Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much indeed 💋

I love you sweetheart

I'm going to bed

stay healthy

Taking a break

looked at that picture

dude

it's supposed to look

sexy

and

mysterious

clearly I have forgotten how

💋

It has been raining pretty much all day

Maybe off and on but all day

The temperature is supposed to drop and I think it might be coming the front I mean sooner rather than later because just a few minutes ago my headache got so bad so so bad

Barometer brain is a bad deal Don't ever let them give you barometer brain or whatever

So I have to go to bed I mean I have to go to bed anyway cuz I have to get up and go to my mom's studio tomorrow but I got off today

It was important to me and I negotiated it but now I have to go tomorrow

But even if I didn't have to get up in the morning I think I would have to go to bed because my head feels like it's going to explode

It wasn't like that all day I don't even think I took any headache stuff earlier

I love you very much

I hope you're doing okay

Not too tired

Goodnight sweetheart

I hope you had a good day

Turkey and pie and all that stuff

I had turkey in green beans and lemon chess pie

I keep looking at all the stuff

Like national day of morning

Which is kind of how they're rebranding Thanksgiving

I kind of stopped thinking of Thanksgiving as a pilgrim in Indian holiday so long ago that at first I was like wait what

But then of course I'm seeing that everywhere

And I get it I do I really do

But I'm having a lot of different feels about

I mean on one hand

Thanksgiving is really the only holiday I celebrate

so I really don't want it to get turned into something that I have to be unhappy about

On the other hand

I am actually feeling kind of a low-grade mourning

Over the fact that I've lost my native American identity

yeah I mean obviously I didn't have tribal affiliation and blah blah blah

but it isn't about my claiming to be native American it's about my sense of myself

And I feel real sense of sadness

At the loss of who I thought I was

And you know there's a way in which I still feel like who I am as far as my genetic heritage is unimportant doesn't tell me anything about myself I'm not better or more special or any of that stuff based on kind of who I'm related to or what my genetic makeup is but somehow

That sense of myself as part of

I don't know that just had a connection for me that didn't have anything to do with an individual person or anything genetic it was more of a spiritual component

And I was never really interested in my family tree and I'm still not

I really don't care

But I did care about that not to do with individuals

And it's like I care even less about the actual individuals than I did before

It's weird I'm not going to say it makes any sense

Normally this time of year is very stressful for me

And I try to watch Australian MasterChef or the great British bake off or whatever it's called but they're warning new seasons of either of those so I watched some top chef I like top chef but I don't like it as well as Australian MasterChef or the great British bake off

But then I'm not feeling a lot of retail stress because I'm not working retail

I love you sweetheart

I'm pretty tired

I think I figured out why I had the such a bad headache

There's a cold front coming through

It's going to get down to the sixties and then it's going to get down to the fifties and then Monday we're going to have a hard freeze of like 36°

Which considering that it hasn't dropped below 72° for a while is pretty cool I might get to wear a sweater or something

Actually on Monday I might get to wear a coat just pretty impressive

Anyway I love you

Goodnight sweetheart 💋

Anyway I'm going to go lay down and probably fall right to sleep

I love you very much

I was going to do a whole big long list of things that I'm grateful for but I just can't do it right now but I do feel better happier for having talk to you

I'm grateful for you

And I've had some songs stuck in my head

I'm sure you're asleep now

But I guess you'll see all this stuff when you wake up and maybe it'll be enjoyable to read

Or maybe it'll just be like

Oh my God what boring s*** she talks about

So I don't know I don't know if that's what I would be talking to you about if I was with you probably not probably if I was with you I'd be talking to you about something more interesting than that

I love you sweetheart

Goodnight

I'm getting low on battery and I really should have gone to sleep a while ago

I felt like I had all these things

That I was going to talk about

But then this all seems pretty random

And I did a reading and asked you know what does he want to know or what does he want me to talk about or whatever and I didn't really get anything that made any sense

I got that Ace of swords and two of swords again The truth and the armistice thing

But I don't I don't know what that means

Maybe it means you want to hear how things are going with my mom

Maybe it means you think I'm not telling you the truth about something although I don't really know what that would be

And then the armistice thing that could be about my mom too or I guess it could be about us but I don't think we're having a problem

Unless I'm not being communicative enough and that could be a problem so I guess maybe that's how I started talking about all this stuff maybe I just thought I would let you know what was kind of going on in my head which does seem to be a random assortment of things

I am very grateful though

I feel like I've had

A fair amount of divine intervention on my behalf

I know one time I was telling somebody something and they were like wow you are really unlucky and I was kind of shocked because I didn't know what I had said that gave them would give them the impression that I was very unlucky I must have been bitching about something and they were perhaps feeling like that I was exaggerating things or something I don't know I mean the last time I told somebody while they were very unlucky it was because they were coming up with things that I thought were lies about you know well they couldn't do this for this reason because this crisis happened and they couldn't do that for that reason because that crisis happened and it was like you know when somebody can't work because their grandmother died but they've already had like six grandmothers die and how many grandmothers do you have you know that kind of thing so maybe I was saying something to them that sounded like that but I can't imagine what that was any rate it's not all that important but I've always felt like I was very lucky and so when they were like wow you're really unlucky I'm like no I'm not I'm very lucky person

I've always felt like I was a very lucky person

I have had bad things happen to me but I don't feel like that's a lucky issue you know

I guess that seems kind of counterintuitive but I guess that's not what I mean by lucky

I guess I don't think lucky means that you were born into the best possible situation and everything went as good as it could possibly go and you have no complaints with your life That's more like fortunate or privileged

The best description that I ever had for luck in the way that I think about it sadly came from Harry Potter I don't know if you ever read the Harry Potter books and I certainly wouldn't recommend that you read them now because what's her name is a terf and so I am not going to recommend her she's also been very disappointing on some other things like she should probably just not talk about her opinions but I mean she's free to talk about whatever she wants to talk about whatever putting that aside

I can't remember which book it's in now but Harry gets a luck potion and he takes the luck potion and there's like this kind of glittering action and then it's like he sees the connections between things that he wouldn't normally see and he gets a feeling that he should do a certain thing that he wouldn't normally do that seems counterintuitive and he just goes with it and everything goes along like with the best possible outcome so like like you're just moving the particles around a little bit so that things click together if you've read the books maybe you remember that but that description of what happens with him when he takes the luck potion that is what I mean by I've always considered myself to be very lucky I feel like I have a certain degree of that pretty much all the time doesn't mean I would win at gambling you know it's not that kind of thing

Yeah he didn't eat it

He didn't eat the food I gave him last time that I doctored up and I don't think he's going to eat the food that I just gave him that wasn't doctored up

I saw this video I don't remember where I saw it but this woman she has a cat and she has these little things that he can step on that say words so like she's like actually I think it might be a girl cat because I think it might have a girl name I don't know anyway she's like what does whatever the cat's name is what does kitty want and the cat goes over and it like steps on this little button and it says like food food food

And she's like it's not time for food now and the cat goes over and steps on this other little button and it says mad mad mad mad

And she's like oh I'm sorry you're mad is there anything else I can give you you know and the cat walks over and steps on another one and it says something like pets you know or whatever

And in general I'm not sure I want the cat to talk to me because I already feel like he's talking to me pretty much all the time anyway and that there's really a very small percentage of things that he's unable to communicate clearly about and I suspect that the things he's unable to communicate clearly about are more of a passive aggressive thing to keep me guessing and wondering then it is really his inability to communicate what he wants but the whole you know I want half of the food this way and half of the food that way and I'm going to alter which part I want first in a way that's difficult to deal with or he wants food so I get up and give him food and then he comes back and he wants something and I'm like you know what do you want kitty take me to the thing that you want you know and so he's like oh and he walks me over to where his nipples he has this very elaborate he has his dish that his nip is in and it was a plastic dish actually that i got from the neighbors they like brought it back for me from a trip or something but Kitty he gets this chin acne so he had to have all like I had a water fountain for cats that I had had from bus and I had to get a special new one for him that ceramic because he couldn't use the plastic one and he eats out of you know China dishes because he can't he can't eat out of plastic ones because he gets this horrible chin acne and so he has this black spot that like comes and goes from his lip and I hadn't really connected it to the chin acne cuz it's not on his chin it's on his lip

But it's back and now his lip is all swollen cuz he's he's super he's got super sensitive skin He's a ginger right and so it occurred to me after I mean years that his nip tray is plastic because he doesn't always eat the nip You know usually I put the nip in the tray and he kind of sniffs it a little bit and then he has his very elaborate thing that he does where he covers it up and he has all this tissue paper and butcher paper and you know this collection of paper whenever I go any place where I get paper so it's looking a little ratty cuz I haven't really been going any place but typically like you know when I would get a package or I would come back from a trip or something I would bring him some new paper and I would switch it out and he he takes it and he like very elaborately buries this nip tray but lately he's been eating the nip and I think that that's what's causing his lip to be black and swell up that it's like skinny irritation it just isn't the same chin at me stuff that he was getting so I have this plate that I have from a trip the same I don't remember which trip it was it was a trip where I had a bad attitude about something I guess because I got a mug that says whatever and I got this plate that says like go ahead and take my advice I'm not using it or something like that

But it's black and it's ceramic and it looks like it's written in chalk it's real cute so I set that up for him and you know he wasn't typically using his nip as a station you know he would just periodically be by his nip and I would go do you want some fresh nip but now he's like leading me there like it's a station like I have to get up specifically from what I'm doing to go give him nip like I have to get up to go give him food or I have to get up to go let him out so it's like he's trying to put me through my paces you know it's funny he's getting me all trained up

I am remarkably hard to train

It has taken him so long to get to the point where I understand that if he starts eating his food and he eats about half of it and then he goes and sits in the kitchen window that I am supposed to understand I mean I guess I'm supposed to stay there and watch him until he finishes every bite of his food which I don't very often do but I'm supposed to understand that what that means is that I need to doctor the second half of it so he can finish eating it

And he's so proud of me because I finally learned this but it didn't help him all that much because I still don't stand there and watch him so you know if he's getting fed because I'm in the kitchen making coffee or something well that works out for him but if he's hungry and I just feed him I mostly just watch to see that he is starting to eat it and then I assume that however it is is fine for the whole serving which is after all not more than a half of a very small can that really shouldn't need to be you know blue buffalo limited ingredient potato and fish serve two ways

I can't remember now did I say that I couldn't find where he threw up I was sure I heard him throwing up but I can't find it so it's probably somewhere that I just didn't see because it was dark or I don't know I will find it when I step in it that tends to be what happens but just walking through I don't see it

maybe he didn't maybe he just hacked and choked and didn't actually bring anything up I don't know

That post the other day about selling stuff on eBay was not supposed to indicate any sort of depression or unhappiness and I realize in retrospect might have read that way it also wasn't supposed to indicate that I'm having to sell the last of my precious possessions or any sort of desperation of any kind it was really just kind of a antiques road show situation I had I have some stuff that I've been reluctant to explore getting rid of because it was like quasi special

but now I just kind of feel oppressed by the possession of it and I was hoping that it was possible to get money for it but it doesn't look like that stuff is going to be a very likely source

And it might be that I could take it to a consignment shop but I just don't know if anybody's going to be going to places like that while the coronavirus is so bad

But you know it's not a big deal

I've had a headache all day and it just got substantially worse in the last little bit

I did feel a little hard done by this morning though because I got extra sleep last night I mean I got 8 hours of sleep legit

And then I woke up feeling all you know my ears are stopped up and my sinuses are swollen and I took two aleves and an ibuprofen which is an enormous amount of painkilling and it just never did do anything at all

now I have that kind of nausea that you have when you have a headache it's really bad for a while and I thought earlier that made me my neck was out it doesn't feel like running my hands along and it doesn't feel like it's out so if it's out it's got to be that one that's like way up at the top that you can't actually access

And it's kind of funny because other than going to the chiropractor the only thing I've ever found that really just knocks that back into place is a sexual thing in that song

and I was thinking about I don't think about it real frequently but I was thinking about yesterday or today how long it's been and I don't think it's good I don't think it's good to go this long I think I've become uptight I think it's affected my sense of humor

Its kind of a drag

I might be having some mood though

I was going to make a big list of things I'm grateful for

But it seems to be taking the form of

I would be grateful if

Which is totally not in the spirit

I would be grateful if I hadn't eaten that bag of Cheetos

I would be grateful if I had enough sexual desire to muster up getting in bed and masturbating to an orgasm

Because I think I would really benefit from one

But I just can't get excited about the idea

I would be grateful if

My head didn't hurt

if that noise I just heard wasn't actually my cat throwing up so that I have to go clean that now

I would be grateful if

I didn't feel like I was finding so many things kind of irritating and boring

Irritating isn't necessarily an unusual emotion

I'd say a fair degree of things irritate me on a regular basis

It is just a question of whether I give in to bitching about them

Used to be like I don't know when I was in high school I made me college I couldn't not vent

I just had to anytime that I was caught up with something I just had to vent about it

As I got older I would periodically have to vent about things but I feel like it got easier for me to put that off rather than having to do it right away

And since I've had this whole like experience in relationship with you where I feel like I have to really watch what I say for a variety of reasons

And they're all kind of things that I just don't tell people

so it's not just that I'm watching what I say around you to some degree because I'm worried that I'll say something wrong or upset you

but it's also that the people that I'm talking to whoever that would be at any given time over the years I'm mostly not saying anything about you

And you're such a large part of my life that to not talk about you is kind of unnatural you know

And so over time holding all that stuff in although it would seem like you know it doesn't have anything to do with them but holding all that in has given me a lot more control over what I say and when I say it in general I think

I don't feel like I'm actually stating this correctly

I feel like it's given me a superpower

Like I can be overwhelmingly distracted or disturbed or upset about something and not say anything to anybody about it

And I feel like that's something I've developed because of this

And I realize that I sometimes still say things that come out wrong or are upsetting to you or sound different than how I mean them to sound

But I do spend a fair amount of time trying to think of all the ways that something can be taken and then after the fact running it back through my head to see how it sounds

So while I would say that irritation is a pretty normal thing for me in life in general and has been across the band of my life The degree to which I can not talk about the things that are bothering me has vastly increased vastly

So the feeling somewhat irritated isn't all that worrisome to me

But the fact that things are boring to me is a little more worrisome

I mean I've got two months and months of pandemic without getting bored

And lately but I'm not sure exactly what period of time this is but since I've been having all the hormones stuff I think I find myself clicking on an article that I'm going to read or clicking on a video that I'm going to watch I'm being like bored now

Too long didn't read

Bored now

And I'm not saying I'm bored by anything that you have said or anything related to you this isn't related to you at all I want to make that clear because you might think it is and that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is I'm concerned about myself because I am irritable and seem to have less enjoyment of things in general which is both of those things are signs of depression and I don't feel depressed but both of those things can be signs of depression

and it might just be that it's been an emotional roller coaster with everything that's been going on in the country and that there's just only so much of it that you could take before you start having some negative repercussions and I was having negative repercussions already a while back I was freaking out and stuff

There I just popped my neck a little bit and that's better it might be out it might be out

But I am having a very real sense that I'm kind of falling apart and I need to just you know get that together

The cat is staring at me trying to do mind control

It's a new case of food and he never likes the first few cans of the new case because the quality control is not adequate for him

So he has not really eaten the food that I've given him because it is gross

And it hasn't been that long since I fed him and I know he did not eat that food but now he wants me to give him more food and I suspect that I will go to the kitchen and they will still be food in his dish from before because he doesn't actually want more food he wants different food but there isn't different food to give him

and no matter how many times I describe the situation to him he just does not seem to gather the pertinent information from my words he just wants me to fix it

He also seems to think that I might have control over the weather like he gets very irritated if it's rainy and he can't go out without getting wet he seems to think that I have some control over that

He's kind of high maintenance

 i took pictures of all the paintings my mom is putting on etsy

well, so far, anyway

fifty--  two pictures each

and 

i numbered the backs so she could keep track

of what was what

she has posted some

but some of the pictures are not the ones i took

and they don't seem to be in any kind of order

so, i don't know what's up with that

i've been using the retinol booster

and the sodium ascorbyl blah blah

and

i kinda broke out bad

but then

after i got kinda mad

stuffs been healing faster

and some of those breakouts seem like they might be healed

like for real for real

because they tend to break out in the same spots again and again

the mask is supposed to come saturday, i think

and the yuskin-A was supposed to come beginning of december

but

it's here now

and i've got it on my face

and it's possible thatit's genius

from a sensual point of view

this routine is extremely unsatisfactory

but

maybe it will work

 i've been falling asleep in the chair

i'm going to go to bed

i'm a little sad that my antiques road shop experience

wasn't a little better

in 15 years they've been waiting for some fancy coffee experience

and

i don't really care about them

but

i kinda hoped someone did

woulda been nice

pain in the ass to ship though, right

i've got the 10 year anniversary hand crank coffee grinder too

someone was or best offer-ing that one for $125

somebody had a 20 year anniversary statuette coffee scoop

for $35

i didn't know about that one

seems

less useful than the grinder

seems like you ought to get an engraved watch or something

for 20 years

this all makes me wonder

is this because nobody wants their stuff

or

is everybody just struggling that hard

i love you very much sweetheart

goodnight 

 so i just did this thing

i went on ebay to see if people are selling

old starbucks employee swag

and if so

for how much

i don't have a ton

a lot of it

i gave to people who worked for me

but

i have this one set of desert plates and demi tasse

that's pretty fancy

and i thought maybe

so i looked and i found one for $76.

and i thought cool

but then i saw or best offer

and i thought less cool

then

i started looking for that specifically

and

i found it for as little as $4.95

or best offer

nobody wants old 2005 leadership conference

limited edition gifts for managers

even at $4.95 they're taking offers

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Okay so I should have gone to bed like a couple hours ago well actually if I wanted to get eight hours to sleep I should have gone to bed four hours ago but I think we're going to make do with four and a half hours since we got an hour and a half for two hour nap this afternoon and since that's just apparently how we roll anyway

I hope that you're doing well

I'm uncertain whether I like this retinol or not

It already came I was surprised

It's definitely not too strong

But I think it's not nothing

But I have to be really careful with the acids

And this has some amount but I'm not sure how much of lactic acid to help

I don't know make a bigger impact with the resurfacing

I'm probably putting on more than I'm supposed to

And I've been picking

I wish I could make myself stop but I don't seem to be able to

And I feel like I've been thinking that it's just around the corner that my face is going to be clear for like I don't know I feel like I've been telling you that for like 2 years

Anyway I love you I'm going to bed

I just wanted to let you know I did a reading yesterday but I didn't tell you about it yesterday

I ask it what we would be like together

And it gave me eight of roots discipline

And I hope that was very interesting so I'm going to tell you about it eight of Roots is eight of pentacles and that is the card that is usually in like a right or weight deck oh God damn it Ryder Waite deck it's the card that usually has the journeyman craftsman working to perfect his skill and I wouldn't have exactly called a discipline because if I just say discipline by itself I think like discipline and punish

So I saw discipline and I kind of frowned but then I'm like no no no not like that

Working sometimes alone but more often with others on some worthwhile project or activity there is a goal and yet the real value lies in the work itself The putting together of something lasting the learning of skills working with others towards a common goal The work might take place in some traditional structures such as a small company or an artist collective or group of healers or a school or a union whatever the setting what matters is the dedication both individually and as a group Emmy quotes a famous bit of advice from the I ching

Perseverance furthers

And featured on the card are eastern bumblebees that build their hives underground The workers labor together to create the unified organism that will serve them all the hive everything in the picture suggests that seeming individuals actually form a larger hole and then I'm skipping a bit and then it says there is a growing body of thought that suggests a forest is not a collection of isolated creatures but a single organism like a hive of bees

Joe I thought that was good I mean I don't guess it's super romantic but

I thought it fitted in nicely with our mythology

So what I was working on the other day and what I'm going to be working on tomorrow every year at Christmas time she sells a lot of cards and they're you know small collage cards that people can either give as a card or they can you know frame as a small picture or whatever and they're you know about $10 and she's like working on these little canvases that you can just stand up on your desk or mantle or whatever or hang on the wall and do whatever you want with them but they stand up by themselves and some of them are 5x5 and some of them are 6x6 and I think a few of them are 8x8 and so she's working on painting a bunch of those so she's like hey can you make cards they're just collages and I'm like yeah I love to do collages I literally love to do collages so she's got like just a ton of you know stamps and bits of paper and then she's got all these squares that are like well they're not squares they're rectang yeah rectangles that are some of them are well some of them are from big pieces of paper that she just painted with different kind of colors and textures and then cut up and some of them are from watercolors that she's done in the past that you know didn't work out for one reason or another and so she cut them up and so I spent a lot of time going through and picking out bits that appealed to me and then I worked on making cards and I wouldn't say I got as many done as I would have hoped that I did but I spent a lot of time looking through stuff and I didn't even go through all of it because I finally was like you know I just need to start doing stuff I've got enough to be going on with

So it was just super fun

I don't really know why I haven't been able to get it together today

But I'm like very excited to go and do collages tomorrow

the my collages don't really look very much like her collages

But they are made with her paintings and stuff so you know

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much

Okay I'm going to sleep now

I love you very much

and I have to get up earlier in the morning so I should have gone to sleep before like at least 2 hours ago but I didn't because I'm bad that way

I left the noxzema on my face like a mask

I'm not sure exactly how long I did that but I used to do it when I was younger

And I really think this stuff is awesome

and it made me wonder if maybe the reason why I didn't ever have any problems with my skin and I know I postulated this before but I guess I must have thought it was ridiculous

Was maybe that what I was using was working not that I had magic skin

Although I might have had magic skin had really good skin but I decided to operate on the assumption that perhaps what I was using back then was effective and so like I'm using the noxzema that's great

The toner that I used or sometimes I just use it as a cleanser because like I think in the morning I probably just use that was 10.0.6

And you could still buy that it's got a lot of alcohol in it so I don't know I may not be able to talk myself into it but it's not like sea breeze it's got good stuff in it too it just has a lot of alcohol as well it has half a percent of salicylic acid 2% as the highest you can get but perhaps using 1/2% on a regular basis like you know a couple of times a day is effective without being irritating I don't know and then I was like well the face mask I used was Queen Helene mint julep mask is that still available and sure enough it is and it's got sulfur in it and I have been looking for a sulfur mask but all the ones I found were expensive well I mean Queen Helene mask is cheap cheap cheapit's like $6 for a tube I can't remember how many ounces are in the tube I want to say six but it might not be that much but a 2-oz jar is like $5 so even if the tube is only 4 oz it's still an amazing value

Not that I don't like the Merle Norman mask I'm using I do I like that very much but you know mix it up

So that stuff is all available like you know 40 years later which I'd say is a testament to the fact that the shit must work because they couldn't stay in business

But then I started looking around for the moisturizer and I couldn't find that

I used one of two moisturizers The one I think I used the most often was rose milk

which was you know a common thing that you could find in the store at that point it was rose water and glycerin and it had some milk powder skim milk powder or something mixed into it too

Or the other thing that my mother would buy and I would use was milk plus six which was milk protein and six other things but that's not around anymore either there's apparently a shampoo but I guess I could look at the ingredients of the shampoo to see what's in that but I've no reason to think it would be the same things

But I think it was like milk and wheat germ oil and some vitamins I don't know

Now I did find a rose milk body lotion and it might be the same formula but I don't know I don't want to start putting that on my face

Not that I'm adverse to mineral oil as such

But I just couldn't make myself

But I thought you know if glycerin is the most important ingredient

Yu-be is a Japanese glycerin cream that I had a sample of one time and I was very impressed with and it has camphor in it which is another ingredient and I'm kind of trying to get on the yu-be although it's not very expensive it's a lot more expensive than the Japanese version which is the exact same ingredient

It's called something like yushima-A

So I think I'm going to get my hands on some of that because like for the American market version it's $25 for 2 oz which you know it's not bad I guess but for the Japanese version it's $21 for 6 oz and it's probably cheaper if you're in Japan

The noxzema is really good

I highly recommend it

I kind of feel like I've been cheated somehow by all the expensive cleansers

And I mean you go through the noxzema faster or I do anyway but then I'm also using it on my body not just on my face and the grocery store the pump bottle is like $3 and something but I mean at the rate I'm going through it I think I have less than about less than half a bottle and I haven't had it very long so when you take into account the speed at which I'm going through it maybe it's not quite as good a value as some other things but I'm just super impressed

Last year about this time I bought a jar of 5% retinol from truth treatment because it was like a Black Friday sale or something but it was still super expensive and I still have a little bit left because I was using it like once a week and then sometimes not and whatever and now I've been using it more frequently and I really really like it and I'd like to buy another jar of it but I just I can't so and I couldn't really decide whether I thought it was helping that much or not so I'm going to try a retinol from beauty pie which I'm still getting the membership for is like $10 a month and I haven't been spending that money because you know when I'm looking at what money I have to spend and what I want to spend it on I have ever wanted to spend it on the beauty pie stuff but I didn't really want to get rid of it because they have some items that I like like that plantastic and they come out with new stuff all the time so it rolls over every month so I had quite a bit of headlight 800 and something dollars worth of credit to spend although that doesn't mean I had money it just means that it I could buy whatever I wanted but it still cost money but like that plantastic according to them if you bought that on the market it would be $60 which is probably right because you know the way the markup and everything is on those kind of items and what they do is they go to labs in Switzerland and Japan and Italy and whatever and the labs that people who are going to make their makeup lines go to and so basically if you're going to make a makeup line you go to one of those labs and you say hey here are the things I want to do and they have technologies and they just kind of maybe tweak them for you or maybe just give them to you exactly the way they are so that plantastic serum that I like is theoretically a $60 serum but it costs like $8 well I got a retinol that's a " super " retinol booster that's supposed to have like 3% encapsulated retinol with lactic acid or something so that's not as strong as the retinol that I've been using and the one I've been using was formulated by a formulating chemist pharmacist who used to have his own pharmacy that he just all he did was make formulations for people who had you know skin problems or burns or things and he studied with the guy who invented blistex so I mean you know he's pretty good and I suspect that this will not be anywhere near as good but I really don't need it to be as good I really just needed to be good enough you know

So the super retinol booster 3% encapsulated is $17 and whether it works or whether it doesn't work we know it will have a very pleasant texture it'll be pleasant to use because it comes from one of those labs that makes prestige skin care so whereas it might not be as active or effective actually has something that you'd get from the ordinary that ordinary grant active retinoid it does not have a pleasant texture it is not pleasant to use and I don't know whether it does anything either

I know I had a night serum retinol from Merle Norman one time and it was an encapsulated retinol with I think it was lactic acid and it worked pretty good I enjoyed it very much I don't know if it kept my face clear because I don't think at that point I was having issues with that but it was about 55 or $60 and it was only like a month's worth and it's too much the expensive stuff that I've been using you know was more than that but you know it's lasted a year so but it's just it's too much to lay out and especially since I don't know if it's a really doing that much and of course once I stop using it I'll probably notice whether or not it's doing that much and then you know I don't know we'll figure something else out later but the beauty pie stuff is on the way

And it's it's funny because now I'm like yeah I don't need to wash my hair I don't need to brush my hair I don't need to be clean I don't need to be wearing nice clothes well I like to wear nice clothes if I go out but if I'm around the house I could wear the same shirt for like 6 weeks but God damn it I need my face to be clear That's the line I'm drawing in the sand I don't want to be all broken out on my face and it just seems kind of crazy now like why do I give a s*** but I do and it's not like anybody's even really seeing my face because I got the mask all the time but you know I don't know it's like clear skin or bust

Anyway I love you very much sweetheart

Sleep well

All right I'm going to have to go to sleep

My mother has a bunch of stuff to do related to Shirley's move and some stuff she needs to order and do and set up so I'm not going to the studio tomorrow I'm going to go Saturday instead I've got a few a few things I'm going to be doing online for her but I'm going to do them from home

I'm going to go to the grocery store hopefully pretty early in the morning well like 9:30 or 10:00

I'm going to get a turkey

I don't know whether she's going to want to work a day after Thanksgiving or not I think the plan is to try to be in the studio Monday Wednesday and Friday now

With Saturday is like an alternate or an add-on

So maybe

Maybe I can get that Friday off

I want to do another reading but I haven't had a lot of luck when I've tried

And I'm trying to figure out the best question to ask because I already asked about the election and I already got an answer so I'm not really supposed to ask that same question again but I'm feeling like we need a reading

And I already did a reading for you that said everything was going to go great for you where you are and I can only assume that that means that you know ask and answered on that too

But if I ask a question for me I don't feel like I'm going to get a good answer cuz it doesn't like to answer me but I feel

A weird way

Not like I felt earlier in the pandemic

And I assume that is from the enormous amount of time I've been spending with my mother

But also the stress I have about us

But now this sort of

I don't know mental uncertainty that I'm having within myself

I feel sort of blocked and stifled but then I also feel kind of like I'm being stretched and expanded I'm just not really sure what's going on

And I want very much to do something to make you happy but I'm not entirely certain what to do

Can I just keep kind of zoning out

And I just feel like I need to do a reading maybe you would enjoy that

Okay the first three cards are the 10 of cups overflowing justice and the nine of cups fulfillment and the tin of cups is talking about just experiencing joy in life and not asking questions about how you got to the joy and what the what the structure and the meaning and everything behind it is just accept it and live in the moment which is kind of an unusual reading of that card Justice is even stranger kind of it's talking about turkey vultures and how not only are they kind of like a psycho pump figure but that they in actual reality have a very sterilizing quality so according to this book if you rub if you rub yourself with turkey vulture feces you would actually be cleaner than before you did that which I don't understand in reality how that can be but I'm kind of seeing a pattern and the fulfillment is all about you know going through that ordeal crossing the river and coming out on the other side so oh yeah and justice just talking about how you have to know who you are before You can move ahead and so what I'm getting out of that is that this is a process that I have to go through and when I come out of it then I'll be free

Then the second set of cards is the father of roots and the mother of feathers and enchantment father of roots is that starry nosed mole coming out of his burrow and looking up at the stars and having joy of life so there's more joy theme The mother of feathers is that bird where she's sitting there and the male birds are having a big meeting display and she is not real concerned because it's all on her time so when she's ready to mate they'll be a male there and she doesn't need to worry about them at all she's just focused on her pretty red flower and then enchantment is Ace of Roots or Ace of pentacles which is the pure energy of the Earth in this deck so it's again it's all life it's a miracle and gratitude and purple arrowroot sends out its roots and all directions and performs a kind of magic by cleansing the soil around it of industrial waste so again we've got this cleansing image

It's the next row we have the lovers and the magician and the four of roots and the lovers is all about passion and danger and choice and love and relationship and the magician is the beginning of the journey emergence of self-awareness is tied in with Odin and his ravens because this magician is a raven thought memory to basic components of consciousness and it has that banner at the top which is about potential and from a previous reading that had a kind of a katubah energy the four of roots is the card of the introvert it's a time for introspection a time when it's important to armor ourselves and stay away from social activities also hints at a lot going on under the surface of a seemingly calm person but the main energy is preservationwe may find if we take steps to protect ourselves things seem to fall into place as if the world understands our needs so that seems to be about the pandemic but not just the pandemic

Then I had some cards that I thought were somewhat negative The really and truly they're not all negative exactly but I got the tower which I don't think I need to look up but that's about upheaval and radical change and fire and the moon which is about deep psychological and hidden mystery but then I got two cards that have been showing up a lot lately and I can't remember if they've been in any of the readings that I've done for you or not I don't sort of think so but it's the ace of arrows which is truth and the two of arrows which is armistice and I always think of the The Ace of arrows as being a positive card creativity vision and in the magic 8 Ball it was at one point Estelle but in this deck it has sort of a different meaning and it seems sort of less positive to me more problematical

truth honesty reality heightened awareness of the mind the power of your own truth a challenge to look at a situation with complete openness and commitment people or aspects of ourselves that normally we might find challenging or simply avoid bring us harmony due to a commitment to honesty and balance this card might challenge someone to look out or confront some person or aspect of life the quarant has been avoiding

And then the two of swords was us card that was showing up for me a lot before now that I'm thinking about it but in this deck it's armistice and it's got I think it's a wolf and a mountain lion and they're tied together and blindfolded and they both have arrows in them a moment of calm and peace in a tent situation this can literally be between two adversaries or finding peace in yourself during great tension how the people or person use this moment is up to them Will they go back to fighting or will they build upon the armistice for an individual will she or he go back to struggling with life or find a way to tackle problems in a less stressful way and it talks all about the cougar and the gray wolf being wounded and tethered and blindfolded and they walk together in tandem normally they're enemies or at least they compete for territory and prey but they put aside their ancient rivalry to help each otherthinking of the card in terms of a relationship as we can with all twos we might say that people who have been enemies find themselves bound together by a common danger or a joint challenge what will they do if they overcome their problem and how will they manage in the moment

And then the answers were the six of roots and the nine of roots those were the cards that were supposed to bring it all together and make it make sense The six of roots is a card that makes me very uncomfortable it's got this rabbit and the snake and it's based on some folk talemost cards in the deck derive from the lives of plants and animals The 6th of root derives from a creation story Quetzalcoatl decided to come to Earth in a human body after several hot days when he could not find any water he lay down under a full moon to die he came hair came across him the rabbit and asked what was wrong q said there is no food or water I will surely die nonsense hair said just eat grass like me there's enough for everyone my human body can't eat grass all I can do is die now hair could have said serves you right for becoming human and hopped away instead after considering he offered you could eat me I'll die but she'll keep on living q was so impressed he changed into his true form the feathered serpent and left into the sky and said I wish to honor you hair from this moment on you will live in the moon and whenever it is full you're selflessness will be remembered Reading this wonderful story it struck me that q lost his memory of his true self when he became human and only the shock of hairs altruism reminded him of who he really was and maybe we humans all share the same problem amnesia of our true selves

And nine of Roots accomplishment the culmination of work and effort satisfaction in whatever has been accomplished this is one of the most beautifully balanced compositions in the Brady Toro in the middle of the picture the trees stand uniform evenly spaced below ground we see each trees roots almost as uniform as the trunks though the roots on each end snake down to frame the title of the card above the tree trunks the leaves grow in such abundance that they merge together and form what looks like a landscape of green hills with a valley in the center to make a space for the number of the card The roots and trunks symbolize the sustained efforts the lush leaves the sense of accomplishment and in the foreground we see the dynamic excited body of a red-bellied woodpecker with the reward of his labors a beak and cloth full of grubs when we look again at the trees we noticed the trunks are riddled with holes where the woodpecker labored to find all those delicious larvae The trees show no signs of harm they still stand strong fed by their roots and the blue sky above the leaves

I slept most of the day

I wasn't going to do that but asleep me thought there was no particular reason to get up

Asleep me wanted to stay laying in the big blob of color

And again I do not know how I managed to go so long without having to get up to pee

Also the experiment the pores was confirmed so now I know I can do that probably not more than twice a week and I think it's a little irritating so probably better if it wasn't quite as often as twice a week

I dreamed a lot of things

I'm pretty sure they were all fairly complicated

But the only one I can remember

I was doing a promo changeover for wine except I wasn't really doing it some people were helping me so it was taking up a lot of space

And I was like I don't think it's going to be okay for it to just wind all through like this so whoever was helping me no one was monitoring them at all while they had me off doing other things so they did just whatever crazy thing they thought of

And then Susan came up behind me was like well you're going to have to redo all that

I think the brain fog is gone

And the nausea and dizziness

And the cramping, mostly

But I'd still say there's a mood element going on

I hope your day is going well

I love you very much

 i just wrote a bunch of stuff

that i'm not sure about

it might be obnoxious or crazy

it might be saying too much or not enough

or both

i want to write you something beautiful and surreal

i need to go to bed

i don't have the beautiful surreal thing to write

but

you are beautiful and amazing

and

i think better now than ever in a variety of ways

i love you sweetheart

I'm doing that thing again tonight where I put the polyhydroxy acid PHA essence which also has probiotic lysate and then I put the micropealing drops on top of that I did not put the salicylic acid serum on because I don't really have any bad bumps and I don't have a lot of that left because what I did when I was running out of that is rather than buying that I bought and I know I talked about this but I can't imagine that you remember all these skin care things but I bought the melon and gets (malin + goetz) this is the kind of thing it does to me all the time

Anyway I got the mail and gets come stuff that you put the q-tip in and then put dots on your face and that hasn't really worked out for me very well I can't do it before I go to bed because it's dries and it breaks apart into dust that gets in my eyes it doesn't seem to matter where on my face it goes it gets in my eyes and I mean it is nicely drying but it doesn't necessarily dry things in the right way it just kind of dries my skin out I mean it might be that it would work in some magic scenario that I haven't tried yet but it just it has not worked for me it's an adorable little bottle but it has not worked for me I'm sorry I chose to spend my money that way I thought it would be great and I also to be honest with you had run across some information that made me think that your skin might get addicted to salicylic acid like that if you use salicylic acid and then you wanted to stop that you would have even more problems with clogged pores and that made me think that a salicylic acid serum was maybe not the best thing but I don't know I think I'm going to end up buying that cleaning stuff again

but I still have a little on the bottom and so I'm trying to kind of stretch it for as long as possible

Anyway so I did the PHA essence and the micro peeling drops which says on the front of it that has salicylic acid in it but I do not see it on the ingredients list what I see on the ingredients list is Willow bark extract and willow bark is a source for salicylic acid but I'm pretty sure that if you don't break it down into salicylic acid you just have it be willow bark extract that what you have is not really salicylic acid because willow bark is anti-inflammatory but I don't know that it's specifically poor clarifying but I guess there's some amount of salicylic acid in willowbark so they say that

So we'll see if it does it again

It might have been a fluke

Oh the difference between magnesium a squarable a squarable (ascorbyl) phosphate and sodium a scorable (ascorbyl) phosphate it's not a lot I mean sodium is obviously assault but magnesium you know it's similar and I didn't get as far as finding out whether the magnesium was more bioavailable than the sodium version The sodium version is supposed to be anti acne and clarifying it's supposed to also be brightening and I think but I didn't actually get far enough to be able to say for sure but I think the magnesium is possibly more brightening but not as clarifying as far as acne

The sodium version is twice as bioavailable as a scorable glucoseide (ascorbyl glucoside)

Which is a sugar form oh I should mention these are all forms of vitamin c that you use on your skin I should have probably led with that but I was just like well everybody knows that but probably everybody doesn't know that and the form of vitamin c that I have been focusing the most on trying to find things with that in it is tetrahexydecyl ascorbate which is lipid soluble instead of water-soluble like those other forms so it's possibly better able to get in there and do something about your collagen then the water soluble forms that are more surface however I didn't realize that they were getting rid of acne things and really I don't think what I have is acne exactly

But whatever

Do you remember how when I wasn't eating meat I went through all kind of tribulations to try to get a vegetarian chicken soup

And I never quite got it to taste like chicken soup

Well I cannot tell you how much chicken soup I have eaten during the pandemic

Quite a bit

I mean I guess I could have had it more because I haven't had it every single week

But I don't think there has been one month where I didn't have it twice or rather I didn't cook it twice generally I get more than one meal out of it

Now I've seen a lot of people when they cook the chicken soup they might cook it with the vegetables in it but then they take the vegetables out but I do not do that

and I have experimented with other vegetables but pretty much the essential vegetables are carrots celery and onion You can have other vegetables but you have to have those and it's not really improved by the addition of other vegetables

And generally I use noodles

But every once in a while to mix it up I have rice

Rice makes it a little hardier I think

It also makes it seem a little healthier

It's funny because if I'm buying chicken soup in cans I mean I might buy like one of those big generic cans of chicken noodle soup from concentrate because you can eat that

And realistically I ate that when I was a kid I don't hate it but if I'm going to buy chicken soup in a can to enjoy I think the only kind I've ever really liked in the canned soups is the progresso chicken with rice

I'm not a big can soup buyer

Although I will say there was a time in my life when I was in my twenties and in college that I thought the answer just the answer was to have a bunch of cans of Campbell's cream of whatever soup and a box of white Zinfandel in the fridge because if you mix any of those cans of cream of mushroom soup with I mean essentially white wine but at that point it was the '80s and white Zinfandel was like the thing right and this was after I had taught myself to drink wine but you know I didn't have a big budget and you could get a big box of that white zinfandel for pretty cheap and it would last forever cuz it's packaged in those cryopak things that are gravity-fed

It's just kind of funny to me that I thought that was you know like acceptable food

and I suppose I could try it again now it's probably not bad I mean I didn't ever have bad palate but that was my idea of cooking quickly for myself in my twenties

I did a lot of microwave baked potatoes

I did a lot of microwave chicken breasts

I got when I got my Macy's card I got this pan well I got a couple of different pans they were calphalon anodized aluminum I think is what it's called not the stainless steel ones I got to skillet and I got a like regular pot I don't know what you call those things saucepans is that what they're called sauce pans that had a steamer insert and then I started cooking things where I was like steaming chicken or fish and vegetables and then I would make a sauce with the cream of chicken or cream of mushroom or cream of asparagus or cream of celery there's a whole bunch of cream of soups mixed with white zinfandel and that was my fancy sauce

But I got to be honest with you and there were plenty of times when I just ate microwave popcorn or one part of one of those ring cakes you can buy at the store for pretty cheap

But I hate microwave popcorn the way a lot of people in college ate ramen

I would get that super movie theater extra ultra butter kind and I would eat it and then I would I'm not kidding you I would lick that like greasy salty yellow stuff off the packets and say yum yum yum because there used to be no limit to the amount of salt I thought was good

When I was a kid I put salt on everything

I put salt on cottage cheese

Which I feel confident I got from my father

But the idea of salt on cottage cheese is really gross to me now and I can't remember the last time I was at a restaurant and I put salt on something I used to always put salt well no probably whenever I went to a place where I got eggs because I put salt on eggs and they don't usually put salt on eggs when they're cooking them I don't think but for some reason eggs taste gross to me without salt

But like generally when I would go to a restaurant which I haven't done in a while I mean Jesus since March I guess but when I would go to a restaurant I would always when I was a kid put salt on it I don't even think I tasted it before I put salt on it I just assumed everything needed salt but now I'd say a lot of things are too salty for me The same way a lot of things are too sweet for me

Anyway chicken soup is good I like chicken soup

Generally what I've done is bake a chicken and then put the bones and extraneous meat on the chicken into the crock pot and cook it for like a day and a half or something to make a bone broth and then put in the vegetables and like a couple of thighs and the noodles but those you got to put in like kind of at the last minute so it's chock full of ingredients sometimes there's not enough broth and you've got to like add broth to it but at the beginning of the pandemic I got multiple jars of that bone broth that they sell at the grocery store and I haven't even used any of them because every time I go to make soup I just make bone broth in the crock pot

My mother was not a very good cook but she was pretty decent at chicken noodle soup well no not chicken noodle soup she never put noodles in it but chicken soup she would put a lot more vegetables she would always put like squash what else did she put in there she might have put potatoes yeah I think she did I don't think potatoes are really necessary especially if you're if you're putting noodles or rice then the potatoes are kind of too much but I think she put potatoes and I know she put squash and she might have put in other things I mean I kind of think she didn't have a recipe I kind of think she just took whatever there was available and threw it in there The fact that my mother could make a decent chicken soup is like a testament to the fact that chicken soup is so fundamentally solid that it's hard to totally screw it up

But yeah carrots and celery and onions I'm standing by that

The cat is howling I've got to go feed him again

I'm having a very hard time focusing

I made oatmeal ate oatmeal

I got started

Or distracted

Comparing sodium ascorable phosphate to magnesium ascorable phosphate to ascorbal glucoside

And then I looked over and I saw that there was something but then when I went there there wasn't and I don't know what happened

If this brain fog stuff is something that people have all the time I don't know how they function

All right well I'm drinking coffee I washed my face I got to say I still feel kind of muzzy headed

Also I seem to be having just kind of flow through my head situations from my past work where I was not the greatest or most enlightened or smartest

And I'm finding that I can take this information in several ways

I can look at it as a criticism and feel bad about it

or

I can look at it as a critique of me as a whole and feel like maybe I am not an accurate assessment of my skills levels

or

I can look at it as a self-assessment and see the ways in which I've grown and would do those things better if I was doing them again

And I'm choosing to look at it in the last way but I would prefer to be honest with you not to be doing that right now and the fact that I don't want to be self critiquing is slightly undermining the efficacy of choosing that perspective

Because the fact that I'm not that into it is making me lean a little more heavily towards the wow I really under assessed the degree to which I was just a normal person as opposed to a really super awesome person

but I don't know all of that is kind of weird I mean I typically do have a few things that'll pop up that I'm reassessing but they're usually you know more or less current things that they're still some way I could you know have an effect on doesn't really do me all that much good to think about all the ways in which I fell short of my current expectations years ago

The sun coming in the window is really bright The blinds are pulled they're just like those you know kind of mini blinds the apartments have that are made out of that very flimsy metal and they're closed

But a lot of light is coming in and I'm getting a great deal of enjoyment from the bright filtered I guess you'd call it bright filtered light

I just have the fan on and my phone says it's 72° outside which is pretty cool

I think I'm hungry

I got some of those packets of instant oatmeal I try not to eat those I try to make real oatmeal but those packets of instant oatmeal are what I ate as a kid so they've got kind of a comfort food aspect so I got some

Maple and brown sugar and then you put like a handful of raisins well my handful I guess your handful would be too many

Okay I'm out of bed

I'm going to make coffee I think

Okay so I'm awake sort of

Was going to get up at 8:30 send every set my alarm for 10:30

And I have this sense that I'm getting up at the big slab of color

which doesn't make any sense I understand with one part of my mind but the other part of my mind it makes perfect sense and somehow the big slap of color is a desirable thing

And I have a real version to being vertical

I just want to stay in the big slab of color

And then I see all these variations with little globs of color as an option somehow

I'm uncertain exactly what that means if it's manipulating the big slap of color into little blobs of color or if somehow staying in the bed would allow me to make the little blobs of color I'm just not sure

I really don't want to get up my head hurts but it usually hurts when I wake up in the morning I've got plugged up sinuses that when I get up and take a shower and start moving around go away if I don't take a shower they would less so go away but they would partially go away actually they're not going to completely go away because there's allergens and what not

And I have been continuing to have higher than average Amanda sneezing

I dreamed about I can't really remember I know there was coffee shops somehow

But it seemed like very long involved dreams that went on and on about lots of things so I don't think it was just coffee shops

Then there was the whole slab of color blob of color thing

and I'm pretty sure you ran there somewhere

And I just turned on my left side

I read somewhere quite some time ago that if you lay on your left side it helps to drain your lymph

Which is a good thing

And I pretty much laid on my back all night

Okay so I guess we're going to compromise

I'm going to set my alarm for like 20 or 30 minutes and I'm going to lay here and just enjoy laying in the bed and then if I fall back asleep the alarm should wake me up

I wish I could remember those dreams Tell them to you I think they were pretty interesting

it occurs to me that I didn't really explain myself very well when I said I was dizzy and I was going to go lay down I did go lay down but I fell asleep

Now I didn't finish my coffee it's very unusual that I don't drink the full first cup and then go get a second cup but only drink about half of the first cup and was like I really don't want coffee which is usually a sign that my stomach is upset and/or that I'm sick

taking naps in the middle of the day is also a sign that I'm not feeling very well it's pretty unusual for me to do that although my sleep patterns have been pretty erratic and I have had a lot of stress but sleeping during the day for me is a sign of illness

And then I got up and it was like I don't know 5:00 or something and I had toast and a baked potato cuz that was all pretty bland I was much less dizzy after I had the nap but I still did not feel well and I was having like cramps so that tends to reinforce the hormone thing

I I just really couldn't tell you what I have been doing I did research on retinols I I don't know I've just been kind of zoned out I watched some more Monty Python I didn't even really look through very much social media just a little tiny bit

But I'm pretty sure that the symptoms of covet are not just like nausea but actual you know vomiting or diarrhea not just like oh I feel nauseated and I'm dizzy I'm pretty sure that's hormonal and it's been a while since I had a bout of this exactly this way but I'm pretty sure this is what my body did right before it had periods

Now I've had hormonal stuff I don't know how frequently I've had that I don't have any sense of time anymore at all but I know I've mentioned it a few times but I feel like it's highly likely that I will actually have a period because I had that whole emotional maudlin episode which would be consistent with really bad PMS now that I'm looking at it after the fact and then I had the dizziness and the nausea and I feel better now but I've been real out of it all day I would say brain fog is a pretty good description

so I'm sorry I know I said I was going to go lay down and then I kind of disappeared and that might be a source of worry and I don't mean to be that I feel confident that I do not have covid

And I'm going to put on some of that hormonal cream before I go to bed

I love you very much sweetheart

💋

 i'm feeling generally better

but i'm not going to the studio tomorrow

both so i can get over it

and so that i have a change to make sure that's what it is

so i don't have the covid, for sure for sure

i love you very much sweetheart

gonna go to bed now and get up at more or less regular time

sleep well sweetheart 

 good morning sweetheart

how are you doing today?

i'm waiting for her to call--  appt was 10:30

but

first appt and whatnot, but it also occurs to me that i'm not sure there's anything for me to be hearing yet

they think she has sleep apnea and she has to be tested for it

not something they can do in the office today

so it may all just be asking her questions and physical exam

and scheduling

might not be anything to see here

i'm still, or again, really, having nausea

i looked it up

it can be an early sign of covid

but

i don't think it is

i still think some kind of hormonal thing is more likely

and that is what it feels like today

so she called

he lungs sound good

he doesn't think there's enough evidence for apnea

to be worth sending her to a test at this particular moment

she's using an oxygen concentrator when she sleeps

he wants her to continue with that

i feel a little dizzy

i'm going to go lie down, i think

i'm drinking some emergen-C

i love you

Well surely is having surgery in the morning

They've had her on IV antibiotics and although the infection was going up her arm it's headed back down to her fingernail and they checked and it hasn't gone into the bone so they have to basically lance it and cut away the dead tissue

and I heard her talking with my mom on the phone well my mom was talking to her caregiver but I could hear her talking in the background and she is scared I doesn't really understand what's going on and she wants to ask questions but she can't remember the words that she wants to use so she is asking questions but the word she's using are I mean they're real words but they have like a word salad quality to them but as soon as she says the wrong word she gets frustrated cuz she knows that's not the word she wants so she tries another one and that's not the word she wants and she tries another one and that's not the word she wants so it's it's just really kind of sad

But she just sounds angry and petulant

But I can tell she's scared so there's a quality of small child you know it's it's pretty sad

And my mother is going to lung doctor tomorrow because they think she might have sleep apnea when she was in the hospital they were monitoring her oxygen levels and the nurse told me that her oxygen levels had gone down when she was sleeping like significantly and when I asked the doctor about it the doctor didn't seem to know but then subsequently they decided that she might have sleep apnea

And I kind of wondered if they would have come to that conclusion if I hadn't asked about the oxygen levels going down but perhaps they noticed it on their own I don't know it doesn't really matter at this point

so she's going to this doctor but I can't go in with her if I go with her I won't be allowed in the building because there's no place for people to wait which was how it was in the hospital you know there was no waiting room so if you like if your whole family had come thinking you were going to get to see your loved one they would have been like no you're only allowed one family member and everybody else you know has to wait outside

Which I'm assuming that people knew and so they didn't bring loved ones that couldn't come up but it did seem like there were people milling about so I don't know

So anyway I can't go with her because I won't be allowed to go up and the only reason I want to go is so that I can find out what they say so what they said was that she could call me when she's up with the doctor and I could listen in and I could ask questions now will she do that I don't know while she remember I don't know so I guess I need to be prepared for that but I don't know if it's happening or not

Then she's got her regular doctor appointment in the afternoon but she's just getting blood taken for that she was back down to only 2 lb over today she says I don't know I I can't tell she doesn't look swollen at all to me and I made her promise to take the diuretic this evening as well

When I was on the way home and I was almost all the way home I had this like wave of nausea and my first thought was oh my God I've got the covet but I'm pretty sure I don't I don't know why I was having nausea sometimes if I'm really really hungry I can feel somewhat nauseated and I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast and it was kind of late but I've started taking iron again I am prone to anemia and I mean probably not so much anymore I think it had to do with really heavy menstrual cycles and not having those so but I haven't been feeling as good as I think I should feel and I decided that perhaps vitamins were in order and I have these vitamins they're called heme iron and they're designed really for if you have issues with anemia they have really high b vitamins and the iron is like 450% of your daily required whatever with the idea that you know you take them and it builds you back up faster but since it is so high I don't ever feel like I should take them every day because I don't want to get too much iron so I tend to take them sporadically you know like I'll just take I'll take it every other day for you know a few days and then I don't take it for a while I have this pain I get in my hips sometimes that for some reason I feel like is a sign that my iron is low so I'll take the iron then and until the hip pain goes away I can't explain that it isn't scientific it's intuitive and it might be completely wrong

But where I was going with this was I took that this morning now if I took that on an empty stomach it would make me feel sick and the way I felt was similar to how I feel if I took iron on an empty stomach except I probably would have actually thrown up if I had taken on that iron on an empty stomach and it was hours and hours and hours later so I have no explanation for it unless it was just you know stress or hormones or something I don't know

So I came in and I ate some crackers and I sat down for a little while and then I had cod kind of poached maybe is that what you would call it You put it in some water with a little bit of butter and a little bit of well a lot of lemon and you could good in the oven on a low temperature That's poached right and root vegetables carrots and beets and onions sweet potatoes and brussel sprouts I know Brussels sprouts aren't root vegetables but they're really good with root vegetables and it gets you a green in there

And then I fell asleep in the chair pretty much immediately

But I had a very exciting thing happen that was just about me didn't have anything to do with my mom it was just an exciting moment for me and this is probably going to be even more boring for you than hearing about my mom but I can't help it it was amazing

At some point during the pandemic months ago I saw a video that said that if you put cleansing oil on your face and you massage it for like 2 minutes that all of your blackheads and clogged pores and whatever will come out well maybe not all of them but many of them and I'm like I don't believe that but I would love for that to happen so let me try and I mean I'm massaged and massaged and massage to massage and I got like maybe one or two blackheads out of my whole face it's very disappointed

But I have not stopped trying right so you know every day at some point during the day I'm rubbing my face with this cleansing oil I have actually have a couple of different ones I have one that I use downstairs that's a little thicker and I can clean it off with those honest baby wipes and then I have some upstairs that's more liquidy and I use that in the morning usually although I haven't been using it in the morning lately because I've been using noxzema

Which I really like and is dirt cheap and I feel like it is at least as good and maybe better than anything else in terms of clearing my skin now it's not a beautiful immersive experience of the green beauty and the luxury and whatever but you know I have a really beautiful cleanser well it's almost all gone but I had a really beautiful cleanser that's from a Hawaiian company and it has red Alea Clayand hibiscus and all this kind of stuff and when I put it on my face it softens up my sebum plugs so that I can scrape at them and they come out well initially I thought of this is great but what it does is it makes me pick my face real bad so it's not really that good of an experience for me because it makes me do bad things that I shouldn't do

Well the noxzema it loosens the sebum plugs but you know I'm doing it in the shower so it's a little bit different situation be I can scrape with them a little bit and they come out and I don't end up doing as much damage I don't know whether it's because I'm in the shower or whether it's because of the noxzema experience or what but it's working for me and it's like cheap so I'm like okay whatever I'm not fighting this

But last night I put on I have the stuff that I bought with points at Ulta or something I don't know a while ago and I like it it's got polyglutamic acid in it and at first I think that's what it's called and at first I maybe it's polyhydroxy acid maybe probably glutamic acid is something else any rate it's like AHAs but it's bigger so it doesn't get in as deep doesn't irritate your skin as much it's actually not supposed to irritate your skin at all but I have weird skin and it gets over stimulated in whatever so when I got it and I used it I thought it was irritating my skin and I stopped using but then subsequently I started using it again and I decided that it wasn't actually irritating my skin it was purging and at the point when I started using it again I didn't have as much to purge and so it didn't cause as much trouble and so I started experimenting with it so now I use that periodically

So I put that on and it's an essence not a serum or whatever it's in essence so put that on and then I have a little bit of that Clinique salicylic acid stuff left and so I put that on my spots

And then I have this serum that I got from beauty pie I don't know probably a year ago or almost a year ago that I've used periodically and I like it but I still have quite a bit left and I'm like I'm just going to put this on too and it's a micropealing serum but it's it's pretty gentle so I thought you know I could handle it and when I got up and I went into the bathroom this morning I put that oil on my face and I started rubbing and oh my god all this stuff started coming out of my skin just all these little sebum plugs and they're really small you know it's not like I have gigantic blackheads or whatever they're really small and they're mostly not oxidized because I'm trying my best to get them out you know so they're mostly not visible but I can feel them or whatever and they bother me to have all the clogged pores so I just started rubbing in a circular motion and they just started coming out and I was like oh my god and there were so many of them and I was just like aaaahhhhh

and it was I mean it was the experience that I've been trying for all this time and then I was like f*** what did I do and I was trying to think back to what happened last night at this remarkable experience so it's

Exuvience probiotic anti pollution essence

Clinique clinical solutions clearing gel

And beauty pie micro peeling drops

The micro peeling drops are like fruit acids it's got mango and banana and some other thing I don't know

and so of course now I just want to do that like again and again and again but I'm not going to do that I'm not going to do it more than twice a week because that's a s*** ton of stuff and I want to f****** my moisture barrier but

When I looked at my face this morning I was like you know the spots aren't that bad so I put on I have this sunscreen that's made with zinc so it's a physical sunscreen but it was made by one of the people that I follow on Etsy and it's got zinc but it's also got all this amazing amazing stuff in it so it's very nourishing and I got it because you know I thought if I was going to go outside I might need a sunscreen and it had all this amazing amazing stuff in it and the sunscreens I had you know were expired and I have so much trouble with sunscreens irritating my skin and I had had really good luck with all of her tinctures and stuff and I liked the ingredients so I'm like I'll just get that and I mean it was more expensive than a super cheap zinc sunscreen but it was less expensive than the zinc sunscreen that I used last time I needed sunscreen and the one I really liked they stopped making I used to get one at whole foods and it it was white I mean it had a white cast I don't know that it looked that good but like I would wear it when I went on the road and by the time I would get to wherever I was going to see you whatever breakouts and things I had would be cleared up because zinc helps clear up breakouts so I thought well I'll put this on and I don't have a little bit of a white cast but it also has to cut down on the white cast she put this mica stuff in it so it's glowy so it it has a kind of a blurring effect so it doesn't it's not like a tinted sunscreen but it's like a blurring sunscreen so I put that on not in super large quantity and then I put a little bit of that tinted thing the covergirl thing on top of that and I was like well you know that pretty much covers it if you look real carefully you can see but if you aren't looking too carefully it's pretty pretty well concealed so I did that and I felt pretty felt like I looked pretty good and she didn't give me any s*** so I guess she either decided not to give me any more s*** or she didn't really notice I mean I really thought it looked pretty good so

I realize that that whole thing with the sebum plugs coming out of my face rubbing in an oil I realized that that's gross and to normal people and that that's probably not really what you want to hear about but for me that was like I don't know some kind of fantasy experience it was just amazing and it made me so happy

And then that I could basically quote do my makeup end quote without really wearing any makeup and look at myself and think I looked pretty good although I got to say the mask covers up awful lot of my face and then I've got my hair all pulled back and I don't think you get any real sense of me when you look at me

My hair seems very faded and my feature seemed very nondescript so I'm not going to say oh I look super good in a mask but you know I felt pretty good about it

So I guess I need to go to bed and on the one hand I am so tired so much tired of then it makes any sense to be

But on the other hand I don't really want to go to bed I don't know why I'm like that

But I'm not working tomorrow I'm just being on call for doctor phone calls that may or may not come and working on other things but not at the studio at home

I love you very much sweetheart 💋

I hope you're doing well I'm feeling a lot better about the world today I still have a lot of stress but I'm not spending a lot of time thinking about how I'm laying on the floor with a broken hip dying you know I mean that was not my proudest moment

All right what looks like we're on for today

And she has an appointment to have blood taken tomorrow

She's still up 2 lb

But I made her promise she would take the diuretic tonight as well

She did not tell them that she was up 2 lb when she made the appointment

and she doesn't have an appointment to see the doctor she says if she makes an appointment to see the doctor they'll make her wait for a week which may or may not actually be true I don't know but she says that if she's still up 2 lb she promises she'll tell him and ask to talk to the doctor I'm not sure what I can trust her with

And I told her we need to find out from the doctor how much of that diuretic she can take safely because we might be in a situation where we need her to take more of it

Because if you just have to sit close to the bathroom all day that's a whole lot better than going to the hospital

So anyway I am tied up for today for sure

I hope your day is going good so far I hope it continues to go good I love you very much

Well she's kind of difficult

And this isn't entirely about that

But Shirley is in the hospital now

my mom texted me and so she doesn't know whether she's going to want to work tomorrow or whether she's going to need to do something with Shirley

I'm not sure what she would be doing with Shirley because the woman who is hercaregiver isn't exactly the right word because she's in one of those kind of halfway houses for old people that you put people in when you can't really afford to put them in a nursing home

And she's already been in it a couple of them I think

At least one she got moved out of that one because she said they were mistreating her and then she had a strangely broken toe and so they moved her out of there and put her into this new place but now she has something wrong with her finger and she's been saying these people are mistreating her

And this woman who's her like I said caregiver isn't the right word because she's not staying with her and as it turns out Shirley is having visits from hospice care though although my mother talks about her with some degree of regularity she passes out actual information pretty badly

The last information my mother gave me was that she was not Alzheimer's she had dementia and that that was different and that she could live indefinitely with dementia

Well apparently she's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's at some point subsequently and she's receiving hospice doctor and nurse visits through her insurance 

But the woman who's in charge of monitoring her situation because my mother decided she couldn't deal with it and she'd been living with that woman for a while but her condition deteriorated to the point where she couldn't handle her anymore so now she's in charge of making sure that everything that needs to happen for her happens for her she saw her Thursday and she said she was fine Thursday but then apparently today she's got blood poisoning

So you know they don't know yet and she's in the hospital

And I don't know how hospital is for you there or if you even would know that but here they are currently allowing people to have visitors but they allow one visitor so since Shirley doesn't necessarily recognize people and this is the person she sees the most and this is the person who's in charge of making sure that all her stuff goes right That's the person who's going to be her official visitor so my mom will not be going to visit her while she's in the hospital but the hospice worker said she needs to move out of that place and they recommended a place to move her to so that's going to have to happen and I don't know whether my mother's going to need to be involved with that or not

But she said that she wasn't sure whether she was going to want to work or not so I told her I would be up and ready so that if she wanted to or if she needed me I would be available and she should just keep me posted so I may be free tomorrow or I may not

But the reason why I said my mother is difficult is that you know she's supposed to be monitoring her blood pressure and she's supposed to be monitoring her water retention because she had to be hospitalized and it was a pretty big ordeal and if her weight goes up two or three pounds she's supposed to call the doctor

But she went to see her cardiologist without me and he apparently told her she should just take an extra water pill which you know is probably what the other doctor would tell her to do so I don't necessarily have a problem with that as a thing to do but she's lying to me when I ask her about her numbers

I know this because hey I was pretty sure she was lying to me and then b she told me oh yeah I was lying to you and I'm pretty sure that she was up 15 lb and that was fluid maybe more than 15 lb that she had to be hospitalized but then when I was talking to her today she said it was 10 lb and she's up 4 lb now and I'm like well you know if did you call the doctor and she's like no I just took an extra water pill and I'm like okay but you're supposed to call the doctor if your weight goes up 2 or 3 lb and she's like well that's not what the cardiologist said and I'm like okay but what I understood was the agreement was that it was your regular doctor who was going to be monitoring you because it's hard to get in to see the cardiologist and she said call and she said that you needed to go in more frequently to be checked and she's like well she told me 2 to 4 weeks and it's been 4 weeks so I was going to call her tomorrow but she wasn't going to call her tomorrow

So I'm like okay well you know she took her extra water pill tonight because apparently she's taking the water pill one time a day now instead of two times a day

and she sure that it's all going to be fine in the morning and I'm like okay well you know way yourself before you call the doctor to try to make an appointment so that you can tell them if it's up and I mean it's not like I think 4 pounds is such a big deal

And it's not like I want to be you know the military police or something

But I mean I thought we were all on the same page that you know this is something that we need to be taking care of before it gets out of control and it wasn't 10 lb it was more than 10 lb but if she thinks it was 10 lb then she's almost halfway and she just is blase about it

I told her that the covid is coming and the hospitals are about to be completely overrun and that she wouldn't be able maybe to get medical treatment if things got out of control and besides she didn't want to be back in the hospital but I'm not certain that she's taking it seriously

And apparently I can't tell by looking at her if she's retaining a couple extra pounds of water That's just too small of a threshold

And see this is part of the reason why I have to be doing this because she can't be trusted

And you know if she wanted to die I could respect that I understand that I've wanted to die lots of times but she doesn't want to die

and I feel like she isn't taking the cover to seriously if she should be and I don't know how to ask her more specifically about her numbers without just being a complete b****

I don't know

I don't know

I'm not sure how to handle her

Anyway I thought I had written you this morning but I see that I haven't and I'm sorry I just to be honest I just watch Monty Python episodes all day and talk to her on the phone and you know I don't even know what else just kind of veged I mean it's been probably 5 hours since I stopped watching Monty Python episodes

I need to go to bed because I need to be up in case she wants to work and I didn't have to do it that way I could have said no if you don't know now then let's not do it but to be honest with you I didn't want to do that because I kind of feel like I should be watching her so if she wants to do it I kind of feel like I need to just so that I can keep an eye on her and try to make a closer assessment of her water retention and whatnot

Anyway I didn't mean for any of that to interfere with you

So I'm sorry

I am feeling some stress

But you know I don't know how much longer she's going to live like this I mean she has really good medical care she has much better medical care than I think I probably have ever had and for sure she has better medical care than what I'm going to have when I'm old and childless so they won't be anybody checking on me

I was thinking about that too

What it's going to be like when I'm old

although realistically I don't know how old I'm going to live to be

So you know that's not help helping anything

I think I told you I had a vision a few years ago that I was going to die alone in the desert

But I'm not like afraid of that

I kind of go back and forth about whether I think that's a good thing or a bad thing but I'm not afraid of it

I just really hope that I don't like fall down and break my hip and have to lay there until I starve to death or oh no I would dehydrate first so three days it'd be a long three days laying on the floor waiting for somebody to come by and find me and why would they I'm a f****** hermit I aspire to hermit this in a lot of ways so these are not happy thoughts but you know it could be worse

But this is not what you want from me this here

So then what do I say right so now it's late and I'm just saying it anyway I may as well have said it hours ago

If she does want to work tomorrow I may have to bust out the real makeup because I'm more broken out now than I was before

I don't know

I just don't know

I'm sorry I'm not more there for you

And I worry about you

Whether you're healthy or not

Whether you're taking good care of yourself

I hope that you are

And I hope that you understand why I didn't say anything earlier

And I hope you aren't unhappy with me for saying this now

I tried to get all upbeat I really did

I just didn't quite manage it

Then I'll be fine maybe

I wish I had another sibling

That Jennifer wasn't just the imaginary kid she talks about but was actually somebody I could stick her with

But truthfully there's a way in which this is psychological work that I really need to do to be able to have any closure about this

And she's been saying you know how I'm so awesome and talented and whatever and of course it's all because of what a great mother she was and when she said she had lied to me and I was like yeah I kind of thought so she's like oh we can't lie to each other because we're bonded at the heart

Can I just I don't know about that stuff I don't think she was a good mother and I don't know if we're bonded at the heart I don't feel very bonded at the heart

But she is my mother you know

And I love her

Even if I also hate her

Does that make sense

But my brothers they're not her kids

I'm it

And she's got her self all tied up with Shirley because she didn't want to trust Shirley's son and she keeps trying to get me to sign on to be in charge of Shirley if she dies and I'm like no I'm not going to do that I don't really want to have to deal with you dying and you know going and digging through your house and trying to figure out what I have to do and I'm not really emotionally prepared to deal with any of that but I'm not taking on extra people who aren't my responsibility

I didn't want my mom to take on this responsibility because she's old and she has a hard enough time taking care of herself

And that's not so much because she's old as it is just because she's crazy

But I'm I'm not taking on extra people I'm not and what she should do if that's the issue is go get a lawyer who would be in charge of that stuff but there isn't really enough money for that

Me and Shirley doesn't really have enough money for that she was just so determined that she needed to be in charge of all that

But when Shirley came down here to live with her you know she asked her son if he could take her one day a week and he was like no

But I think she had a worse relationship with with her kid then I have with my mom for sure and you know men aren't really expected to do that kind of stuff anyway

So whatever

You know

Yet another reason why being a girl is a bad deal

And that's enough of that

I love you very much sweetheart

Going to try real hard to wake up with a better attitude