#so. may he get through sufficient depression that he can go

[nimblermortal]

Jackson Crawford: I categorize my tasks by letters in the Younger Futhark runic alphabet... Nimbler: Nerd

[endlessburningdarkness]

**I headcanon their relationship falls apart anyway, even without a reveal, bc there's only so long Shen Yuan can lie to himself and put up with terrible sex and LBHs manchild behaviour. I imagine he logs out at some point and returns to his real life.**

Can you develop more this, please? =)

Through most of the story, Shen Yuan is going from one crisis to another. He doesn't have time to sit down and think and be honest with himself. After the story ends, and he has to think beyond just surviving I imagine he will eventually realize he wants more than a relationship built on a lie, and terrible sex and the life of a cultivator.

I imagine he'll crave modern things more and more, not to mention, finally remembering his family and the life he left behind, the life he could've had, where he doesn't have to get his arse ripped open bc the protagonist will cry and destroy the world if he doesn't feel sufficiently "loved". Isn't it telling that both LBH and SY's idea of love requires sex, which one of them doesn't enjoy?

I also imagine he won't be able to deny how manipulative and coercive LBH is, and LBHs appeal as a character (and he does still consider LBH a character even in the end, its why he insists on bottoming, bc the stallion protagonist couldn't possibly take it up the arse) will dwindle and fade away.

It's like how you like badboys in fiction, but if you really had to deal with one irl day in and day out for years on end, you'd say fuck it and pack your bags. If the story book world is now real, that means real human emotions and realistic reactions to things, and I can't see Shen Yuan, realistically, wanting to stay.

So he would find an out, either by killing himself or just logging out and going back home. I don't think LBH would let him leave, and he knows that. It's why he feels so pressured to keep LBH happy and content and sees it as his responsibility, bc an unhappy LBH = world ending. Eventually though, he'd get over that idea, once he has time to pause and think things through and sort out his feelings and get used to his new, disappointing life.

Maybe Shen Yuan becomes the new protagonist, and lives out his dream of being LBH. bc that's the real reason he was reading th original novel, it was a male power fantasy, and Shen Yuan bought into that. He wants the power fantasy and he'll ultimately have to confront his own unhappiness and disappointment within himself. There's only so long you can lie to yourself. Shen Yuan lies to himself in order to survive, but once survival is secured, he will have ample time to realize he's been lying to himself, and that he doesn't want to continue.

And maybe some things are worse than death. I can't imagine years of lying and being coerced into a relationship with painful and humiliating sex is gonna feel any different from torture via human stick a few years down the line.

Him logging out and continuing with his normal life is probably the funniest outcome. I can see him writing fanfiction of Shen Qingqiu becoming a demon lord and fucking LBH/women as a sort of therapeutic exercise to deal with his trauma in the real world afterwards.

Honestly, I think he'd be relived to escape and probably give up his online hating. Which is ultimately the message mxtx wanted to send by writing a story about a straight online troll ending up getting fucked in the arse so badly he bleeds every time. don't hate in front of the author's face, aka the comment section, which is what Shen Yuan was shamelessly doing, harassing the author so much the author remembers all his comments. It would be a nice ending to say he learned his lesson?

But i also don't think an online hater deserves what Shen Yuan is put through in the story as "punishment" for his bad behaviour. It's not that serious imo. Good thing its a fantasy story and doesn't take itself too seriously. It would be a lot more depressing then, and not nearly as funny.

I may have gone a little offtopic. Oh well.

[necronatural]

Limbus Company theory

Okay, I have absolutely no idea if anyone's noted this yet. Did anyone pick up that the Sinners are held down by a Sin, represented in their EGO, and their Canto are about their struggles against another sin entirely. The branch creates a space for 'penance'. When Rodya entered the field of effect of the branch, Baba Yaga went crazy, freezing the entire mine. There's clearly some paralleling at work here.

So let's go through.

Gregor, Canto 1: Sloth V Gluttony (survival); note that this expedition failed, and we later explore Sloth with Yi Sang

Rodion, Canto 2: Pride V Gloom; note that Rodya refused to actualize

Sinclair, Canto 3: Gluttony (Greed) V Lust

Yi Sang, Canto 4: Sloth V Gluttony (greed); Dante's resonance begins

Ishmael, Canto 5: Gloom V Envy; Dante's resonance progresses

When we look at the dominant sins of the remainder...

Heathcliff, Canto 6: Envy...

Don Quixote, Canto 7: Lust…

Hong Lu, Canto 8: Gloom…

Ryoshu, Canto 9: Wrath…

Meursault, Canto 10: Pride…

Outis, Canto 11: Pride…

Faust, Canto 12: Pride…

Dante, Canto ?: ????

Sins not confronted yet: Sloth, Pride, Wrath

Sinner sins left to explore: Envy, Wrath, Lust (If we're talking strictly what progressed Dante's clock, Gluttony & Pride)

Assuming Dante's doomsday clock setting is moving in 5 minute intervals, Dante currently has 2 positions left on their clock; 5 minutes to midnight and midnight itself. It's made almost explicit that their resonance with sinners is the tool with which they resonate with the branches. By obtaining each sin, they're building to some sort of complete whole.

Predictions based on this theory; Pride being so back-heavy probably means we're going to scramble for branches with Hermann. It gives the impression that for whatever reason Pride is necessary, which is interesting.

My own theory: Rodya says she'll settle in the cold [Gloom] for a little longer, and Sonya says she doesn't have the mark. I'd say this might mean Rodya hasn't sufficiently resonated. Sonya may have tried to bait her in hopes of getting better results in this regard.

This may mean ...

The last few Cantos will be a losing streak (LOL)

Someone who hasn't cleansed themselves of their opposing sin/formed the mark of cain will get the branch; I'd imagine this person shares sins with Dante, Vergilius, or Charon, who I believe are probably Envy, Wrath, and Lust respectively (OOP @ WHO WE'RE MISSING ⬆️)

In that respect Vergilius V Sloth, Charon V Pride, Dante V Wrath. I even think the wrath Dante is opposed to could be Vergilius

Very notable there's only 3 sins missing; it could be possible we already have Dante's branch; they were very obviously part of the group of Cain Marked, and again, their clock started at 25-to-midnight and just kind of sat there for a little while. It's also possible it didn't move until Yi Sang because their sin was Gluttony (ambiguous manifestation)? If Hermann also represents Lust ..... Think about it

Rodya's refusal of the call of Cain might become plot-relevant, just as our failure to observe what happened to Gregor on the myth arc timeline of 3 years ago and relationship with the Big Bad makes it obvious he's going to be a core character in the future. We can tell based on those who have the mark of Cain that he just doesn't have the chops, so mayhaps their mutual exclusion will be a surprise tool that will help us later.

And of course, my theories for the sins that weigh down our remaining Sinners: Heathcliff V Sloth, Don Quixote V Wrath, and Ryoshu V Pride. I predict all the Prides share Rodya's opposing force, which is Gloom; we see this in the books these characters are based on, with Meursault's despair of being sentenced to death being overcome by his Pride, Outis putting herself through grueling trials for the sake of returning to her family, and Faust beginning with suicidal depression leading to her pride creating(summoning) Mephistopheles.

I think it would be pretty funny if Dante was Gretchen's evil baby. Or that Gretchen might have been their previous self, manipulated into giving birth to Dante (extremely vulnerable and exploitable state), which they will be disgusted by and put to death. How many representations of the Divine Feminine in classic literature can Dante represent any% speedrun

[chatonrandom]

I hate to say it, but the new Devil May Cry Netflix trailer does not look good. The animation itself a bit off in some spots/I can clearly see where they cut corners, which is not good for a freaking trailer. Visually it does not wow me and throwing in five bazillion explosions at once and some one-liners does not make up for it.

And I just... I don't know what to make of this reimagining of Dante and Lady. DMC3 is one of my favorite games and the relationship between Lady and Dante and how they grow to understand each other through their similar family struggles and bond is one of my favorite things about it. What is even the point of putting Lady in here if they're changing their meeting? Dante and Lady cross paths specifically because of the Temen-ni-gru and Arkham and Vergil collaborating, however briefly. Without that, there's not much reason for them to meet because Lady doesn't become a demon hunter on her own until after DMC3 because her primary goal up until then is stopping her father.

Also Dante's look is just... off? Lazy? There's just not enough detail on the small things like his sword and necklace and even his hair. Also it just... I don't know, it doesn't feel like Dante to me. Dante has always been mouthy, but something about his lines just don't feel quite right. I'm not sure how to explain it. I feel like Dante wouldn't say "you still can't rip people's shirts off," he'd joke about Lady coming on strong or something, or, as in DMC3, tell her he doesn't go out with women who shoot him in the face/chest, which is also something I prefer. Lady shooting him between the eyes carries more of a "You should be dead" feeling rather than in the chest.

It's difficult to place this Dante on the timeline, but 3D was the cockiest because he was so young and nobody had ever really said no to him or stood in his way; 4D and 5D still retain Dante's mouthiness but it's more laidback. Dante's mouthiness and playfulness is directly related to his character growth; even in DMC3 itself we can see his character develop and change as he reflects on his place in the world thanks to his interactions with Lady. This is also why it's common interpretation that 2D and the original anime Dante are so quiet: chronogically, they take place after DMC1 and he was very depressed after the Nelo Angelo incident, and he doesn't really perk up again until he meets Nero and realizes he might still have some family left!

I can't say I'm a fan of Lady's new look, either. What was wrong with her original look? And why is Dante even wearing a shirt to begin with? 3D was shirtless beneath his coat for the whole game and it wasn't a problem. Why can't Lady have her miniskirt and shorts and her blouse? What, is it too "sexy"? It's her look, and she rocks it.

And I'm not sure I appreciate the Vergil stinger at the end despite Vergil being another of my favorite things from the series. Look, I love Vergie. I love that walking disaster of a man and his stilted way of talking and his insufferable pride and obsession with power to compensate for his childhood trauma and his petty rivalry with Dante. But the same way Dante has a timeline correlation to his character, so does Vergil. Vergil spending several years trapped in Hell and brainwashed in Mundus's slavery directly corresponds to his out-of-touch mindset. It's why he has no idea how to interact with Nero and spends his time post-DMC5 sitting in Nico's van beside his family looking like the most awkward person in existence. There has to be sufficient reason for Vergil to show up—he needed Dante's amulet in DMC3, but also he's very clear at the end of the game that he's trying to keep Dante safe from falling into Hell with him. If it's not related to gaining power, then there's no reason for Vergil to even seek Dante out. Vergil always waits for Dante to come to him first, because he knows Dante can't resist bothering him, and because wherever Dante gets the faintest whiff of Vergil's involvement, he'll get to the bottom of it no matter what it takes. Vergil is not the one who shows up and taunts; that's Dante. And given the changes so far, I'm skeptical whether the writers will handle their relationship well.

"But Chaton," you cry, "this is Devil May Cry! It's all stupid cheesy fun! It has the depth of a kiddie pool! Don't think too hard about it!"

I love Devil May Cry. And I love the story, even if it may not be the deepest. And Hideaki Itsuno did not need to give DMC3 the story he gave it, nor the beautiful and delicate ending, but he did. He did and it captivated me. You're free to ignore the story but the fact of the matter is that it exists and was written with care and Itsuno has gone on record saying the theme of DMC5 is love. To boil DMC down to "wacky cheesy action" dismisses and disrespects the efforts of the man who saved the series not just once but twice.

[yuseirra]

It's so weird. I keep listening to Fatal and this guy loves Ai so much. It's still something I can interpret as love, and is this the right way feel about it? Why do I still feel like Ai's chosen the one that'd treasure her when I'm so stern about moral values and feel like someone who's done wrong should be sufficiently punished in fiction if needed? Why do I still feel this isn't that unhealthy? This feels like intense longing from someone who's so lonely and hurt driven to the point of being utterly broken?

He misses her so bad. It's so painful. What is the point of making an originally good person like him suffer so bad? This is wrong. That's so horrible. It feels really bad... I sense these enormous, overwhelming feelings, and I'm still not sure if I can dismiss this only as pure insanity because this happened because he really did care about Ai. Is it that it's got overridden and taken advantage of? Fatal is so weird because that whole song screams.. of this feeling of becoming tainted and madness, the whole melody feels like it; yeah, I can see that, but..

I actually see what the story is doing as a whole. I think I have a good idea of how this is going to be wrapped up and why they made this choice, but as I always say, I'm not the one responsible for forming the story and having crafted these characters so I can't say it for sure.

If what I anticipate does come true, then this can be a really meaningful piece of work. I want to believe in that. But it's so hard to hold out on that and see these pointless sufferings in the process. Aqua's hate should not have been directed at this guy. This character...I think he needs love. If just one person was kind enough to him, he could have lived with that, and he just didn't have that, it's so unfair.

I think I can sense what this character is feeling you see, it's what's made me draw so much about him and Ai,

in that case, I see why the writers and staff cared enough for him to give him two songs, but if I'm wrong on this, I just don't know.

I think I will have the answers.. by December? I hope so.

I would like to believe in my feelings and go on because, in terms of feelings, I know what this is, what's being displayed doesn't entirely make sense, the only consistent things I can read about this character are the feelings and his state is really, really, really bad. They are so depressed on the near verge of death, they are so weak... If someone is feeling this despaired, maybe they can turn into something different but I'm not sure about that, I can't determine that, I need more information to piece things together, but I can say, this is a really huge feeling they're feeling, and I sense a lot of sorrow. It's so weird...

It's different from what I feel from seeing the comic, you know. You know how sometimes you act and you feel the sort of feeling your role may feel. Or when you read a work and you can get a sense of what a character may feel. I've been good with these. It's what I rely on...this sounds really dumb, I know, but... I feel really sad when I try to match up my feelings with what this guy may feel. With this level of sadness... I just don't know what to make of him but it's really reasonable for him to have this sort of feeling too, since someone who cared for died. They don't exist anymore... can I even sympathize with him? Am I supposed to? It's not.. actually insanity I feel as the core, it's sadness. Everything he does seems to stem out from that sort of feeling, "sorrow" is his core. so I can't help feeling pity when he's this... horrible mess right now. But what did he even do? we never even got to see that. Why is he like this? It's actually really painful to try and sync up with him, I do that when I draw characters, and I had to back out several times from getting too deep because it hurts. I'm adjusting my level of doing this with this character time to time because what he's going through is really intense. The same with other characters in this comic, had this happen with Aqua and Ai too, that's why I'm so impressed with how this comic builds its characters, the characters in this manga are suffering internally so realistically, you can actually feel their emotions if you try really hard haha. It makes it really intriguing, that's how I was drawn to it in the first place. Do you have these things happen to you, do? I certainly cannot be the only way who has this happen, I am sure!

The reason I keep talking about him is because. the information that is presented doesn't connect with each other.

Still I feel like I can sense what Ai saw in this guy. Then he should be saved; I want that to happen. And if the way I see it is correct, it actually will happen. I don't know how but by the end of the series, it will. I sound like I have little base, don't I? but I'm usually right with these, I had something like this happen lots of times, so I think-and hope-I'm being so this time as well!

[arisenreborn]

Going to start posting some of my pawn lovers guild qotd answers here for archival purposes (and to fondly look back on the Pain).

Todays question was... well, I think it was something about what music would play in a fight against them which turned into "Design a Boss Battle" 😂

Emrys Boss Battle

Okay so he’s a pain in the ass. He’s taken the form of the dragonsplague dragon evolution pretty much; similar features but a little more physicality to him, bigger than a drake (not as big as Grigori), very sexy and fucked up. More aerial a bit like a wyvern, he’s frustratingly fast and fights like an archer/thief: pelting you with briney arrows that leave corrupting puddles where they hit for a small period, or darting in close and lashing you with his tail or talons before dipping back out. He shouldn’t be able to move so fast for something so damn big. 

Poisons, fire breath, duh, but it has a cool briney effect to it and will have an acidic-like effect around it (similar mechanically to poison really). He’ll occasionally control one of your pawns. Higher chance of dragonsplague infection just fighting him in general.

I like to think he wanders the world and is kind of a “random” encounter. Gonna segue a second about the music: Lux Aeterna is the inspiration but definitely a twisted up version that ‘grows’ with every encounter; it starts out discordant and hard to pick up on the melody, with sort of Silent Hill-ish vibes woven through it. With each encounter (three MAIN encounters depending on how each fight goes) it grows in intensity, frenzy, and drama. It becomes more ‘clear’ but also more ‘violent’, the final version has an aspect of ‘anxiety/fear’ - a creature torn between fight or flight. 

Getting him in a ‘downed’ state in the first two fights is just him hovering feebly closer to the earth and making him an easier target.

Each encounter can be ‘failed’ or ‘succeeded’, failure is him flying away, success obviously when you defeat him results in him basically divebombing the ground which almost seems more like a kamikaze/escape…he crashes and bursty-melts into a plaguey, brine-like substance in the ground you shouldn’t touch until it gradually goes away -will have the same effect as genuine brine. You get exp but frustratingly no loot, alluding to the fact he’s not actually gone yet. Each success grows the difficulty (and music) of the next encounter. 

You probably get garbled dragonspeak also: mostly just cursing you as the Arisen, the second fight gives you a ‘you won’t take … from me…’ as he fades away. 

Third fight will be the most intense - and he’ll try to escape often. He’ll lose -some- of that physicality and be more of a dick to hit without magic/enchanted weapons. A lot more briney attacks, can control up to two pawns if you’re not quick about dealing with the first one. 

However once in his downed state he’ll actually slouch down on the ground on all fours, and his ‘heart’ will be revealed, a cavity in his chest leaking out what looks like a woman wrapped in black and red tendrils and fleshy sinews.

Yeah, it’s Olivia, though she looks a bit, yanno, like she’s become the pseudo-heart of a plaguedragon. So you’ve gotta attack her while he’s downed and you will hear him make… awful awful sounds when you do. He may even beg you to stop. 

But you won’t, of course, and once you’ve broken his heart sufficiently he’ll gradually crumble to mist and dust with the final words "Olivia... forgive-..." and leave you with all the gold and wyrmslife crystals you could have hoped for, you monster.

Also a ‘Corrupt Dragon’s Aegis’, idk what it’s stats are (probably not *super* different from the usual) but it’s probably neat. And depressing. Probably a description along the lines of ‘A shield once carried by the brave Arisen of another world…’ Finally, a wolf fang necklace… (it was a gift Emrys gave to Olivia. It can be given to an NPC for high +40 affection)

The description on the necklace is: "It seems to exude an aura of love, whoever once owned it treasured it dearly."

[rainswept]

why do you like chuuya /gen, like I dont mean to sound rude in anyway but why😭🙏

this is going under a read more because i started yapping and couldn’t stop. i’m sorry

his personality. hes so funny and hes such a bitch i love him. but also he’s an incredibly dynamic character. he’s well written and tbh that’s enough for me to like him already. he’s had so much shit thrown at him and very well could have become a horrible person but he’s not. others care about him and he cares about others. he hasn’t let himself become as bitter as he could have been. he is still so full of humanity despite it despite everything SEE NEXT PARAGRAPH

i’m a sucker for characters that are entirely completely human and yet don’t think they are, or struggle with whether they are or not (especially thinking so because of all the reasons that they are— but i suppose chuuya doesn’t really fit that part so i won’t get into that now.) like yes chuuya has (or had, i guess) a reason to believe he isn’t, but does that really matter when faced with the fact that you have emotions and blood just like everyone else? does your make matter when you’re not so different after all? it’s existential. it makes u think. 

his crime list is about as short as he is and i find that wonderful

his lore/past/backstory whatever you want to call it. not even, he’s still going through it. man 😭. he’s had so much loss but not a single goodbye and i think that’s a really fucking good (and depressing) concept. he has never had the chance to mourn properly. he acts like he did.

hes cunty

his dynamic w dazai i find very compelling too. like yes they bicker and yes they fight and yes they “hate” each other (they don’t) but they also trust each other with their lives and have left them in each other’s hands too many times to count. it shows u the depth of both their bond but also the characters individually. they’re not entirely self sufficient.. they can obviously take care of themselves but they’re at their best when working togegher. i thinkt hats cool. FREINDSHIP IS MAGIC!!1! no but it shows u that even the strongest people arent at their best until theyre able to connect. not that dazai and chuuya have a model relationship at all… but there’s trust there. and that’s enough

hes hot

he makes me so viscerally and upsettingly sad

dog motifs. ok hear me OUT i’m SORRY but tbh the title was what got me interested in bsd in the first place. everyone is a stray in this show and i like that very much. i love characters that are LOYAL to a FAULT. i love characters with gnashing teeth and wagging tails. i love characters that hold so tight onto things their hands hurt and they end up causing them to flee. that “everything i’ve ever loved has claw marks on it”??? yeah give me that shit i will eat it up EVERY TIME. i love characters that are blinded by their senses of duty, not in the way that they’d do anything whoever they’re loyal to asks of them (though that is a nice dynamic too, i don’t think that’s as Chuuya ™️ as the other i’m talking about), but in the way that they’d lay down their life without a second thought (or caring about how those people see them). a dog that is beat may bite but but but it will still have its duty. even if it hates it. (<- see also AKUTAGAWA akutagawa is the reigning champion of dog motifery that is probably why i love him so much. but that is akutagawa. and i’m talkign about chuuya so im gonna dhut up now) ) i like characters with Three Betrayals COUGH COUGH COU💥💥💥💥ogh mymgod scafamocuhe 3 betrayals chuuya flags sheep dazai Im HOWLIFJG someone KILL ME NEOW ok thay doesnt make aense i just thought it was funny. anywa

fanbs fanbs* FANGS idc if they’re fake

thanks for comign ti my ted talk 🙏 i may add more later. but i didn’t want to. talk. too much. um. i think that’s out the window though

[eternalwritess]

i hope i'm not requesting anything at a bad time; i guess i'll take a romantic matchup for hazbin?? i know helluva's in tje same universe i'm just. uegj,

Pronouns: they/them/theirs; anytime i shoot for they/he i forget 2 seconds later, it's like there's just a single semi-visible crumb of man inside that i can rarely beat in a footrace i'm sorry. He's There.

Sexuality: gay (nblm/mlm/achillean)

Personality: gonna be real with you, i am. honestly kind of a nervous wreck?? i'm trying my best not to be so timid or insecure to such a degree but anxiety is something i struggle with Horrendously and i? die,

might also be a lil depressed and a lil lost in life but we're not talking about that today—

if i manage to feel comfortable enough with someone though i can definitely either be a complete doofus or very clingy (or in a romantic context, touch-starved) and very,,,, puppybrained?? as they say??? a

Hobbies: aside from venting my emotions through baking and being a bit of a bookworm or library-mouse, i tend to draw somewhat often (even if it's kinda. b a d) and i've been on a stream-watching kick as of late?? i may also touch a video game from time to time, but like. don't a lot of us

Pet peeves: off the top of my head, when people try accusing me of shit i didn't do, fake people, when people handle time travel plotlines Like That (you know what i'm talking about), mother's day

idrk man it's hard to recall pet peeves for me when i'm not Completely pissed or salty, i hope that's sufficient💦

i'm sorry if i butchered the format i have n o idea how this is gonna look as a submitted ask 🏃‍♂️

𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕓𝕖𝕖𝕟 𝕞𝕒𝕥𝕔𝕙𝕖𝕕 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙…

𝓗𝓾𝓼���!

i wasn't really given much to work with so sorry if its kinda short and inaccurate

You probably met at the hotel and just needed someone to talk to and Charlie wasn't there so he decided to listen to you

He'd most likely talk with you over your anxiety and try to calm you down if things get too bad

"Deep breaths"

As for venting he's heard it all and knows how to deal with it all so he's more than willing just to listen to you and give you advice from there.

He's not that big into electronics but I'm sure that you might be able to get him to watch a few streams with you if he's in the mood

He wouldn't mind the clingyness very much as long as it doesn't become paranoia or anything harmful to the relationship or such

You and him might discuss books every now and then and he would try and give you reccomendations even if they might be a bit out of style

"Have you read?..."

He likes your drawings and likes watching you improve and will gently tease you about them and then say how good they are and how you've improved

Husk isn't a fake person at all and is more of a down to Earth person

He's very honest and will most likely never lie to you if he does it's most likely about him being an overlord because he's embarrassed or with his contract with Alastor just because he doesn't want you to get worried

But even if he did and you found out he would apologize and you might go through a rough patch but thats about it

Over all it would be a very caring relationship <3

[cherryrainn]

Hello! could I please get a Helluva Boss matchup? multiple characters are okay, if you think it's fitting or necessary.

I'm 21, non-binary pansexual/romantic, and polyamorous (no preference for gender)

General personality stuff:

MBTI is INFP

Ennegram types 2, 4 and 8

Zodiac Taurus sun, pieces moon and rising

Not sure if appearance matters but- 5'3, chubby and kinda muscular, lots of scars on arms, chest, and legs, brown eyes/hair. Hair is shoulder length, wavy, and usually dyed. Fashion consists of graphic tees (with puns, memes, and trippy art) and jeans or shorts. I'll wear lots of different kinds of jewelry, and don't really have a set aesthetic.

Hobbies/likes- going to the gym, roller skating, playing video games, driving, listening to music (and singing along.. Badly), smoking weed, watching TV shows and movies, hanging out with friends, drawing, Writing, reading, going to museums/amusement parks, taking care of/watching animals, and analyzing media

Positive traits: my friends have told me that I'm smart, funny, sarcastic, polite, thoughtful, strong, patient, trusting/trustworthy, empathetic and compassionate. Pretty self-sufficient and independent/productive. My friends generally come to me for advice and I've been told I'm a good listener. I also like make myself useful (doing dishes, wiping down counters, laundry, etc) I'm passionate and very excitable and it makes me pretty talkative (when I want to be). Sociability depends on my mood. Sometimes I sit back and enjoy group dynamics, other times I participate more in conversation

Negative traits: tendency to be envious. I'm very self conscious/ insecure, and indecisive because of it. Bad habit of taking stuff personally and dwelling on issues that I should let go. can get annoyed/frustrated easily, especially if I'm overstimulated. also jumpy and gullible. Communication is very important to me in all my relationships, but when I get depressed, I tend to isolate.

Diagnoses: depression, anxiety, PTSD, and ADHD

Misc info: When I first meet people, I'm overly formal and will crack a few jokes, but once I'm familiar with someone, I cuss a lot and enjoy playful teasing, but I always encourage to set boundaries if they need to. I collect a lot of stuff. I have a Ton of comfort items- my posters, stuffed animals, collectible figures, etc. I'm a big over thinker. Big on current events and media analysis. I've got lots of vocal stims and am pretty fidgety.

I show my love through acts of service and words of affirmation. I enjoy doing things for my loved ones and making sure they can relax, feel safe, and be happy. I could talk about my friends for hours.

I know this is pretty long, so I apologize if it's overwhelming. Please don't feel pressured to answer. Much love to you 💛

I would pair you with….

Blitzo!

given your personality traits, interests, and preferences, i think you find a great match in blitzo. blitzo is known for his wit, humor, and sarcastic nature. like you, he's talkative, excitable, and enjoys playful teasing. his devil-may-care attitude aligns with your sociability depending on your mood. blitzo’s multifaceted personality, from formality to more casual interactions, resonates with your initial reservedness evolving into comfortable, informal exchanges.

while his hobbies may differ, his passion and energy could mirror your excitable nature.

both of you share a tendency to be envious and a struggle with insecurities.

he will absolutely come to you for advice, considering your empathetic and compassionate nature, friends are likely to come to you for advice. your good listening skills, combined with your thoughtful and patient approach, create a supportive environment for him to open up and seek guidance!!

both of you have your share of struggles—be it your mental health diagnoses or personal insecurities. this common ground could foster a deeper understanding and empathy between you two, making for a more supportive relationship.

blitzo’s sarcastic and has that sharp edge, but deep down, he's got a soft spot for those he cares about. sounds a bit like you, right?

and hey, acts of service and words of affirmation? blitzo might not say it outright, but deep down, he'd appreciate having someone who values connections and shows love through actions.

[olderjodijournals]

FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2015 I spoke with my endo doc’s nurse and told her something that only Tom knew until then. Something I should have told my doctors upfront, but was afraid to, thanks to past experience. Even Tom urged me to speak up about it.

When I was on Prozac, I not only noticed throat pain and had more trouble sleeping, but I became depressed and even had thoughts of dying. As those of you who know me well know, or have read in my past journals on other sites, I attempted suicide in my teens when I was a ward of the state and in a horrible place. After surgery set my arm and I was released from the hospital, I was returned to that same horrible place and treated so badly that I was almost sorry I didn’t succeed in ending my life. So even though it’s not the 80s and this is an entirely different situation, coming clean has backfired on me before, and I remember that. I finally realized that the only way my doctors could help me and understand what was really going on was to be upfront with them, so I told the nurse about those feelings. Prozac typically causes this in those under 25, so I definitely wasn’t expecting to end up feeling so bad.

The first few days I actually felt rather relaxed. This doesn’t mean 75 mcg of levothyroxine is right for me, though. This dose definitely causes me an uptick in both physical and emotional anxiety. However, I am going to continue it until Saturday when I get blood drawn. The doctor has ordered another TSH test.

Originally, the nurse was calling to tell me that the doctor had never heard of throat pain being connected to Prozac and that she felt I should give it another chance. As I told her, though, no matter what the numbers say, I always feel best on 50 mcgs and I don’t even need the lorazepam on that dose. Furthermore, as she agreed and confirmed, 50 mcg is NOT life-threatening. My thyroid, or complications caused by it dying, probably wouldn’t kill me or cause great harm to me for many years with absolutely no medication at all, so 50 certainly isn’t going to hurt me and it is better than nothing. I feel kind of shitty on nothing at all, better on 25, and best on 50.

Even someone who had their thyroid completely removed was telling me that even though their numbers appear a little low at 175 mcg, they can’t handle going to 200 without feeling jittery and unable to sleep.

I have no problem seeing a counselor to help me deal with the trauma of what I’ve been through over the last year and what anxiety I may naturally have which is nothing compared to what I can get from too much thyroid medication, but fuck the psych pills for now. Last night I slept the best I slept in nearly 2 weeks with NO racy heart wake-up calls. I have NO doubt in my mind that Prozac was the culprit in causing me throat pain, waking up with a racy heart, depression, and thoughts of dying. I already threw the shit away, and I wish the makers of the crap would pay us back for what we paid for it as well as Tom’s lost wages during the day he had to stay home and babysit me because I was so freaked out by how bad the shit mindfucked me. I’ve got the lorazepam to use as needed and I’m okay with that. I’m NOT okay with taking additional medication just so I can stand a higher dose of thyroid medication that may be somewhat helpful but not necessary. Again, 50 is plenty sufficient enough. A little extra weight and dry skin/hair aren’t going to kill me. I’ve also got the beta-blocker for if my heart rate gets out of hand.

Sometimes we really do have to do what’s best for us as individuals and not what’s best for the majority.

Even Andy was concerned when I told him I was starting Prozac. I told him to relax, the suicidal thoughts and depression happen mostly in younger people – and they do – and so I thought I’d be fine. Wrong! I totally get how this and other drugs can cause Robin Williams and others to either become depressed or kill themselves. Not that I didn’t get it before, but going through something like this can really wipe out any last vestiges of doubt and ignorance as to how a foreign chemical can mind fuck you and make you do things you wouldn’t normally do, especially when your life is just fine otherwise. I may not be a millionaire but I have just about everything a woman my age could want yet all I could think was, if I just didn’t exist…

After talking to the nurse I sent the doctor this:

I will take the 75s and get a TSH test probably this Saturday when I can get a ride. I just felt compelled to apologize to you directly for not telling you about how I became depressed and wanted to die on the Prozac. When I was younger and had feelings like that and confided in others, it backfired on me, and I remember that even though times have changed. I should have been more upfront with you. To make a long story short, when I was 17 I was a ward of the state and in a horrible place. I threw myself out a window and broke my upper arm. After I was released from the hospital I was returned to the same horrible place and treated so badly I was almost sorry I did not succeed. I know it is not the 80s and you are not them, but Tom has been the only one I could discuss such unwanted feelings with till now. Your nurse made me feel so much better and I am glad I told her. Thank you for continuing to work with me to help me feel better. As for the higher levothyroxine dosage, I honestly do not know that I can take that for much longer due to both the physical and emotional anxiety I get on that particular dose. There is what the numbers say and then there is how I feel, and on 50s I feel much better and I do not even need lorazepam, even though I know 50 may not be enough thyroid hormone for me. Since 50 is not life-threatening and better than nothing, I would rather take that and feel better than have to take other pills just to tolerate a higher dosage. For now, though, I will take 75s till I am tested and use the lorazepam as necessary. Again, I am sorry I was afraid to admit how I felt earlier.

Later…

Now that it has been a whole month of treating the fungus in my toenails, and now that the warmer weather is setting in, I decided it was time to polish my nails. I hate bare nails, even on dolls, LOL. The treatment made it a lot better although it is not 100% cured. I can always hit it again when the weather cools down next fall if I want to. It isn’t dangerous or painful so it doesn’t have to be perfectly cured. It looks better, though, and the nails aren’t as thick and bumpy which makes them harder to trim.

My thyroid is dead, my heart beats too fast, and my cholesterol is too high. But I'm alive! Yeah, I am still feeling much better now that I got the Prozac out of my system and now my worst problem, once again, is dealing with the daytime noise. Every single fucking day I have to hear landscaping coming from somewhere around here and it is annoying as hell.

Really hope Tammy doesn’t get settled into her new home and then get hit with daily landscaping too, and have to listen to some guy saw and hammer shit in his garage without having the decency to shut the damn door. I haven’t heard any of that lately here, but the landscaping is insane. Because she doesn’t have a lot of leafy trees and there doesn’t seem to be any common areas (I didn’t know the people own the land in the place she’s moving to), the worse she may have to deal with is lawnmowers since there seems to be a lot of grass where she is. Still, I hope she isn’t disappointed and as surprised as I was to learn that retirement communities aren’t that quiet. I suppose different communities have different noise ordinances. Here, anything goes as long as it’s daytime. I could blast the shit out of my music all day long if I wanted to, not that I want to do that. The only time I crank it up is when I’m cleaning or to drown out the landscaping.

Is she rich or something, though? She refuses to tell me how much the place costs and from the looks of it, it looks like a very expensive place to live. How does a couple go from a low-income apartment to that?

I had a dream that she, Larry, and I were all in Hawaii. They were lounging by a pool or something like that when I walked by them in my swimsuit and said I was going to go down to the beach for a swim because I didn’t know if I would get the chance to do it again. They just shrugged as if to say, “Whatever.”

In another dream, I was decorating a backyard that sort of reminded me of the one we had in Phoenix. There were these huge shelves that were kind of shaded and I considered setting up the rats’ cages there.

Then I was sitting at a long table. Andy was to my right and some Indian people (not American Indian) were across from me as well as to my left. I started to explain Indian culture to Andy, and then I stopped and asked one of the other people at the table if it would be okay to tell him what I learned about their culture and they nodded. I don’t remember what the hell it was I told Andy, though.

My parents were alive in the last dream and we were staying in a cabin in the woods. I went for a walk at one point and got lost. The darker it got, the harder it was for me to find my way back and I knew I would have to find a place to rest till morning. A medium-sized white dog with long thick fur approached me and kept me warm for the night. The next morning I found my way back, much to my parents' relief.

Never mind. Tammy just told me they paid 69K for the whole thing, the house is 4 years old, and they pay $160 a month for cable, lawn, and trash.

SATURDAY, MAY 2, 2015 There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Prozac was responsible for my latest round of hell. I have a feeling that the doctor is still going to claim that she’s never heard of the symptoms I had and basically imply that I’m full of shit, but I don't care. The only thing I'm unsure of at this time is whether or not I can adapt to 75. I’m also tempted to pull out of the counselor appointment and say look, "I know my body and I know what's normal for me. As long as I’m not given too much medication or the wrong kind of medication, there is no crisis."

I find it rather disturbing that two “professionals” told me that my heart racing me awake was anxiety when in fact it was the Prozac.

Blue lives matter, black lives matter... rolls eyes I don’t know who’s more pathetic. The pigs or the animals we call black people. I just know that I see a scary similarity to the savage beasts in the Middle East. Only difference is Americans loathe and refuse to tolerate those overseas while they have all the love in the world for the sick, dangerous and destructive scum we’ve got living right here. Tom says it’s all about being poor. Oh, please! We were poor for years. But did we ever go beating and robbing innocent people just because Jesse’s mutts pissed us off or something like that?

Funny how half of the pigs being charged with Grey’s death (and I do believe it was police brutality) are black. Yet people will still use race as a crutch. Everything always comes down to race in this country, even when race has nothing to do with the situation. What I know of the Grey case is obvious – it was about police brutality. Not about race. Not unless half the officers involved hate their own kind. Still, they’re not going to do shit to the cops. Cops are free to kill all they want.

So heartbreaking that the Wayne County prosecutor had to resign simply for expressing her opinion about shooting the protesters. What’s wrong with this damn country? I agree with her! If you’re going to act like animals in society you should be shot and die like animals. Black people DISGUST me with the savage beasts they so often are, much like ISIS, resorting to violence (mostly upon those who are innocent) when something pisses them off. No matter how violent we get, cops are going to continue to brutalize ALL races because that’s simply what cops do. Only difference is that the media is going to focus on black victims.

I continue to have mixed emotions about Andy. It is hard to believe that the same person who could care enough to send those cheesecake samplers would go out of his way to do things that he knows bothers me, but it’s more than obvious that this is the case. His obsession with posting pictures of violence and fire, especially when it involves blacks (pics of the Baltimore riots), really disturbs me. I don’t get what his goal is. Is he trying to push the acceptance of blacks on me? Or does he simply enjoy offending, grossing out, and annoying others? I asked if he could post things depicting things of a more peaceful nature (hey, looking at flowers puts me in a better mood than violence) and his reply was “Not yet,” and then he goes and posts another pic of the animals rioting.

Again, I am torn between hanging onto him and cutting ties. He frustrates the hell out of me, not just with his immaturity and his forgetfulness (be it his fault or not), but with the way he seems not to care about how others feel and with his selfishness. No matter how many times I tell him that a particular thing does not interest me, he seems to push it on me more. I’m amazed that I don’t have to hear about his God fantasy a lot more than I do. It seems that everything to him is about celebrities, sexy young guys, and violence.

If I asked myself if I would be friends with him if we were meeting today for the first time, the answer would honestly be no. I just know that if I let him go he would be devastated and I don’t want that. I don’t hate him; I am just annoyed by him and sick of him at times. But Andy's not one you can easily “cut back on.” You kinda gotta be all or nothing with him.

At the same time, I know I have to consider my own feelings. I have a feeling that if I told a counselor exactly how I felt about him, they would probably tell me that given how often I have doubts about him I should probably let him go. But would he let me go if I let him go? Or would he stalk the shit out of me every chance he got and try to reach out to me through my friends? This is someone that’s friends with some of my friends. Well, just Norma to be exact. The point is that disengaging myself from him may be a lot harder than it was to detangle myself from Kim in Molly. Speaking of Molly, something must’ve happened to her. This is the longest I’ve gone without any blog views from her.

Still, the frustrating question remains… do I put up with Andy's negative side, or do I let go and hope for the best?

Going for a TSH test this morning. The only thing is that I have to go to the bad vamps. Yeah, I hate this lab. Nothing but incompetent bitches work there. So… I’m sure I will be coming home with plenty of bruises. At least I didn’t have to fast all night and this morning. I’m just not sure why the doctor wants me to get tested now and not closer to our next appointment in six weeks.

Decided to place the large gymnast silhouette sticker in the hallway and she looks fantastic there! I’m going to add a few more to the other side at some point. I’m just not sure we should have painted that hallway such a bright, blinding pink, LOL.

Had some weird dreams last night, all right. For some reason, I felt compelled to tickle Tom’s foot in his sleep, but he never woke up. Then I saw what I thought might be a mouse hopping along the wall before I got up and wandered around the house. The house had multi-levels and didn’t look anything like our house. Some rooms were huge and others were tiny.

Then I dreamed I had a girlfriend in her 20s who reminded me of Nancy K. She kept insisting she was all or nothing and since we “did it” we had to be serious. I don’t know if I was young again as well, but I seemed to have serious doubts about her. I wasn’t exactly turned on by her appearance even though she wasn’t ugly, and I didn’t like how young and immature she came off as.

SUNDAY, MAY 3, 2015 Yesterday was a rather enjoyable day. Oh, some have asked me if I have any plans to try any other diets anytime soon. Naw, not worth the hunger just to lose a few pounds that only come back.

We went to Walmart and not only got groceries but a few other things as well. We got a new silverware set that looks expensive but isn’t, and I got a bottle of hot pink nail polish as well as another one of those scented polishes in Chocolate Truffle.

Got a few wax melts, one of which I had before called Purple Sands that I really like. I also got a Latte Mocha and Honeysuckle, which is in the warmer right now. Got a small bottle of White Shoulders perfume too. Maybe next time I will get Emeraude.

After we came home and put the groceries away we headed for the lab. This time there was a girl there named Kylie that I had never seen before. She was friendly and was able to draw blood on the first try. The only problem was that we had to wait a whole hour. The waiting room was so jam-packed I was amazed there were no screaming brats present.

We’re hoping for single digits, but not expecting them. I don’t understand for the life of me why the doctor has ordered this test so soon but I guess she must have her reasons. She told me she thought I needed 100 or more micrograms and unfortunately she’s probably right. Either way, she is a much better endo than an amateur shrink and I won’t hesitate to tell her that either, LOL. I don’t hold the Prozac backfiring on me against her, though, because I know she was just trying to help. For now, I will continue on with the 75s unless they become a problem again.

After the lab, it was home to good food and good relaxation.

MONDAY, MAY 4, 2015 I was falling asleep thinking how wonderful the weekend had been just to wake up an hour later with my heart racing. I thought I was over that shit! Why does the past love to return to haunt me and why have I been having these things? Did I just get overheated? Is it menopause? Anxiety? My medication?

It raced really fast for a few minutes. Even my brain felt like it was sizzling or something, and I took lorazepam to help me fall back asleep. After that I was fine. I didn’t wake up a million times and I had no more “heart attacks.”

I was in the middle of dreaming that Tom and I were on some boat or ship. I don’t think it was ours. A storm was brewing and he wanted to see if we could get to a particular place before it got bad so he opened a door to check the weather conditions out. It was very windy and cloudy so I told him to forget it. If my heart hadn’t raced me awake I probably wouldn’t remember that dream.

The lady who lives diagonally from us with the double-door garage was having it worse. I got up at 2 AM and a half-hour later I was aware of car door slamming. My first thought was that it was next door. Wondering what the hell they could be doing at that hour, I looked out the window and saw fire and ambulance had pulled up to the other house. The woman was loaded into the ambulance and her husband followed in their car.

Just got a notice from my endo doc saying:

I am glad you are able to articulate all this more openly as I believe it is part of the healing process. We will GET to a good place in time with all of this. Let me think of next steps but certainly one is to help the anxiety calm down with medication that agrees with you. I will work with Dr A to help get you in for a medication evaluation with a psychiatrist. Once the anxiety is more settled I think we can tackle the thyroid. Hang in there! DR O

So I Skyped Tom and asked him what I should reply with, and he said:

No need to reply...they can talk all they want then we'll do what is best.

As I sit here and mull her words around in my mind, I’m not sure what to think. I have mixed emotions about things right now and with good reason. I don't want to end up a walking pharmacy I was as a kid, but at least I have rights to my life now that I didn't have before. At 16 years of age, I simply couldn’t say “no” to any medication I didn’t want to try or that I didn’t like the effects of. Now I do. I don't want to treat anything physical or emotional unless it is absolutely necessary to my well-being.

Again, I’m not sure a counselor, shrink and medication are necessary if they just give me the proper dose of thyroid medication. I never had anxiety problems this severe before, so why now, even though I happen to feel fine at the present moment?

I appreciate the doctor not giving up on me and I appreciate her doing her job and trying to get me to a better place where I feel better and I’m healthier. I’m just afraid that their efforts may make me worse as the Prozac did. I don’t want to get worse trying to fix something that may be able to be fixed simply with the proper dose of thyroid medication. So I have mixed emotions like I said. I respect the fact that they’re the experts, but sometimes I think that maybe I still know myself best and that they’re getting a little too carried away. I guess time will tell. Either way, I definitely don’t want to go through the physical or emotional hell I have been through all over again, and I know there are no guarantees that I won’t.

There are other fears as well. I became addicted to and acquired permanent side effects from the Navane I took many years ago. Well, I don’t want to become dependent on pills any more than I would on alcohol or illegal drugs and then suffer long-term consequences. So unless it is absolutely necessary, I don’t want anybody playing God with my brain chemistry too much. Yes, I’d rather get addicted than feel like I’m going to die, but if there’s a better, easier way, I’d rather that.

I thought about it for months and finally decided that getting my hair straightened might damage my already damaged hair, and decided that I was sick of long hair anyway, so I cut it off. It’s not only easier to deal with and more manageable this way since it’s very curly and I have to dye it regularly, but it will make it easier for swimming season.

I got it done at Supercuts and the girl did a great job. It’s to the shoulders with a slight layer in back to keep it from poofing out, and some face-framing. The whole thing took only about 15 minutes and when she was done she put some anti-frizz product in it that smelled really good. The whole thing cost just $16.

Tom told me we could go anywhere I wanted and I could have any service I wanted. That’s really sweet of him, but I never saw the point in paying $60 for the same cut you can get for $16 whether you have extra money or not, and I guess we’re doing pretty well right now because we calculated that if he were suddenly jobless and didn’t get unemployment, we would be okay for 10-11 months. Either way, the prospect of ever becoming poor again seems like nothing compared to the physical and emotional hell I’ve been through the last year.

Between bike riding and tons of walking through giant parking lots, I got a lot of exercise yesterday. The lady at Supercuts told us we had a 25-minute wait, so we walked to the nearest store, which was a dollar store. I got a cute Rainbow spinner to put outside, and this dangly thing with gems and butterflies to hang over the bar across the top of the bench swing to give it a little decoration.

I felt a little flustered by the time we got back to Supercuts, so I decided not to go walking around Target across the way like we had originally planned and to just go back home and relax.

With all we have going on, we decided to postpone Reno until the fall. We are still not sure when and where we will get a kitten, but I guess we can start looking around.

So tell me… what’s the point of hiding our Facebook friends if Facebook is going to announce on the newsfeed that so-and-so is now friends with so-and-so? And why does Facebook need to recommend our friends to our other friends? I swear there is not one stitch of privacy on Facebook. If I post to one friend’s wall everybody else has to know about it and I don’t see why it’s their business no matter how trivial the post may be. Everything I “like” and comment on is pointed out to my friends, and while I don’t necessarily mind them knowing what I “like” and comment on, it still doesn’t pertain to them so it seems pointless. This is one of many reasons I continue to limit my usage of the site. I use it more to check for messages and collect pictures than anything else.

TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2015 In about an hour, I’m going to take the laptop and hang out in back of the house for the day. No one’s been sawing and there wasn’t any landscaping yesterday, but Bob is constantly doing shit in his garage and even if most of the sounds are subtle little bumps and bangs, it is both annoying and distracting when I am trying to focus on my work. I went to sit and read outside in the fresh air and I could swear I smelled some chemical coming from his garage, like maybe paint.

Today’s Tuesday, so there will be landscaping noise because the house across from us is on for today. Then there’s whatever the park decides to do.

These doctors, nurses and appointments are really starting to overwhelm me and I’m tempted to just ignore the phone for the day and give myself a break. I asked Tom if he thought they really cared and were trying to help me or if there could be some sort of conspiracy going on I might not know about connected to insurance or something like that. He said it’s mostly that they just don’t want to be sued and that by sending me to a specialist they’re safe.

My endo’s nurse ended up calling and I told her that now that I felt better, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go making any more changes too soon. As they say, why change what works? She agreed I sounded a lot better. I don’t know that the dosage I’m on may not give me trouble later on, but for now, I am enjoying the fact that I feel better. I am just afraid to try any new psych pills that might end up being a real mind fucker like the Prozac was.

She told me to relay the same information to my PCP and I did. Then the PCP leaves a message on Tom’s phone, and Tom Skypes me to tell me to give her a call. So I called and ended up talking to her directly, and she pointed out that I had anxiety before the Prozac. That’s very true, but as I tried to tell her, the first time I went on the levothyroxine there was still some life left in my thyroid and those pockets of activity that flared up were what caused my severe anxiety, and that I was not normally anxious to that extreme. As long as I’m not on the wrong medication or too high of a dose, there is no crisis. I’m just not sure either doctor understands this. I’m not sure if it’s just because they don’t know me very well or what.

I have had many instances of stress in my life and the worst thing it has done to me is cause me to have the runs and restless sleep, not feel like I’m going to panic and go out of my mind, or like my heart is about to jump out of my chest and I feel like I’m going to suffocate. That all started last year after they raised my levothyroxine dose. As they also say, though, we can explain something to someone but we can’t make them get it. I suppose that if I keep explaining it, sooner or later it will sink in, but I’m not that patient. I can kind of see why they may think I come across as more anxious than I actually feel at times. I’m naturally energetic and that may be taken as somebody who always has bad anxiety.

Nonetheless, it won’t kill me to tell the same damn thing to a counselor on the 12th and then to a shrink in July even if we’re the ones that have to pay for it in time, gas, and money. Unless my PCP and endo pull strings to get me in sooner, which is what they would like to do. I don’t know how to tell them, “It’s okay guys. I’m off the Prozac. I don’t want to kill myself. Relax!”

There is still a risk of an anxiety flare-up, however, because other things in life can cause that, and I don’t know that my thyroid is 100% dead yet. I slept great last night and didn’t get raced awake by my heart, be it due to anxiety or menopause or whatever.

To add to my already growing list of appointments, my PCP wants to see me in a month. I have no idea why. What must I see her for in a month that I can’t tell her online or by phone? Just because some of us have money doesn’t mean we want to throw it away frivolously. Every time I have to see a doctor or specialist it costs us. $25-$35 may not seem like much, but it adds up in time.

I had a dream that Tom and I were in Boston. It definitely couldn’t have been on a vacation because that’s the last place we’d go. However, we stayed at a hotel in which I knew that Mary G/D and her mother worked. In reality, I want nothing to do with her and I don’t see that changing in the future after the way she used me so badly for many years from jail and then decided she didn’t need me afterward while throwing some false accusations at me on her way out of my life. She was an extremely needy, naïve and paranoid person. She’s probably still using some abusive rich guy to feed her shopping addiction.

Regardless, in the dream, I met up with her mother who was half the age she would be in real life. She had long straight silver hair but it didn’t make her look old or ugly. She knew who I was and she didn’t seem to like me at all. I don’t remember what she said but she started voicing some rather judgmental opinions about me about something or another. I eyed her pregnant belly with disgust and a little judgment of my own, knowing that she got knocked up by Mary's present boyfriend, and told her to let Mary know that I was around before I turned and went back to my hotel room.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2015 I now have 6 appointments between now and September, 3 of which are unnecessary. My PCP thanked me online for the shrink appointment info saying she’ll try to get me in sooner or on a cancelation list. I almost replied with, “No hurry. I’m feeling much better. As I told you and Doc O, as long as I’m not on the wrong medication or too much of it, my anxiety is much easier to manage.”

But they still wouldn’t get it, not to mention the fact that all these appointments can make a person with my sleep issues feel very overwhelmed, and that it’s costing us money. I did point that out to my PCP’s nurse, however, every time we have to run in for something that can be done by phone or online, we have to pay.

I spoke to Paula yesterday and asked her if she’d ever been on Prozac before. She has. She said all it does is give her funny dreams.

She called because she had been worried about me saying she wasn’t receiving my texts and wondered if I got caught up in earthquakes, fires, and every other imaginable catastrophe. Yet when I texted her afterward, she got them just fine. I think she just wanted to talk and that’s probably why she blocked her number, too. I answered thinking it was the doctor’s office, but that’s ok, LOL. I don’t mind chatting every now and then.

I used the laptop in the bedroom yesterday for about 5 or 6 hours and the battery drained down to 51%. It took just over an hour to charge it. This pretty much tells me it would last all day, which is a good thing. It would probably take 2.5 hours to charge if it was totally dead.

I had some dream about swimming in a pool and tanning and possibly wanting to go high-diving at night but thinking better of doing such a thing with no one else around.

Then I dreamed I was telling Tammy that I thought menopause was coming on and she kept insisting that I was too young for that. I told her I didn’t expect it until my 50s, but was confident that menopause was truly setting in.

In reality, I am starting to retain water, but just like last month, there’s no way my period is coming on time, which is supposed to be tomorrow. With my shit luck, I will PMS for a month before I have another period.

Andy continues to annoy the shit out of me and make me question the validity of his friendship by posting pictures depicting subjects he knows bothers me or that I am sick to death of. Every time he does this, though, the longer I will go before I check in on Ask. Only problem was that he hadn’t checked in before I checked in the last time, which is probably part of why he posted the picture at that particular time… because he knew he would be unavailable for several hours anyway, which sort of defeats my purpose. He may not be smart, but he’s not as dumb as Paula.

Later…

I keep hoping they’ll post my TSH score online, but they haven’t yet. I’m trying to decide whether or not I should call for the numbers, even though I shouldn’t have to because that’s what the online site is supposed to be for. A part of me is curious and a part of me doesn’t want to know because I truly believe the results aren’t good. They may be better, but I doubt they’re good enough. They know what the results are whether I know it or not so I guess I will find out soon enough either way.

I am more concerned as to what the doctor might want to do about those bad numbers than the bad numbers themselves. It is way too soon to up my dose again after all the shit I’ve been through. I am just not ready for that yet. Now that I finally got to a stable place both physically and emotionally I need to stay there for a while. Even if the numbers aren’t perfect, I’m not unhealthy and I’m not in danger, so I don’t want to push myself too far too soon.

I suppose it will be a while before the movie Cleveland Abduction is available online. I know the basics of the story and that one of the girls had a baby in captivity, believing that her dead mother sent her an “angel.” Well, I’m not so sure the dead can influence the living and I definitely can’t believe any mother would want her daughter to get pregnant by her rapist, but I can understand that in desperate situations we sometimes need to tell ourselves these things in order to survive. I’ve done similar things in times of desperation way back when. I didn’t brainwash myself into believing some of the things I tried to tell myself, but it was a sort of a mental pretend game that I would play in order to help me cope. Just like many try to justify life’s horrors by convincing themselves it’s “God’s will,” I have my own ways of getting through life’s hardships. Sometimes we need to tell ourselves whatever sounds best in the worst of moments. Some of us may believe those words while others don’t, but we always try to do whatever it takes.

Do I believe there’s a God that loves us all equally? No, I don’t. I think if there is a God that He is a real shit to some of us with total disregard for how some people are affected both physically and emotionally. However, if I have a tough time in life and I find that telling myself that wearing a red shirt while eating a banana is the key to getting through it, then that’s what I’ll tell myself even if I’m kidding myself in the end. So yeah, I can kind of understand the God/Angel fantasy. I suppose destiny will always play itself out no matter what we do, though. We can fantasize, we can bullshit ourselves… but fate will be fate no matter what.

Later…

OMG, my endo’s nurse just scared the shit out of me! If it wasn’t for the relief I felt afterward I might have been pissed. Finally curious about my TSH score, which failed to show up online, I called and spoke to Chris. She then tells me my score was 21 and I’m thinking, oh no, just oh fucking no. How can that be after two weeks on a higher dose?

She then went on to tell me that an underactive thyroid can cause depression and all that, and I expressed my fears of taking on a higher dose so soon after I finally found some stability that I would like to enjoy for more than a week.

Then she was confused and wondering why I would be tested just two weeks after starting a new dose since it takes two weeks to get into the system and four weeks to see results. I wondered that too, but all I know is that I was told to go to the lab and so I did last Saturday.

Then she was even more confused and realized that she was reading me results from April. This would explain why I supposedly had the same score twice in a row, which would be unlikely unless I was on no medication at all.

So she called the lab and then she called me back to tell me something I wish I had known before. The results of this particular test take longer because it includes a HAMA. This has to do with the antibodies that can cause false high readings and one to be thyrotoxic.

Damn, do I miss those days when I didn’t need any medications and tests and all that stuff. But they’re over. Totally over. Yes, I am throwing myself a five-minute pity party, and it’s my party so I’ll cry if I want to.

THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2015 Yesterday turned out to be a pretty hilarious day. HAMA stands for human anti-mouse antibodies, so I learned thanks to a friend who does great research. When I asked the nurse what this meant, she said she didn’t know and then she said what I thought was, “All I know is that it has to do with the mouth.” Well “mouth” was obviously “mouse.”

I had quickly looked it up but hadn’t read anything in detail until a friend slipped me some links Tom and I checked out. It didn’t mention rats, but apparently, exposure to mice, particularly wild mice, can create antibodies in a person that can interfere with the results of blood tests. If I have this thing, then it might be giving false high readings on my TSH tests.

Personally, I don’t think I do, but I have definitely dealt with wild mice. We used to get them all the time in the trailer, and one time we had one in our Phoenix house in which I decided to make a pet. I called him Gizzy, LOL. I never handled him, because he was too timid and I didn’t want to get bit, but I gave him a home for a while. After two or three escapes, I decided to set him free again, realizing he was never meant to be anybody’s pet as adorable as he was. I even caught a pair of mice in Maricopa. Despite plenty of contact with rats and mice, both wild and not, I don’t think that’s the issue but that is just a guess. Only the test results can say for sure.

I was laughing at the thought of the good doctor noticing my rodent obsession (rat T-shirt last time I saw her, rat profile pics on both Facebook and the health site, even though I doubt they see our profile pictures on the health site), and thinking that that’s why she should do this test. Tom doesn’t think that has anything to do with it so much as the fact that some people have had the symptoms that I’ve had while getting high readings that say they’re undermedicated even though they feel overmedicated. Maybe I will find out something today. I’m more concerned with my TSH score, but if I have this anti-body present, all they have to do is a different type of test. My doctor’s good, though. Damn good. I doubt Dr. D ever would’ve ever come up with this idea.

Tom got a paid day off for doing that woman’s job that’s on maternity leave. Not sure that’s nearly enough of a reward, but it’s better than nothing.

Oh, wow. It’s actually raining out there now. I heard some thunder earlier but didn’t expect any rain. Maybe it will keep things quiet today and I will stay in the front of the house. I have been finding it better to retreat to the back of the house during the daytime during the week.

Revlon's Tea Rose polish may smell like roses, but their Chocolate Truffle barely smells chocolatey, and the color is hideously ugly. If it weren’t for Gold Glaze's transforming effects, I would have taken it right off. Might send it to a friend.

Last night I beat the shit out of some guy in my dreams that was in a pool with jade-green water so murky you couldn’t even see through half an inch of it. I don’t know what in the world he said to piss me off bad enough to make me jump into such filthy water and punch him in the face and then slam his head against the concrete side of the pool while Tom watched in horror shouting, “NO!” But it must’ve been pretty bad. Normally words aren’t enough to get me to go after someone, so I would have had to perceive it as something very threatening. After the 30-second surprise attack rendered him unconscious, I pulled myself out of the water and hosed myself down.

FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2015 Never heard anything yesterday about my test results. Maybe today. I’m not going to worry about calling them, though, because it’s their job to get in touch with me. I just worry about being pressured to go to a higher dose too soon. I would really like to stay on 75’s for the rest of the year before I go making any additional changes.

Tom was going to get himself a new Mac Mini and a new monitor but then realized he wouldn’t be home enough to use it so he is holding off for now since his seven-year-old iMac that I won is still working fine. The one I won for me is sitting in the bedroom closet on standby in case anything malfunctions on my new MacBook Air

We did get a bunch of other stuff on Amazon, and some of the things I got included a few more large gymnast stickers. So when you walk down our long hallway you will be surrounded by leaping gymnasts in various poses with a couple of figure skaters to start you off.

My pearl slave ankle bracelet came yesterday and it is okay. Still waiting on the turquoise slave bracelet. I posted a pic of my very old-looking foot on Twitter.

I also got a set of 24 rainbow nail art polishes. That will really get my colorful and creative juices flowing.

The rainbow spinner that I grabbed at the dollar store was a dollar well spent. We attached it so that it hangs off of this trellis-like thing that’s on the front patio and it looks really cool from the kitchen window. Yesterday was pretty breezy so it was really spinning up a storm. If I can hear the wind chimes then I know it’s really moving.

I had a rather disturbing dream last night where I think I might have been in jail, though I’m not sure what it was I was accused of. I was still on inhalers like I was 15 years ago and mentioned needing one. A stout, balding, uniformed cop said he “ordered” one.

Then they were searching for my fingerprints on possible evidence with what they told me was luminal. In real life, however, I learned from watching forensic shows that luminal is used to make blood appear that have been washed away. In my mind, I calculated that if I was convicted of whatever it was they were investigating, I could spend anywhere from a few months in jail to six years in prison. An escape plan was hatching in my mind as I woke up.

Later…

So I came out of the bathroom about an hour ago to see that Chris left me a message. I called back and was transferred to endocrinology just to be told she was busy. So I sat there with my heart pounding in anticipation (yes, that is “normal” anxiety for me) of her return call.

Eventually, the phone rings and I snatch it up, hoping for the best but fearing the worst. She says hello and all that, and I finally cut to the chase and tell her I hope she had good news for me. She did! I tested negative for the HAMA thing, and my TSH is down to 11, just slightly out of range!!!

I literally cried tears of joy and relief. I sent a message thanking the doctor, letting her know I feel better and hope to continue on the 75s without any issues. I also asked if she still wanted to see me in June and if I was supposed to go to the lab the week before. My TSH is probably on the upper end of the normal range right now since I was last tested just two weeks after I started it.

I am just so, so happy! I didn’t expect to have the HAMA, but I thought she was going to tell me my TSH was in the teens and insist I up my thyroid medication dose right away.

As I also told her, I still don’t think a counselor and shrink are necessary as I firmly believe the bulk of the anxiety stems from what happened last year, and the Prozac, which takes time to get over, but I will keep those appointments anyway.

In other news, my slave bracelet arrived. I like it better than the other one, though it is a bit big for me

SATURDAY, MAY 9, 2015 My 24-piece nail art polishes arrived yesterday, so after Tom and I go for a bike ride, I will do some colorful creations on my nails.

I’m sending Paula a couple of bottles of other nail polish which I only used once and didn’t really care for. I think she’ll like them, but it’s ok if she doesn’t and wants to give them away or something. I just hate to throw things away.

She’ll be 48 on the 30th.

The weather’s still in that “stuck in-between” stage. It’s not winter anymore, but it’s not quite summer yet. It’s nice in the afternoons, but cold in the mornings.

Later…

Dear Mom,

Not that I’m sure I believe in the afterlife or any kind of heaven or hell (I don’t know that for sure either way) but this is just to inform you that I treat everybody the same. And I do it without feeling a shred of shame or guilt. What that means is that I would not tolerate or forgive the abuse of a family member any more than I would a friend or lover. That includes you. You abused me for many years in almost every way imaginable. I cannot and will not ever forgive or forget that.

Carrying me for nine months and then giving birth to me is not an automatic “ok” pass to be excused for abusiveness. It does not grant you the right to abuse me as you did and it does not make you worthy of being forgiven by me either. I have too much respect for myself to be blinded by biology. Biology is not an excuse or a ticket to be abusive simply because your own mother abused you and set a shitty example for you. By the time you were an adult, you should’ve been smart enough to know right from wrong no matter what kind of example was set for you. I have no pity for you. I have no respect for you. You were a hypocritical little shit filled with nothing but condemnation, judgment, jealousy, phoniness, selfishness and insensitivity, though you sure thought you were superior to everyone else, didn’t you?

You once told me that if I didn’t like somebody, then don’t have anything to do with them. This was probably the only good advice you ever gave me, and this is why you didn’t have me in your life for a good decade or so. See, I don’t waste time with revenge and stooping to anyone’s lowlife levels that I may come to dislike; I simply ignore them and disappear from their lives. Poof. Gone. History. Just like that.

Until you got too old and senile, you put me down every chance you got. You treated me like dog shit. You made me feel stupid as hell. I may not be perfect, a genius or rich, but let’s see YOU come back to life and write 29 books, get anywhere from knowledgeable to fluent in 8 languages, and then call ME dumb again. Oh, and don’t forget to taunt me about my weight again, too.

Let’s see you raise a hand to me so I can break your arm in a million more places than mine broke when I threw myself out a window mostly thanks to you. You had the guts to hit me as a small child but once I grew up you were nothing but a gutless piece of shit, weren’t you?

Get over you and rise above you… I definitely have. Forgive you… No chance in hell. So if you’re out there, Dureen June, I hope the afterlife has been anything but kind to you and that you are suffering every single minute and that every single minute is like an eternity and then some. May you rot in hell and suffer a million times worse than any amount of suffering you ever inflicted upon me. That is my so-called Mother’s Day gift to you.

SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2015 No hope of menopause setting in even more this month. My period was only 2 days late this time around. I was really hoping to skip another month, but at least I had the easiest PMS I’ve had in years.

Yesterday was a very fun, productive and physical day. We rode our bikes a couple of miles, and then the mailman drove up with a long triangular box. In it were 3 tubes containing the gymnast wall stickers for the side of the hall that runs along the laundry room and second bath. They were a bitch to apply and it took a few hours but they look fantastic! I did this while Tom did some trimming and weeding outdoors.

Later…

Here’s proof once again that life isn’t always what we plan it… And that can actually be a good thing. I called our closest Petco to find that for three hours on Saturdays and Sundays, they have three-month-old kittens up for adoption who are neutered/spayed and have had their shots. They weren’t supposed to be there until noon, so I first tried a new Chinese place.

I ordered beef fried rice and wonton soup to go. Strangely enough, there was an additional container and for a minute I thought they accidentally gave me somebody else’s lunch. It was filled with steamed vegetables, chicken pieces and wontons. When I opened the soup container and found only the broth within, that’s when I knew that all those vegetables were supposed to be added to the soup. I decided to add just the wontons.

What was absolutely disgusting was biting into what I thought was a little sliver of green pepper that was actually the spiciest thing I ever bit into in my entire life. I ran and rinsed my mouth like crazy, but my mouth and lips burned really bad for about an hour. How can any human being do that to themselves??? It’s like taking a match and lighting it inside your mouth. I don’t understand why anybody would want to do that.

Everything else was delicious. There is so much food that I can munch on it on and off for the next couple of days. They do Chinese and Vietnamese food and I can order online as well. I’m mostly interested in the various fried rice dishes. I don’t care for stuff like chow mein and egg rolls.

Upping my dosage and metabolism has made me hungrier. Tomorrow all this ferocious eating needs to end. I’m not going on a “diet,” so to speak, because I couldn’t stand the hunger it would take to get down into the 120s. I would like to stay in the 140s, though, so I am going to pace my food by going back on a timer menu of sorts where I only eat every 3 to 4 hours. This helps me cut back without feeling like I’m going to starve to death like a 1200-calorie diet would make me feel. I’ll have, “Alexa,” my personal assistant who works for me full-time, set timers for me.

Tom and I were laughing at how the name Alexa is definitely out of the question for the cat since the original Alexa will respond every time she hears her name. Usually, you just hear a 2-note tone which is basically her way of saying, “I heard my name but didn’t get what you were asking me to do,” if her name is mentioned without following with a command that she is programmed to handle.

So we come home, eat, digest a little, and then head to Petco. Sure enough, they tell us that there are no kittens for adoption today because of Mother’s Day. Now why oh why wasn’t I told that over the phone? I hate it when the holidays interfere with things!

But it actually turned out for the better this way because then we have a chance to get it everything it needs beforehand (for a lot less money on Amazon than at Petco), and we can bomb the house first which we will do Tuesday while I’m at my appointment and then stopping at Raley’s for a white base coat nail polish and the postage to mail Paula’s little birthday envelope off to her.

For now, if you’ve been born yet, kitty, I hope whoever’s got you now is taking really good care of you until your new parents can adopt you and bring you home!

Since we were at the store anyway we looked around at products and compared prices in our minds to what we’ve seen on Amazon, and of course we checked out the rats. They had a huge adult cream-colored rat that was so adorable. Its tail was over a foot long. He was easily over a pound and I had to resist the urge to reach in and hug it and kiss it and run out of the store with it. Instead, we got Hoodie a new fleece-lined hammock with a zebra design… until the idiot chews one of the straps. Less than five minutes after I hooked it in his cage he crawled up into it and went to sleep. Well if you like it so much, don’t chew the straps, you furry bastard!

MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015 I think Dr. O is still on vacation because she’s been playing slots every afternoon. Yeah, I love to spy. Also, another doctor answered my last question to her about whether or not I was to still see her in June and get a blood test done before that.

She hasn’t returned to my blog, and I have mixed emotions about that. It’s always cool to have a regular reader, but this way I feel I can speak more freely about my doctors, not that any of them can’t disable cookies and read me without me knowing it.

I noticed the doctor’s friend count went from 15 to 12. Wow, I thought I had few friends with just 20 friends. One of the ones that seem to be missing is her daughter Stormy. Did they have a tiff or something?

As a little test, I anonymously asked myself if I liked jokes pertaining to race and religion, and made it visible only to Andy. I said that some of the religious jokes can be funny at times, but that I’m sick to death of hearing about race. This is very true and I keep hoping he’ll take the hint, but sure enough, he didn’t and I had to spell it out for him yet again just how sick I am of the race shit.

Another thing is that I specifically mentioned twice yesterday that I was going to back off on eating as much, and sure enough, he mentioned going to the grocery store today.

Insensitive? Selfish? Or does he actually go out of his way to bring up subjects he knows people don’t want to hear?

Later…

Just finishing up with some cleaning. I now have the place almost completely cat-proofed. Not sure we’ll get a kitten next weekend, but I don’t see why we can’t get it the weekend after that.

Last night I went around and picked out some things on Amazon and placed them in the cart for now. Most of the things I picked out are pink, even if the cat may end up being a male, LOL. Hey, that’s my favorite color.

Tom and I were debating whether or not Alexa could be spying on us (Amazon Echo), but our guess is that she isn’t. Still, when you have a device with microphones that are always connected to the Internet, you can never know for sure who may be listening in on you even when you’re not using the device for what it is intended for. We don’t care if anybody is, however. I don’t see how anything we could say would be all that exciting and interesting to any potential listeners, and I already had my speech rights violated once, so I sure as hell aren’t about to allow it to happen again in the privacy of my own home. As they say, being victimized once as an adult in whatever way is one thing, but allowing it to happen a second time is another. Especially when you have choices. If any law is ever going to screw me again, I’m certainly not going to make it easy for them to do so by playing nicey-nicey and being “cooperative” like I stupidly did before. I’m just going to sue the shit out of them instead. If you send something in the mail or are accused of sending something that somebody else sent, that isn’t the same as if they go to you be it to spy on you or to view your public blogs. There’s a big difference there. So if you come to me… read/listen at your own risk! :-)

All I see on the Facebook news feed lately is what people comment on and what they "like" and it is a very annoying feature to add to my growing list of Facebook complaints. I see much more of this than their actual posts. I would really prefer to know what’s going on with them and not what news articles they’re “liking” and what friends they’re commenting on because, well, I really don’t care. A friend liking another friend’s profile picture has nothing to do with me.

Unfortunately, I realize that it’s a two-way street in this case and that if a friend comments on or “likes” something of mine, all my other friends are going to see this as well, including anything they post to my wall (kind of glad I’m not very active there or hear much from people other than in messages). It annoys me that I can’t interact with some people privately. Realizing this, I think I may go public out of curiosity to see if I get any followers. If so many people are going to see my stuff anyway then I guess I may as well not worry about trying to hide things as much. I won't make my friend list public, though.

I haven’t decided for sure if I’m going to do this, and of course I won’t make literally everything I post public, but since I’ve been troll-free for a while, I may consider it. I hate to admit it but a part of me misses being stalked, just not by batshit crazy people. If I were ever going to be stalked again it would be nice if it were somebody attractive, intelligent, interesting and fun. But sadly, that’s not the way it usually works. The vast majority of them are very homely-looking people with no brains and no life. Therefore I might as well be glad that I have been free of trolls for a long time now, and hope it stays that way. The Internet has changed since I’ve had these problems in the past, and of course, so have I. There’s no way I would put up with the shit I put up with for so damn long. I would put a stop to it before the first week was up. Not that I’m responsible for their actions, of course, but I could have done more to make myself less accessible. It’s just that when you’re an author and you have public blogs and all that, it’s not always that easy.

TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2015 I am now appointment-free until June 9th… Yay!

Last night I dyed my hair and it was the easiest dye job to do in years with my hair being so much shorter.

We changed the air filters in the air cleaners in the bedroom and living room and they will be good for a year.

Got up this morning and was a little tired. I am going to sleep for a million hours tomorrow, alarm-free! Before I go on, and speaking of alarm clocks… although I rarely use alarms, I decided it’s time to replace the ancient alarm clock that I’ve had for at least 20 years. I’m getting a really cool one that lets you change display colors. It will be fun to change every week or two for variety.

So I got up, took my meds, and had Alexa set a timer for a half-hour as always. Then I checked in on the usual sites I check in on before I could have my coffee. I scrolled down the Facebook news feed a little bit just to find it littered with people’s “likes,” and so I hopped onto Prosebox.

I read something so disgusting that I couldn’t stop reading about it. It talked of how a woman carries microscopic traces of the DNA of every man she’s ever slept with for the rest of her life. Assuming this means that the guy has to cum, I thought of who else I may have been dumb enough to have unprotected sex with other than my husband that may have gotten off in the end. I can only think of one and that would be Ron. Pretty sure the few others either got off by me giving them a hand job, didn’t get off at all, or were wearing rubbers.

The grossest part is where they talked about how a woman that swallows a guy’s cum and how the cells get behind her eyes, in her nasal cavity and pretty much spread throughout her entire body since they’re living cells that latch onto the body and basically call any host home.

So I still have this less than handsome, partially bald, ugly, naïve, dumb-ass loser that I was too nice to say “no” to living within me however microscopically it may be, 20 years after the fact. EW! Just EW!

As they say, never sleep with anyone you wouldn’t want to be because they will become a part of you.

We set the bombs off and left when the landscapers that come on Tuesdays were getting started, so that was an annoyance I didn’t have to listen to. Then it was off to see the counselor, Stacey. I like her better than Dana. Dana constantly interrupted me but this one listened intently as she took notes. Although I haven’t felt the need to chat nonstop for years now, it is nice to be able to do the talking for once, instead of others rambling on and on and always interrupting me.

I wasted no time getting to the point. Tom was with me, too. We explained to her that while we understand that the doctors aren’t doing anything wrong by referring me, and while I can understand that they haven’t known me for over 20 years like my husband, it’s frustrating and costing us money trying to get it through to them that I never had anxiety attacks before last year. I’ve had the stress from hell, but I have never experienced what I experienced last year until my thyroid medication became an issue when I had those flare-ups.

She seemed to understand how terrified I was not knowing what the hell was going on at the time. While both are going to cause trauma and phobia, it is different if you’re threatened at gunpoint versus thinking you accidentally overdosed and may die. At least with the gunman, as terrifying as that may be, you at least know what’s going on. But when your body does something you know it’s not supposed to do and you don’t have a clue as to why; that’s taking the terror to a whole new level. The internal bogeyman can be a lot scarier than the external bogeyman.

We all agree, however, that the events of last year did truly traumatize me and give me a phobia about taking medication in general. I have improved tremendously over the months, though. Initially, even ibuprofen, which I had taken for years for cramps and other things, seemed very threatening.

We also told her about how the Prozac backfired on me.

She said she would let A know that I saw her today and that she believes the anxiety is due to my thyroid as well as medication issues, and let me know that she’d be there for me if I wanted to see her again. It’s nice to know she’s there, but I think my condition is stable and that my thyroid is a lot deader than last year. I just hope I don’t get some whole new problem now that this is getting settled.

I did learn some interesting things from her, however, that’s nice to know because there’s always the threat of future anxiety attacks for any of us, for any reason. An anxiety attack only lasts 9 minutes. I didn’t know this before. The key is learning to flush the extra adrenaline out of your system in a quicker and more efficient manner by remaining calm. She also said that deep breathing exercises might actually make it worse if you do it too late. She recommended some type of physical activity, which surprised me because I thought that would make it worse by elevating the heartbeat even more. She said that initially, that could be the case, but it would actually help calm me down faster. I just hope I continue to be problem-free on the dosage of thyroid medication I’m currently on!

After seeing Stacey, we stopped at Carl’s Jr. for burgers and fries.

When we got home we aired the place out and I said hello to Bob as he was walking up his driveway. He offered us a really nice square glass table that I’m guessing is about 5’x5’. I remember when we looked at this place and the realtor asked if they could leave any furniture behind that they wanted to, which I okayed, and how I hoped to myself that they would leave the rectangular glass table in which we sat talking on the patio, but they didn’t. Well, now we have one just as nice!

Tom hosed down the white plastic chairs we got in Auburn, but the vinyl cushions were all torn up. We’ll grab some new ones soon enough.

That was so incredibly nice of Bob! I told Tom that I almost felt guilty because we haven’t done anything for them. He said that before I felt that way, we only got it because they wouldn’t take it (they were collecting clothes today), and while it was still very nice of him, we’re technically doing them a favor by taking it off their hands.

So now I have the table to sit at with my laptop and the swing to sit on with my Paperwhite, assuming the bees aren’t terrorizing me.

Paula texted me to ask me to make her a lucky bracelet for her birthday. I let her know that we sent her birthday present today and she thanked me, saying I always remember her birthday. I do.

Ugh. :( I wondered why I hadn't heard from my beloved Italian foster dad in a while, who just popped into mind. I just now decided to check obituaries and now I know why. His wife died in 2012. They were like the parents I never had and wish I'd had. Miss them so much!

THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2015 I didn’t do an entry yesterday because I wrote so much the day before. The kitten is getting real! We ordered tons of stuff for it on Amazon this morning… one of those high-tech litter boxes, food and water bowls, a carrier, a bed, and what I call a shit genie with a genie mat.

The shit genie seals clumps of shit much like a diaper sealer, and the mat catches and holds litter. Things have come a long way from those days when all we had was a plastic tray for cats to do their thing in.

We still want to get one of those carpeted perches for it to climb on, but there’s no hurry because it will only be a few months old when we get it at the end of the month.

I also grabbed myself a rainbow sundress and a couple of sleeveless nightgowns to replace a couple my mother sent me years ago. These aren’t to sleep in since I prefer to sleep in just my panties, but for lounging around on warm nights. That is if they ever return to Citrus Heights. It’s mid-May and we still need the damn heat late at night. :(

The only slight negative is that I woke up overheated a few hours after crashing, but it was definitely because it got too warm in the bedroom. Thinking the warm weather was here to stay, we opened the vent real wide in there to keep it cooler when the AC was running, yet this makes it too hot when the heat’s running. But I stayed calm, didn’t panic, turned the heat down, used the potty, then my heartbeat slowed down and I slept just fine without having to take anything to help me get back to sleep.

Been having weird dreams lately, but I only remember bits and pieces… me holding a giant rat as a rabbit hopped by, Tom saying we’ll get a two-bedroom house in two years (we have a two-bedroom now), and dreams of Nane. I’m not sure what Nane was doing in my dreams. It seems we might have been picnicking together.

We were vacationing or living in apartments or condos somewhere, but in one dream there was a garage just outside the bedroom wall, and I was telling Tom that I was afraid that some night someone would get drunk and drive right through the wall and run us over in our sleep.

Then I was in some wooded area where a large river ran through. I was standing by its side. Its current was very fast and as much as I wanted to take a dip in it, I was afraid of getting swept away.

FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2015 We had some pretty cool thunderstorms yesterday evening. Glad I wasn’t sleeping!

Some black pickup has been speeding through the park. Today’s the first time I’ve seen it. It speeds so fast that its tires squeal as it comes around the corner where there is a long run without speed bumps.

Our future cat’s shit genie has arrived today. It’s going to take a lot of shit to fill that thing up, LOL.

We also put up our latest new decorative wall plates, one in the living room and one in the bedroom.

Lost a few pounds by cutting back over the week. I was always able to lose at least a few pounds. The question is, do I want to see if I can lose more on the 75’s, or do I want to continue to enjoy my weekend binging? Maybe I’ll compromise and do a little of both. I’m not determined and motivated enough to make a full-fledged commitment. You know how it usually works… The more you want something, the more you are willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it.

Later…

I feel really bad for Andy. His situation reminds me of Norwich and Phoenix. His neighbors fight, and screaming kids play outside his place and steal this piece all day long. He complained to the board about next door’s fighting twice and it didn’t do any good, although the couple’s son, who is the one doing the shouting, has been quieter the last couple of weeks.

Some brats jumped out of a tree and onto someone’s car and so they cut the tree down because of that as well as bird droppings from birds within the trees. Andy isn’t too happy with that. That’s not the only tree they cut down either.

He says he pays for peace and he will fight to get that peace. Not in the mainstream, he won’t, and while he’s attached to others in a place that has incredibly thin walls like the NHA did. If we can’t always get peace here in a house in a retirement community, why does he think he would get it there?

I guess Doc O patched things up with her daughter because she has been re-added to her Facebook account, LOL.

Since I like to have at least one of my lead characters in my books be based on somebody I know or have seen, and also stem from at least a little bit of reality, my new story will be called Rainstorm. I figured I could use the daughter Stormy to pick on “Rain” and vice versa. The good doc will have to play referee at times.

The plot will basically deal with Doc O’s husband dying of an unexpected heart attack, and then a patient of hers moving in across the street from her. Once they realize they are neighbors, Doc O falls a little too hard for her until she is driven to kill the woman’s husband. She then coaxes her to sell her house and move in with her, something Stormy feels a little weird about since Rain is so close to her in age.

I have a whole new story format/style that I've started using that I like a lot as opposed to chapters or line breaks to represent scene changes. Since I usually write in third person and alternate between different characters’ points of view, I just decided to head sections with the name of the person whose POV is being presented. I got the idea from a book I recently read. So instead of saying chapter whatever, the person’s name will be there.

I don’t usually talk much about my friends in my journal anymore, but since I created a section for private entries, I guess I can do a quick friend update.

Paula is still awaiting her birthday present.

Mitch and I are still in touch.

I don’t communicate with Christine very much, but we still do occasionally.

Adonis almost never communicates with me, and although I asked him if he wants to remain friends on Facebook, he insists he does. Maybe his Vietnamese girlfriend has something to do with his lack of contact.

Alison, and of course Andy, and I are in touch daily. I have not had any problems with Kim, and there has been absolutely no sign of Molly online whatsoever. If she isn’t dead, then her parents are finally doing a great job of keeping her off-line where she belongs.

I currently blog on 4 sites and my regular followers are basically invisible on 3 of them except for Prosebox. My regulars there include a 24-year-old in England, a 27-year-old in Oregon, a 41-year-old and Florida, and a few others that rarely comment. The old lady in Texas still comes in almost daily as well.

I don’t hear from my nieces very often. I actually hear from Norma more than them.

I hear from Irene here and there who claims not to have heard from Nane since around the time we broke up. That is unless Nane told her to say that. Nane's account hasn’t been public since then, but I know she still uses it because she plays backgammon every day like Doc O plays slots every day. Sometimes I even miss the judgmental Hündin.

I think that pretty much covers the regulars. I figure that if there’s anybody I’m forgetting, then they aren’t in my life enough to remember them.

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2015 A part of me hates to admit it, but I am missing Nane lately. I noticed she picked up my last message to her, but I haven’t heard back from her and I don’t expect to. It’s probably still for the better that way, LOL. I do miss our chats at times, though, hottie or not. We both may have said things we shouldn’t have said, but I will always have fond memories of her. The secrets we shared… the things we’d joke about…

I made the comment to Tom earlier about how my teeth appear to be the whitest they’ve ever been, and it’s true. He said that’s what I get for having them cleaned recently, keeping up on them better, limiting the coffee/tea, and not smoking. I’m definitely keeping up on them better. I used to brush just once a day and use the WaterPik if I happened to feel like it and remember to. Now I’m brushing when I get up and then again with that special fluoride toothpaste the dentist gave me at the end of my day. In addition to that, I am flossing the old-fashioned way and rinsing with Act every day.

We went bike riding and it was breezy but beautiful out. It seemed the wind was against me in every direction I faced. At least it was dead. No traffic or mutt walkers.

SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2015 I worked my arms and core indoors, then I went out walking for a while. Now I am ready to write.

Much of the cat supplies, as well as my new alarm clock, arrived today. Still waiting on the litter box and carrier.

The hot pink bed is pretty and soft, and I love the set of six rainbow bowls, which will be used for the cat food. Each bowl is a different color… Purple, pink, blue, green, yellow and orange.

Water and dry food will go in a pale pink dual bowl set. The bowls themselves are metal and can be taken out of the holder for washing. So only the holder is pink.

I also got patchouli-scented body spray, one of my favorite fragrances.

The alarm clock is a little disappointing, though acceptable for now. It was very cheap and doesn’t have a radio in it. All I wanted was a clock with an alarm, which I rarely use. No radio was necessary because I never listen to the regular radio anyway. Why suffer through commercials when I don’t have to?

It’s much smaller than I thought it would be and because the numbers are backlit, they aren’t as sharp and therefore they are very hard to read at any distance without my glasses. I can’t see the date or seconds at all but that doesn’t matter. Within five years I’m not going to be able to read the time without glasses, so then I will spend a little more money to find something bigger and better. Maybe I will check some out in person so that I can see what they actually look like instead of relying on a picture I see online.

Also, all the colors are a little too bright for sleeping except for red. Someone mentioned that online in the reviews, saying that while the thing doesn’t have a dimmer, switching it to red isn’t as bright. Some colors are easier to see than others, like the blue. Maybe I’ll only keep it on red when I’m sleeping at night.

I hope the alarm will be loud enough to override the sound machine, but I think it will be because the slightest change in sound wakes me up even if it’s not loud. That’s why I sleep with the damn sound machines in the first place. If I didn’t, forget loud vehicles waking me up. Tom would just have to sneeze or cough at the other end of the house and I would wake up.

In a way, I wish we had another Alexa. Then I could just ask her the time, and tell her to set the alarm if need be, but then Tom couldn’t use her when I was sleeping, not that he uses her much anyway. She’s mostly my slave/assistant. Either way, it will do for a few years and I’m glad to get rid of my old, clunky alarm clock/radio.

Paula got her birthday present and thanked me, saying she likes the colors of the nail polish.

Last night I dreamed I was talking to Nurse Chris on the phone, and then I was watching an amazing figure skater. She was amazing because she was in her 50s and nearly 100 pounds overweight yet she could skate as well as any typical figure skater.

Then I observed a hidden room being uncovered by the police. It was a smallish room with just a couch in it, and a little boy insisted there was a trap door underneath the couch.

MONDAY, MAY 18, 2015 No more voice posts on LiveJournal. When I played back the posts my voice sounded very garbled and like it was underwater, not that I expect that anybody else heard them. I could barely make out what I was saying. It doesn’t sound this way when I use the same phone for Facebook voice messages, so I know it’s them and not my phone.

Very disappointed in the cat carrier. Damn me for not checking the dimensions! I typed in ”cat carrier” and chose from what came up. However, this could only transport one kitten or a couple of rats.

We went to Walgreens the other night because I needed lip balm. I got a honey-flavored one and also one with blueberry and dark chocolate. Never had that combo before in lip balms. It’s nice.

I felt a little lightheaded yesterday for the first time in a long time and I wonder if my bad ear has anything to do with it. It has been aching nearly every day and I look forward to seeing the specialist on the ninth. I just hope she can help me without putting me through additional pain or hassles and without costing us a fortune.

Last night I had a dream that my foster parents were still alive and I was visiting them at the group home they used to run. Instead of a bunch of round tables in the main room, they now had these restaurant-like booths. I told them I had something to tell them so I sat them down in a booth and then slid in across from them. I thanked them for being the parents I wish I’d had, and for caring about me the way they did.

Mom might have said something like, “Wow, this is a nice surprise.” And then she thanked me for remembering.

I was swimming in the ocean somewhere in another dream with Tom and several others. We were quite a ways offshore and the seas weren’t rough but they weren’t totally calm either. I felt myself drifting further out and realized that I should head in closer to the others.

In the last dream that I remember, I might have been working a regular 9-to-5. As I was applying glitter mascara right before I left, I told Tom that I was modeling the mascara that day for someone that was curious about it at work, and so I thought I would show them what it looked like on me. In real life, he wouldn’t give a shit, of course, but in the dream, he seemed kind of upset about the idea of me modeling that mascara, LOL.

TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2015 Irene contacted me to tell me Nane contacted her. Well, she calls her Marion. She even copied the message which was very brief and in German. It just says, ”I’m still alive as you can see, and I’m not on Facebook much other than to play games.”

The fact that she copied her message pretty much stamps out any thoughts of Nane instructing her to act as if she’s been ignoring her, too. I told her Nane read my messages recently but never replied. Either way, Irene says Nane's too “oberfläche” for her (superficial).

Even though I would never do this, my mischievous side burst out laughing at the thought of sending Nane a message in response to her message to Irene, making her think for a minute that she accidentally sent it to me. LMAO! Oh, the evil thoughts I think at times. :-)

Later…

Being the ever-so-curious person that I am, I did some research to see if I could find out Nurse Chris’s last name so I could put a face with her voice, and if I found the right Chris, then she is one seriously ugly fucker. Skinny, but ugly as hell.

The only thing that put a little doubt in my mind is that she’s registered with Kaiser Permanente when the medical group we use is Mercy. But as I learned by researching Doc O, a doctor can belong to two different medical groups at once. So I figure nurses can as well.

Right Chris or not, this Chris is very skinny, petite, and has super short hair and ears that stick out. She appears to be around my age if not a bit older. Her voice sounded a bit younger, and I thought I detected a hint of a southern accent, but she is listed on Facebook as being from Petaluma and I’m pretty sure it’s the right Chris.

Decided to send Chris a quick hello. Amazingly, it went straight to her inbox just like Doc O’s did, and just like the “Hi, how are you” I just sent the hot doc. I would be willing to bet just about anything, though, whatever’s up there has made sure any message I sent her remained invisible to her, but I have no clue on the friend request. She’s more likely to have received that as well as a share notice for sharing her turtle pic than she ever was of getting my messages.

Still, divine intervention is always in order when they’re good-looking. Sure seems that way, anyway. Next time I will know that if I ever have a doctor who’s really good-looking, she’s only temporary because she or the medical group as a whole will do something to drive me away, or she will up and move.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2015 I was asked a couple of questions that I thought would make good writing prompts. One was whether or not I agree with the fact that some people are being charged with influencing the suicide of others. This is a tough one for me. I would still like to think we’re responsible for our own actions, but at the same time, some people and events in our lives really can influence the things we do. So I’m a bit split on that one.

Do I believe poverty motivated the Baltimore riots? No, I don’t. There are plenty of poor people who don’t act like savage beasts. My husband and I were dirt poor for years yet we didn’t go looting stores, assaulting people, killing people, and starting fires. I think poverty can be more of a motivation for theft and burglary, but not necessarily other things. I just think - and this is the part most people don’t want to hear - that some groups are naturally prone towards crime and violence, blacks being one of them same as Muslims. The only difference between the two is that we Americans seem to be able to see and condemn the Muzzies for their behavior, while we sit back and make one excuse after another for the blacks. Blacks may not be as bad as the Muzzies, but whether you kick the crap out of somebody or kite a check, both are crimes and both are wrong.

Over the last month or so I have gained a few pounds and I can’t seem to get them back off. I started to lose a few but they came right back, as usual. For the last six years, I used to range, depending on my cycle, between 147 and 151 pounds, now I’m ranging between 151 and 156 pounds. I knew my weight wouldn’t stay where it was forever, but I hate feeling like I have so little control over my own body. It would probably come off on a 1000-calorie a day but how many people can stand to do that day after day, week after week, month after month?

Oh well. I didn’t ask for hypothyroidism, so there’s only so much I can do about it. I still exercise most days of the week.

I’m probably still undermedicated, as my thyroid continues to die off. The only problem is that whenever I am on enough medication to actually lose weight, it is because it makes me anxious as hell and unable to eat as much. Seriously… you want to kill your appetite enough to lose weight? Just get sick, anxious or depressed. Realistically, though, no one wants to live that way. I definitely prefer the extra weight to feeling like shit. I just wonder how much higher it’s going to climb in my lifetime?

Some of the hypothyroidism symptoms do seem to be returning. I’m getting feelings of fatigue, but mostly lightheadedness, feeling cold when it’s not really cold, and water retention. Could this mean my thyroid really is a little deader? I will have to ask the doctor the next time I see her and ask if she knows about how much of it is gone. If I had to guess – and this is simply a guess – I would say a good 90% of it is gone now.

I may not let it get cold in here, but it sure has been unseasonably cool outside. We should have been done with the heat weeks ago yet we still need it at night because we’ve been getting down into the high 40s to low 50s. The forecast shows it returning to the 80s by the weekend, so hopefully it will stay warm.

I only remember one dream from last night, which was weird, as most dreams are. I was riding in a car late at night with two or three other people who seemed to be in their 20s or so. They wanted to dig five or six little graves and run over some wildlife out in the country and then bury them. I insisted we shouldn’t do that, not only because it seemed wrong and pointless, but because one tiny head hair of ours that might fall into the graves could be traced back to us or something like that, LOL.

THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2015 Not a whole lot to update on now. I am continuing to remain anxiety-free and having fun on Desktop Nexus collecting and sharing pics of all kinds of things. It’s cool to see how many points, favorites and downloads my pictures get, though I’m mostly interested in other people’s pics.

Yesterday I was kind of lazy so I plan to do more today. Getting excited as Saturday approaches and hoping they will have kittens available for adoption Saturday afternoon at Petco. If they don’t, this will be the second time they failed to come through and we will then look elsewhere. They had a Memorial Day adoption event last year, so I’m hopeful that they will this year as well.

We postponed our little trip to Reno for the fall but I don’t know if it’s worth it, the more I think about it. Why leave the cat alone for a night just to go and gamble when we can gamble right here at the Thunder Valley Casino? If we’re going to go on a vacation, we should make it a real vacation and go places and do things we wouldn’t or couldn’t ordinarily do close to home. There are no tropical beaches close to home, that’s for sure!

Aly wonders if my lightheaded feelings and other symptoms could mean I’m low on iron. She has the same symptoms when she’s low on iron. Good question! However, I have never been told I was low on iron.

Last night I dreamed I was at some beach somewhere. It may have been the beach my family and I would spend our summers at in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Old Colony Beach. That was where our cottage was. It was close to the beach but not on it.

In the dream, I wanted to tell this guy that the windows of his two-story cottage, which was right on the beach, appeared “stuck” from the outside. I then took pictures of about three windows when I suddenly realized that if the guy caught me shooting pictures of his place, he probably wouldn’t be too happy. I proceeded to run away, but my feet got stuck in the sand.

FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2015 I definitely did the right thing by cutting ties with Nane, even though we had a nice dinner somewhere in my dreams last night and I still seemed to have some feelings for her.

Well, not in real life! Not with the way she just dumped poor Irene claiming that Irene’s changed since they met in New York way back when. Irene told her, “It’s been 30 years. Of course I changed.”

While I will admit upfront that I never met either one of them in person, and that while Nane once complained to me that Irene changed over the years, I would have to worry about anyone who hasn’t changed in 30 years. We’re supposed to grow, learn, mature, experience things and wizen up with age. Nobody plays pretend games with Barbie 30 years after the fact or still believes in the tooth fairy. When I think back to some of the things I did and the way I would talk 25 years ago, I think, OMG, how utterly immature! Yet my behavior at the time was totally in accordance with the age group I was in. One does not need to always be oh so mature and serious, but should one in their 50s be expected to act like they’re still 25?

My guess, based on the conversations I’ve had with both of them, is that it has to do with the fact that Irene doesn’t live nearby and has gotten married and settled down. Nane, on the other hand, is still a party girl who loves to socialize like crazy in person, go to concerts, get drunk, chain smoke, and all kinds of things that no longer interest Irene. I’m not surprised, though. I figured Nane would eventually “get rid” of her.

Nane said she took a train down from Germany to Austria and visited her a few years ago and complained that she wanted to leave the club they went to too early and that she wore a dirty sweatshirt. If you think one who doesn’t want to party until 2 AM and wears a spotty shirt makes for a bad friend as opposed to one who is deceptive, phony and backstabbing, then that tells me an awful lot about you right there. As in you being someone I have no regrets about cutting ties with. Seriously, if I had the slightest doubt about letting her go when she got all hypocritical and judgmental of me, they are totally gone now. Again, I never met Irene in person but she seems like such a sweet, kind, easy-going person. Why dump someone like that? I can see if she never heard from Irene, but Irene wanted to keep in touch more than Nane was willing to.

As Irene said, Nane is the type that will always have a problem with everybody she meets. It’s no wonder she's still alone, and I tend to believe she deserves any misery that comes her way. She could condemn me for not liking the two most problematic groups in society, yet it is okay for her to dump somebody because they’ve grown and matured over the course of a few decades? Wow, just wow. Obviously, if Nane doesn’t need you or she thinks you’re weird or she doesn’t like the way you dress or live your life, she dumps you, granted we all have the right to pick and choose whom we’re friends with. Still, it just seems like such a lame reason to dump somebody as opposed to somebody who has screwed you over and said and did mean/bad things to you. I don’t think it’s healthy for Andy to have 3 cups of coffee a day but I’m not going to dump him for it. Now if he contacts me to tell me I’m wrong for liking bright colors and starts pressuring me to paint my walls gray, then laughs his ass off because I sprained my ankle or because something scared the shit out of me or got me depressed, then I might want less contact with him. He wouldn’t do this, though, of course, LOL. It’s just an example.

Nane is a very non-accepting and non-tolerant person, even though she will condemn anybody for bashing blacks, Muslims, gays, etc. I guess that’s just part of what makes her the hypocrite she is. I can understand the desire to be selective, but when you have a problem with just about everybody, you will really never have anybody in your life for very long. It is the same with trust. Of course you don’t want to just trust just anybody and everybody. But when you trust no one at all and you think everybody is a liar, you’re definitely looking at a lifetime of being alone. I suppose that’s what some people want and that they would rather deny themselves the good in people in order to protect themselves from the bad. To each their own, even though I still feel bad for Irene.

I offered to send Nane a message for her, even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good, and Irene agreed it wasn’t a good idea. I feel a million times worse for her than I ever felt for myself where Nane is concerned. Nane was just a picture online of someone I never met. It may not make her any less real, but Irene knew Nane a lot longer and they have actually met in person.

Irene mixes German with her limited English, and if I understood her correctly, Nane is in counseling now because (her boyfriend?) did something very bad to her. This is what Irene said anyway. I wonder if this could be part of why she chose to dump Irene now? Some people withdraw into themselves when they’re down and out and even dump people, while others tend to reach out more to their friends in times of need.

I realize my own life might be a lot easier if I had no friends at all, but that wouldn’t make for a very fun and interesting life. Again, what may work for one may not work for another, but while I don’t regret letting Nane go, I don’t regret that half a decade we had either.

I also realize that mostly thanks to her, and now to Irene, my German is only destined to keep getting better and better, LOL.

Later…

My poor sister was dealt yet another blow in life when the owner of the house she was to buy backed out of the deal. Understandably, she is heartbroken, but she and Mark will house hunt again in a few months.

I wonder why there are no laws against this sort of thing. A deal should be a deal, shouldn’t it? Either way, I understand her frustration. I was really bummed out and even a little pissed when we didn’t get that place in Newcastle, and the realtor didn’t even have the decency to let us know before we drove out there that an offer had been made and accepted on the house the previous afternoon.

It was really dumb of me to order my nightgowns in a size large simply because I put on a few pounds. I could not only get into a medium of these things, but I could probably get into a small as well. With loose-fitting gowns or dresses that fall straight down, I usually require a size small. What was I thinking?

While my sister’s theory (not eating or drinking enough) as to what could be making me lightheaded, along with Aly wondering if I’m low on iron, could be a factor, Tom and I are both leaning towards it probably being my bad ear. I will see the specialist in a few weeks.

So after I did a little shopping in my dreams last night, I met Nane at a restaurant where I ordered “turkey lamb.” They looked like pork chops and it was something I had never eaten before. I cut off a piece of the meat, stuck it in my mouth and started chewing. Then I gave a nod of approval and told Nane it was pretty good.

In the dream she lived near me, having owned both a house and an apartment. She decided to sell the house and stay in the apartment until she moved back home. I asked her if she was going to stay in Germany for the rest of her life and she said no, but that if she couldn’t move to Turkey, she would go to Egypt.

I can’t believe she would ever live there in real life. She’d go to Greece if Turkey weren’t an option.

Then after we complained about the weather, I tried to hide the tear that slipped down my cheek as I thought of her leaving.

SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2015 Today we’re hoping to find our new kitty! That won’t be for another 6 hours or so. First we’re going grocery shopping at Walmart.

Yesterday I felt like I had read, written and spoken more German in a day than in a whole month! I exchanged voice messages with Irene as well as written messages. I understood most of what she said but was mistaken in thinking she was saying that Nane's ex was the one who did something bad to her recently. Irene isn’t sure who did what to her. I guess Nane was very vague about it in her final message to her. She was, or still is, in therapy on account of drinking and depression. Yeah, I suspected she may have a problem with drinking with all the times she mentioned getting drunk, downing a whole bottle of champagne by herself, and other things. Last I knew she had problems with just about everything from what she told me directly – her ex, her mother, her job… Oh well. It’s her life and her problems. When you shut people out, there isn’t much they can do for you anyway.

I also learned they weren’t in touch for 20 years. I guess that after they returned to their countries, they got together a couple of times, then had no contact for 20 years until Nane contacted her.

I have done 5 reviews on Yelp. I have reviewed 4 doctors as well as Stacey.

I had a dream I was in a pet store that had several pieces of what looked like shortened pool noodles dangling from a display. Each one was a different color and I knew they had to do with building your own cage for small animals. The pink was my favorite of course.

I then dreamed Andy and I stayed in a hotel and got into a huge fight. I awoke after 1am needing to pee. I was in the bed closest to the door while he was in the one closest to the window. I got up and found that the door was open part way. Suddenly terrified that we’d been ripped off in our sleep, I slammed the door shut, flung the lights on, and ran in search of my purse.

This woke Andy up and he immediately started cussing me out before I had a chance to get a word in edgewise and tell him the door had been open. He threatened to wake me up for waking him up and I screamed, “If you’d just shut up and listen for once instead of going on and on all about yourself, you might learn a thing or two about what’s going on around you!”

But our screaming went on and on, him none the wiser to the fact that someone had pried our door open, LOL.

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015 Yesterday we arrived at Petco right at noon. The River City Cat Rescue team was set up by the front of the store and they had about eight cats. I expected them all to be three months, but half of them were full-grown. They had a variety of sizes, breeds, colors and fur lengths.

The first cat that caught my eye was Simone (the rescuers assigned each of the cats names). Simone is about six or seven months old and so we probably share the same birthday. Close enough, anyway. She is a beautiful shorthaired tabby with grays and white. I was bummed out to find some guy had his heart set on her, or so it at least seemed.

I then checked out a black cat that was younger at about three months old. He had longer fur, and I prefer short hair. I gave him serious consideration, though, because he still would have made a fine cat and I believed Simone was taken.

They had some gorgeous Siamese mixes, but they were full-grown and their fur was even longer.

With envy, I watched the guy hold and cuddle Simone, adorable and shorthaired albeit not quite as young as I had expected, and then I turned back to the little black kitty. A few minutes later, I looked up to find the guy was nowhere to be seen and Simone was still in her cage. I asked one of the ladies where he went and she said that he hadn’t filled out any adoption papers so she was still available… and then she was ours!!!

She is super friendly as were most of the kittens. The adult cats looked bored as hell and preferred to nap. The belief is that Simone went into heat and ran away from her original home. Animal control picked her up before she could have any litters, and she has recently been fixed and given shots. We expected the adoption fees to be over $100, but they want $75.

I told the woman that we had a cat carrier in the car but she said they deliver the cats to the homes personally and would call last night. Well, she never called and I’m a little worried she may not be as serious as I assumed she was or decided not to let us have her, but wouldn’t say so for whatever reason.

Tom still believes they’re serious because they only have so much room for all those cats. One of the women was taking pictures with her phone to put on their Facebook page, but they didn’t take Simone’s picture and she’s not online, so that’s a good thing. The lady said that she would deliver her today or tomorrow, which would be great because we will both be home. We have everything a cat could need except for a scratch post and food, but she said she would bring some food. We want to find out what she likes before we pick up any ourselves.

She also said they didn’t expect people to keep the names that they gave them, but we don’t mind sticking with Simone. It’s an okay name for a cat and it’s rather unique. She might acquire a nickname or two along the way depending on her behavior and habits, but Simone is a good name.

They said they would put a sign on her cage saying she was adopted. A good thing since most people had their eyes on her.

Later…

Simone is on the way! I called Carol at 10:00 and she said she was sorry she didn’t call last night and that she had an emergency. Well, she did say she would deliver her today or tomorrow and today’s the day!!! She’ll be here in about an hour. We’re excited!

Going to go out tomorrow for cat food and a few more toys for her. She has that feather wand I won that the rats love to play with, but we want to get her a ball or something like that.

Yesterday we got cushions for the lawn chairs out on our patio in a blue abstract design that’s really pretty. A little pricey though, especially for Walmart.

They were having a yard sale by the office yesterday but we didn’t have any cash on us at the time so we didn’t stop and check things out. Maybe next time.

Heard the strangest animal sound earlier, but I have no idea what it was. It definitely wasn’t a dog. It almost struck me as something you would hear in a tropical forest or something. It kind of reminded me of a monkey, though I’m sure it was a bird of some kind.

I had a dream some guy broke into the house, but as always, the house didn’t look like our house. It was a young Mexican guy that I immediately charged and placed in a chokehold while I was sort of hanging off his back. Then he started ramming my back against the wall by backing up into it ferociously, so I got off his back and attacked from the front, kicking and punching furiously. I awoke before the winner was known, but by the look of shock and pain on the guy’s face, I think I can guess who won that one, LOL.

MONDAY, MAY 25, 2015 Simone is home! She is a major sweetie and quite an attention whore, LOL. The rats don’t mind her looking in on them but as soon as she stuck a paw deep into Hoodie’s cage and the mouth of his burrow, she learned that those little furry “toys” that move can bite. Not only that, but she reached in and scooped out a bunch of bedding, so now Hoodie’s in with Cappy, even if they may not be thrilled to be roomies. The bars on that cage are closer together, so Simone can’t squeeze her curious little paws through them.

Cats may not be as smart as rats, but she should be smart enough to know better than to mess with the rats from now on. It would be nice if she would stop jumping on this keyboard, too. They say taking a spray bottle full of water and spraying the cat is a great way to train it. Well, since jumping on the counter is one thing, but jumping on it and totally getting in the way while I’m trying to make coffee is another, I was glad for the spray bottle cuz it worked! Thank goodness I learned about that one because picking her up and placing her back on the floor was useless. She would simply jump back up on the counter.

She does seem to know her name because she came when I called her. The only thing I don’t appreciate is when she play-bites. She bit my chin hard enough to draw a couple of dots of blood… and she just got sprayed off this desk, LOL.

When I got up and opened the laundry room door, she immediately came running to me and was acting like she was hungry and was perhaps used to getting wet food as well as the mix of dry food Carol brought with her. Shortly after that, I realized her bowl was empty so I refilled it for her. Today we’ll be picking up more food and some toys, too. We ordered a 6-foot perch with multi-levels, hideaways, scratching ramps, and dangly things for her on Amazon for $100. That’s another thing I’ve learned… if it dangles, it’s a toy. She loves to jump on the back of the couch, reach up and fiddle with the ceiling fan chains. She just jumped on the back of my chair, too.

She’s a beautiful cat with nice soft fur as soft as a bunny’s, but she’s definitely a clingy one, so she can be a pain in the ass as she can be fun. Love the way she dashes up and down the hallway, but trying to put lotion on my legs with this thing around can be a real challenge, haha. No problems using the litter box, though, so that’s good.

Carol was just a few minutes late and had no problem finding her way to us. She said she’s delivered here before. Simone’s watching the rats eat crackers now. Carol showed me how to clip her nails.

Carol really liked the stripper on the door and asked if I painted her. I told her she, along with the flowers on the walls, were actually stickers. I didn’t think she’d be so impressed with the stripper being around 60 years old, LOL, but she liked her and was amazed by all the gymnasts leaping and tumbling across the hallway.

Carol said Simone now has a chip for if she escapes. If she were to escape and be taken in by someone else it wouldn’t do any good. But if AP picked her up, they’d scan the chip, and our address would come up. Things have come a long way since the early 90s. So has spaying. She’s been “tattooed,” so that it’s obvious to any vet that she’s already been spayed. She was first picked up on the 13th.

Now I hear her playing with the feather wand.

Ok, she just jumped on the desk and this time all I had to do was show her the spray bottle and she jumped back down, LOL.

After a few hours of exploring, playing and running around, she napped on my bed.

Later…

Tom is beating tree spikes into the ground to make watering the cypresses easier without wasting as much water, and Simone is sleeping.

We went to Walmart at around 7:30 this morning and picked up some toys and a variety of wet foods as well as dry food for kittens between 6-12 months. One of her toys is pretty cool. It’s a pink fuzzy ball that has a motion detector in it. When it’s moved it has flashing lights and makes a squeaking sound.

The vet that spayed her is obviously as colorblind as Andy because they listed her as a brown and white tabby. LOL, try a black, gray and white tabby.

Instead of putting them down these days, they have a system where those that aren’t taken in by cat rescuers are fixed and turned loose again. They snip the corners of their ears so that if they’re picked up again, they can see that they’re fixed feral cats.

I take children’s chewable vitamins and decided to try some with extra iron to see if I feel less lightheaded. It seems to help as long as I don’t go too long without eating, but I think getting my ear taken care of next month will help as well.

My anxiety is virtually gone. This is the best I’ve felt. I just worry that the doctor’s going to want to up my thyroid medication dose and bring back the anxiety the next time I see her.

Tom has been going crazy in my dreams over shit he wouldn’t care about in real life, LOL. I met some lesbian somewhere who wrote me a letter or an email saying her daughter was straight but she was a lesbian and all that, and we ended up becoming friends. This was someone who lived in my town. Tom wasn’t happy at all with the idea of us being friends, though in reality, he wouldn’t care who I was friends with so long as they treated me well.

I just can’t get into story writing lately. I’ll start something and then I’ll lose interest after a few pages or so.

TUESDAY, MAY 26, 2015 Simone is continuing to be a very active and lovable kitty that is sometimes a pain in the ass, especially when she gets in the way of things and tries to trip me by dashing in front of me. Having her around is a lot like having a two-year-old around, only a lot cheaper and quieter. She is everywhere and anywhere and she loves to get into anything she can. She’s catching onto the fact that I don’t want her on my desk, but I’m sure she sneaks into forbidden places when I’m not around.

As soon as I opened the bedroom door this morning she ran up to me. She woke Tom up at 11:00 last night by biting his feet.

The living room floor is littered with toys, and she often loses some of them under the couch.

She doesn’t seem to like salmon but she likes chicken hearts and liver. We’re still getting to know what she likes. Perhaps she will be a poultry kitty as opposed to a seafood kitty. Or maybe she refused salmon yesterday evening because she only eats in the mornings. We will soon find out. She loves the treats we got her and is eating a mix of her old dry food along with the new.

After a few hours of playing and window-watching, she fell asleep on the couch. Sometimes she sleeps there and sometimes on the beds. She hasn’t slept in her own bed probably because she has never been confined to the laundry room. When we are both on days she is confined to the second bedroom, bath, and laundry room, but naturally, she prefers the bed to her own bed.

Because the master bathroom is so big, I took the rats in there to run around and get some exercise, but they didn’t seem to want to take advantage of their freedom.

I started to hold Hoodie out to the cat earlier and introduce them but Hoodie’s body tensed up and he pulled back quickly as if to say, “No fucking way!” So the cats and rats will remain separated.

I feel a little bad for the rats having to keep them in such a small cage, but for the sake of their safety as well as Simone’s, I have no choice. I know they hate Simone and would prefer to live alone, but this is the way it has to be. I guess in this case I should be glad rats don’t live very long.

What other traits and actions of Simone’s have I observed that I could mention today? I guess that’s it for now. All I can say is that she is either doing one of two things… She’s either sleeping or she is like a stick of dynamite, LOL.

Now that she is finally settled down for the day (cats seem to be nocturnal) I’m going to do some cleaning and then go out for a walk.

I’m utterly appalled and sickened by all the violence in Baltimore over Memorial Day weekend. They couldn’t even have the decency to take that day of all days off, could they? Fucking animals! I guess blacks are the Muslims of the US and Baltimore is the Middle East of the US. The next time they have the nerve to cry racism, imaginary or not, they ought to remember this shit. Act like vicious animals in society and nobody’s going to like you! Well, you would think that’s the way it should be yet most people still seem to have a bleeding heart for these fuckers and think they deserve more than anybody else in society. If one of them ever attacked me I would like to think they would be charged with a hate crime, as it should be, just as I would be charged for sure if I attacked one of them (which I would never do unless it was self-defense), but I’m sure they would play the race card and get away with it.

As for the couple that welcomed their 100th grandchild that everybody’s talking about… I’m sorry but that’s nothing to be proud of. I just don’t see why people are so damn proud when they have a shitload of kids or grandkids. All this does is hurt the population problem even more. Again, nothing to be proud of.

Our society’s sense of what they should be proud of and what’s important and what’s right/fair versus wrong/unfair not only baffles me at times, but it seems a little scary as well. The fact that law enforcement can waste precious resources on investigating and prosecuting somebody simply because they expressed themselves on Twitter or something like that in a way that most don’t agree with in a country that “claims” to believe in freedom of speech while letting so many child molesters and other types of sex offenders slip through the cracks, is abominable. Really, how much time does your average pervert do these days?

WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 2015 Simone is continuing to be a fun pest. She alternates between wanting to play and napping but is settling in nicely. Unfortunately, though, she puked last night just a little bit. This cat is not only a very finicky eater but doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite in general. I’m thinking I might have given her too many treats yesterday.

I’m glad cats don’t need to poop as much as rats do. I’m also glad there haven’t been any issues using the litter box and she isn’t destructive at all. Last night was the first night we left the living room and kitchen open to her and she didn’t knock anything over or get into the trash. I guess the trash is a dog thing as opposed to a cat thing.

She was funny the other day hiding just inside the laundry room waiting for me to walk by so she could spring out at me. She also loves to chase reflections. When the sun hits it just right, the gems that are a part of the wind chimes outside cast moving reflections across the walls and floors and she loves to chase them.

When the Roomba was vacuuming she was both curious and scared. She would watch it until it crept close to her and then she would run. Using the treadmill also sent her running, LOL.

She loves to look out the windows and the screen doors, as most cats do, but I didn’t want to take a chance of her charging the door when I went to check the mail so I enclosed her in back of the house and slipped out the front door.

She doesn’t make me sneeze but she sometimes leaves patches of reddish irritation on my skin. I dab on a little hydrocortisone cream when that happens.

These animals are going to work me to death, though! I brought the rats into the bathroom and at first Cappy didn't even want to leave his base. I had to pick him up and place him on the floor so I could wash both the cage and base. To them “go run around” really meant go hide behind the toilet. All the while Simone meowed outside the door, feeling totally left out.

The only noise nuisance around here lately is the usual… landscapers. Compared to what Andy and Aly go through with screaming kids, and in Andy's case, fighting neighbors, I can’t complain too much. I just kick on the sound machine or move to another room now that I’ve got a wonderful portable MacBook Air. It is so fast and I have been virus-free since I went Mac in 2008. My MacBook Air was worth every penny of the $1100 we paid for it. Tom’s jealous of his wife’s faster computer and he picked out a MacBook Mini and a new monitor until he realized he wouldn’t be home enough to use it much. It seems everyone else but he is home most of the time yet still has enough money to get by. I tease him about not having much free time until he retires, but hopefully that won’t be the case. If it isn’t it will still be worth all the money he not only earns but that we will have for retirement. The more retirement money we have, the more options we have if we decide not to stay here forever.

Anyway, I have been having some connection issues which I first thought was due to someone else on our channel, but I think it might be more than that. Something may be up with our equipment.

I decided not to bother documenting those vague, quick clips of dreams that are senseless and uncertain. I will just stick to covering the dreams that are a little clearer even if they don’t make much more sense than those brief little flashes of dreams.

I befriended a young woman somewhere in my dreams last night and eventually asked her if she’d ever Googled me. I was curious to know if she’d ever discovered my blog or books. I got the sense she never had, and when she learned that I was going to be 50 years old at the end of the year, she was both stunned and put off since she was barely 30. I definitely prefer friends closer to my age in real life. I think most people do, but when it comes to cyber friends it doesn’t matter as much.

Then I was in some restaurant where this hideous 50s music was playing and someone was having a shake that contained celery and some other vegetable that sounded pretty disgusting to me.

THURSDAY, MAY 28, 2015 My hair is noticeably longer even though it hasn’t even been a month since I cut it. It usually grows really slow when it’s short.

I totally love my new rainbow dress as long as it is! The material is a little thin, so I will get a new half-slip.

My Girl Scout Cookies flavored lip balms arrived yesterday, too.

Unfortunately, my new alarm isn’t loud enough to wake me up over the sound machine. Usually, the slightest sound wakes me up, or change in sound, but Tom flashed the light and bumped the corner of the bed and I still wouldn’t wake up. That is totally not like me. I’ll bring Alexa in there when I need to set an alarm. She can go louder than loud and she seems to only work for me these days anyway, LOL.

I cut up about five old shirts for future rat beds, and I wonder if having a second cat may make Simone less clingy. Hmm… something to think about.

The poor thing puked again this morning. We know they throw up furballs here and there, but this cat just can’t handle wet food for some reason and seems to think that dry food is enough for her, so fine. We’ll just give her dry food then.

She actually napped for three hours yesterday and seems a bit calmer this morning. We cuddled for a while as I waited till Alexa said I could have my coffee. I think she is finally realizing that this is her forever home. She is much better behaved than I thought she would be, but screw declawing her – that’s not necessary – I’d rather detooth her! That’s the one thing she still does that is annoying is how she wants to shower us with little love bites.

I exchanged hellos with Virginia yesterday and told her we got a kitten. They’ve had cats and a dog before, and she said she wondered why there were so many dogs in the park these days. I told her I would never get a dog because I hate barking. What was funny was when she started to “slip,” saying her grandson had community service, which she quickly pointed out was through school, and they had to care for animals up for adoption, LOL.

FRIDAY, MAY 29, 2015 Simone is enjoying her new perch! It was very simple to set up. The instant I unpacked and held out one of the scratching posts to her, she did her claws on it. She broke the original toy that dangles from it in less than five minutes by grabbing hold of it in her mouth and jumping off with it, so we tied a ball to it instead and she hasn’t tried to detach and run off with it. We think she’s killed before and sees feathery things as birds.

The only thing I don’t like about her is when she bites, normal for cats or not. She bit me on the chin, and this morning she bit Tom on the nose.

Yesterday I woke up with a sore throat and feeling like I had a slight cold. After five hours of “wishful thinking” and a kick-ass immune system, it was gone. As I told my sister, my body will kill anything but fat, LOL.

A small plane keeps flying round and round. Yes, it is annoying, and yes, I am complaining.

I slept with the sound machine a little softer since it was nighttime and I knew there would be no delivery trucks or anything like that going by, and had no problem hearing the alarm clock which went off just seconds before Alexa’s alarm went off. Since Tom rarely uses Alexa, I may as well use her as my alarm clock because it is just so simple. All I have to do is unplug her, pick her up, carry her into the bedroom, plug her in, and tell her what time to wake me up. That’s it. No buttons to fiddle with or anything else. I just have to be sure to specify whether I want to be woken up in the AM or the PM.

Tom may have to work tomorrow, which is great money-wise but sucks otherwise. I swear he is the only one who isn’t able to be home 80% to 90% of the time!

Later…

I had a series of disjointed images of dreams last night that made absolutely no sense at all. After having some young girl reach something from a shelf that was too high for me, I was doing laundry in some huge building when I looked at the clock and saw that it was 9:30. I don't know if it was morning or night, but I knew that Doc O was in the building passing out "free" meds, and I contemplated whether or not I wanted to see her.

Next thing I know I was peeing in a toilet with moving water. It was almost like a mini river lived in the toilet, LOL. But then the toilet turned into a pool and I didn't want to pee in it, so I quickly got out of the pool.

So that bitch, Dr. D, really did move. Her latest profile picture on the health site (St. Joseph’s in this case) looks hideous. She’s got these wide thin lips that curl upwards at the sides, creating this goofy smile on her strangely shaped face. I like her hair and eyes, though.

Maybe part of why she didn’t seem to give a shit about me and what I was going through was because she knew she wasn’t going to be my doctor much longer anyway.

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2015 Still wondering when we will be able to go one solid week without seeing headlines or discussions on race, Muslims and corrupt cops. And I once thought I was sick of hearing about Britney Spears and Angelina! But of course the more shit you cause in the world, the more it makes the news, while the do-gooders don’t get much credit. Really, if a person writes an awesome book, what are the chances of them getting any credit for it? Next to none, of course. But if somebody goes and starts opening fire smack dab in the middle of a crowded mall – it’s instant fame! rolls eyes

Alexa woke me up this morning but it took me 5 to 10 minutes to hear her alarm going off. Trying to control my schedule is getting harder and I still have 10 more days to go. Damn it to hell and back if there is anything up there that cursed me with such rare and extreme sleep issues! I am (admittedly) tired, grumpy and PMSing.

Yesterday’s annoyances consisted of landscaping, a small plane flying overhead for over two hours, and a guy with an old white dumpy pickup that visits the lady across the street. That truck is loud. For some reason, the garbage, green waste and recycling trucks don’t annoy me. They should. They’re louder than the truck and plane. But they just don’t annoy me as other sounds tend to.

Simone is continuing to enjoy her perch as well as the usual places she hangs out in which is pretty much everywhere. She also continues to be fun but annoying at times as well. I love playing ball with her and cuddling with her, but I really wish she would stop distracting me when I’m trying to read or write.

She is much less work than the rats are as far as cleaning and caring for her goes, but she is definitely dumber and she definitely eats less. Yes, the rats not only eat more but they will eat everything and anything, quite unlike the finicky feline. They would gladly polish off Simone’s unfinished meals, but they shouldn’t have that much protein. Makes their skin itch. I’m glad Simone doesn’t beg for everything I eat like the rats do.

I forgot to mention that Carol, the woman who brought her to us, said that it wasn’t that that guy changed his mind about taking Simone; it was that he wanted her to be an indoor/outdoor cat along with his other one. Well, Simone is an indoor cat only, so she wouldn’t let him have her. Wow, sometimes things really do work out for Tom and Jodi, too. She was the first one to catch my eye.

Later…

Took a ride down to the lake to give the ducks the last few remaining pieces of the rats’ and my Jewish rye bread. Swimming along with the ducks was a turtle, which we’ve never seen there before. Tom took pictures with his phone and he will send them to me later at which time I will share some. It was a pretty good size at 8 to 10 inches.

In last night’s dreams, a Neanderthal woman from over 30K years ago returned to dress me in the firs of her latest kill, LOL.

Then Andy got furious with me in another dream because he thought I told him he looked 81 years old when in fact he misunderstood what I said, haha.

He had several friends with him, mostly young girls of various races and they were all pissed at me for pissing him off. I was embarrassed for them as I watched them act like they were still in high school or something, making a big deal out of nothing at all.

A young black girl shouted from a bit of a distance for me to get back inside what looked like a ground-floor apartment. I stopped walking at that point because I wasn’t about to be bullied and told what to do at my age. Then another girl (Hispanic?) approached me with a couple of other girls in tow yelling something at me, and I said, “Who the hell are you?”

“Don’t you recognize my voice?” she asked.

I told her I didn’t, and finally tired of the immature antics, I pushed the door open to the apartment in which my parents sat just inside the door at a table. The bitch then tried to push her way into the place, but I was able to close the door on her, even though she was taller and probably heavier as well. I then turned to my parents and said, “Andy and I are done! I have totally had it with his bullshit!”

In the last dream, I was alone in some old cabin. It was smallish and might have had one long room. A storm was coming, said the female DJ on the radio, who also said she’d had only four hours of sleep the last three nights. I placed a hand by the door and could feel the cold draft as the wind picked up, and hoped the power wouldn’t go out that night.

SUNDAY, MAY 31, 2015 Was reading a post in a forum about another woman with hypothyroidism who thought medication was the answer to losing weight. I thought I was going to lose weight when I was put on medication, so long as I ate right and exercised, but quickly found that I still needed fewer calories than I could stand to have every single day to get it off. Instead, I still need to work at keeping it from climbing. Yes, it is an everyday battle, and yes it’s true that once you go hypo, you never go thin. Thanks, God, for “blessing” me with such a lovely disease.

On the bright side, I’ve felt the best I’ve felt this last month. Gone is the anxiety, and gone are all my hypothyroidism symptoms except the water and the weight. My skin and hair are still a bit dry, but I am older and I do live in a very dry climate.

I just hope my endo won’t want to make any changes that might mess it all up again. I haven’t even enjoyed one solid month of bliss yet and I’d really like to leave a good thing alone, even if my numbers are still a bit high, and I know they will be. I’m also a bit nervous about my PCP trying to talk me back on statins, but if she does I will let her know that I want to wait for the results of my blood tests. That will be done hopefully between my two appointments on the 9th.

I had a dream one of the rats died, and then later came back to life.

My mother was alive in another dream and my sister and I were having trouble finding her. I guess she was traveling somewhere or something. Then we discovered she had a house we were unaware of that she might have gone to. There were rows of small, colored houses that were raised on short stilts. There were no yards; just rows of houses. My mom’s was red and I hoped she’d leave it to me after she died.

[mb0328]

Chapter 1

            IT’S INTERESTING, ONE’S MIND. NO one can truly understand what happens within it. People often joke about a devil and an angel on each shoulder, but what if there is some truth to the statement? Though not as literal as an angel and a devil, the darkness in one’s head can sometimes seem more prominent than the light. Or, for Jethro and Hadlee, the monsters in their heads. People say to fight them, not listen to them, but perhaps it is not as easy.

            For Hadlee, a battle of wills, health, and love rages on within her. The will to seize and breathe. The will to wake up and live the next day. To control her fears and anxieties. Her health seemed to be linked to a monster that may never be defeated, and again, the battle for her life is in nobody’s hands. And love, a struggle for the love that she fears she will not be able to keep. The love that she ran from in fear that it may not be as good or pure as it may have seemed.

            For Jethro, it is a battle of love, emotion, and trust. A battle for the love that ran from him in fear. A fear that he set into motion with his words. Every morning seemed to be a battle of emotions; would he be depressed and lay in bed? Would he be simply okay and get up to slump through the day? Or would he feel better and face the day? Finally, trust. Since that day, he had been battling his ability and judgment in trust. He knew he could trust his friends, but his mind fought against him. The image of the plane flying away plagued his thoughts during the day and his dreams at night.

            Both seemed to forget to not listen to the monsters in their heads.

~~~~~~~

            The rain hammered hard against the tower's windows, though it did little to faze Jethro, who sat slumped in one of the chairs, mindlessly watching as the water ran down the glass. The rain hadn’t let up for nearly a week, leaving most of Sydney underwater and Bondi Beach utterly deserted. Deano, Mouse, Nicola, Jesse, and Glick sat around the tower looking just about as glum as Jethro, though their moods were mainly tied to the weather. Nicola thought thoroughly about the past two months as she watched the young man in the chair across from her; she never recalled him smiling or laughing since the day Hadlee had left. Harrison had also taken it pretty hard, though he bounced back a bit after his parents called to let him know how Hadlee was doing. Hadlee had yet to call herself. Nicola had received a few sparse texts, one saying she was fine and another saying Happy Birthday. She was surprised when she got a Christmas present in the mail and a letter. However, she didn’t bring it up with anybody else for fear that they wouldn’t get anything. Jules had asked her quietly one day as she had also received a small gift.

            It was hard to watch her friends suffer so much. The other lifeguards had taken it in stride, but Jethro was still battling his inner demons. For the first couple of weeks, Nicola and Jesse had to pull the poor lad out of bed every morning so he wouldn’t spend the day moping under his comforter. Soon, he had become a bit more self-sufficient, though he did it with a lack of enthusiasm and a look in his eyes that Nicola could only describe as broken. Harrison had flown home to New Zealand the week prior and had been trying to work on getting Hadlee to come back to Bondi, but she had heard little on his progress (if there had been any at all). She had gotten one picture the day he had gotten there of Hadlee’s bedroom (to describe it as messy would have been a severe understatement), and Hadlee wrapped up in her blankets. Nicola knew Hadlee was just as bad as Jethro, if not worse.

“What are we going to do with you?” Nicola mumbled as she continued to watch Jethro sit sullenly in his chair.

~~~~~~~

            Harrison sat on the floor of his childhood bedroom with his back against his bed, and his legs spread out straight in front of him. He’d been home for almost a week, and still, he had made no progress in getting Hadlee to return to Sydney with him. Nicola and Jesse had progressed much with Jethro, but Hadlee was unmovable. He’d tried everything he could think of, short of simply picking her up and dragging her back to Sydney. He could see her deteriorating slowly. Their parents had made it their mission to avoid going into Hadlee’s bedroom, and it took every ounce of self-control that Harrison had not to mouth off. Hadlee was their daughter, and it shouldn’t only be his responsibility to help her through things. Harrison didn’t understand why she decided to leave Sydney in the first place. She had many happy memories there: a job, a boyfriend, and a family.

            The day she left, he felt like a part of him had fallen away. Having her in Sydney was so typical. Maggie had taken it a bit harder than Harrison had expected, but she had become more of a rock to him than anybody else. She was the one who had told him to go to New Zealand and try to get Hadlee to come back. Maggie agreed that being in Sydney was too good for Hadlee to let her walk away. Harrison knew this would have to be at Hadlee’s pace, but it was hard.

            Harrison groaned and ran his hands over his face.

“What am I supposed to do?” He mumbled into his hands.

[jdgo51]

JUNE 29, 2024

Abundant Grace

Yusuf Dass (Uttar Pradesh, India)

"By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast." - Ephesians 2:8-9 (NRSVUE)

"'From a young age, I loved to go to church. I was very active in youth ministry, and my grandfather, who was the pastor, regularly involved me in worship. I enjoyed my time at church, but my faith was not strong.

After my grandfather’s death, I stopped going to church and got caught up in worldly distractions. I began a marketing job and became wrapped up in secular society. Some of my friends were members of the local mafia. My life was a total wreck.

After some time, my mother urged me to turn to Christ. But I thought to myself, I am such a sinner! How can God love me? But 2 Corinthians 12:9 reassured me that God’s “grace is sufficient” and that God loves me. I have been saved — not because of my work and deeds but because of God’s grace. So I turned to God and began trying to use my life for the glory of God. Since that time, whenever I have felt weak or depressed, God has showered abundant grace upon me."' God is there even in those very rough times.

TODAY'S PRAYER

"Thank you, God, for your gift of grace to us. Guide us as we seek to follow you." Amen.

Psalm 34:1-10

"1 I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise will always be in my mouth. 2 I praise the LORD let the suffering listen and rejoice. 3 Magnify the LORD with me! Together let us lift his name up high! 4 I sought the LORD and he answered me. He delivered me from all my fears. 5 Those who look to God will shine; their faces are never ashamed. 6 This suffering person cried out: the LORD listened and saved him from every trouble. 7 On every side, the LORD’s messenger protects those who honor God; and he delivers them. 8 Taste and see how good the LORD is! The one who takes refuge in him is truly happy! 9 You who are the LORD’s holy ones, honor him, because those who honor him don’t lack a thing. 10 Even strong young lions go without and get hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing." Honor God and have everything that you need or want. He is present in times of need. Well, actually present every day whether there is a particular need or not. Bless you, all! Joe

[stopdrunkdriving]

7 Benefits Of Going Through Hard Times

New Post has been published on https://drunkdriving.co.za/7-benefits-of-going-through-hard-times/

7 Benefits Of Going Through Hard Times

Everything God does in our lives is for our benefit, including suffering.  Though they never seem pleasant at the time, hard times produce wonderful benefits in our lives. On Monday I mentioned one benefit – affliction drives us to God’s word. Here are seven more benefits of suffering:

Affliction drives us to God in prayer

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. James 5:13

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. PS 107:6

When the sun’s shining and everything’s going our way, we don’t feel our need for God. But desperate times lead to desperate prayer. When we’re helpless to change our situation, we cry out to our Savior, who delivers us from our distress.

Affliction humbles us

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 2 CO 12:7

Afflictions remind us of how fragile we are. It keeps us lowly. Reminds us that everything we have is a gift. Pride leads to a fall, but God gives grace to the humble. Affliction positions us to receive grace.

Affliction makes us rely on Christ’s power

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 CO 12:9

When we realize how powerless we are, then Jesus can display his might in our lives. When we’ve exhausted all our own resources Jesus rides in at just the right moment, like the hero in a movie who comes to rescue someone as the train is bearing down on them.

Affliction brings us the comfort of God himself

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction…, 2 Co 1:3

As well meaning as others are, there are times when no human words can comfort. But God himself comforts us when we cry out to him in our pain. The God of ALL COMFORT, the one who knows exactly what our broken hearts need, comforts us in ALL our affliction. The One who fashioned our hearts, who knows our every drop of sadness, knows the exact medicine we need to comfort us.

Affliction gives us compassion for others

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 2 Co 1:3

When someone else has been through the same thing, their words can really comfort us. Though your pain is horrific now, someday God will use you to bring his comfort to someone else who suffers the fury of depression or the agony of a child who rebels like yours.

Affliction produces endurance and patience

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, RO 5:3

The only way to get patience and endurance is by being placed in situations that require it. But it will be worth it in the end, because it is by patiently enduring in faith that we’ll enter heaven.

Affliction reminds us that this world is not our home

For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. HEB 13:14

As many blessings as this world has, it’s not our home. Affliction weans us from this world, reminds us how transitory it is, and makes us long for heaven, for that day when we’ll see Jesus face to face and he will personally wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Bless the Lord oh my soul and forget none of his benefits. Especially those benefits he brings us through hard times.

Source: http://www.theblazingcenter.com/2014/05/6-benefits-of-going-through-hard-times.html

The post 7 Benefits Of Going Through Hard Times first appeared on Koa Sinag.

[skullhub]

MUSE PROFILE: SPIDER-MAN NOIR (E-90214)

Name: Peter Bentley Parker

Age: 29

Pronouns: He/Him

Height: 5'10"

General Alignment: Neutral good.

General personality: Perceptive, Nosy, Strong-willed, Extremely anti-establishment, Humble, Selfless, Loyal to his causes, Self-sufficient, Socially awkward, Smarter than average, Quick on his feet, Supresses his emotions often, Empathetic, Virtuous.

Family: May Parker (Aunt), Ben Parker (Deceased)

Home: Queens, New York city, Earth 90214.

Backstory: Peter Parker was raised at the time by his paternal aunt and uncle since his birth, being raised an activist and a firm believer that good always triumphs over evil in the end. This very anti-capitalist and anti-establishment mindset having nearly gotten him killed a few times in his life. Peter wanted nothing more than to bring justice to the Goblin and everyone else that'd gotten his Uncle Ben killed in cold blood, so he had to start small by working for the bugle with Urich and highlighting the struggles of those who're worse off than him. His anger brewing the more he was put out onto the field to capture the uncomfortable situations many New Yorkers had been put into during the great depression.

After finding his reporter partner Ben Urich unresponsive in his chair with a syringe next to him, Peter decided to intercept a phone call from one of the goblin's goons, and meet them up at one of the piers where they would be picking up a shipment of valuable antiques that had missed their stop over at the metropolitan museum. After a spider-god statue had broke during the collection, thousands of spiders started swarming around goblin's men, with Fancy Dan having died after being bitten repeatedly by the cursed spiders that came skittering out of the broken statue. With one of them having crawled onto Peter's hand, he accepted his fate thinking he was going to go out in the same way Fancy Dan, when really thanks to his golden heart he avoided that fate.

The Spider Goddess that inhabited the now broken statue, Ereshkigal, had cursed him with some of her power as he became tied to the web of life directly by her. Being blessed with the classical powers of Spider-Man including Spider sense, spider strength organic black webbing, the works. With Ereshkigal's 'curse' and a costume of his own design, he went and sought out Urich to get him to help with taking down the goblin, only to have found him a lifeless corpse within his own abode.

In the name of Urich's lover Felicia, Peter managed to overthrow the Goblin and his men, ceasing his criminal operations across the city single-handedly with only Felicia's words and the blessings he received to keep himself steady. Jonah, of course with the way he is across the entire multiverse, portrayed Peter in a negative light in the papers and went to go track him down for a little chat about his conduct in the press. Only to be dragged on a wild goose chase that lead to Parker killing the Vulture (to his aunt's shagrin) and stumbling upon a bigger scheme from the Goblin that required him to rescue Jonah and Felicia from his torture house. And when Peter finally cornered Norman, he chose to spare him despite everything he'd put him through over the course of his comic debut.

Extra Info: Noir will sometimes use outdated terms and slang due to the time period he's from.

Noir was bitten by his spider at 19 years old and has spent a long time perfecting his fighting skills, suit design and a lot more. He's even incorporated his signature pistol in his fighting style.

Noir rarely ever takes his mask off, he only ever slightly lifts it up around the other spiders in order to eat or drink.

Noir isn't a gambler but he is pretty decent at card games, he can shuffle a deck pretty decently too.

Noir is somewhat colorblind, he still can see some color however in his vision they're pretty dulled and so certain colors may look same-y to him. He's able to properly identify them, but identifying colors by shade is rather difficult for him.

Peter's got a few scars from the various situations he's gotten himself into, most of them are scars from when bullets have grazed him, and from when the edges of knives have been pressed up against his body.

Despite how it may seem Peter is actually a scientific genius, he just doesn't have the tools nor the budget to properly show what he can do.

Peter is actually very quippy when he's not dealing with any bad guys, he doesn't want them to underestimate what he's capable of just because he made a quick jab at their gimmick or something.

Noir's goggles are prescription and he fitted the lenses himself after realizing it'd be too dangerous to wear his glasses into a fight. His lenses are nearly coke-bottle-bottoms level thick due to his astigmatism and nearsightedness.

Peter has a bad knee due to having had a bad landing after having taken a tumble whilst trying to land smoothly on the ground. He often has to sit after a long period of standing/moving around.

[abigailjohn2023]

 As Schools Go to Tech for Emotional well-being Backing, the Best Arrangement May Be More Simple

As Schools Go to Tech for Emotional well-being Backing, the Best Arrangement May Be More Simple Dallas Parenting Resources

Youth emotional well-being is in a difficult situation, and schools have seen firsthand the ascent deprived for emotional well-being administrations among understudies.

Regions are progressively going to teletherapy to help understudies who will not be guaranteed to get seen by restricted school psychological well-being experts, who are generally called to intercede with understudies encountering an emergency. Some edtech organizations are turning their endeavors to emotional well-being, and emotional well-being tech is directing its concentration toward understudies.

Schools and locale are paying huge number of dollars for admittance to these computerized devices and administrations, at times utilizing reserves recently accessible to them through government pandemic help cash.

However there are other, more conventional ways that training and after-school projects can support understudy prosperity, as well, including facilitating social encounters for youngsters and setting up schools with more wellbeing experts — two methodologies that are once in a while tied for sufficient funds.

And afterward there is the way that, when it capabilities as planned, an ordinary school day can furnish numerous understudies with the help they need to flourish. Christina Cipriano, overseer of the Instruction Collaboratory at Yale and partner teacher at Yale Kid Review Center, expresses that while a large part of the consideration has been on understudies who need emotional wellness support at the individual or little gathering level, instructors shouldn't forget the "force of connections" to help understudies all the more extensively — at the study hall or school level.

Contingent upon the assets accessible inside a school region or at a specific grounds, the way to supporting numerous understudies could be setting up completely adults at a school to be a believed grown-up in an understudy's life, somebody who can listen closely when required.

"Anybody can frame a solid relationship with an understudy," Cipriano says. " In that whole school, having every person see themselves as a mentor could be a way to help and support students who are at risk of developing more serious mental health issues.

One test that understudies face as they advance through grades is that, as they progress in years, they stand out from grown-ups at school, she makes sense of. There may be one grown-up for each three children in a primary school homeroom on the off chance that an educator has the help of assistants, she proceeds, yet that proportion develops all through center and secondary school.

According to Cipriano, "everyone could be playing a role with those relationships," including "paraprofessionals," "hall monitors," and "lunch monitors." It's minimal expense and high-reward."

Is More Tech the Response? Understudies today have 20% higher paces of nervousness and misery contrasted with pre-pandemic rates, says Juan Treviño, a specialist and clinical program lead at Dawn Wellbeing. The new business gives telehealth advising to center and secondary school understudies through school locale.

For all understudies yet particularly more established understudies, he adds, those battles with nervousness and discouragement are influencing them on a close to home level and furthermore scholastically and socially.

However, according to Trevio, one of the messages that counselors convey to students is that it is acceptable to experience those feelings.

"Something that feels significantly better to me, to a youngster feels improved, however something terrible feels more regrettable," Treviño makes sense of. " Their feelings aren't an issue, [but they] need to master adapting abilities so their side effects are gotten to the next level. It is not the depression and anxiety; rather, it is how they and the school handle it.

In the mean time, the developing interest for psychological wellness support from guardians of more youthful understudies is so perfect, Treviño says, that he's amidst fostering a virtual family treatment program for guardians and their youngsters in primary school. Guardians need assistance answering the social and intense subject matters that understudies are managing now that they're back nearby.

"A great deal of it very well may be credited to emerging from the pandemic, twisting of connections not simply with peers and being pulled out of school for a year, yet on day to day life. Despite the fact that life has returned fairly to ordinary," Treviño says, that change has been intense "for the more youthful children for whom pandemic is a major lump of their life."

Sunrise Wellbeing is accessible in 62 school locale in six states. A student is referred to the service by a school counselor, and the company matches the student with a therapist who will meet with the student via videoconference for a predetermined number of counseling sessions.

This is not quite the same as other tech-worked with psychological wellness devices, as applications that could follow through on-request directed reflection or crisis text-based hotlines implied for individuals who need assistance during an emotional well-being emergency. With regards to contraptions or applications that have an emotional wellness incline, Cipriano says understudies might be attracted to them since it's a natural medium, however those items will quite often be summed up as opposed to custom-made to every understudy's necessities.

"Very much like the heterogeneity and the decency of fit among youngsters and specialist, or the kinds of methodology being educated, there may be a comparable heterogeneity being used of applications," she says. " We should be careful [because] treatment has never been one-size-fits-all, so it would be untrustworthy to think one tech arrangement is the response in such manner."

Daybreak Health costs schools differently, depending on things like how many students are in a district and how much support they need. Understudies and their families don't pay straightforwardly for the administrations — they're covered by confidential health care coverage, Medicaid or school region reserves planned for emotional well-being administrations.

Sunrise Wellbeing pioneers say they measure how well their projects work through factors including how quickly they coordinate understudies with advisors, the level of understudies who complete the full number of treatment meetings, understudy appraisals, and the level of families who report conduct upgrades at home.

The model has received positive feedback from investors. Daybreak Health raised $10 million in a Series A round in the spring of 2022. Crunchbase detailed that in the a half year paving the way to the raising support, the organization's "income roughly quintupled" and it "saw comparative development in understanding volumes."

[hamletteprinceofdenmark]

I’ve seen some folk have a little trouble parsing out Jack Seward’s entry so let’s go through it together.

First thing’s first, Jack Seward is not meant to be creepy.

But to get to the meat of the entry, I’ll go through line by line, and for easy reading my commentary/annotations will be inside square brackets and purple in colour ☺️

Dr. Seward's Diary.

(Kept in phonograph) [Jack keeps his diary on a phonograph, a very early recording device similar to what would become our modern dictaphone. This is the very latest in technology at the time.]

25 May. —Ebb tide in appetite to-day. Cannot eat, cannot rest, so diary instead. Since my rebuff of yesterday I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.... As I knew that the only cure for this sort of thing was work, I went down amongst the patients. [Still feeling miserable and depressed from being rejected by Lucy, Seward finds he cannot sleep or eat as he normally would, he makes his diary instead, about to recall what he did that day. As a way to battle the empty emotional mess he’s in, he decided to throw himself completely into his work as a way to build up momentum and energy again. He goes to observe, study, and help his patients.] I picked out one who has afforded me a study of much interest. He is so quaint that I am determined to understand him as well as I can. To-day I seemed to get nearer than ever before to the heart of his mystery. [He picks as his focus a patient that he finds interesting and intriguing. The patient seems “quaint”, something we might interpret as “almost sane” or “not dangerous”. We might also interpret this as Seward seeing the patient as one he could “cure” more easily than others who he might deem “less sane”. Seward is determined to understand his patient better, and thinks today he has got closer to that understanding than he ever had before.]

I questioned him more fully than I had ever done, with a view to making myself master of the facts of his hallucination. [He studies the patient by asking them a series of questions, like an interview or modern therapy session, aiming to understand both what his patient believes and what the cause (and therefore cure) to those beliefs might be] In my manner of doing it there was, I now see, something of cruelty. [Upon reflection he thinks that he took things too far, to the point of cruelty] I seemed to wish to keep him to the point of his madness—a thing which I avoid with the patients as I would the mouth of hell. [He thinks he may have encouraged or even worsened his patient’s condition on purpose in order to study it further, something he regrets, and states that, under normal circumstances, is something he would never do, with this or any other patient under his care]

(Mem., under what circumstances would I not avoid the pit of hell?) [A quick aside as Seward questions the nature of hyperbole] Omnia Romæ venalia sunt. Hell has its price! verb. sap. [Quite literally “In Rome, everything is for sale." Seward is quoting Gaius Sallustius Crispus, generally known as Sallust. He is the earliest known Latin-language Roman historian with surviving works to his name and worked alongside Julius Caesar. The document from which this quote was taken talks about the corruption and bad governance in the Roman Army at the time. Sallust was making a point that if people were willing to pay the right price, anything was permissible, for better or for worse. Seward also notes “verb. sap." This is short for verbum sapientiae or 'a word of wisdom'. Like a ‘quote of the day’ to keep in mind, Seward is making a comment to note that if he continues down this path, he may have to pay in more than gold.] If there be anything behind this instinct it will be valuable to trace it afterwards accurately, so I had better commence to do so, therefore— [Having gone on this tangent, and noting that even if the methods of getting that day’s information were dubious, there might be something useful to be gained from it, he starts his formal notes on the patient immediately so as to be the most accurate he can.]

R. M. Renfield, ætat 59. [The patient’s name is R.M. Renfield. The patient is 59 years old.] —Sanguine temperament; great physical strength; morbidly excitable; periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which I cannot make out. [Sanguine refers to one of the four humours, a medical theory that has since been disproven. The Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates is often credited with coming up with the idea. He theorised that the body contained four liquids or “humours” that needed to be kept in balance for ultimate health. These humours affected everything from personality to physical and mental health, and were also associated with the four elements. Each person tended towards one of the four humours so each person’s balance was slightly different. The four humours were yellow bile (choleric temperament, fire element) black bile (melancholic temperament, earth element), phlegm (phlegmatic temperament, water element), and … blood (sanguine temperament, air element). Renfield has a sanguine temperament, meaning he is outgoing, passionate, sociable, and generally cheerful. Seward also notes that he is in great physical shape, can get over-excited or over-passionate, but can have periods of gloom or depression. He also notes that today Renfield seemed fixed on a certain idea but he couldn’t make it clear to Seward what that idea was] I presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish; [Seward theorises that the combination of Renfield’s base personality (being cheerful and easygoing) and his madness (a disruptive and upsetting influence) disturbs the natural order of his mind. Once Seward understands it better, he will be able to aid Renfield in setting it right.] a possibly dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for themselves. [Seward states Renfield is probably dangerous, but not selfish. He reflects further that selfish men are as much a danger to themselves as to the people around them, friend or foe.] What I think of on this point is, when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal; when duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and only accident or a series of accidents can balance it. [He thinks of the self, as someone’s general personality, how they think, how they behave, and how they treat others, similar to a centrifuge - a circular device that spins liquids at high speeds in order to seperate them into their component parts (again very new tech for the average Victorian) - and that everything a person does “spins out” from one central idea or theme. He resolves to make his own theme “duty”, as the spinning force, like ripples in a pond, will have a good influence on himself and the people around him and under his care, as apposed to having a selfish core (like how he treated Renfield badly today) which would have bad effects, that only an accident (or coincidence), or indeed a series of accidents/coincidences could set right again].

Well there you are! A break down of Seward’s diary! I hope you all enjoyed the ride and are now a little closer to understanding our local doctor and what he’s about 😊