Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

I did not watch the whole game I was monitoring but then when it became apparent that it was pretty amazing I found someplace I could watch it and I watched the last two sets I guess or maybe sets is not the right word

Okay I won't pretend that I understood exactly what the hell was going on but it was still pretty epic

Okay well I don't think I'm sick anymore

But I'd feel really tired and run down

I had some of that chili oil

And it was kind of surprising I mean I expected it to be really hot but it wasn't really hot but it was very flavorful and I got the big jar it's like I don't know 26 oz or something and it's most of their jars are like 7 oz I think so this one said it was the family / restaurant size and then it came with this little adorable spoon with a long stick I guess cuz I guess cuz it's a deep bottle but it's a little spoon and so that made me think oh man the stuff must be really hot

Plus you know some of the Chinese restaurants or Thai restaurants or Pan-Asian restaurants that I've been to or ordered from give you like a little thing of chili oil and I figured it would be similar to that you know chili oil oil with little chilies in it except that this stuff has other ingredients

And the story on the chili oil makers is that it was originally this woman and she had like a little lunch place in China where people would go and get food on their you know lunch break or whatever and one day she was lazy or running out of time or something the story very slightly and she didn't make the condiment topping for her foods

And supposedly like people were like oh you don't have the condiment topping today will never mind and they all left and went and ordered stuff from someplace else and that was when she realized that they weren't stopping there she wasn't wildly successful because they loved her food was because they loved her topping and so she's like well f*** it I'll just go into the condiment making business

So I had ordered Chinese food and I had some white rice left over and so I reheated that and then I put a little of the chili oil on top of it and tasted it and it was really really good but it wasn't really hot so it's like oh it's not that hot I could put more so it was a pretty good size bowl of rice but I think I ended up putting about a half a cup of this stuff on it it is amazing

It's got all the flavor of the chili but it's not very hot so you could eat more of it and it doesn't you know if you eat something that's too hot it kind of burns out your taste buds and you can't taste it so plus it's got a little MSG in it which intensifies all the flavors and I know that's a controversial ingredient that isn't probably good for you but I don't have a sensitivity to it so you know whatever

I don't seek it out but I don't have to avoid it specifically

So it's got all the chili it's got all these chili flavors but it's not so hot so you taste all the chili flavor I mean in a way that you wouldn't typically because you don't have that MSG and then it had fermented soybeans also in it but like as like a whole bean shape not like all mushed up like Miso or something

And I had that last night and it didn't cause me a problem so I guess my guts are more or less back to normal

And also I figured that I must not be sick anymore because I started reorganizing cabinets which is not something that I would do unless I had extra energy which I don't have extra energy so I don't know how to explain that really

But I've decided what I want to do is start having kind of a Japanese soup for breakfast kind of action

I still have plenty of seaweed but I did think about buying some kind of like dashi soup mix either buying bonito flakes or buying a powdered mix of dashi or packets or something

And doordash does have 99 ranch

But they don't have like a complete selection they have a a really abbreviated selection of things and I don't know I just ended up finding this stuff on Amazon that looked more like what I wanted

There was the stuff I bought from 99 ranch years ago and I actually found it when I was cleaning out the cabinet cuz I saved the bottle even though there's really not anything left in it because it's from I think it's from Taiwan but maybe it's from mainland China but it's a it's a soup concentrate and there's no I mean it may say soup concentrate in English but like the name of the brand doesn't have an English translation the name of the product doesn't have an English translation so I don't know what it's called I've bought it several times and 99 ranch but well maybe twice but I just have to recognize it so I started looking on Amazon under soup concentrate and I found this other thing that seemed like it was possibly pretty close although I've no idea what's in the original one I mean like no idea at all

But this new stuff that I got it's got fermented soybean essence which tastes a lot like soy sauce but it's not quite so salty and it's a little less intense and then it has a whole bunch of vegetables carrots and onions and turnips and kombu and shiitake and some other stuff so I'm like well I like all those things that sounds very much like what I'm looking for and it's organic so it's non-GMO soybeans which I would prefer

It's made in Korea

Anyway it came and it's super tasty it's not exactly the same as the other thing but it's you know pretty similar in spirit

And I tried a little bit of that mixed into some boiling water and it's really good so I mean I think I could probably just pour some boiling water mix that in mix in a little meso soup and bam

Of course I have all these grand ideas about seaweed and chopped up thin tofu sheet skin something and udon noodles and you know all these elaborate things but

I'm going to need to either have an order delivered from 99 ranch or go to 99 ranch I'm not going to try to get all of those ingredients from Amazon because I mean it just isn't possible anyway but then when I was looking on 99 ranch they only had like six different kinds of miso available

And none of them are kinds I've bought before so I don't know I really I ordered a large well large-ish tub of miso on Amazon one time and it was really gross I ended up throwing it away

And I had thought well you know white miso is so mild how could there possibly be a white miso that wouldn't be good

But I was wrong and now I'm kind of gunshy

So I don't know

So I'm very distracted with all these ideas I'm having a hard time focusing

And I feel a little bit I don't know if it's depressed or just kind of low affect I don't know I feel kind of weird emotionally

And I guess I've been feeling weird emotionally for a while but I wasn't specifically feeling weird emotionally while I was feeling sick I was just feeling sick but now that I feel better I guessed I feel like I should feel more

I thought maybe you seemed like you were a little sad but maybe I'm just projecting that

Anyway I hope you're doing well

I love you very much

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

96.7

I feel better

I think I'm going to go to bed now

I love you very much sweetheart 💋

There are two thermometers

It's not just always 97.4 because it's broken

or something

the one I've been using more recently

is a pointy at the head kind

and

it's new

with a new battery

Okay so I fell back asleep

And there's this whole dream with driving in the parking garages and ice and whatnot I don't really remember

But you also had superpowers

And there was this friend of yours

I was trying to date your daughter

And you demonstrated your powers by

Changing your size I started to say blowing yourself up but that's mean something different

And so you increase your size and you got really giant

Like sure I'm not to mess around

But then he like tricked you to where y'all were walking together and he kind of bypassed you and went into a restaurant to meet her

And then you like change yourself into some kind of like sports mascot like a ram but like a little tiny like helmet size RAM and then you blew yourself up really big like you were going to get him

And I don't know how that worked out

But then you and I were talking

Except in the dream I think I had some kind of superpowers too and for sure I was younger and cuter

And only got into an argument

About I don't know I'm not really sure now what the argument was about

But it had something to do with your superpowers versus my superpowers

And apparently we decided we were going to test them somehow only I don't think we actually decided that I think it was part of the argument somehow

And we were kissing

And arguing

And kissing

And my heart started pounding so hard it woke me up

Full cup in a pool of night sweat

97.4

I haven't fallen asleep yet

but I wanted to say

I'm still listening to drive your plow over the bones of the dead

and

I think I love it

I'm only half way through chapter VI

you should read it

I didn't know she had won the Nobel prize

at least not before I got the book

I'm not sure when I found out

so so good

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

I do not feel good at all

but

when I feel good again

I'm eating rice with chili oil

my stomach hurts

I ate some toast

it says it's not sure

if that's ok 

97.4

Okay so I guess I've been up about 3 or 4 hours

And I was having a craving for red meat so I guess that means I need protein

So I made some mashed potatoes and hamburger patty cuz I thought that would be pretty easy on my stomach

While still being meat

But now I'm having diarrhea

I don't kind of afraid to leave the bathroom

So no vomiting

But day 5 and the diarrhea is pretty bad still

And it hasn't been continual it's been kind of come and go but

I don't think there's any way this could be a cold

Because I haven't gone anywhere without being double masked

And colds just aren't that contagious

I mean I guess I have been around my mother without being double masked

But I don't think you can be a carrier for the cold without getting it

I feel like I have to have gotten it at the grocery store

And I just don't see how that's possible for a cold

So I don't know

I didn't take the homeopathic flu medicine cold and flu medicine yesterday cuz I wanted to see if it made a difference and I slept for at least 12 hours and when I woke up I feel like I did feel a little worse

But I have subsequently taken it today

So I don't know what all the contestant will distress is about

But it cannot at this point be food poisoning because I've had a whole days when I didn't have any vomiting or diarrhea well at least one whole day namely yesterday

So I don't know

When I woke up today my joints were all really stiff and when I walked into the bathroom the light was almost blinding you know the way if you had a migraine light is almost blinding but I didn't have a migraine I just had a mild headache

And it wasn't sunlight it was fluorescent light because the sun was already down

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you very much 💋

I've been thinking about it a lot lately

I don't think you look bad with a mustache

I just don't think you look like you

If you take a bunch of time to look tough and whatever then it can look really sexy

But when you're just looking like yourself I don't like it

But I'm not sure that that's because it doesn't look good

And I want to make perfectly clear if it would make you happier to have a mustache I'll get used to it eventually

I think I just have kind of bad associations with mustaches

And I really love the way you look

And so for me the mustache messes it up it makes me think of my father and like other guys that I've dated and just none of it has good association so it it's distracting and slightly triggering

But I think I presented it as though you didn't look good that way in an absolute sense and that probably isn't true

I think probably if that's a look that makes you happy then you should just do it and I'll figure it out

I don't know why I'm so like obsessed with this right now but it's not like I haven't thought about it off and on for the entire time since

Not sure how coherent this is

To recap

I don't like the mustache

Unless you're going to spend all of your time looking mean and tough

But I don't want you to spend all your time looking mean and tough so

I don't like the mustache

But the most important thing

Is that you like the way you look

So when I'm trying to say is if you're happier with the mustache I will readjust

And if I made you feel like you did not look good that way in an objective sense

Then I'm sorry that was a dick move

I love you very much

This doesn't seem terribly lucid to me

But I'm still not running a fever

Well I ate the oatmeal but my body was still crying out that it wanted brown rice cooked in bone broth so I managed to cook that and I ate a little bit like a little tiny bit cuz it wasn't quite as done as I wanted it to be but it was done enough so I scooped a little out and just put the rest back in with the lid on to steam out I put and this might have been a mistake some garlic powder and some dry lemon powder which is a new spice I got at the phenicia I don't know a couple months ago month and a half ago and some dulse

And now I'm not sure that was a good idea at all

Although it could be the peanut butter that wasn't a good idea

I don't know my stomach does not feel happy

I'm pretty sure I'm sick

But there is a voice in my head that is saying no you're just becoming increasingly aware of every little ache and pain and you're making a big thing You're faking it you're faking it cuz you don't want to go to school

And in point of fact I never faked it so that I could not go to school when I was a kid because I wanted to get away from my stepmother I wanted to go to school

Anyway I finally just went ahead and texted my mother because of voice in my head was like yeah well what if you were making a big deal because she hasn't texted you to check and see if you're okay and she's sick or dead or something

So I texted her and she was fine

She reiterated that we are not doing it next week but she didn't make it sound like it had anything to do with my being sick or not sick

I think she thinks the fact that I haven't had a fever means that I'm not really sick

And I got to admit I have sympathy for that feeling

Because I feel like if I was super sick I would have a fever so I don't know

have not been up long

97.4

extreme fatigue

stomach feels kinda hair trigger

I wanted brown rice cooked in bone broth

but I couldn't quite handle that

too much standing

too long

so I made instant oatmeal

with raisins and peanut butter

we'll see how I handle that

Okay well I'm doing better again

And I don't want to overdramatize my situation I'm not like oh so sick

I've had some symptoms that have been unpleasant

But except for the vomiting

They really have been that bad

And since the vomiting was on one day and it was contained to a span of several hours

I just I don't know whether to say

Oh yes I have covid

Or to explain the symptoms away to other things

Ed I have been taking

Who's Ed?

And I have been taking the homeopathic flu medicine I've been taking it more like once every 12 hours than once every 6 hours

I'm also taking something called bioplasma by Hylands

I had started taking that before I got sick

There was just a lot of chatter

Some Amazon reviews some YouTube videos blah blah blah that said that the stuff was amazing for pretty much everything that could possibly be wrong with you

And I have a bias against Hylands because when I couldn't find the Boiron homeopathic stuff before I tried them and I felt like none of their stuff did anything but this is a little bit different it's not plant things it's cell salts so bioplasma is the 12 cell salts and it's supposed to be for relief of symptoms of colds, simple nervous tension, fatigue, and headaches

And it comes in this kind of cool looking bottle and there's like a thousand tablets and it was like 10 bucks but you take like four tablets at a time or something so it's not like a thousand doses but still it's an awful lot

So I mean I suppose it's possible that I'm sick and the homeopathic stuff is making me feel better and making me not be sick

But I find that to be honest with you kind of hard to believe

and I mean

It's not that I want to be super sick

It's just that I'm not sure if I'm sick

Or if I'm just having what sick symptoms

I mean that vomiting was definitely illness

And it was extremely unpleasant and a little bit scary

But I can't absolutely rule out some sort of food poisoning although it doesn't really fit any of the patterns I can't absolutely rule out hormones either although it doesn't fit any of those patterns

But this isn't fitting any of the patterns that I have for cold or flu really either

So I don't feel confident saying that I have covid but then if I don't have covid what the f***** wrong with me

And I guess I feel better in the middle of the night because I just feel better in the middle of the night anyway

I am definitely very stiff and cracky and poppy like every time I move anything it cracks and that seems like it's a lot more than usual although that's not exactly an uncommon symptom in a milder degree

And I'm definitely still jangly

I'm not very well focused either

Oh I forgot to tell you

The universe told me to buy a book

I can't explain exactly how that happened

Because I can't really remember

but somehow

The universe thinks this is directly related to

And will be informative for

Writing my book

It says I was getting a little too lecture-y

where I need it to be more personal

So there's that

I think I'm going to go to sleep now

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

 update

feel much worse

diarrhea

pulse felt in head and ears

like a sort of pounding but not like my heart is involved

anxiety/tension in neck and shoulders much worse

jangly

 i've been up a little while

headache and backache continuing

new swollen glands in neck

not painful

i really don't know what's up with me

i feel like i'm sick

but

not bad sick

so

i don't know if i have covid. or what

mom has still not checked in

my teeth hurt

i think i was grinding my teeth or clenching my jaw in my sleep

and my anxiety is way up

i love you very much

I feel much better

are solid food

I don't know what to think

I'm really surprised though that my mother hasn't checked in with me

I was supposed to go photograph stuff on Friday but on Thursday I texted her and ask her how she was doing she said she was fine cuz I figured if I got it from somebody she was the most likely source since I found out she's been going out to eat twice a week for months well maybe more than twice a week I don't know

I was appalled

But she said she was doing fine

And I told her I had just gotten through throwing up and that I didn't think I should probably go on Friday because I wasn't sure what was wrong with me and I didn't want to get her sick in case I was contagious

But she's like oh no okay not Friday and not next week either

And I'm like okay cuz I wasn't saying I had covid I was just saying I thought there was a possibility I could have covid but she's basically like okay yeah well I don't want to see you for more than a week

And okay that's fine but I don't know I would have checked in with her

So I don't know I'm fixing to go to sleep I think

Goodnight sweetheart

💋💋💋

I love you very much

still alive

I woke up

I felt feverish

I took my temperature

97.6

there was only one thing I remembered from my dream when I woke up

and now I've forgotten it

temp was 97.2 yesterday

so I guess

no fever

if I have covid

who/when/where

doesn't add up

but I do feel sick

successfully ate some canned chicken noodle soup before bed

with bone broth

my body had been screaming

CHICKEN SOUP 🐓🍲

all day

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Well the stomach pain is back only I'm not sure whether it's stomach pain or menstrual cramping

But I'm full on vomiting now

So it's either the worst case a hormones that I've ever had or have covid

It's pretty much got to be one or the other I think

And I feel a whole lot shittier oh I can't believe it actually spelled that out it didn't recognize the shittier is s*** That's funny to me

I hope you're doing okay

I don't know I think I'm going to at least get back into the bed

I'm not throwing up any food I don't have any food in my stomach I guess anymore so I just threw up some I don't know mucusy stuff and then I was trying to drink emergency and I just do that up so if we've got a situation where not even liquids can stay down that's bad but we'll see

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you very much 💋

Okay there was more to the stream but all that I can remember right now is I was talking to somebody about these people at a restaurant and kind of a dildo country type place

Okay I'm leaving that because it's hysterical

I was yawning

But I said down home country type place

And they were having some big conversation that was I don't know cool or meaningful or something I don't really remember and this lady who was sitting next to her at a table next to the people I was talking to and me

She asked what I was talking about

And so I told her oh you could just watch the video blah blah blah

And she's like where what I watch the video

And I could not think of the name YouTube

And it was freaking me out really bad because I watch a lot of YouTube

And I was like how can I not think of the name of it I watch like 6 hours of it a day

And she would come up with something and I would be like no I never even knew about that thing

I'm like it's not Vimeo I know it's not Vimeo

But after several tries

I came up with I found the video on some site called BBsays

That's probably not it but I'm sure about the BB part maybe it was BBbabyz

I thought that was really weird

Oh and the one I had right before I woke up they were these two people and they knew each other they wanted to make movies and so they were going to shoot I want to say it was a 43 second trailer teaser trailer something it was going to get people interested in their movie I guess theoretically interested enough to give them the money to make the movie

So they each went and I heard some people

And one group had these very distinctive hoodies with I don't know like company markings or something although

And I was noticing that and saying man you know they're doing all this shooting and they don't have permits for anything and them being so easy to identify could kind of come back and bite them in the ass but it looks really cool

And I don't think that this was part of the intended movie but the main guy he kept getting his dick caught in things which I mean on the one hand isn't funny at all but on the other hand was pretty funny in a slapstick way if it wasn't real which I think it was

So I mean they filmed it trailer but I don't know that it actually had anything to do with what the movie was originally supposed to be about but I think all that slapstick stuff stayed in

And the other one she went to like a whorehouse and hired a bunch of girls to play her daughters and they didn't really want to do it but they had to and I don't know that they were all that good or that the thing came off all that well

And then I was having some sort of a get-together I don't know if it had anything to do with their movies or not I sort of don't think so but I had beer multiple six packs of beer but they seemed too light so I was a little afraid that once I opened them up they weren't going to have much beer in them and they were a some special kind of beer

And then somebody I'm not 100% sure who it was it was somebody that I've known in the past I mean like an actual person I think that I knew in the past maybe Johnny who was the beverage department head before me

But maybe not I mean it didn't make a lot of sense

But maybe it was tied in with the beer I don't know at any rate he was like

I don't remember what brought this up

But I was getting out of my car or getting into my car one or the other and he was like oh are they going to breed you too

I can't really imagine what situation immediately preceding that would have made that an appropriate thing to say but Johnny was kind of a dick so maybe that is why it was Johnny

And I was like dude I'm 51 I'm too old to breed

Which is funny because I'm not 51 I'm 55 so I'm making myself younger and my dreams I don't know maybe it wasn't me maybe it was somebody else but I thought it was funny after I woke up

And he's like oh I'm so sorry

I don't like well I mostly didn't want kids

It was only really in the face of not being able to have them soon that kind of made me want them

And then at the place where we were all drinking beer somebody showed up who was famous enough that we rearranged all the furniture to put him in a particular spot I'm not sure why we thought that's bot was better than any other spot but we did

I'm pretty sure he was a musician

But he wasn't anybody that I know in real life

Or no oven real life

But I think he had a pink guitar

I'm confident that was more to my dream than that but that's all I remember right now

Well I still feel bad

I still have a headache

And an upset stomach

And my back is still really sore

I don't think I have the covid though

I mean that's supposed possible that I do but I don't think I do

I got a cystic acne thing

So possibly I'm having some hormonal stuff

But I've been taking the promencil for almost 3 weeks and I thought by and large it had been going well

Now it has been cold

But it's warmer today

I just don't know what's going on

But I love you

And I hope that you're doing well

I'm going to go to sleep now

Goodnight sweetheart

💋💋💋

I love you very much

Chapter 2 (not finished with chapter)

I suppose the gold standard would be to start at the beginning.  The problem is I can't locate the beginning.

I mean, there was a point in the past when things seemed to make more sense.  The problem is that it didn't, not like in an absolute sense.  There's always a point a little further back where things seem to make a little more sense.  Did it, though?  I think the world has only ever made sense within the framework of set expectations and seeing what you expect to see given those expectations.

I've just about decided that all of that is an illusion anyway.  The sense that things seem to make, it's only within some limited framework that someone can convince you is true.  Like the belief you perhaps had that your parents know everything and you can trust what they tell you to be true.  That's more or less true.  More in that they know more than you do as a small child.  More in that most of what they tell you they at least believe to be true.  There are all those exceptions though like they didn't know the answer and they didn't want to look it up so they just kind of guessed but you thought it was true until the point at which you realized oh crap I believe things that are wrong.  That's a less scenario.  Maybe that less scenario causes you to answer incorrectly in class and causes you some embarrassment.  Maybe it's just some little thing you jenga into your entire big picture of the world.  If it gets pulled out unexpectedly, or if you discover you need to pull it out, it's near the base, since you got it young, and perhaps the entire picture becomes unstable.  So see, more or less.

Also there's a whole category of things they tell you that they know to be untrue as they are saying them, but they're maintaining the fantasy-- for your sake.  An example of this might be Santa Claus.  However, if you think about it, I think you'll realize it goes much much further than that.  There are also truths your parents tell you about things that have to be taken on faith.  Not just religious truths.  Normative reality.  Societal truths that might actually be true for you right now, but that you shouldn't expect to stay true if your conditions change even a little bit.  No one really adequately explains the changeable nature of truth.

So since I'm not sure that I've ever really known what was going on, and I am highly dubious that there has ever really been a point which could conclusively stand as the point of beginning, unless I go back to my birth which would be at least my beginning, but I don't remember it.  Maybe this is all a very silly windup to say that any beginning is purely arbitrary.  Maybe that's just an excuse for choosing an arbitrary beginning.  To-ma-to, to-mah-to.  

Anyway I'm not going to go back to the beginning whenever the beginning was.  I'm not even going to go back very far.  I'm going to go back to, as usually is usually the case with me, the first thing I had become obsessed about.  I don't mean obsessed like truly truly obsessed, instead I mean the object of fixation that seems to me somehow symbolic--  in this case a little sculpture called America.

rough draft chapter 2 (not the whole chapter)

Okay I'm going to have to come back and retype this but I was going over it before I went to sleep and I'm going to go make I don't know coffee or tea or something and probably some toast so I'm not going to be typing this right away and you don't need to wait to see I guess

I suppose the gold standard would be to start at the beginning. The problem is I'm not really sure when the beginning was. I mean there was a point at which things seemed to make more sense, not like in an absolute sense, you could always go back a little further and have things seem to make more sense.  However I've just about decided that all of that is an illusion anyway.  The sense that things seem to make it's only within some limited framework that someone can convince you is true.  Like the belief that your parents know everything and you can trust what they tell you to be true.  That's more or less true.  Most of what they tell you they at least believe to be true.  There are all those exceptions though like they didn't know the answer and they didn't want to look it up so they just kind of guessed but you thought it was true until the point at which you realized oh crap I believe things that are wrong.  Also there's a whole category of things they tell you that they know we're not true but they're maintaining the fantasy for your sake.  An example of this might be Santa Claus but if you think about it I think you'll realize it goes much much further than that.  

Anyway I'm not going to go back to the beginning whenever the beginning was.  I'm not even going to go back very far.  I'm going to go back as usually it's the case with me to the thing I become obsessed about.  I don't mean obsessed like truly truly obsessed, instead I mean the thing that seems somehow symbolic that I become fixated on.  In this case a little sculpture called America.

Well I went to bed early thinking I would be able to get up early and I set my alarm but I did not get up well I got up to pee but then I was like no I need to go back to bed

My head still hurts

I feel a little not dizzy whatever's right before dizzy

My back hurts really bad but that could be because I slept wrong

My whole head is still very full but at least I don't have that audible heartbeat pounding thing in my ears that was really off putting and also my neck doesn't seem to be as stiff today it was literally just cracking yesterday

And now I'm telling myself I'm going to go downstairs cuz I need to take all my vitamins and pills and things and they're all downstairs but I'm like but I'll just lay down for this

Meaning this

I don't know if I'm sick or what normally I'm not like man standing up as just too much of a strain so I don't know I just don't know

But I had a weird dream

I was staying at this I'm not sure if it was a house or a trailer that was set into a foundation it was pretty rickety but it wasn't like an obvious trailer

And it was somebody's trailer or house or whatever it was that I was staying in but I don't know exactly why I was staying there

I think there was a little bit of they were old and in a nursing home or something or it was it was somehow a house that was in my family that needed somebody to stay there so they were going to help me out by letting me stay there but it was out in the like excerbs

And it was some guy who was staying with me in case I needed to be driven to the hospital because I was very very pregnant

And I'm not clear on exactly who he was

But there was like a little park area out across from the house and there was a group of people like kind of gathered there and they were having some sort of a reasonably mild but seeming like it could escalate it any moment type of altercation

And seem like there were a lot of red hats there

So then the sky who's there with me he starts screaming out the window at the red hats get him all riled up

I'm like cut that out I would like to maintain a low profile here you know I'm not exactly in fighting condition and I don't want to fight anyway

But he just kept screaming out the window getting them all riled up and they started taking on the I'm not sure exactly what I mean by this they didn't like physically change but they just seemed to me more like not zombies but some kind of demonic creatures you know kind of like there's that picture in the subway car window where they're all leaning against it and they look like zombies that was in Michigan maybe

All this just kind of took on the sense that they were now monsters outside the house that might get in any moment to attack me

And I went to the backyard and this guy had said a fire a big fire like I guess it was supposed to be a bonfire or a campfire or something but he'd set a big fire right next to a tree and I'm like we need to put that out right now before it catches the tree on fire

And then there was something about blue

I don't remember if I put on blue glasses or if I got blue something I don't remember I just remember that I really needed blue and then it was there and things were better but it was kind of abstract

I love you very much sweetheart

💋💋💋

I'm going to bed now

I see that I didn't say good night

I did not mean to skip saying good night I just somehow did

I'm sorry

I had a lot of dreams

I had one about a woman who lived in the house that had like multiple concrete slabs at different levels foundation and then somehow like a cover had built over that

And there was more story to that but I don't remember it

And then there was another part with the museum

I kept rearranging the objects on this table which I think was supposed to be representative of a room set up but I don't now remember what the objects were

And then right around the corner there was a radio and I turned it on and it was broadcasting music and talking about things that happened in the past and I'm not quite sure how it did that because I think it was a real radio and it was picking up a real station

And then there was an entryway or covering or something to the metro station and it was done it was much more like the Paris Metro it was wrought iron and it had all these people characterized in it that were colorful and beautifully done and they were kind of like the elders from the neighborhood they were all black and they were all really old but they were the current elders they were like still alive and this was like a tribute to them

But they looked a little like the people on the doors of encanto which I just recently watched

Also you have kind of a theme song in my head apparently it's not new it's been going on for a little while I just haven't told you about it before and maybe I have some vague recollection of this actually being something that happened years ago I don't know what it's in relation to why it starts playing it particular times but apparently the spy who loved me is your theme

that's all for chapter 1, chapter 2 starts tomorrow

more Chapter 1

So maybe you understand the way the pandemic has been for me a little better.  It's a category of sickness that never passes me by.  Sometimes when cold and flu season sweeps through my work group I catch it right away, then by the time it has worked it's way through everyone else, it has mutated enough for me to catch it again.  Just months of sickness.  Not bad enough for me not to work.  Still, months of dragging myself around.  What all those seasons didn't have, that this one did was an actual fear of death.  I did have a flu once that made me understand how people died from flu, but I was never afraid that I would actually die.  Also, now the doctors, who normally pretended that they knew what they were doing, really didn't know what to do.  So I just knew that if I got this stuff I would absolutely die.

I'm not claiming, at this point, to be completely sane.

So when I say I came downstairs into another world.  I don't know exactly what I mean.  I just know that that was my sense of things.  The scent of tomato plant was less like a symptom and more like a sign.

I'm a little uncomfortable talking about signs.  Even when I'm in a state which I feel pretty securely looks sane from the outside.  When you start talking about signs.  People think you're crazy.

I dreamed

There were two people

And maybe they both were me but maybe neither one of them was me I'm not sure

But the one I identified more closely with and been in some sort of possessed state I guess where they had kind of meshed with some historical person and painted this mural along the wall of my mom's old art gallery from the '70s

It was painted I think pretty much exclusively from this particular shade of red with some violet in it so it's up it's darker than a magenta but it's not quite as purple as like a burgundy would be but just that one color kind of a line drawing almost

And it was a table set for not sure whether it was specifically breakfast lunch or dinner but it was some meal and it was on the deck of this ship like a cruise line or kind of ship and that's the person who I'm tempted to say as I because I identified more closely with this person came to and was looking at this immediately said what it needs is blue needs a little bit of blue here for to give a hint to the sky and it needs a little bit of blue here to give him to the sea and so just immediately upon coming back to themselves they wanted to continue on the painting that they had just done under the influence of this other person who was a ostensibly a great master but it didn't say who

But it was possibly influenced by a book I saw on omnivore about avocados it was a cookbook about avocados and it had this line drawing of a table in a very bright pinky red

The other person had all the people on the cruise ship and not just people animals too they had to kill them all but in like a clue way like you know Colonel mustard in the library with a candlestick kind of thing they had to for each person and animal and everybody on the ship they had to kill them like that I mean they didn't all have to be colonel mustard in the library with the candlestick but they had to have those kind of statistics like you know in the pool blah blah blah you know I don't know

And I don't think they were super enthusiastic about doing that to start with but by the time they had gotten through a few hundred they really weren't enthusiastic about it and by the time they got to the animals they were feeling kind of a love for life that they had never experienced in their life

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Chapter 1 continues

Of course none of this precludes the possibility that my olfactory hallucination is based in purely physical malfunction.  I could have.  There is a long list.  However, I consider this to be much less likely, or, at least, a much less likely to be useful area of focus, because it's much more of a one point on a line situation.  I could, sure, have a brain tumor, but is it likely?  They don't run in my family, I'm not like low key worried about brain tumors, and, anyway, the only way to check for that is to run expensive tests or rather to have professionals run expensive tests.  I'd rather wait until I have at least one more point on the line, and, honestly, probably two more points on the line, before I start making my next step:  go to the doctor.  I believe this to be logical and practical, but I'm not entirely certain that I should pat myself on the back because those attributes do not describe the true root cause.  I have a distrust and aversion to doctors.  

Had the list included something like:  zinc deficiency;  it is quite likely that I would have increased my intake of zinc rich foods, or, more likely ordered a supplement.  Had the list included something like:  excessive cheese consumption;  I would have cut out cheese for a couple of weeks, and then decided that unexpected smells are part of the spice of life.  Why deprive oneself of cheese?!  I'm kind of kidding, but not really.  I could have gone longer.

The point is:  I focus on what I can test for on my own.  Anything that will require a doctor becomes an only in case of emergency situation.  I realize that this is far from mainstream, it is, however, grounded in my actual life experience.  Let me try to explain.

I was sick a lot as a child.  Strangely, I don't think of myself as a sickly person, but I was constantly in and out of the doctor's office in my early days.  It began shortly after birth, I had jaundice.  My mother was told I was allergic to her milk and needed to be switched to formula.  I had high fevers for which my tiny body had to be iced, my grandmother told me.  This was later confirmed when my permanent teeth came in with ridges I found horrifying and I asked the dentist "what could cause that", high fever in early childhood turned out to be the answer.  I had allergies.  I had weird crusty rashes in the tender curves of my ears which would split and bleed painfully for which I needed special prescription cream.  I caught every cold that floated past the threshold of the house, and when my grandmother went into the hospital for her cataract surgery--  at, oh dear god, the age I am now-- they put me into day care and I got so sick it became some sort of family crisis.

After my father re-married, my step-mother was the one constantly taking me to the doctor.  When the doctor would leave the room she would steal sample medicines from the drawer.  If I pointed out to her that stealing was wrong, she would answer sharply that "we need to get something out of this", and though I always thought to myself something to the effect of "like getting me well, I wish you meant", I never really seemed to get much better.

I was not the only person I witnessed not getting better under doctoral care.

My mother's father kept going for the V.A. for pain.  He had exploratory surgery.  Then he had more pain.  He had more surgeries.  They ended up removing his colon;  and his eye;  and possibly some other things.  He stopped complaining about pain.  He just moaned all the time after that.

My father's sister had high blood pressure.  I believe that was all she had.  She ended up with drug-induced lupus from the prescription drugs.  Then she had to have a hip replacement because the hip was destroyed by the corticosteroids they gave her for the lupus.  Then she had an infection in her lung they couldn't clear so they removed part of her lung, and while she was in the hospital recovering from that she developed and enormous decubitus ulcer which had to be surgically reconstructed.  And somewhere in all that, they accidentally cut her achilles tendon which was a long physical therapy recovery.

A friend's sister had migraines.  They tested.  They tried things.  By the time they were through trying things she had been in a mental hospital twice because she wanted to cut herself open to let out the spiders.  Her only previous psychological issue:  anxiety and depression of a mild variety, easily managed with medication and never causing any life disruption when financial circumstances made therapy and medication impossible.

I would just as soon leave the doctors for other people.

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Some stuff happened today and I lost the vibe I got to go to sleep get up and try to get back to it

So I've been signed up for reddit's app for a year now and the only thing I ever look at but I do look at that like almost every well sometimes almost every day sometimes once or twice a week it just depends is the Asian skincare group

I started off looking at several skin care groups that was one that was like over 40 or something and I started off trying to look at some political ones as well but the only ones I ever look at anymore and they really it's almost the only one that ever sends me any notifications probably because it's the only one ever really look at

And I can't say that I've really taken anybody's advice on anything or that it's been helpful to me in any way but it's just kind of entertaining to me to see what people are using and what they think is old school

I mean these people think CosRX snail is old school

And I guess they've been around I just looked it up they've been around since 2013 but I never hear any of the Korean skincare influencers talk about cosRx I only ever hear American influencers talk about cost RX

I don't know when I started trying to use Korean skincare it was kind of tricky to find I mean I was going to Asian groceries and ordering things from weird websites and sometimes fine and things on eBay or Amazon but you couldn't like go into Ulta or Sephora and have anybody know what snail was

So I think I'm all hot s*** I guess because I was an early adopter of Korean skincare I'm not really sure when I started doing that though I want to say it was 13 or 14

Whatever it's not important and I don't know why I'm even telling you this I just was reading a thing on Reddit and I remembered that it's been a year that I've been on Reddit and that that's the only board I ever read

Anyway I'm going to go to sleep now I think

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

No Working Title Yet: Chapter 1 (i think that's all for right now)

It was the strangest thing.  It was like I came downstairs into another world.  I know that doesn't make any sense, and maybe that isn't it at all, maybe it wasn't the world that changed.  Maybe it was me.  I smelled something I couldn't identify.  Was it the spruce and pine candle I had been burning the night before?  No.  There was a crispness to it that was similar.  I couldn't think.  I had spent so many months with nasal prompts close at hand, to be sure I hadn't lost my sense of smell, which to tell the truth was never really that acute, that I was completely unprepared for phantosmia halfway down the stairs.

I made coffee.  I may have made toast.  I puttered around.  When I first wake up I'm normally not all there yet, which is why the smell thing was so strange, the awareness of it.  I did, somewhere in the middle of my first cup of coffee, determine that what the smell most closely resembled, from my internal stored library of  scents, was the greenery from a tomato plant.  Not the tomato itself, but rather that sharp intense green smell which to me is both beautiful and somehow dangerous, maybe poisonous, though the danger is somewhere deep in the perfume of it far beneath the conscious, distinguishing it from the wet green of floral leaves.  I say I don't have much of a sense of smell, and then I seem to be lying about that, but I assure you I am not.  Not lying and not a nose of any degree.  I just have a thing for details.

I had had an unusual dream which might be at least partially to blame.  Rather than my typical rotation of stress dreams I had treated myself to a variation on a theme.  It was the end of the semester...  However, instead of there being an exam for which I had not studied, a class which I had not attended and indeed had perhaps not even known existed vis a vis my enrollment, an open book essay exam with a stack of books I had not read;  this time I was given an oral presentation, at the last minute, with very little time to prepare, to be pitted against two other students both of whom had spent the entire semester preparing their presentations.  What was most remarkable to me was this:  I was super excited about this fact in a kind of bring it on sort of way.  The topic I was given was some obscure and perhaps arcane plant related in some way to blue green algae, and, most fascinatingly, having a ghost mother.  I was sure I had some knowledge of this plant and was rattling off book titles I would need for reference material as I smeared a dried powdered sample around the sides of a bowl with my fingers noting the structural similarity to blue green algae.  The term ghost mother having some meaning to me in the dream which does not continue in my awake mind, which has only some vague sense of it's relation to tree mothers use of mycorrhizal network and mycelium more generally.

Contrarywise, I have a longstanding fancy that what I really need is a good ayahuasca experience because then the vegetal mother could straighten me out.  However, recently I visualized the vegetal mother, because I have an overactive imagination,  First she looked a lot like the plant from llittle shop of horrors, then she added a big bow and a cute little lace collar, and then she changed into something much less cartoon-like, slithering in the walls and dark corners, metaphorically.  She's started giving me somewhat unpleasant feedback about all the many things I thought I knew, and how it just really wasn't like that, actually.  Pretty sure ayahuasca doesn't smell like tomato, though.

 i'm watching  get back

i'm struck by how many bits remind me of

the beatles...now

also

fifth beatle:  billy preston

i have a previously unknown respect for peter jackson

i really disliked lord of the rings

although, counter-intuitively, i'm not really a fan of the books either

and

the 72 hours of  king kong is like 3 years of my life i'm never getting back

[hyperbole]

i didn't know he was a documentarian

this third episode is my favorite

goodnight sweetheart

i love you very much

 

Goodnight

Sweetheart

💋

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

well the tracking said

undeliverable

person unknown

but

there it is in my mailbox

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

I'm not sure I quite captured it

the glowing

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you very much 💋

I dreamed I was a teenager I think I was living in a small town

I had friends who didn't seem to be related in any way to anyone I've ever known I mean I'm sure there were similarities but they weren't immediately apparent to me

And I had a boyfriend I guess

I want to say it was more complicated than that

But at any rate

A guy who likes me

And he would send me rocks with his initials on it

Sometimes he would just leave him by my doorstep

Sometimes he would mail them to me if he was away

Just like a good size flat rock

AVS

I'm quickly forgetting

Allen Vance Seton

I'm pretty sure

weird

 well

i didn't talk so much

but i did buy myself a couple of birthday presents

should be here on my actual birthday

an egf cream

and a soy & Q10 "lotion" toner

they're both things i been thinking about

i decided to go ahead and give them a try

i didn't like the texture on the hada labo i tried

and this may be terrible, idk

but it's cheap so if it sucks i can use it on my body and not cry too much

the face cream has good ingredients

it'll either do something or it won't

but

it's korean skincare, so i think it's a safe bet

japanese beauty is high standard as well

but much less familiar to me

if it's good though

it's a great price and easily available on amazon

it's warmed up to about 55

it's not to replace the wake up beautiful cream

i still love that

i might layer them

or

use the wake up beautiful for day

it's not really heavy enough for a night cream

my skin is weird

there's sebum, i gotta watch the sebum

but it wants a lot of hydration

and it wants a fair amount of moisture too

but

i don't like a heavy, greasy glob of stuff

so i end up putting on another layer after a few hours

and sometimes a third

i don't have to

my face isn't feeling tight and dry or anything

it just soaks in and i want more

for a few days now

i've been patting on a little bit of the russian propolis ointment

[i couldn't help myself]

just a little

and it is a great occlusive

propolis makes your skin glow so i wake up extra beautiful

like i literally look in the mirror

and think yeah, that's what my skin looks like

plus i think it's helping my skin stay clear

it's fucking magic

i assume it's good on minor cuts and scrapes too

i'm gonna go to bed

i love you very much sweetheart *kiss*

Well now I see that I did not say good night

I'm sorry about that I thought I had

But I was pretty tired when I went to sleep

To be honest with you I don't really feel like I had enough sleep but my cat is very agitated I gave him a bowl of food before I went to bed and he still has the bowl of food he hasn't eaten it but he's acting as though he hasn't been fed in a very long time so I don't know what's up with him

It's cold again

Usually the heater fan is his favorite thing ever so I don't know

I really don't feel like driving the car today but it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow so I don't know but it's cold and I don't feel like going out

Anyway I feel a little talkier today

And I'm letting myself have a little bit of coffee which is making me super happy

I love you sweetheart 💋

I hope you're having a good day

I just went and drove my I started to say bike driving my car around the block until I hit hit 4 miles and then came back

I think it's better to drive it someplace and stop and park for a little while and then drive it back because I think that counts as two somehow but I don't want to just park on the street and then start it up and go again so and I don't think it's so important if I do it every day or so it becomes a problem when it's multiple days and short drive so I think

There may be things that you wanted me to talk about or say but I'm not purposefully avoiding subjects I'm just doing the best I can with the brain power I got right now I think

I dreamed last night that I was a teacher and I was at some function and I didn't have a mask and nobody had a mask and I just forgot to wear a mask and then I was kind of freaking out because there were no masks and there was some kind of a presentation where we were supposed to be learning something or discussing something related to teaching somehow I don't know I don't know exactly what it was about but it was going on and so I was there but it was supposed to be my day off and I thought I was supposed to be there and so I was there but it was my day off and then it turned out I wasn't going to get like a different day off I was just going to have work six days and then it was looking like maybe I was going to have work seven days

So although that's different from working in the coffee shop and not being able to make a particular drink it doesn't seem a lot better

I love you very much 💋

I would be interested to know

What you would like to know about me

I feel like I've been talking about myself for years

But probably there are things you want to know

I'm awake

I love you

 goodnight sweetheart *kiss*

i love you very much

I slept very late

I did not drive my car

But I did have this amazing dream

Okay I don't remember all the parts of it

Because there was a whole like spy or government agent or something section with the smartphone that had some kind of special app that did all kind of crazy stuff and looked really different

And there was sort of a futuristic shopping mall that was in like a tunnel

And we interacted with a lot of people I had I think I had a partner of some kind you know like agents working sets of two but I just don't really remember anything about my partner it was a guy I'm pretty sure and I think he was the more senior agent and I was younger like a lot younger than I am like probably my late twenties

But there was also this project that was going on in some like important government agency building and it was building this it was kind of a memorial but it was shelves with books but it wasn't I don't think it was in a library I think it was in like a main area so I don't think they were books that you were supposed to like reference I think they were important historically or something and

I don't know if I was involved actually in it or if I was just really intensely interested in it and so I had all these opinions about what needed to happen but then were these really old shelves that had held the I can't remember what it was a collection of it was collected writings collected works some like really important and I want to say it was like FBI something but I don't know but anyway there were these shelves that had held these books and they were really big and really old and wood and it's not like they were all that attractive in and of themselves but they were an awkward size and someone had taken them off and put them someplace else and I'm like no these wouldn't shows they need to be used to hold those books because the shelves and the books are both you know their history is together what they need to do is build like a frame structure to hold the wood cuz someone had taken them and put them on like some little like I don't know l brackets or something and they looked really bad I'm like somebody needs to take this and build a like metropolis like inspired metal frame

But then there was this other important stuff and it was by a woman or it was a monument to a woman and she had been I don't know she was really important but she was also very there was some way in which she was like a flower and she loved flowers and I don't know so the shelf for that one needed to be somehow this kind of blooming branch and it was going to be right next to or underneath or above probably above the metropolis he won and so you know people were saying well you know that just doesn't make sense because those don't match and so why are we going to make these shelves to hold these books and they're going to look different and I'm like because the show should reflect the personality that we are more immortalizing so it needs to be flowers and it needs to be thus and such and I can kind of almost see it in my head it was kind of abstracted and it didn't match in any way the other shelf but it wasn't it didn't clash with it either it was stylistically abstract enough that it could comfortably sit next to the much heavier much more industrial looking shelf and the room it was this enormous room and it went up really high like I want to say and it had a big kind of oval window in the top I want to say pergola but I don't think that's right I need to look up pergola hang on just a second

No pergola is not right so then what is the word I'm looking for

Cupola is also not the word I'm looking for

Well I feel as though there is a word for it

Anyway after I woke up it seemed like it became some kind of metaphor for building the framework to support the material that you're trying to highlight

And I've been taking I don't think I told you this I got a what do you call it a flower essence is that what you call it Yes a flower essence for ayahuasca and I've been taking it and I don't know whether I believe in flower essences or not

But maybe since I've been taking it maybe it started before that but maybe since I've been taking it I've been having a lot more thoughts along the lines of you know maybe you're not right about all these things you think are so fabulous about you a lot of sort of humbling thoughts that you know are perhaps good to look at from perspective but aren't really all that beneficial to me because how does it help me to believe that I'm not as good as I think I am you know that just seems detrimental

I mean it's all very fine and good to look at things and say well you know you could have done that better you could have done that better you know from the perspective of doing better next time if you're doing them again like going back and learning lessons that maybe I should learned that yeah I didn't maybe have the information to learn at the time

But it's not beneficial to dwell on the fact that you may be weren't doing things as good as you thought you were doing them You know because if you dwell on that too much then maybe you think well you know you don't really know s*** You're just all fully yourself and I don't think I don't really think I can afford to be a lot less full of myself You know what I mean

I mean I actually think that at most points in my life if I'd been a little more full of myself it probably would have gotten me further so I don't see that there's a whole lot of benefit in you know pulling out my stuffing you know what I mean

So then I was like well you know maybe the vegetal mother doesn't really have my best interest at heart and that seems bad but maybe she does but she just isn't very good at I don't know like bedside manner or whatever you know if you're telling somebody something that would be good for them to know but

I mean that's always kind of been a problem for me you know people try to warn me about things like when my mother was going to teach me to sew she wanted to impress upon me the fact that the sewing machine was dangerous even though it was like a treadle machine that you know there was a limit to how out of control it could get because you were pumping it with your foot so yeah if you stopped pumping it it would go for a little while but it's not like it was a you know electrical machine that was just going to run over you right but she spent so much time telling me about all these injuries that family members had had in sweatshops and you know what not that then I couldn't be unafraid of it enough to really learn to sew and to be honest with you I think learning to sew is one of the things that I really should have done because I have all kind of ideas for clothes that I would like to have that aren't available for me to buy and I think being able to make those things would have made my life fuller and I mean it's still could but I'd have to learn it now and it would have been so much easier if I had just learned it when I was 10 you know

My point with that was that it doesn't take the same amount of warning for me that it would take for the average person because I can extrapolate in my mind and see all the ways that I could be hurt and maimed and damaged and I can visualize them pretty clearly so you know I don't need a lot of warning I need more encouragement that it's possible to do it safely right

I mean when I was having a mo my lawn when I lived at that house I wasn't willing to use an electric gas mower or a gas gas mower because Bill had had shrapnel thrown into his leg from mowing my mom's lawn and so I got to push mower because I felt like that was safe enough for me but God damn that was hard work and I wasn't willing to do it very often so I got notices all the time and that was when I mowed the lawn when I got the notice

So last night I took my ocotillo flower essence with the ayahuasca

And I felt like that that was part of the reason why I had that dream that seemed like it gave me important information about the framework and the supporting

But I feel like I've gotten distracted like I think it was 30 minutes of distraction time I was looking up flower essence information

So I guess the main attribute for today is lack of focus I'm going to go ahead and publish this before I get distracted by something else and you have to wait even longer for it I'm sorry I have not been very communicative today

I love you sweetheart 💋

I drove the car today

I didn't go in anywhere

But it's surprisingly hard for me to even make myself do that I am had an upset stomach

And after I go out and drive around I realize that it's fine it's not a problem to drive around

But it's still surprisingly hard to make myself do it

When I went to the mailbox today to get the mail the clouds were so beautiful they were very fluffy but somehow they looked painted you know they were very white on one side and then they were gray on the other side and they were fluffy and big and fairly evenly distributed through the sky it looked kind of surreal

For a while when I was leaving to drive I could just drive out the exit that's not really an exit that's right next to my apartment cuz I'm right next to the office and so there are gates where people come in but they have been just leaving them open during office hours

For months they've been doing that

But the gates were closed because there's a sign on the office we are closed they're not even they're not even going in

They have been I think the reason why they had the gate open is that they would just you know somebody would come in and they would call or whatever and then they would go and meet them and take them around in their little golf carts and and then they'd do the paperwork at two chairs and a table that they have kind of outside my apartment and everybody's all masked up and everything

And they are sometimes working in the office cuz when I had to go resign my lease that was a point at which the covid was pretty low so there were two of them in the office and one was on like one side and one was on the other side so and it was like a bin in the wall so I mean it was pretty socially distanced

But I was going to have to go to the regular exit and you have to enter a code on the keypad and I was really dreading that and I was looking around and I found like a piece of paper I could wrap around my finger so I could not have to touch the keypad but then one of the golf carts was leaving and I just let him get ahead of me so that the gate would open cuz he's got a clicker or something

And then when I came back in somebody was ahead of me so it opened and I didn't have to touch the keypad so that was great that worked out really great for me

But I had a little stretch of three or four days that I didn't drive the car and then I just drove it down to the grocery store and then it's been another three or four days so that was longer than I wanted to really let it go and I didn't well I mean I drove a fair amount but I'm not even sure that the amount you drive is all that relevant

Like when I was going to work I was only driving about 2 and 1/2 miles to work and then I would drive 2 and 1/2 miles back from work and that was the majority of the driving that I did

Every once in awhile I would drive less than 7 mi somewhere and back

When I was driving the car before I would drive it around for like an hour and then I would come home and then I wouldn't drive it again for like a week or two weeks or 3 weeks and that wasn't working

I don't think it's how far you drive it I think it's how frequently

So I'm probably going to make myself drive it again tomorrow just to get like a good solid baseline of driving

When I was a kid

I went to work with my aunt Joan a few times

And where she worked they had like a little kind of auto mat thing I think that's what they're called automats they had a machine that you could push a button and it rotated and they were all these little compartments maybe they were a couple of machines I think it was just one rotating machine and it had like you know hard boiled egg cottage cheese tuna sandwich cheese crackers peanut butter crackers some other kind of sandwich and maybe like a piece of fried chicken and a roll or something I mean it was like food prepared food that must have been brought in by somebody

And then there was you know one of those coffee machines where you push all the buttons you want coffee with cream and sugar plus plus plus on the cream or the sugar or whatever you know and it was hot chocolate on there too and probably tea as well every once in a while you still see one of those machines they were very common they had one in the library at u of h when I went to school there but I I don't know if they still make them

I think they had a soda machine dispensed ice and soda into a cup as well The kind of soda machine you see now where you put in money and it drops a can I'm not sure those were out yet I mean they were pretty soon after that I know they had those by the time I was in say third grade because we lived in an apartment complex that had a soda machine and they were a quarter it was very exciting but I don't believe I had ever seen one of those machines prior to that The kind of machines they had before that you put money in and you opened the little door and you pulled out your bottle of soda but I mean the sodas were all bottles until 75, 76 I'm not sure somewhere in there and maybe there were canned so does other places

And in fact the bottled sodas weren't in plastic bottles yet then either they were in glass bottles and you took them back and got your deposit I'm not clear on why we stopped doing that I mean I guess from the standpoint of you're not going to accidentally break your bottle or whatever maybe I'm wrong maybe there were cancer earlier

Anyway I was thinking about that and I was thinking about there used to be an old cigarette machine that some local art group had bought and maybe they bought a bunch of them I don't know and they put them in whole foods and maybe some other places but I only ever saw him in whole foods and so you could put money in and buy a little art thing that fit into I guess the size of a cigarette box and it would dispense like the cigarette machines remember cigarette machines

And then in Martha they have I haven't seen it because I didn't know it existed when I was there last so I don't know if it was in fact there and I just didn't know about it or if it's come about since then but it's some sort of a art supplies vending machine or maybe it's art supplies and weird things I don't know but for sure art supplies are one of the things I think the idea was since everything closes down really early they would make a vending machine with crazy s*** you might want in the middle of the night but couldn't get

And then I'm thinking about those vending machines that make the udon soup in Japan because now I'm thinking about vending machines

And I think there needs to be some sort of vending machine but like an auto mat like where you go in and there are all a bunch of vending machines but not food other things

Maybe things that couldn't really be dispensed by machines

Maybe they would be like the wizard of Oz where he gave hearts and brains and things but they weren't really that they were symbols

I don't know I haven't got it all worked out

When I was a kid I was fascinated by machines that you put money into and got things out of I was all about that apparently my aunt Joan had a very embarrassing situation where I wanted money to put in the tampon machine at some point

Because it didn't really matter what the machine was I wanted to put money in it and get a thing out of it

I had a dream I don't remember which day it was I had forgotten but it came back to me You were massaging the mole on some guys face like you were running your finger around it because it looked just like mine That's kind of weird

I also had this dream and it's really unclear it was very specific in the dream but I don't remember it clearly and I don't think that it was spelled out very clearly in the dream I think it's one of those things where it's all a bunch of symbols and it makes sense to you in the dream but then when you try to piece it back together it doesn't make sense but there was this necklace with these clay beads that were I don't know like ink and or Aztec or something and there was this little girl and they were somehow tied together although the necklace was very ancient and the little girl was not

I wish I could remember

I should have been gone to sleep

I love you very much sweetheart 💋

I love you very much

I'm not trying to ignore you

I've just been really freaking out

I don't know whether the promencil is helping or not

I thought it was

But then I had all that hot night sweats

Temperature variation stuff

And the anxiety is pretty bad

I couldn't take or haven't been taking the maca because I took it that first day and it seemed like it made me even jumpier

So I've not been taking that

The allergies are pretty much gone

And 3 days is pretty much what it took last time so I don't know why I haven't been doing this all these years well because I thought it wasn't available anymore

And it might come back I'm not necessarily expecting for it to stay away permanently

I've been in kind of a mood today

And the cat is hopping up and down on my last nerve

And my head hurts

But it never has gotten the way usually does with the weather changes so I think the allergy stuff is helping with that also I'm taking homeopathic thing for pain it's like for muscle pain and bruising and whatever I wasn't sure if that would help with the tension cuz you know that's muscle stuff and it's helped some I guess with that and a combination of the two have made it such that I've only actually taken one Tylenol in the last several days which is great

I'm kind of excited about my birthday

I would like to have gone somewhere

But as it stands I don't even think I'm going to go out to a restaurant or anything because it's just not safe

Maybe I'm blowing the danger a lot of proportion

I'm really worried about you

I mean you're healthy and fit

And I assume your boostered

So I assume you'd be okay

But I don't know what I would do if you weren't

I'm trying not to think about that too much

I really can't say that I would be all that fun to be around right now in fact I'm pretty confident I would not

But

Just in the spirit of having something exciting to say I got a shirt that is like three sizes too big because they've started having inclusive sizing on QVC which means they go up really really big and they had the shirt it's like a I guess a mock neck but it's a pretty high mock neck it's kind of like halfway between mock neck and actual turtleneck and it's a long sleeve sweater type thing but it's real lightweight it's like a t-shirt weight fabric and they didn't have it in my size but I was looking at it and I was like you know I have all these t-shirts that I wear around the house that are you know modal and soft this isn't modal this is rayon but it is pretty soft and since it's got long sleeves and the mock neck and it's enormous it's like I mean it's like a nightgown I guess but I don't think I've ever had a piece of clothing that I've worn that was quite this big and I think if it were my size I think the neck would bother me I like mock necks but they got to be not too tight and this one the mock neck is just a little tiny bit bigger than I would want it normally but everything else is just so big

Anyway I don't think I would go out in public in it unless I had it layered under like a jacket or something so that it wasn't noticeable but it's really comfy to wear around the house and the turtleneck thing really is nice for the cold as I haven't been running the heater I've just been running a little bit electric space heater thing next to my feet

So that's nice

And I'm burning like a spruce candle but I can't smell it I think it's just been burning too long and I can't notice it anymore because I can still smell the lavender deodorant that I have sitting next to me

I thought I would give it a try because it was quite a bit cheaper than the vanilla beach summer beach summer vanilla summer vanilla I think summer vanilla is what it's called I still have a little bit of that but it's gotten really expensive and I found this one and it was it's more quantity and it's got really good ingredients but I wore it one day and I'm not sure I like it

But regardless I have it sitting next to my chair so anytime I get to worrying about not being able to smell I just pick it up and smell it and if I can still smell the lavender then I know I can still smell

I don't know how many books I ended up listening to last month not very many I think just two or three

I've started a new one this one I've had on my wish list for a little while and it just suddenly looks really good I think because it's set in the cold and it's now cold so I think it's supposed to stay reasonably coolish all next week with Lowe's in the 40s or 50s although the highs are going up to the mid 70s on several days so not so cold

It's called drive your plow over the bones of the dead I think that's right

It's by a Polish author and I never have really learned how Polish names are pronounced so unless I've heard it said I hesitate to even try but it's Olga and it starts with the t the last name I mean and she's pretty famous I think

Hang on this is bogus I can get the name I don't have to say it out loud I can write it

Olga Tokarczuk

I started listening to it but I was falling asleep pretty quickly and I didn't really hear much but I'm kind of enchanted I mean I guess I heard a sample of it before I bought it and I didn't hear a whole lot past the sample but

All the characters they don't have like name names they have descriptor names like oddball and Bigfoot stuff like that and she was saying how she feels like that her neighbors probably have names like that for her too and she noticed that she never says her neighbor's name when she's talking to him because in her mind his name is oddball and she realized that he never says her name either

But they live in this little I guess it's a village maybe because she said that the three of them bigfoot oddball and herself are the only ones that live there full time everybody else I guess lives there in the summer and then in October they turn off their water and drain their pipes and lock up their houses and leave and part of what she does to support herself is she kind of babysits some of the people's houses which I don't know if that involves her going into them yet or if she just kind of watches to make sure that nobody messes with it I don't know

But Bigfoot is dead maybe he was murdered but if he was murdered who was he murdered by cuz nobody's there right but

Oddball knows something is up because his lights are on and he always turns off his lights and goes to bed cuz he's trying to be very frugal with his expenses so he doesn't just leave lights on but his lights are on and the dog is barking like crazy so he goes over there and the guys dead laying on the floor

So he goes and gets the woman whatever her name is and they go over there and look at him and he doesn't have socks on he has basically cut off pieces of strips of sheet that he's got wrapped around his feet and I don't know they just feel like his body looks too pathetic and so they change his clothes and move him somewhere which if it's a murder seems like a bad thing to have done

But I don't think they are assuming it's a murder and they don't want him to be shamed by his I guess impoverished appearance in death

I don't know there's just something about it that that's a little bit fairy tale-esque

But then it also reminds me a little bit of when colorless goes to Finland

I guess I have this whole kind of wintry world in my head based on I don't know movies probably and it doesn't get a lot of play normally so I guess since it's cold

And it is a little bit cold

I'm kind of afraid to turn on my heater because you know when you turn on your heater for the first time the central heating for the first time of the season you get all that kind of like burning smell from I don't know dust or whatever whatever it is I don't know but you know that smell I'm talking about right it's not just well

You know I had that apartment that the guy next door his heater when it kicked on it caught whatever that was on fire and so I've had fear ever since then the first time of the season that I would turn the heat on but every other year I've managed to push through the fear and turn the heat on

But I might not make it this year

I mean maybe maybe I will but I haven't you know it was cold but this place although it is not really very well insulated I guess it's a reasonably well insulated except at the doors and windows which are appalling but once you build up a temperature it maintains it pretty decently well no I mean it got cold but it didn't get as cold inside as it was outside I guess it's what I was trying to say because it was like 35 outside and it was not 35 inside in fact I didn't look at the thermostat so I don't know what the temperature was inside

Yeah well my head hurts and I sound kind of pathetic and like I'm having some kind of real psychological issues which I mean I am having psychological issues but I don't think I'm a danger to myself and others so that's good

I love you

And it doesn't seem to matter how old I get I always get kind of excited about my birthday

But I'm going to be 55 and that seems good

Double nickels is a safe speed

Remember exactly what that's from I sort of think it was from one of those dolls that you pull the string and it talks but what doll would have said that I mean wasn't like a Jimmy Carter doll was it I don't know you know from back when they made the speed limit 55 to save gasoline

I keep working on that story in my head bits and pieces of it come together and different ways I would still like it to be a mystery I don't know why I think it's because I like to read mystery scent because a mystery is a thing

So then it's not some amorphous supposed to be the great American novel whatever you know it's it's a thing that has parameters but I don't know one part that came to me that I just love

You know Mr sluggo the snail who hasn't been back I don't know what happened to him or where he went I think the cat and I scared him away but anyway in my story he didn't get scared away in my story not only does he stay and have it the night kitchen but he writes me things so I'll like find these kind of snail trail mail

And I love that I mean I think it might be more well suited to a children's book in a lot of ways but then again it could be kind of spooky

Also showers are portals sort of to communicate into the past and the future

Possibly the commune in the desert is in the past and possibly I'm trying to influence them in ways or they might be able to save the future or at least the present but I'm not too sure maybe that's too complicated

I got to go to sleep

Goodnight 💋 sweetheart 💋

I've been up since about 1:30 so I slept about 12 hours

I had night sweats

So it's freezing cold well okay not freezing cold but it was like almost freezing cold like mid-thirties stop it cat

When I went to bed stop at Kat what is it that you want

So it's very cold when I went to sleep

And then I woke up and I was super hot

So I went back to sleep with less blankets and then when I woke up again later I was cold again so stop it stop it stop it settle settle

I had fairly complicated dreams I think

I remember this one where I was going to do a tasting of some sort at a it wasn't exactly a festival it was more of a parade I think

Can I sent my father and Debra notification that I was going to be there

But then I ended up going to some sort of amusement park or something with I'm not sure who it was some other family members

I got really sunburned but wasn't red I was like brown and crispy

Then I ended up staying there too long to make it to the parade tasting thing

Then I was like well that might not have been booked for this year anyway I know it was booked for last year but I might have not had permission

In any way they only people who knew about it were my father and Deborah

So that was kind of weird

But then I was with a big group of people and we had to live together for a year

You kept making all these jokes about it

About how we all liked each other now but we weren't going to like each other after a year

Except in various different ways that I don't remember we know like it was more joking that what I said wasn't very jokey but in the dream it was very jokey

And then I was housed up with these other girls who I mean I knew him but I weren't like you know people who were my best friends or anything and they was just very complicated shower where you screwed off this big wheel behind the shower head and inserted all these scented pod things so that it would shoot out different kinds of things that you moisturizing water and scented water and whatever and really like any of the things they had put in there so they're like well fine go through the thing and pick one that you like so you can have one that you like so I looked through the whole thing again and again and again and I finally found this one that I could stand the scent of that was I don't know kind of woodsy I guess and it was called Milan

Although to be honest with you I think I would prefer that my water didn't have any scent at all I don't know why that wasn't an option

But I mean this part of the dream went on for a long time they were all these different scents

I don't know if I could actually smell them in the dream

Although maybe it was some kind of in my dream way of checking to see if I had covid cuz I do smell things regularly to make sure I still have sense of smell

Although my understanding is that that doesn't necessarily hold true for omicron

But also could be related to there's been something going on with the hot water I don't know if they're working on the boiler or what they're not leaving any notification on the door if they are but just you know somedays for like half the day there's no hot water

And it would make more sense if it was from like you know 9 to 5 or something I don't know if it's starting at 9:00 ever because not usually up at 9:00 but it has sometimes gone later than 5:00 I don't know whether the pilot light is going out and then somebody's calling them when it when there's no hot water I don't know there's nobody in the office now because they've shut it down because of omicron and they put up a thing a while back that said you know only call for maintenance if it's an emergency so I don't know