younger people have no idea what aging actually looks and feels like, and the reasons behind it. That ignorance is so dangerous. If you don’t want to “be old,” you aren’t talking about a number of years. I have patients in their late 80s who could still handily beat me in a race—one couple still runs marathons together, in their late 80s—and I lost someone who was in her early 60s to COPD last year. What you want is not youth, it is health.

If you want to still be able to enjoy doing things in your 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s, what you want to do, right now, is quit smoking, get some activity on a regular basis (a couple of walks a week is WAY better for you than nothing; increasing from 1 hour a day of cardio to 1.5 will buy you very little), and eat some plants. That’s it. No magic to it. No secret weird tricks. Don’t poison yourself, move around so your body doesn’t forget how, and eat plants.

If you have trouble moving around now because of mobility limitations, bad news: you still need to move around, not because it’s immoral not to, but because that’s still the best advice we have. I highly recommend looking up the Sit and Be Fit series; it is freely available and has exercises that can be done in a chair, which are suitable for people with limited mobility or poor balance. POTS sufferers, I’m looking at you.

If you have trouble eating plants because of dietary issues (they cause gas, etc.) or just because they’re bitter (super taster with texture issues here!), bad news. You still want to find a way to get some plants into your body on a regular basis. I know. It sucks. The only way I can do it is restaurants—they can make salads taste like food. I can also tolerate some bagged salads. On bad weeks, the OCD with contamination focus gets so bad I just can’t. However, canned beans always seem “safe,” and they taste a bit like candy, so they’re a good fallback.

If you smoke and you have tried quitting a million times and you’re just not ready to, bad news. You still need to quit. Your body needs you to try and keep trying. Your brain needs it, too. Damaging small blood vessels racks up cumulative damage over time that your body can start trying to reverse as soon as you quit. I know it’s insanely, absurdly addictive. You still need to.

You cannot rules lawyer your way past your body’s basic needs. It needs food, sleep, activity, and the absence of poison. Those are both small things and big asks. You cannot sustain a routine based on punishment, so don’t punish your body. Find ways to include these things that are enjoyable and rewarding instead. Experiment. There is no reason not to experiment—you don’t have to know instantly what’s going to work for you and what won’t, you just need to be willing to try things and make changes when things aren’t working for you.

You will still age. Your body will stop making collagen and elastin. Tissues you can see and tissues you can’t see will both sag. Cushioning tissues under your skin will get thinner. You’ll bruise more easily. Skin will tear more easily. Accumulated sun damage will start to show more and more. Joints will begin to show arthritis. Tendons and ligaments will get weaker and get injured more easily, as will muscles. Bones will lose mass and get easier to break. You’ll get tired more easily.

But you know what makes the difference between being dead, or as good as, in your 60s vs your 90s? Activity, plants, and quitting smoking. And don’t do meth. Saw a 58-year-old guy this week who is going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t quit whatever stimulant he’s on. I pretended to believe it was just the cigarettes, and maybe it is, but meth and cocaine will kill you quicker. Stop poisoning yourself.

Baby steps; take it one step at a time; you don’t need to have everything figured out right now. But you do need to be working on figuring things out.

[nonotnolan]

The Best of Both

Dedicated to my Valentine, the lovely @mergeman

--------------------------

The fact that I was still trying to work out at the gym a few days a week was a testament to my sheer stubborn force of will. Now that my college days were now several years behind me, it was becoming painfully obvious that I was growing more and more out of shape. So, I decided to join the massive throng of people who made a resolution to work out more in the New Year. Most of the New Year's Eve crowd had given up a few weeks ago, but I refused to let myself become part of a failure statistic.

Which, while that did feel something to be proud of... I really wasn't changing any other part of my lifestyle. I was still eating ramen for lunch and dinner almost every day, my daily food intake was completely devoid of any fruits or veggies, and... well, I wasn't sure if protein shakes were legit science or just overhyped consumerism, but I wasn't buying any of those, either. I showed up, played around on the equipment for a few hours without really breaking a sweat, and then called it a day. I was going through the motions without actually putting in any effort, so of course I wasn't going to see any results.

Honestly, at this point, I think the only reason I was still going to the gym was the amount of free eye candy. Now that the machines were less crowded, the gym rats were free to return to their natural habitat. The beefcakes were completely oblivious to my wandering eye, which allowed me to consume as much eye candy as I desired. Budget-Jason-Momoa was my favorite, but Almost-Tom-Holland-With-Wide-Shoulders was a close second.

And then there was Greg. Well, I have no idea what his real name is, but... I call him Greg, because he reminds me of a guy I knew back in college. He looks looks nothing like Greg. This guy has dark brown hair, a full beard, and massive pecs that were practically the size of my head while my Greg was a five foot nothing skater boy with long, blonde hair. And yet, this guy wears a headband that looks exactly like the one that my Greg used to wear all the time.

"Take a photo, it'll last longer," Greg said, flexing an arm in my direction. He smiled at me, clearly taking my attention as a compliment.

"I am so sorry!" I said, immediately dropping my gaze to the floor. He would be the first person to notice me staring at his amazing body. "I, uhh... it's just, that headband. You remind me of my friend Greg."

Whatever answer he was expecting, he clearly was not expecting that. He paused, fumbling with his water bottle for a few moments before seemingly making a decision. "Follow me," he said, gesturing with his massive hands. He sauntered off toward the back of the gym, where the employee's only cleaning closet was located. Where he was going, I had no idea. But I knew enough about myself to know that if I didn't follow him, I would regret it for the rest of my life.

Greg wedged himself into the closet, standing on top of the mop drain and ducking slightly so that his shoulders cleared the shelves of cleaning supplies. "I know it's a tight fit, but the door has to close behind you," he said. I obliged, standing on top of the vacuum cleaner to do so. Even if this was an elaborate prank, I was standing close enough to him to feel the heat of his body, and the pungent smell of his sweaty body brought all four and a half inches of my manhood to attention. Greg pressed against a portion of wall, there was an audible clicking sound, and then the entire closet started to move. "Yeah, it's an elevator," he said, correctly reading the look of confusion on my face. "Trust me, Bennett, it's only going to get weirder from here."

I had never told him my name. "You really are Greg," I whispered, staring up into his eyes.

He smiled back at me. "For the most part. The old Greg was merged into Keaton's body, and I am the result. I'm about 80% Greg's personality, with the 20% being habits and mannerisms from Keaton. Physically, it's probably closer to 90/10 in Keaton's favor. The perky nipples are all Greg, though," he added, winking at me as he lifted an arm to fondle himself through his muscle tank.

Once the movement stopped, the wall behind Greg slid away like an elevator door, revealing a dimly lit metal room. The center of the room was an elaborate tube contraption that looked like someone had tried to turn a tanning booth into a Science Fiction movie prop. There was some sort of control console off to the side that was displaying a gallery of men on its screen. "Go ahead, pick a body," Greg said, gesturing me over to the device.

"Every man you see listed there has been screened for compatibility with the program," Greg explained. "They're all single, muscular men in peak physical condition. They also think they're agreeing to try out an experimental intelligence boosting drug. Which... in a way, I guess they are. I may not have much of Keaton's personality, but I do have complete memories from both of my former selves."

"I choose him," I said, after scrolling through a few of the other men. There was something about him that felt right. He looked confident, but in a way that suggested a quiet smug behavior and not an in-your-face cocky attitude. I found myself instantly drawn to his wide shoulders, and his eyes were captivating.

Greg looked over my shoulder and smiled. "I see you've chosen Travis, that's an interesting pick. I can't guarantee what you will look like once the merging process is done, of course. You won't keep the same tattoos, I can tell you that right now. Still, I'm sure the new you will be just as charming as he is intelligent."

I could feel my cheeks turning red at that comment, but I decided to ignore it. "So... what happens now? I mean, he's not actually here, right?"

"That's right," Greg said. "So, we're going to run the machine on you first, and it's going to convert you into a... a liquid, basically. We'll also notify Travis that we're ready for the experiment to begin. When he enters the machine, he will be injected with the liquid we made out of you, and... at the end of that process, the new you will be finalized. I know it sounds like a lot, but I promise that it isn't painful in any way."

I nodded, feeling equal parts nervous and excited at the thought of becoming merged with a muscle hunk. "I'm ready," I said, looking over at Greg.

He just laughed at me. "No, you're not. Clothing interferes with the process. You gotta get naked first, then you'll be ready."

"Oh. Ummm... can I at least get some privacy?" I asked, suddenly painfully aware of my still-raging erection.

"You can't," he said, with a wide grin. He grabbed the waistband of my gym shorts, and pulled both my shorts and my boxers down to my ankles. "Besides, I already know that you're happy to see me," he said, reaching around to give my shaft a quick squeeze. "If the new you is also gay, maybe we can have some fun later."

I let out a brief, involuntary moan as a shiver of pleasure rushed up my spine. Well, at least things couldn't possibly get more awkward. I quickly shucked off the rest of my clothes, and stepped into the modified tanning booth. The lights flickered on, and soon all I could hear was the loud hum of the fluorescent lights. My skin started to feel unnaturally warm, and pretty soon I could feel my consciousness slipping away as a peaceful, calming sensation overtook me...

--------------------------

The first memory that I have is lying naked on a medical gurney with a massive headache. Moments ago, I had been standing in a tanning booth, except that moments ago I was also sitting on this medical bed thing getting an IV hooked up to my arm. I reached up to feel my hair, which was now trimmed to a short buzzcut. It wasn't different from my short blonde hair. It was a big change from my long brown man bun. My ink changed, but the designs were inspired by the trip to Japan I took after high school. I hated that trip, but it was a family vacation. I always wanted to go to Japan, but travelling just for anime would have been stupid. I glanced over to the mirror to check out my new body. The amount of muscle I grew was almost insane. Honestly, I think I lost a bit of definition, but I can probably get it back. I must have spent at least a half hour examining my new body.

You get the idea. Even now, I'm still occasionally seeing things that trigger conflicting memories from Bennett or Travis, but the first few weeks were the absolute worst. I'm glad that I had Greg at my side to help me through the worst of the merging sickness, as we called it. I've had migraines before, and this was definitely worse somehow.

Unlike Greg, I didn't really feel a loyalty to either of my former selves. I decided that my name would be Benjamin. Like if someone took Bennett's name and made it popular. No one expects a civil engineer to look this good, but it's made climbing the career ladder so much easier. Especially now that I actually want to go fishing with the boss when he invites me out to the lake.

I haven't been back to that gym in several months-- too many conflicting memories, so I just use a home gym setup instead. Greg still goes a few times a week, though. After all, he's still helping the owner find good candidates for merging. I find it weird that Greg still has to pay the monthly membership fee despite being an employee of sorts, but I don't complain. He's the only reason I exist, after all.

Besides, we're dating now. Greg had told me-- both of me, in fact-- that if the new me was gay, we would have sex. Travis thought it was a joke, Bennett decided it was an offer he wanted to redeem. Turns out I'm bisexual. It's a good thing I took after Travis in the manhood department-- Greg can no longer fit my entire shaft in his massive grip. My new 8.5 inch cock is bigger than either of my former selves had before. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm also not about to complain and neither is Greg.

[kaunis-sielu]

Fire Dogs

The fires had been blazing for weeks now, inching closer and closer to your home and firefighters were pouring in. You’d decided to stay, the fire was mostly moving away from town, thank god. The mayor had said that people who were willing to stay and help care for the hordes of firefighters pouring into town were appreciated. So even though you were a single Omega, you’d signed up. You could take in 2-6 firefighters depending on if they were willing to share a bed with one another and if you needed to sleep on the couch. You’d been assigned 3 men, all from New York City, one a Captain and all of them Alphas.

When you open the door as they walk up your sidewalk the first, a man with light hair and blue eyes, gives you a tight smile.

“Hi, welcome. I have a dog, is that okay?” The three men don’t even have to look at one another before all nodding yes. “Great, come on in.” You move out of the doorway and the three men come into the house.

“Thank you so much for opening your home to us.” The first man says, god he smells good, like sandalwood and lavender.

“It’s the least I could do.” You introduce yourself as your dog comes trotting into the room, Cooper’s tail wagging wildly. “But you can call me Fawn, and this is Cooper.”

“Sorry, I’m Steve Rogers, this is Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson.” The first man says introducing himself and the two men with him.

“It’s a pleasure. I’ll show you guys to your rooms.” You lead them upstairs and show them each to a room. Bucky takes your first spare room, Sam the second and Steve is in the master.

“Buck, you’ve got third shift, Sam you’re on first and I’m on second.”

“Do we start today?” Bucky asks as you make your way downstairs, you were given a small packet for the guys, things you would need to know like allergies, presentation, emergency contacts and dietary restrictions. All three are simple, no dietary issues, no allergies, Alphas, Sam has his wife Carol as his emergency contact but Steve and Bucky, or James as he’s listed, both have Rebecca Barnes, Bucky’s sister.

You get started on dinner and Sam wanders down into the kitchen bringing his

“So, why didn’t you leave town?”

“Nowhere to go. And the fire is heading away from here so hopefully everything will stay away from town.”

“The smoke doesn’t bother you?”

“I mean it’s not great but as long as Coop and I are okay I plan on staying. I’ve got some stuff packed up in my car and ready to go but I just haven’t pulled the trigger yet.”

“That’s fair. We do really appreciate you doing this. Letting us stay here.” He’s got such a soothing presence about him that you forget he’s an Alpha until his scent washes over you.

“It’s the least I can do,” you tell him with a smile, “so what does first shift mean?”

“Oh, it’s the really early shift, like 4am. Steve will be out running a crew since he’s a Captain back home and he’s around 10am then Bucky is 4pm.”

“What will I need for you in the morning? Breakfast? Coffee? Energy bars?”

“Coffee would be great. I usually take it with milk.” You jot down coffee and milk on a sheet of paper.

“How do the other two take their coffee?”

“Barnes likes it black, like a psychopath and Steve likes it with cream and sugar so he can’t taste the coffee.” You laugh and jot down creamer.

“Any chance you know what kind of creamer he likes?”

“Caramel I think.”

“I can always ask him too. I’ll set the coffee to go off at 3:15 for you.”

“Thank you.” Sam says as he sits down at the island. “What are you making for dinner?”

“Spaghetti. I make the sauce from scratch, from the garden.”

“It smells great.”

“Thanks, should be about a half hour. I’ve got meatballs in the oven and will have some garlic bread and green beans from my garden too.”

“You’re going to spoil us huh?” He says with a grin and you laugh, hoping that your suppressants work like they’re supposed to and keep you presenting as a Beta.

“I don’t get to cook for others often so I’m being a little selfish. Let me know if you need anything from town or want me to get anything. I’ll go shopping for the week tomorrow.”

“Are they paying you to host us?”

“No, but I don’t mind getting you guys stuff.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely, I wouldn’t offer if it was a problem.” You assure him and after studying you he nods.

“I’ll be sure to let the guys know.” You chat with Sam while you cook. You learn that his wife Carol is an Alpha and a doctor. The Alpha/Alpha pair is uncommon but if it works for them that’s wonderful. You also learn that he, Bucky and Steve served together and that Carol had outranked all three.

It seems that Steve has always been the one to lead their little trio, and when the smell of dinner lures him and Bucky down you include them in the conversation. Bucky, whose scent is oranges and cedar wood, is more chatty and flirty than Steve is but there’s this quiet strength about Steve that’s impossible not to notice.

Sam goes to bed immediately after dinner but Steve and Bucky stay up and watch the news with you. You set the coffee machine for Sam and leave him a note to help himself to anything he wants to eat. Then you bring Cooper outside, he wanders your wildfire lit backyard, the orange glow is spooky and the smell of smoke is thick in the air.

“Come on Coop, it’s bedtime.” You tell him leading him to the living room. Both Steve and Bucky are gone so you change into your pajamas and get ready for bed in the bathroom then head back to the couch where Cooper is laying dead center. “Move it Coop.” He grumbles but gets down, once you’re settled you let him back up on the couch between your feet.

You wake up as Sam closes the fridge.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” He says softly. When he turns and sees you sitting up on the couch.

“No it’s okay.” You tell him as Cooper hops off of the couch. You follow him to the back door and let him out.

“Why are you sleeping on the couch?”

“They needed three more beds so I gave them three more beds.”

“We put you out of your room?” He asks with a small frown.

“I sleep more on the couch anyway, I usually fall asleep to one baking show or another.” You tell him with a sleepy smile, you hadn’t meant to tell them they’d taken all your beds but it was too late now.

“This is your home.”

“Seriously Sam don’t worry about it.” You say letting Cooper back into the house. “Be safe.”

“Thanks.” He says and you go back to bed on the couch.

The next time you wake it’s 9:00 and you want to make sure that you’ve got something ready for Bucky and Steve for breakfast so you get up. You feed Cooper then let him out again, if there wasn’t the fire you’d let him stay outside as long as he wanted. You sit down on the couch and pull your tablet into your lap. Cooper joins you on the couch as you start to draw your characters.

“Morning.” Steve’s voice is low and soft when he greets you.

“Good morning. There are pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash browns and bacon in the oven. The pans will be warm.”

“Thanks,” you hear him help himself to food and coffee then he comes out into the living room. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“Not at all. Don’t let Coop fool you into any food though.”

“No people food for him?”

“Just some fruit and veggies.” You tell him glancing up at the fire captain. “So Sam said you guys were on a 4-10-4 start time but what time are you all home?”

“We’re doing 12 hour shifts, so Sam and Buck don’t overlap but I will with both.”

“Okay, I’ll have dinner ready when you get back. Is there anything that I don’t have that you need? Sam said you liked a certain flavor of creamer.”

“The French vanilla is fine.”

“He said caramel?” You glance over at him again and he has this little shy smile on his face. “I don’t mind, I need to go get groceries anyway.”

“Caramel is my favorite.” He admits and you nod then get back to your drawing. He finishes his breakfast in silence then puts his dishes into the dishwasher, Steve heads back upstairs and you hear him finish getting ready before he comes back down.

“Be safe.”

“Thanks.” He says before closing the door softly behind him.

Bucky sleeps until almost noon, you’ve taken breakfast out of the oven and put it in the fridge. He somehow looks groggy still and you’re worried he didn’t sleep well.

“Good morning.”

“Morning. How are you?” His voice is low and husky.

“Good. Did you sleep okay?”

“Yea I slept great. I could still be asleep to be honest but I might get called in early.”

“Why?”

“There are less guys at base camp right now. Apparently a group of them had some trouble on the way? I don’t know but Steve called.”

“Breakfast is in the fridge if you wanna heat it otherwise I have lunch meat and stuff for sandwiches.”

“I love breakfast food.” He says making his way to the fridge. He starts a cup of coffee then opens the fridge.

You find out that Bucky is a chatter. Which is fine but you’re glad that you’re illustrating today rather than writing because there’s no way you’d be able to focus on writing. He asks you about living in the small town, how you ended up here, about your job, when he finds out you’re an author and illustrator of children’s books he promises to buy his niece a couple books. You tell him to leave his address and you’ll send him a signed copy of the one you’re working on, he excitedly does.

When he leaves at 3:30, not being called in early, you take a break and start on dinner. You want to make sure you’ve got food ready for Sam when he gets back.

Sam comes in at 4:45, Cooper barks excitedly and Sam sinks to the ground and Cooper immediately calms allowing Sam to wrap his arms around him. You don’t say anything, just continue to cook while Sam hugs Cooper to him. You hear him talking softly but you ignore him, whatever he’s saying to Coop is none of your business.

“I’m gonna go take a shower before I eat.” Sam says at full volume, the side of his face still pressed to Cooper’s side.

“That’s fine,” you assure him, “I’ve got about twenty minutes before the rice is done.”

“Okay.” He disappears then Cooper comes wandering into the kitchen. You give him a couple of treats and tell him what a good boy he is.

Sam eats in silence then goes up to his room, you’re pretty sure he goes to bed by 7 but after the day he’s had you can’t blame him.

At 10 you start reheating food for when Steve comes in. Sure enough, 10:30 rolls in and so does Steve. Cooper greets Steve with a wagging tail, Steve gives him a little pat and heads upstairs. You hear the shower turn on and after around 10 minutes Steve is back dropping down on the couch as Cooper puts a head in his lap. Steve absently pets Cooper and you place a plate of food in front of him.

“Thank you.” His tired eyes meet yours and he gives you a little half smile.

“It’s the least I can do.” You tell him sincerely. Cooper stays with his head in Steve’s lap until Steve goes upstairs to bed. You set up your bed on the couch and set your alarm for 3:30 in the morning so you can get food heated for Bucky and coffee and food started for Sam.

You fall asleep still smelling Steve on your couch.

Tag list:

@memyselfandmaddox @thefanficfaerie @patzammit @dsakita @dramadreamer14 @killcomet @thesassmisstress @andahugaroundtheneck @loving-life-my-way @thefridgeismybestie @dumblani @im-just-another-monster @mywinterwolf @giggleberts @biskwitmamaw @geeksareunique @paintballkid711 @lumar014 @also-fangirlinsweden @connie326 @inkedaztec @eralen @valsworldofcreativity @strangersstranger

[itsbun]

On a lighter note: Here are some of the interesting parts of being autistic!

1. Stuffies have to pass the “hug test”.  If they are too small, too hard, too itchy, etc. to hug then I won’t buy them!

2. If I am buying multiple colors of a certain style of clothing, they have to be the exact. Same. Thing.  From the same company, in the same cut and fabric, or I will feel like they don’t “belong” with the others.  I own 5 skirts, all the same size and style, and my t shirts are all the same size with the same neckline.  I wear the same socks in different colors, the same style of choker, and I used to own two pairs of converse to switch between but I have leg/feet problems now and need to wear ugly orthopedic shoes :/

3. I don’t wear makeup or style my hair.  Some of that is from dysphoria (I’m enby) but I just don’t like to do my makeup or have to spend an hour meticulously arranging my hair until it looks a certain way.  I squeeze it when I get out of the shower so my curls stay curly and that’s it!

4. At some point in the last two years I decided my favorite color was pastel pink.  So uh... I made my entire room and 80% of the things in it pastel pink.  Yes, including stuffies.  And bed sheets.  And curtains.  One day I wanna paint the walls pink too!

5. I sit really weirdly.  Like really weirdly.  Like even the fact that I’m gay doesn’t explain how weirdly I sit.  I sit with my feet and legs in weird positions that don’t look comfortable to other people.  Right now I am sitting with one foot on top of a leg of my chair and the other wrapped around the back leg of my chair with my feet in two separate directions.  Yes it’s comfortable.  No it’s probably not helping the leg problems lol

6. I think one of the reasons I sing a lot (every day sometimes for hours!) is because it’s a vocal stim for me!  I looooove singing so much it’s not even funny.  I’ll sing the same song over and over until I don’t wanna sing it anymore, and then I’ll pick a new song!

7. I know every single episode (that I’ve seen) of Spongebob in detail from start to finish.  I can sit there and quote and entire Spongebob episode without watching it first.  The funny part to me is I don’t have a TV in my room, and I watch TV very very rarely when I am sitting with my family.

8. I never stop moving!  I’m always twiddling my thumbs or wiggling my toes or shaking my leg.  I do it without noticing.  I do little dances or rock when I’m bored, I sing to myself very quietly, I pinch at my skin (not in a mean way), I fidget with things in my hands, the list goes on!

9. I am very bad with directions.  If someone walks with me to a place, and I turn around to come back from that place, my brain can’t reorient because I am facing a different direction and didn’t catalogue enough about my surroundings to make it back on my own.  This happened every day in elementary school for over 4 years and continues to happen every time I go places.

10. I am sooo picky with food textures, tastes, temperatures, and how it’s cooked!  For example, I am a person that actually loves mushy room temperature food, but struggles with food that is too hot, too spicy, or too cold.  I don’t like to season my food at all.  I also hate foods with slimy seeds in them like tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, most peppers, watermelon, etc.  I will not eat most fruits or veggies unless they are cooked in the way I know I like.

Aaaand I can’t think of any more rn!  Please let me know if you feel similarly or related to anything!  I like to think it’s unique but it would be cool to meet other neurodivergent pals who are like me!

[malt-o-meat]

carbs is fuel, fast carbs (juice, soda, gatorade) burn faster, so if you feel exhausted and you haven’t had food in a while, fast carbs will give you energy to do more stuff like make more food. slow carbs (oranges, chocolate, pasta) take more time and give you fuel for longer.

protein repairs you, it’s like. building supplies. helps you repair muscles and fibers when they tear from regular use. if you go work out, having protein after will help some with being sore.

fats is oil. it makes protein and carbs do what they do. absorbs vitamins too. it’s sort of the road that protein and carbs build off of. if that makes sense.

vitamins are regulators and your body doesn’t make em

A: tells blood cell building machines what to do

B: precursor to other enzymes. holds their hands and moves with them to do stuff.

C: antioxidant, prevents your body from oxidizing (bad things happen when you oxidize)

D: tells your bones and organs what they need to do with minerals.

E: antioxidant. again. prevent that. don’t want it.

step one to eating healthy: it is better to have food you will eat than food you will not eat. if ranch helps you eat the salad, get ranch. it doesn’t take away the value of the veggies.

step two to eating healthy: think about what you’re doing in a day. i need more carbs in the morning so i can get to work and do job, and more protein and carbs at lunch because i need to repair from the stuff i do for work.

step three to eating healthy: it’s better to start with a little bit of change, even just noticing where you’re at now is good. if you eat mostly carbs, or mostly fat, or mostly protein, you’re not gonna feel too good. your body needs all of those things to work.

step four to eating healthy: cooking at home. find things you like about it. if you can’t but someone else can, ask them for help. if that seems impossible, then what’s the next step for you? what’s the smallest thing here you feel you can do? if you go grocery shopping, it’s ok to buy frozen stuff. throw it in a pan when it’s done microwaving and practice that. if you can’t do grocery shopping and mostly eat at fast food restaurants, clean your kitchen a little bit. spend some time in there, think about a recipe you would like to try.

step five to eating healthy: add, don’t subtract. cram in veggies where you can stand them, or learn to love them, either way, you need them. there’s a list someone made on this website about foods for sensory stuff? if i find it i’ll link it here. make sure you eat a bite a day, better than nothing. doesn’t have to be perfect but it’s a good starting place. i like the crunchy ones, and they’re good after work treats so. i do a bit of that and hummus. that’s just what works for me.

don’t go buying like 30 cans of green beans and then be mad at yourself when you still have all 30 even though you said you’d eat one a day. that’s ridiculous. try for a small goal that’s achievable and if you can’t do that, try something even smaller, till the first success hits.

i am not advising you eat like i do, cause i don’t know you or your needs. i have some slow and fast carbs in the morning, and something with protein mostly cause i like it, so like. a muffin and some milk and some cheese or salami, and if im still hungry, i give it 10 and then eat if i need to. i brought peanut butter to work, and some protein bars so i will do that for lunch, pb like ice cream, protein bar like protein bar, and then some fruit snacks cause i like them! sets me up good for the rest of the work day.

im not a professional, all of the sources for this are my brain and wikipedia. the only thing that i can say for a fact is true is that it is better to try and fail and try and fail than to stay in the same spot. net gain of failure is higher than net gain of not trying.

the typos are intentional and i’m sexier for it

Searching for nutritious food tips online is a nightmare I don't care about losing weight I care about feeding my body what it needs to feel good!! RAHHH!!!!

[spiinsparks]

—  a child who raised a  child  /  on  homelessness  ;  food  .

   ( *  tws for homelessness / starvation mentions / malnourishment / and in general sonic having like really bad self-feeding habits )

       ||. so  @aeniqmata​  & i were gabbing earlier as we do and l i s t e n...

   Hedgehogs are omnivorous creatures similarly to foxes, except the diets are COMPLETELY flipped. A pet hedgehog’s dominant source of food is kitten food ( which does include high sources of protein, including meat sources like fish and chicken ) but they primarily eat veggies, insects (beetles, worms, etc.) and fruits. Foxes, on the other hand, foxes eat primarily meats, with less emphasis on veggies, nuts and berries. 

        All of that to say  . . . finding a balance between the two of them that would benefit both of their needs was ABSOLUTELY incredibly difficult for Sonic and Tails. Tails needs more meat in his diet than someone with Sonic’s lifestyle could provide. Not to mention Sonic being 11-12 at the time. I won’t talk on flout’s tails’ behalf because honestly her thoughts on it are SO HECCIN COOL and I wouldn’t be able to do them justice - but I can say that while Sonic’s methods weren’t foolproof by ANY means, he did try to go well above and beyond his best.

      We’re talking research into carnivorous diets, with emphasis on foxes, asking other mobian foxes on their travels about THEIR lifestyles in as casual a way as possible because if he HAS to do field research then dangit, he will. Saving up from various odd jobs so that the two of them could go out and eat and purposefully letting Tails pick out whatever suits his fancy (and, by that, I mean he very carefully observes him to see what makes his eyes light up, even if Tails doesn’t pick it on his own... and then ordering that for him anyways, even if it takes up most of his savings, because it’s what Tails actually WANTS rather than what he’s resigning himself to.)        side note: but chilidogs being the sort of safe middle ground for the two of them??? Along with being relatively cheap to buy from vendors, and easy to make on the road.

         Anyways, Sonic struggling to juggle their VASTLY different diets and feeling terrible whenever Tails might fall ill from not having enough - in general, not just when it  comes to properly eating meats.  (But also to that extent, meats potentially being harder for someone of sonic’s former income class (being: none) to get sometimes because of the nature of the islands and mobian-dense populations .... even if the critters exist??? I am a Think.)

       There would be times when no matter how much Sonic would stock up, they ran out.  And, even then,  so often on the go, there’s only so much you can have with you physically on hand. Those times weren’t... great. But Sonic would go out of his way to make sure Tails ate what they had - usually the majority of what they had despite Sonic’s own speed very much meaning he needs to eat way, way more. (his logic: Tails is a kid, and the kid  gets food first. Sonic can eat what’s left and is willing and capable of supplementing with whatever is around that he can gather.)  And he knows he can’t outsmart the fox and he knows he can’t make him worry less, but he’ll play it off and offer to share if it means Tails Does Not Go Hungry Tonight. 

           Sonic is, even now, VERY used to going days without as much food intake as he needs and... at some point he just stopped noticing he was hungry until it started to physically catch up with him.  (intense fatigue, general sluggishness, the occasional stomach pain when it got really bad, etc) Like, logically he knows he needs food, but he can’t really tell anymore on the day-to-day. the signs don’t show up so drastically for him to take heed of it and if he’s preoccupied,  he’ll forget until it’s late, and then he realizes “oh i only had like (1) bagel today.  should probably fix that.”

[leslie-lyman]

There are so many things a wanna know about Tessa and Pero. I see Pero as a curiosity killed the cat type of person, too curious for their own good lol! So maybe a list of first for Pero? What is his first time in a grocery store like? What is his first time in the city like? How does his first time home alone go? If we want to get a little spicy here, maybe what is it like when he see lingerie for the first time? And any firsts for Tessa? Does he teach her anything from his mercenary lifestyle?

Erin! These are excellent questions. I definitely have a running list in my head of “firsts” for Pero that I want to explore. Some may make it into the main storyline of SAMG, while others might see their own one-shots down the line, and all of the things you mentioned are absolutely on my list, so allow me to give you a few of my rambling thoughts here without going into a ton of detail with some of these things. Also disclaimer that some of this assumes that Pero and Tessa have more time together than the seven weeks until the solstice, but in those cases this is all hypothetical musings on my part for now and should not be taken as SAMG canon at this time!

Grocery store: Pero’s first time in a grocery store is sensory overload. Tessa takes him to her local Meijer on a weekday morning when there are as few people there as possible, but it’s still totally overwhelming. Imagine you had never seen fluorescent lights before - you’re indoors, but everything is so BRIGHT. There’s music playing on the loudspeakers (this is a thing Pero notices about modern life, there’s always music playing in the background, in the car, in stores, everywhere) and then every few minutes an automated announcement comes on advertising some deal in the meat department or whatever. This is one of the very first places outside of her house Tessa takes him, and it is one thing to be told about or shown images of modern life, and another thing to experience it. This is one of the moments where Pero very acutely feels the enormity of the changes that have happened in the last thousand years.

And the food - the produce section is pretty straightforward. Pero might not recognize a lot of the types of fruits and veggies there, but it’s at least clear that that’s what they are. Imagine Pero in the cereal aisle. In the freezer section with all the ice cream options. In the bakery department in front of rows of cupcakes and donuts and bread. Imagine Tessa trying to explain to Pero why some Goldfish cracker bags are labeled “flavor-blasted” and others are not. In chapter 4 Tessa tells Pero she’ll buy him anything he wants if he goes to the store with her, but he mostly relies on her that first trip to pick out things for him to try, because he’s trying to just wrap his head around the whole thing.

In a city: Chicago is the most obvious place for Tessa to take Pero. Grennich, her town, is very, very small (you’ll see more of it in chapter 5!), but Tessa shows Pero pictures and video of large cities to give him an idea of what city life looks like now. He’s amazed to see that there are cities that existed during his time that still endure, but that look so incredibly different now (Paris, Rome, Istanbul). Imagine that after the Midwest has dug itself out of winter, Tessa takes Pero to see Chicago. Again, seeing pictures of it and experiencing it firsthand are two very different things. Some things are familiar: the rush of people, the ebb and flow of different smells, the endless noise (though the specific noises themselves are very different).

Tessa and Pero have their own little version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. They take a boat tour down the Chicago River. They spend hours at the Museum of Science and Industry (which Pero finds much more interesting than the Art Institute of Chicago). They eat deep dish pizza and Tessa insists Pero try all dozen-ish flavors of Garrett’s popcorn (he likes the CheeseCorn the best). They take a picture of their reflections in the Bean. Tessa takes him up to the top of Willis Tower and it’s his first time in an elevator. Pero insists he isn’t nervous, isn’t afraid of heights, and if he holds onto Tessa’s hand a little more tightly than usual while they’re up there, well, she wouldn’t dream of giving him any grief over it. Tessa loves Chicago - she went to college and law school here, she grew up visiting the city with her family. But when she left her job and her fiancé and moved back home, her last few years in the city were so awful that they had tainted all of her good memories of it. When she goes with Pero, she gets to see the city anew through his eyes, and rediscovers all the reasons she loves it. Pero helps her heal from the trauma of her old life at the firm and he doesn’t even realize it.

Pero’s first time home alone: It’s like leaving your child home alone for the first time. Tessa is a wreck and Pero is just rolling his eyes and being like, “Do you not remember that time I told you all about how I fought and survived literal monsters on the Great Wall? I think I can handle a few hours in your house by myself,” as Tessa is reminding him for the tenth time not to put anything metal in the microwave if he gets hungry while she’s gone.

Lingerie: The first time Pero sees modern underwear of any kind it’s gonna be a bit of a surprise. Modern women wear fewer layers and less fabric than women in the 11th century did, but actually as far as undergarments go, women largely just...didn’t wear underwear then (though note that this is all based on my googling “medieval underwear” so I am not claiming to be an expert here, lol).

And here’s one of the things about Pero that I’m excited to explore in future chapters: he has no notion of modern beauty standards. Things Tessa might be self-conscious about - how long it’s been since she shaved her legs, what her pubic hair situation is, how old and ratty the bra and panties she might be wearing are, etc. - these are things Pero doesn’t even notice, doesn’t even care about, because the idea that those sorts of things can be changed, that they should be changed because they are somehow “undesirable,” just does not exist for him. He thinks Tessa is beautiful for all sorts of reasons regardless of what she does or doesn’t wear or what she does or doesn’t do with her body hair.

That said, I imagine that maybe the first time Pero sees modern fancy lingerie isn’t on Tessa, but as she’s doing a little online browsing. And he’s like, what the hell is all that??? The thing is, he sees how bras and thongs and garter belts would look good on a woman’s body, but ultimately, he thinks it’s all just so impractical. If he gets to the point of getting a woman’s clothes off, it’s because he’s gonna fuck them. He doesn’t need the additional allure of lingerie, he’s already sold, and it might look nice, but it’s really just getting in the way. Much better in his time when he could slide a hand underneath a woman’s skirts and reach his destination unimpeded.

That is, however, until he sees Tessa in lingerie. And then - well, that’s all I’m gonna say about that for now. 😉

Firsts for Tessa: Oh yes I definitely think Pero teaches her things! He’s both in awe of all the conveniences of modern life and absolutely horrified that it means that Tessa doesn’t know how to do any of the basic survival stuff he knows. And she might gently rib him about wanting to teach her how to do things like start a fire without matches, but she also recognizes that he does so because he cares about her. He may not be great at telling her how much he cares, but he’s much better at showing it than he thinks. If he can make sure she’s able to stay safe and care for herself in some theoretical harsh circumstance where all her modern technology fails, then by god he’s gonna do so, and he’ll sleep better at night for it.

Tessa also absolutely asks him to show her how to use his swords. 100%. And he does, because he may be a grump of few words but the simple truth is he cannot deny this woman anything.

[wanderingcas]

hey so like, i hope this is okay to send? but feel free to ignore it if you don't want to answer. i hope this isn't tmi but recently my mom became a single mom and i've been trying to help out more as the oldest, and that includes meals from time to time. my mom usually doesn't have time / energy to try out new things(frozen meals is the usual) and we're definitely on a budget- i found your post from like. two years ago lmao, saying to message if anyone needed any recipes. i don't even follow you or know you but if you had any ideas for stuff i'd really appreciate it! currently we have a lot of beans but tbh take that with a grain of salt because we can totally go out and get other ingredients, its just a matter of 1. making sure it doesn't cost much and 2. her not having to go to the store super often. do you have anything in general you'd suggest? especially with the fact that i'm a beginner in mind? it's also worth mentioning my mom likes to keep a low amount of meat in the house(but it isn't off-limits, just preferred to not be in everything). i dunno it feels super silly but i don't even feel like i know where to start. thanks in advance!

absolutely it's okay to send!' i answered the best i could, but obviously there's SO much more to go into specifically, so please feel free to message me if you have specific questions

but for every meal, i think it's best to keep it simple: protein, carb, vegetable. everything else on top of that is just extra, but at the base, the meal should consist of that. now, breaking it down into those parts:

vegetables

-frozen vegetables - peas, carrots, corn. you can’t tell these even were frozen when you put them in a soup or a casserole

-potatoes are usually cheap, depending on where you are in the world especially russet potatoes, and they can be baked alongside any protein you make.

-this isn’t necessarily on a budget, but ready-to-mix salads are a great option if you’re looking for something healthy and also fast. but those can be a couple dollars a bag. if that’s not an option, a really good idea is buying spinach (it can last at least a week in the fridge if you keep it good and sealed), buy a favorite dressing, and eat that combo for an iron kick. not the most fun thing in the world, but it’s very nutritious. you can even throw a few croutons or dried fruit in there if you can. plus, spinach can be thrown into any canned pasta sauce you get for an extra vegetable - just let it simmer on the stove for a few minutes until the spinach breaks down and gets soft. it’s a pretty versatile green!

-onions are usually affordable and always elevate a dish - just buy the cheapest your grocery store has, and don’t worry if a recipe says a certain kind (like yellow onion vs. red onion). most of the time, in a pinch, it truly doesn’t matter. we’re not aiming for a michelin star here lol

-celery: you can wrap it in tin foil and it'll last a few weeks in the crisper drawer

protein

-you mentioned you have a lot of beans, which is great, because if you don’t want a lot of meat this will provide you with a lot of protein! some ideas are chili (with those frozen veggies), vegetable soup, tacos, simply just rice and beans... they're really versatile!

-chicken thighs, bone-in, is harder to eat but always cheaper. thighs in general are cheaper than chicken breasts, too. if you can swing it, ready-made rotisserie chickens at the grocery store are the easiest to work with - simply cut and serve with rice, pasta, salad... literally anything!

-somtimes you can find discount meats that are about to expire at the grocery store. your freezer is your friend in this case - buy on sale, then freeze for up to 3 months until needed

carb

-rice is THE cheapest carb and can be used with literally anything. there's a variety of rice, all have their own personality, but get whatever is cheapest - you won't notice the difference in recipes, generally

-bread is obviously yum for any dish, especially garlic bread with pasta - cut a baguette or any thick loaf in half and spread some butter and garlic powder on it before throwing it in the oven wrapped in some foil

-pasta pasta pasta!! buy any shapes or sizes. can work with hundreds of dishes

now for random recipes that you can google for the steps or improvise - they're hopefully not too crazy complicated! obviously not a complete list, but enough to hopefully inspire you. they can all be theoretically cooked in under an hour, too.

-chili, potato soup, any baked chicken dish with veggies + a carb, fried rice, pasta with marinara sauce from an jar + side salad, tacos, quesadillas, beans + rice.

-googling "cheap dinners in 30 minutes" will also get you a crazy amount of results!

in terms of grocery shopping, i'd look up the recipes in advance, then make a list. then you can substitute any veggie or protein you want depending on price.

i hope this helps!! good luck:) and feel free to message me again with any specific questions or if you want specific recipes!! i'd be happy to provide links/steps but i didn't want this ask to get too crazy long <3

[nickgerlich]

Bad Chemistry

If you have traveled abroad, you may have noticed something very different about the foods available there. Supermarket displays may look a lot like what we see here in the States, but by and large, the food you see, buy, and consume there is missing a lot of things…things that are common here.

Things like food dyes, preservatives, flavorings, and other chemicals. And now some people are starting to get mad, recently protesting outside headquarters of Kellogg’s, the company that makes many of the sugary breakfast cereals we have in our bowl each morning.

I find it odd how our FDA can rule so many of these artificial ingredients to be safe, when numerous other agencies and governments around the world have completely banned them. Someone is seriously wrong here, and I suspect the FDA has dropped the ball, instead favoring long-term shelf-stable food products.

But many of the products containing these chemicals don’t need them so much for protection as they do basic marketing. Have you ever seen oranges on the tree in Florida or California? They are nowhere near as bright orange as the fruit we buy at the grocery, because they have all been bathed in orange dye. Fruit Loops? Artificially colored to make us think we are eating various fruits, when of course it’s just highly refined wheat and corn with “natural fruit flavors,” whatever that means.

These products are pervasive in the US, and hard to escape. You have to shop at Whole Foods, Sprouts, Trader Joe’s, and Natural Grocers to avoid them. You can tell the difference, too, especially with fresh veggies and fruits. If you don’t spray the produce with a preservative, those fruits and veggies will go bad a lot faster than what you buy at Walmart. I see it in breads, bagels, and tortillas I buy at those stores. They will start molding much faster than mass market bread products.

I understand that in the case of preservatives, there is an economic side to the argument. Less waste means cost savings, but at the potential expense of our health.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of food products sold in the US contain one or more artificial ingredients, all of which ostensibly have some noble purpose, but more than likely are not all that good for us. It is a problem created by the collision of several forces, from consumers being uninformed, to being unable or unwilling to buy healthier options, and the political pressure of Big Food in attaining and sustaining FDA approval.

It is not that the US has never banned any additives, because we have. Just not that many.

So what is it going to take to see change here in the US? It is going to take a concerted effort by consumers, meaning nearly all of us, to pressure companies into doing better. A complete revolution in consumer behavior is needed to effect this change. It means we will have to start reading labels and knowing what all those unpronounceable words mean. It will mean boycotting products that are phonier than a $3 bill, like Froot Loops. It means shopping more frequently for perishables, and buying less to avoid waste. And it means it will probably all cost more.

That’s a pretty tough prescription, one that is going to be a hard sell to many. It’s not a big ask if you are educated and make good money; it’s quite another if you come up short in either or both of those categories.

Even when you do care and make a concerted effort, it is hard to completely avoid these additives. Tin cans and plastic containers often contain BPA, or Bisphenol A. This chemical is used in the manufacture of many plastics, and is also used to line the inside of cans. Technically, it is a synthetic estrogen, something I am certain none of us want to be ingesting every time we eat.

In the wake of FDA approvals of these additives, we are left to fend for ourselves. And it seems like the chemicals are winning.

Dr “Doing The Best I Can” Gerlich

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