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

I'm not felt very good today

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

I love you very much sweetheart 💋

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

It sounds like there's a whole huge fireworks display going on but I'm pretty sure there isn't a professional fireworks display I'm pretty sure well I was pretty sure that there wasn't a professional firework show that it was just people setting off fireworks and I mean fireworks have been going off intermittently since 8:30 which makes no sense why set them off at 8:30 I mean you're in the city limits you shouldn't be setting them off anyway but if you're going to 8:30 is not the time

So I mean now it's the time it just sounds like too many to be one person or a few people setting them off but I just can't imagine where they could be setting off of professional fireworks display I went outside and I can't see anything it it looks really smoky and foggy and I hear a ton of fireworks my cat is freaking out but I don't see anything

I was going to try to make some sort of you know wish or resolution or something but I'm really not sure exactly what to say you know I want everything to be good but I hesitate to qualify exactly what I think that is because nothing has gone the way I expected it to go I mean I hope everybody doesn't get sick but f*** ton of people are getting sick so it seems pointless to say that

I hope I hope that you remain healthy and if you have to get sick then I hope that it's very mild and uncomplicated

That you don't have to go to the hospital and that you don't have any permanent damage and that it's like just no big deal I would rather that you didn't get sick at all

I Hope 2022 is better

I hope that we move towards happiness and health and enlightenment

And that our problems are that too many good things are happening and we don't have enough time to schedule proper gratitude for all of them

I love you sweetheart

Happy New Year 💋

I've been kind of short on sleep for several days in a row

And I was going to try to stay up for midnight but I'm not sure I'm going to make it

I'm falling asleep sitting up in the chair now

The grocery store was kind of insane

And I was doing a big trip to try to stock up so that I wouldn't have to go for like hopefully maybe 2 weeks maybe longer than that I don't know

I wore two masks

But I walked around around the whole store to make sure I got all the stuff I needed

And I think I was there for almost 2 hours

I was feeling kind of I don't know dissociated from my body or something

But somehow better too I don't know it's weird

not everything is here

and I'm still tweaking things

not sure I want all the big boxes

but

here's what it is so far

Okay I'm very hopeful that that promencil stuff is going to work

Because I took my first dose before I went to bed last night well I mean I took it as soon as I got it pretty much

And it's like a goddamn Christmas miracle

I'm not going to say I'm not tense at all

I'm confident I'm somewhat tense

But this is the most relaxed I've been in months

And I dream something I don't remember what but it was not about world market

Or Starbucks

Even though I read an article about Starbucks before I went to bed

So even though I didn't really get a lot of sleep

And actually feels like I got sleep

Although I guess I am still tired

I just feel like I got some rest

And I could breathe through my nose when I woke up I took four doses of the sinus calm I think is what it's called

Although I'm fixing to go to the grocery store and I am somewhat tense about that

But literally I feel like my shoulders haven't been this low for months

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Also

there is a lot of yellow

Okay you would think since I only got 3 hours of sleep last night that I would go to sleep early tonight

But if you thought that I guess you should be wrong

I've been down a rabbit hole and I don't even know really how to explain the rabbit hole I've been down it's a multiple day rabbit hole actually that was kind of why I ended up being up so late last night

Because well when I thought about styling the medicine cabinet

And then I said no that's kind of crazy

But then I said no

Not exactly

Cuz you have a lot of things that are health issues not big health issues necessarily but things that cause you a lot of day-to-day discomfort that maybe you could do something about but you don't have those products

I mean I focused on like immune building tinctures and vitamins and things like that but I have all these allergies

And allergy medicine makes me feel bad

And blah blah bunch of things

So I was like okay well if you were just going to deal with all of your issues and have the things in your medicine cabinet that you would have to fix those things what would you have

Cuz the tinctures the tinctures aren't really ever going to go in a medicine cabinet there's too many of them well no I mean I imagine they'd fit in a medicine cabinet but you know when I use them I'm putting squirts into a glass of water right so I'd have to make water and take it into the bathroom and I have an aversion to that so

The tinctures are a separate thing that's more of a mixed health cocktail and it needs to be organized and streamlined a little better than it is but it's not really a medicine cabinet thing

But I've kind of morphed into this routine where I'm washing my face with a soapy cleanser and using a konjac sponge and or a vibrating rubberized thing that I got real cheap

I've been wanting one of those foreo things for a long time but I just didn't know if it was a thing that was going to work for me you know cuz I bought that clarisonic and that was the beginning of all my skin issues or my major skin issues like years ago up until that point I feel like my skin was okay but I think I damaged my barrier and then I got started on this whole like picking thing which is not to say that I didn't pick my face at all before but it just became much worse after that point because I became obsessed with getting all the stuff out of my pores which I hadn't been that obsessed with before so chicken on the road I don't know which was the the worst part but whatever anyway I wanted a foreo and they're expensive and I was not going to buy one

I was going to wait until I could find something that was you know about $20 that was like a knockoff and I found this one and it was $25 and I love it I love it I love it I love it and it doesn't have the problems that the clarisonic did because it doesn't have bristles that kind of move and then you're moving the thing around your face and whatever this is like it's just a silicone thing with some little nubby things so as long as you don't like scrub real hard you just kind of move it around it's pretty gentle and it vibrates and it's it's great I'd love it and I feel like it's helping to clear my pores and all that stuff not that they're completely clear I still have pores and whatnot but

Okay that was a long wind up I've been going into my medicine cabinet cuz that's where I keep it every morning and every evening now in this whole kind of routine and so that made me look at my medicine cabinet and go man some of the stuff that's in there is really old and you don't know what it is and it needs to be reorganized and it needs to be cleaned and you know I just haven't really done that because the medicine cabinet was not configuration that I found very convenient and so I wasn't really using it

But then I had this kind of vision of it being like a place where I went to the medicine cabinet and got the things that I needed from the medicine cabinet to like you know enhance my life or whatever

I guess the maybe the two three I don't know I haven't lived any place that had a medicine cabinet for a long time before I moved here and it's kind of a weird it's off to the side it's whatever anyway

And in the fashion magazines that I used to read they often would have these like you know pictures of this or that celebrity what do they have what exciting things do they have in their medicine cabinet you know

And that was where the whole kind of styling the medicine cabinet fantasy came from it was kind of a combination of things

But instead of taking everything out of it and putting things in it in a way that looked pretty that were just kind of like things that were already someplace else you know I thought well you know you really don't have things that you need when you had the cyst you had to go to the store and buy what you needed for the cyst right and you have allergy pills that you don't take because they make you feel bad You have them like in a drawer and when it gets to the point where you're like the balance has tipped far enough that now I feel bad enough that I need to take them I'll take them but then I was like you know when I was younger

Like when I was in college I used to get a sinus infection I got these allergies and I would get a sinus infection from the allergies persistent allergies every year and one year I was really busy in college and I really just did not have time to go to the doctor I just really didn't and so I called him and I'm look I'm like look Dr Orzeck that may not be how you spell it I can't really remember I have that sinus infection that I get every year that you write me the prescription for amoxicillin for could you just call me in a prescription for amoxicillin cuz you know I've got it I get it every year and he's like no I can't call in a prescription you have to come in and see me and I'm like well I don't have time to come in and see you I'm really busy with school right now so are you sure you can't just call it in for me and he's like no and I'm like well then what do you suggest I do and he's like you know take to aspirin and force fluids or something like that

And it made me mad you know

And I mean maybe it was his medical ethics maybe but it didn't feel that way to me it felt like that he didn't care about me he only cared about making his money so well that's true or not that was how I felt and so I started looking around for something else I could do

And I went to moveable feast which was over closer to me at that point it wasn't all the way across town it was Right there on Alabama Street it's just a few blocks down from where I lived I mean and there's a couple miles but it was easy to get to and they had something called sinusitis by Boiron which was a French homeopathic company and I was like well I don't know whether I believe in homeopathics or not it doesn't sound right but you know there's this thing here and it might work and you know have time for this so let me just try it and the antibiotics that he would give me I would take the full 10 days dose I never took less than the full 10 days dose or whatever it was I think it was 10 days and I never felt any better

I mean he had said I had a sinus infection and we had every reason to believe that I had a sinus infection and after the 10 days maybe I didn't still have the sinus infection my mucus was usually clear instead of yellow so I assumed that I didn't have the sinus infection anymore but I still felt bad it didn't feel any better right the symptoms had not abated it just the there was some reason to think I might be better but I didn't feel better does that make sense

So with this homeopathic stuff I took it for 3 days and I mean you take it like every 2 hours or something you take it pretty frequently but I took it for 3 days and I felt completely well

Like night and day from the antibiotics

And I mean even though I got allergies again for a while there I would just when I would get allergies really bad I would use that stuff and it would fix me up right

And then at some point I just kind of got away from doing it I couldn't find it yeah I went in to moveable feast to try to find it again and a guy who was working there was like he made some kind of comment about oh boron yeah we've got hemorrhoid stuff from them and it was like dude I'm not looking for him right stuff why are you telling me about him right stuff you know I mean he just made it seem like that I was crazy somehow and I could never find it again anyplace else

And so I just kind of you know gave up on it

But I was like you know your allergies have been really bad why don't you just check you know boiron and see what they've got

And I remember what the first ingredient was I don't remember all the ingredients but I remember the first ingredient was belladonna cuz I was like that's poison why is there poison in their medicine but homeopathics are all these like microdoses of things that have the same effect on your body as whatever the sickness is and somehow that stimulates your body to do the right thing or something I don't know it's they always say it's kind of like a vaccine but it isn't really

Which is why it never made sense to me and I didn't really believe in it but you know when you take something and it works that pretty hard not to believe in it so they have something that has that same ingredient as the main first ingredient and it's like sinus calm or something like that so I ordered that

And I just kind of went down and the list of you know what are your issues that you have that you're not addressing that whatever you're doing or not doing it isn't fixing them and so it's just an ongoing thing that makes you feel like s***

And for each of those things I kind of researched and tried to find something that was you know not the obvious commercial product that I probably would not like but instead kind of an interesting more you know kind of natural non-toxic

On Twitter there had been this whole big discussion one time about Vicks and how it cures everything right and so then people started talking about kind of the medicines that they had growing up and they was this cough syrup that was mentioned it's like honey loquat something that is apparently really really common in Asian families and that sounded really interesting to me so I was like well you know let's give that a go so that's already come and I've tried that and it's great and I got that neti pot nose spray and that's great and just taking those two things I feel like 95% better and I haven't the sinusitis thing came today but I haven't used it yet and

There's a couple of other things but then I had a lot of debate back and forth about I'm trying to get like as much as possible multitasking products so that I don't have a ton of stuff that I have to buy and most of these things that I've found are pretty cheap for a depeding rub you know they're like tiger balm but I never liked tiger balm it was messy stay in your clothes and it's a little bitty pot and you're trying to stick your finger in it and scoop out enough I just tiger balm was never my thing

But especially now that I have the anxiety my neck and my shoulders are just like so tense that they really hurt and I really need some sort of muscle stuff so I looked and looked and looked and looked and there are a lot of things

But I found this stuff again that's really inexpensive that is for Thai kickboxers and you know I just thought about all the times that I'm like it's like being you know kicked by a mixed martial arts blah blah blah you know I've used that description a bunch of times to describe what my you know various different pains are like and so I'm like yeah Thai kickboxers that's what I need

But then I want something kind of like a Vicks that I can put on my chest when I sleep that you know cuz when I wake up in the morning I'm so congested and I'm so it's awful it's just awful so I wanted something I could put on my chest but I I don't like Vicks so I mean I just don't do it right You know I'd like something like that but there isn't anything so I just say oh well and just go on with my business right but I'm like no if you want that if that would help you find something that you would like that you can use but there were a lot of things for that too and I went on and on and on and you know I guess if I had used tiger balm for my you know muscle stuff I guess I could probably have used that for my chest as well cuz tiger balm the whole point of tiger balm is apparently it cures everything kind of like a Vic cures everything because that mentholatum stuff is just magic I guess

But what I found is another tie thing it's called sang pure maybe

Which is a very popular it's like the maybe the number one brand in Thailand but this is their yellow balm which says it's extra hot so I don't know maybe that won't work but it was like a little pot that was like you know $5 as opposed to the bigger things that were more so I'm like well you know we're going to try that and if it's too hot then maybe you can use it for something else but they're main one apparently you use it if you've got sore muscles or you know if you've got a stomach ache you rub it on your stomach I mean it's like it's just supposed to be good for everything and I thought about getting the regular one I did but it was an oil and I really think that a balm is better for rubbing on your chest and whatever anyway so that took me a really long time because so we're just a lot of variables a lot of moving parts but I'm excited about it

And then it's like well you need something for headaches and that bomb is for my headache too You know you put it on your temples but I have had not the best luck with you know rubbing essential oil things on my temples although in fairness most of the ones that I've had were like peppermint and lavender or peppermint or lavender I mean everybody seems to think that those are the essential oils that help headache and that's never really done much for me

So I'm not sure that a kind of a methylated thing is going to do it so then I thought maybe maybe I want homeopathic

So I started looking at all the homeopathic stuff and there was the one stuff for headache but I was like well I don't know cuz it was particularly kind of headache and I think that my headaches are largely either sinus which the sinus eye does stuff will take care of or it's tension which is a muscular thing I mean sometimes it's probably something in my brain but I mean I've got Tylenol and I would like to get to where I didn't use Tylenol at all because you know it's toxic and whatnot but I just wasn't too sure about the homeopathic headache stuff I did not think that was going to do it for me

But then they had homeopathic menopause stuff and I'm like well you know the menopause is a big problem for you

But the whole point is you're taking like a little bit of something that would give you the symptoms that you have and it stimulates your body to fix it or whatever but the whole point of my menopause is that my symptoms are not necessarily the normal symptoms right so I was like well I just don't have a lot of faith that that's going to work

But then I came across this video that was talking about maca and red clover isoflavones

And are taking maca before and I had good results with that I wasn't taking it specifically for menopause because I wasn't having menopause yet then

And the red clover isoflavones I'm a little leery about them

When I was much younger like in my 20s somewhere I was looking for herbal remedies for something probably menstrual related but possibly it was just some kind of female balancing thing I don't really remember

But red clover was supposed to be like a female tonic herb so I got some red clover and my body reacted to it very badly the way it reacted very badly to the soy things I mean when I tried to put soy on soy facial products on my face it broke me out really really badly and periodically I had had issues with soy causing me to get hives or you know whatever I don't know

And so I mean I think maybe my estrogen levels were just a little bit too high anyway and so then when I introduced more estrogen my body was just like get this out of here we don't know what to do with it we cannot use that no abort abort you know whatever something it didn't like it

So but now my body has been super craving soy but I've had to cut back on my coffee because you know I was having the anxiety and the heart palpitations and whatnot and I had to make that go away so I couldn't drink you know three giant cups of coffee and you know that are half soy and half coffee so you know I may not be getting enough soy isoflavones but I'm not sure what the recommended dose is for the red clover isoflavones but I suspect that the amount I will need is less so I found this one that was recommended by the video but all they sell now is double strength and I'm like I don't think I want double strength and I think the reason why they switched to double strength was you know they wanted to raise the price a little bit maybe and you know some percentage of the people were having to take multiple pills a day anyway so if they made it double strength and kept the same number of pills then for a lot of people that would work out to be more cost-effective it would last a longer whatever so they just did that

But you don't seem to be able to buy the single strength anymore and I don't want the double strength so then I had to go back and forth and back and forth but I'm just afraid you know I've got my face pretty much clear now I really don't want to start with something that's going to make me you know have extreme hormonal acne but then again if I was getting a lot of soy isoflavones I need to replace some isoflavones and there's apparently you know studies with this particular pill that it was like 84 to 87% effective in reversing all these symptoms and maintaining bone density and you know helping heart cuz one of the things if you don't take the hormone replacement therapy you don't have to worry about all the breast cancer and ovarian cancer and cervical cancer but you do have to worry about heart attacks it's like yay

And this pill supposedly has is 84 to 87% effective and the hormone replacement therapy is only like 90% effective or something like that so it's really really close and of course you can buy all kind of red clover pills but they don't have they don't have them standardized for the isoflavones I can't find anything else I mean they're probably is something else but I couldn't find anything else that was standardized for the isoflavones so I went ahead and ordered that but I may have to cut the pills they look as though their tablets and can be cut as opposed to some kind of gel caps that couldn't so I guess if it's too strong for me I can cut them

But it's just been this big kind of exciting adventure to kind of solve my problems which I kind of thought I had before but clearly I didn't because I had all this stuff and none of the tinctures that I've ever taken seem to really do much for my allergies at all when they do all kind of other stuff I think but they don't seem to do anything for my allergies

So that's kind of what I've been doing my neck and my shoulders are so tight just so like not it up and tense but I think I've been having fun

So I don't know is that normal

I'm not sure any part of that was normal

The realization that I just kind of don't have any medicine cabinet stuff that I'm willing to use you know

And yet somehow just didn't have a real clear realization that I don't have any sort of I don't know plan to just deal with my everyday issues I really don't quite understand how that happened I mean I think it just with the allergy I think I just tried a bunch of different hours you medicines and they all made me dizzy or Spacey or psychotic or some other kind of unpleasant thing like they dried up my sinuses in a way that made them hurt really badly so it just at some point I just said well you know I just have to suffer through this because the alternative is worse but then I have this post nasal drip and then I have this cough and you know now if when I went out to lunch with my mother the other day and I was coughing it's like now if you cough it's like I don't know it's like a taboo you just don't cough or sneeze or any of that kind of stuff because it makes you seem sick so then I was like I really need to do something about this and it just all kind of came together with this idea about the medicine cabinet

Which made it like a quest to make a thing perfect which is the kind of thing that I get off on apparently to just spend a lot of time visualizing and creating a thing it would be more useful I think if I did it in a way that produced something that was more I don't know like money producing

But you know it's about joy and self-care and kind of art in a way

And I did find on eBay for pretty cheap a couple of antique bottles I got one that's a an old bare bottle that has like bare printed in the glass on the side that I'm going to put my tile and all in cuz Tylenol comes in a really ugly plastic container and then I also found for pretty cheap on eBay and old alcohol bottle it's glass and that isn't really the important thing but alcohol used to come in bottles that were a particular shape and it doesn't anymore and for some reason that makes me really sad and so I found this old bottle

And I mean those things are kind of silly

I don't really need to be spending money on antique bottles to put in the medicine cabinet you know I mean that is kind of styling it but it's going to make me happy every time I look at those and it wasn't a lot of money so

Anyway whatever it's been like an hour an hour and a half and I'm almost at a battery and it's really late now I need to go to bed

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

I don't remember if I told you I was going to sleep.

Haven't been able to sleep.

I love you very much sweetheart 💋

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you

very

much

💋💋💋

went down a really deep rabbit hole

it was fun

but i gotta go to sleep now

tomorrow though, for sure

goodnight sweetheart

i love you very much *kiss*

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you very

much 💋

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you very much 💋

💋

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you very much 💋

I am not listen to that one thing yet

I was working on some other stuff

I like sports

I don't know much about basketball or tennis

When I said I don't know much I mean I don't really understand what's happening when I'm watching it

I don't know when I mean I guess in basketball it's easy to tell when a ball has gone through the basket

But I mean I literally do not know any of the rules of tennis or basketball I really don't know what's going on

Football I know a little bit more about because I was forced to watch football my whole childhood so I generally know about downs and stuff but I hate football

Tennis and basketball I kind of like to watch even though I don't know what's going on because it's pretty but I hate football

Baseball

I actually pretty much understand baseball there might be some obscure rules I don't know but in general I know what's going on I like baseball

I know a little bit about baseball history

But I haven't watched any baseball for a while

So I keep trying to tell myself that I'm going to start listening to TK

But I haven't been

Every once in awhile I listen to one

But I just have to come clean and say I pretty much don't know what's going on there either

Although I have listen to it some so I have a little bit of a framework

I have been not doing that well lately

Have a lot of anxiety

And some depression

I've been having like the sort of I don't know if it's an existential crisis or what but a lot of the things that I felt very confident about myself

I feel like maybe I was wrong

And

I don't know I've just been kind of evaluating everything and I don't know if that's a good idea I mean on the one hand perhaps it is from the perspective of you can see yourself from different perspectives but I feel like this is not that good for me to be doing

I've had several dreams where I've gone back to that place I worked last and I'm there because I'm worried they're not doing things right and that they need my help for one reason or another but I don't work there

It just keeps being made clear to me over and over and over in the dream that I don't work there and if they don't know what they're doing there'sn't really that much I can do to fix it so why am I there trying to fix it

And this is like I don't know a new kind of stress dream

I feel like I've kind of lost my mojo somehow

I've been putting all this work into my skincare and I've almost got my face to where it's not broken out almost

But now I don't like what it looks like

And I am up a little bit in weight probably from all those donuts that I'm bribing myself with to get me to leave the house

So I'm up about 10ish pounds

And I think that's at a particular place where when I'm 10 or 15 pounds lower I like the way I look better

I don't know I would say that I've had a lot of confidence in the past

And I would say that I have approached you with a lot of confidence in the past

Like I don't think I could have dealt with all the rejection that I have felt at various points if I didn't have a certain amount of confidence with you

But right now I just don't feel like I have a lot of confidence about anything

And I'm not really sure why that is

I think a big chunk of it is hormonal

And I think a lot of it or some of it has to do with the pandemic and the kind of long-term

Situations that has entailed

But

I don't feel good

I don't actually feel like myself

And I'm not real sure what to do about it

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you

very much 💋

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you

very much💋

Well I've been trying to leave the house

And I think I had given you an update on my progress so far

I've been driving the car every other day or sometimes I skip two days in between

I've gone in places

Mostly when there weren't a lot of people there still the idea of being in a place with a lot of people is very difficult for me

But even just the leaving the house

The driving around

They're going in a few places

My anxiety level has just gone through the roof

To the point where I'm having dreams and I'm waking up with like my heart racing

I had like heart palpitations or something I don't know I mean I'm all just nodded up with tension

I'm just not doing very well

And now the trying to remember what they call it it's the transmission rate percentage or whatever it's going back up again in fact our mayor who is vaccinated in booster and wears masks everywhere He's got omicron

So yeah I'm just not sure if I should be trying to go out and acclimate myself to being amongst people

I did dream last night about a road trip I was going home but I wasn't going to be able to stay there and was a long drive

But it's still ended up being extremely stressful somehow

And I'm also stressed about

I'm stressed about other things I can't really talk about

I love you very much

I'm going to go to sleep now

Goodnight 💋 sweetheart

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you very much 💋

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you

 very much 💋

I'm going to sleep

I love you

very much indeed💋

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you

very much 💋

 drove my car again today

didn't feel very well

menopause-y stuff

I had this image well actually no I've got several things that have come up when I woke up after I had that bad dream I started thinking about bad life choices and whatnot and it made me think about how I had wanted for years to do like an ayahuasca thing because what the ayahuasca is supposed to do is you know the vegetal mother kind of tells you what to do to get your s*** together and then had this image of the vegetable mother as like the plant from the little shop of horrors and then you know with a bow on its head to make it a girl and then a variety of it chasing me around until it kind of settled into a little bit less cartoon image and became kind of a not jiminy cricket but like an internalized is it super ego I shouldn't have to ask that I should know but I don't remember it's been a long time not like an internalized parent but like an internalized authority figure with omniscient abilities and now perhaps that's become a character in my story or in my life whichever happens

But then yesterday and today I'm having this strong feeling that the beginning of something I don't know if it's I don't know what it's the beginning of

But there's this memory I have that I haven't had it just resurfaced I mean if you would ask me about it I guess I would have remembered it wasn't like a repressed memory but I just wasn't thinking about it but when I was pretty little

My father and I were with a group of I don't know who maybe it was his friend I just I'm not sure but he was like you know go on ask her

And so one of the guys asked me who was the vice president and I'm like Spiro Agnew

And my dad's like see that makes her smarter than most y'all cuz you don't know that or something along those lines

And I don't really understand cuz I sort of thought I mean you know Nixon changed vice presidents he got forward so we'd have somebody to pardon him but I sort of thought well maybe he had changed before I mean it wasn't mentioned in school but we didn't exactly study Nixon but no Agnew is who he started off with so why was it so impressive that I knew who the vice president was

Maybe cuz I was like four maybe most 4-year-olds didn't know who the vice president was but why would the people have not known maybe he was making a joke cuz Spiro Agnew wasn't a very well-known politician

I'm just not sure what it means or why it's surfacing now and I feel as though it's the beginning of a story but I'm not sure why

I also don't understand why they would have been talking about who the vice president was in like 1971

I love you very much sweetheart 💋

I watched King Richard That's what it's called right All of a sudden I'm not positive that that's what's called

About Venus and Serena and their dad

I feel like you've probably already watched it

But if you have it I totally recommend it it's really good

You probably don't know this about me but Will Smith is I mean he's probably not my very favorite actor or anything but he's like on the short list you know I would go see a movie on the strength of Will Smith being in it I think he's very underrated

And a lot of the rules that he does are like you know movie star type roles and so you know he's will Smith but you know he reminds me of Cary Grant He's got that kind of charm and like really smooth you know and he's even though he's well even he does sometimes have comedic roles but even if he has a serious role he always kind of utilizes his comedic timing and he's got that kind of smile that's you know like I don't know it he just reminds me a lot of Cary Grant

You know like Cary Grant he was usually just Cary Grant but you didn't mind him just being Cary Grant because he did a good job of the role you know and Will Smith is like that a lot but every once in a while he has a role where he gets to actually act

And this was one of those rules I mean he did a really great job of embodying this kind of kind of crazy guy you know I mean like and it's a situation where if it hadn't worked out he was crazy but since it worked out he's a genius right but I mean he was channeling the crazy

It was kind of reminding me of my dad you know that kind of I don't know it's hard to put my finger on but there's a crazy quality that you know it's it's a physicality thing anyway if you haven't seen it I really recommend it I mean the actresses the girls who play Venus and Serena and their sisters they're all great totally great and the woman who plays the mother she's totally great too and really I mean everybody's great it's really really well done

Also I didn't tell you but I found that 11 is somehow a reference to where Venus lived when she was a kid she didn't say how it was a reference whether that was the street address or what but it is a reference to where she lived as a kid in some way for her

Anyway I think I'm going to go to bed

I love you very much

Goodnight sweetheart 💋

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you

very much 💋

 i drove around

i was going to go to the cafeteria

apparently saturday is the day they are closed

i did not know that

i went to the thai place instead

there was a big tv

i was right next to it

notre dame won

and there was a huge mass of people

wearing green

with mostly no masks

and i almost had some kind of panic response

i saw that one thing in the car

i think it had finished, just

anne rice died

and i feel some sorta way

i've read interview with the vampire like five times

more than any other book except alice in wonderland

starting at eleven years old and continuing through to adulthood

i had just been thinking it was time to read it again

i'm sure i would have

if she hadn't gone all christian on me

she wrote that in six weeks to enter it in some contest

goodnight sweetheart

i love you very much *kiss*

Well I just got up and apparently whatever I read right before I go to bed my brain is going to take as a writing prompt

So I created this whole additional career for myself which I didn't I don't think work the whole career in my dreams but it was my last day I was quitting it was my last day it was a Wednesday and I was working until 12:30 and it was basically Starbucks I guess I read about Starbucks right before I went to bed as well

But I was working with a girl who wasn't anybody I worked with in real life and I was reading we weren't busy and I was reading and then I fell asleep and I woke up and it had been busy the whole place was just wrecked and I'm like were you busy and she's like yes and I'm like why didn't you wake me up and she's like she just kind of shrugged at me

And I felt really bad but I like you know cleaned up

And then I went across the street to get food or something I don't know and I came back and I knocked on the office door which is not something that I would have done it was contrary to policy

And Rebecca opened the door

And she was in there with the guy who was the corporate person who was supposed to be signing off on my transition

He was based on the guy who was my manager at the bookstop

But he was much older but I guess he would be much older in real life too if he still alive

He was a character in real life

In this we were having a talk and I was asking him about you know what you're supposed to do and he's like he confirmed for me that you're not supposed to do anything except make life easier for yourself

And I never did that

I always hated that about all the people I worked for and I tried not to do that

But here in this dream it seemed like nobody was behaving as though I had ever done anything nice for them

And some woman came by and left a message for the new manager and assistant manager to come by and set up some kind of an account at darque tan

Which is the local tanning place or it was I'm not sure if it's still open

I had everything set up for their store meeting which apparently they were having a store meeting and immediately upon the assistant manager becoming the manager to you know get everybody on the same page and whatever and I went out onto the deck and she was having a meeting with the not the whole store but I guess the supervisory staff or something and I'm like you know hey it's only 5 minutes after 12:00 I haven't left yet and we still have to do our transition stuff

And she's like well you know

This is more important

Or something

I just felt like all my time spent there had been just for nothing and now I didn't know what I was doing or where I was going I just knew I had to leave there

We're just kind of how I felt when I left this last place except I had to leave this last place because I mean did just wasn't any other decision that made sense to me

So my head hurts and I'm all congested and I'm kind of crampy too

So

Not my best morning in a while

That was just weird

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

can you believe

I'm having another period

so

that's three this year

maybe that's why

the bad sleep issues

I love you very much sweetheart

I hope you're well

Well I went to sleep watching a clip from Spalding Gray swimming to Cambodia

Where he's talking about being on the train and the guy telling him about working in the waterproof basement with the green button and how he's a swinger and he gets an erection thinking about launching nuclear missiles to destroy the Soviet Union

And I woke up thinking about the pina colada song

Oh there's a way in which the pina colada song represents a sort of '70s romanticism

I mean if you think about it

Here are these people that are presumably married to each other but perhaps not perhaps just living together and they're both kind of tired of each other and they want romance and you know this very kind of personal ad idealized version of what they like right

Pina coladas

Getting caught in the rain

Champagne over health food

Making love at midnight in the dunes by the cape

Just a very idea that you would write a personal ad like that and someone wouldn't answer it and then you would run off and have this romantic adventure right

So he goes to the bar to meet the woman who's answering his personal ad

And it turns out to be his old lady

So here they've been in this relationship and they never knew about each other that this was what they were both secretly longing for right

Well I mean inherent in that is that they were both actually with the right person all along they just didn't do enough to find out about the person they were with to know that they were perfect for each other

So it's all about communication and therapy and whatnot all of a sudden

But it's also about a couple who were trying to cheat on each other

And there's a complexity in that

That even though it's a super cheesy song

Actually contains

Like the possibility of actual

Something you know

As opposed to the idea you know don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me

Well that's you know romantic and all

But it posits the romance in a different way

There it's like calling back a nostalgia of you know we sat under the apple tree and had this beautiful picnic or make out session or whatever we did under the apple tree

And A) don't do that with anybody else cuz we're now the exclusive property of each other but also B) if you sat under the apple tree with somebody else even if you weren't doing it in the same capacity because with the exclusive property of each other you would be denigrating the memory of that experience so like don't sit under the apple tree with your sister or your best friend either because that's our special spot

So then suddenly that doesn't become so very romantic it becomes kind of gross

So it's like turning it on its head you know The piña colada song it starts off ostensibly kind of gross and anti-romantic but actually it has the potential of resolution in a way that is actually romantically humanly fulfilling you know and I'm saying we've acknowledged that we aren't the exclusive property of each other and in seeing that we could be with somebody else if we wanted to we find that the somebody else we want to be with is actually each other

And that's the kind of things I think about

Good morning sweetheart

I'm going to go make some coffee and see if the cat has any food left in his dish

I suspect he does

Because he hasn't been hassling me

My cat is very frustrated with me because I have been leaning across the bed kind of stretching my back while I've been dictating this stuff and he's laying right next to me going come on it's time for bed come on you're in the bed and while you're not doing anything you could pat me

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

I had kind of an epiphany

I've been trying to wrap my head around this stuff I kind of want to write

It's all about America

And I kept wanting to make it a mystery

And I kept wanting to make it very complicated and you know postmodern and whatever

But you know when I pictured myself writing a novel when I was younger when I would actually try to write parts of a novel anything that I ever felt really good about was written as though I was talking to the reader it wasn't you know this complicated structure and plot and whatnot it was kind of a direct connection to the reader and whenever I start trying to write the way I think I want to write

I hate it and I hate doing it

So since I wanted it to be a mystery I was listening to all these mysteries

And I came to the realization that the thing I like about the mysteries isn't really the mystery it isn't really the structure it's really the getting inside of the character and you know I don't really know what to call it exactly but you know it doesn't have anything to do with the mystery I don't give a s*** who killed the person

And you know I heard a thing well I make it sound like it just appeared in front of me no I looked up a video and I don't remember what I was looking for but what I found was Stephen King and I'm pretty sure I was not looking up Stephen King because even though there are things about his writing that I really really like a lot of his stuff there are things I don't like about it

And although I recognize that he is a very successful American writer and maybe the fact that he has been so popularly successful is part of why I have this kind of block against him and I say things like oh Stephen King is a hack but it that isn't really true I don't really think he's a hack exactly and he's got talent

But I'm just saying this because I want you to know that I was not specifically looking for advice from Stephen King but in fact that was who gave me the piece of advice that after I shoot on it for several days or a week finally led to my epiphany

I'm going to tell you some other stuff that he said too people were asking him you know how do you write so many books and he's like well you know I get up and I write for about 3 hours a day and that gives me six pages and six pages is a book in too months

And they're like no it's not That's enough pages to be a book but surely you don't just sit down and write it in its finished form

And he's like yes I do

I think it all out in my head I don't keep a journal I don't take notes people are always asking me why I don't do that I don't do that he's like the good stuff sticks around and this stuff that falls away wasn't that good anyway now I don't know if I 100% agree with him on that but that is the way I have always written

Even when I was going to write like a paper for school I would think about it I would run it all through my head and I would think about what I was going to say and all the angles and everything and then I would sit down and just write it I didn't write a first draft and a second draft I mean I would write a draft and then I would go through and proofread it and change you know spelling and grammar and anything I screwed up on but it was you know 99% the same

And I'm not saying that you know I could write a novel that way I don't know if I could write a novel that way because I haven't done it but that does match the way I've always written and it was interesting to me that that's how Stephen King writes because he would not have been my role model

He would be someone my mother would have liked to have be my role model and she was the one that was always making me not want to write

But the thing that he said that actually led to my epiphany was you know that people don't care about plot and structure they care about your characters and you shouldn't let he didn't say it exactly like that he it was a lot more of an off-handed comment but it was like you shouldn't let that plot stuff get in the way

He's like you know I didn't think that the shining was going to end the way it was going to end That's just where it took me

And he didn't think Salem's lot was going to end where it was going to end either

So I mean

I guess you'd say that he's a pantser

Rather than a outliner

But I probably still have made the epiphany clear The epiphany was that what is important is the connection with the character not all that structure and complicated literary stuff I like the complicated literary stuff but that isn't enough for me You know I'll start reading something and I might love the way it's written but if I don't connect with the character then it doesn't matter

And just now I had an epiphany this is the epiphany

I'm all trying to be Thomas Pynchon

When who I am is a lot closer to Sarah Vowell

And what I'm trying to write is not a mystery mean it is a mystery but it isn't a mystery like who done it it's a mystery like what the f*** happened to America but then maybe it isn't even a question of what the f*** happened to America maybe America's always been like this and I was just diluted and I didn't think I was diluted I thought I was super jaded

So what I decided over the course of the last few days that I've been working on it I mean it's gone through a bunch of iterations and I've got stuff but it doesn't need to be a big complicated convoluted structured thing that's horrible

Would it needs to be is individual pieces that are connected to the theme but are individual pieces and they need to be something that is kind of an essay kind of a short story kind of a monologue kind of a stand-up routine

Where I'm using metaphors to talk about what I'm talking about and I'm talking directly to the reader it seems to me that that essentially is what I do well if I do that well but it doesn't make sense to say hey I have this thing to express and so in the expressing of it what I'm going to do is make it into a thing that I don't know how to do

That I have to completely learn a new way of being to execute

I will grant you that is the kind of way that I think but you know I mean how s***** is that to myself I mean what in essence I'm saying is that everything I've ever done is crap

Or maybe that's not what I'm saying but it feels like that's what I'm saying like I have to write some great American novel and it has to be some sort of literary standard and so it has to be this complicated thing that I have to create the wheel for

But why does it have to be that

Nobody wants to read that anyway

I mean am I such a pretentious little turd

Did I have to write the kind of book that only a very small percentage of the people would want to read

So no

Not going to do that

If I'm playing to my strong suit which I don't see any reason not to I mean how does it make sense to not play to my strong suit

Then what I need to do is you know what I do

And yeah it's kind of crazy and magical realism me because my life is like that that isn't like some s*** I'm going to have to make up That's how I see the world

How I see the world is weird

And that's the thing that has value

So I don't need to make it weirder it can just be the normal amount of weird

Life in the time of grackles

Golden America

Night kitchen

The future: reality TV

Then I don't really know about the one with the people in the desert I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say with that yet

And then there's another thing that's like how come nobody wants to buy the world a coke anymore oh my God what decade are you from

And there's more it's bits and pieces it's not connected yet what I need to do is figure out what all of the things are that I want to say and then say them

I always find it a little frustrating when it takes a really long time to come to a very obvious realization

Hey I'm having a coke

I ordered Chinese food

Because suddenly I had to have broccoli

And the plate that I ordered apparently came with a Coke well I could have had a 7 up or a Dr pepper or something else but I was like I haven't had a Coke in years in fact I couldn't tell you in the last time I had a Coke was the last time I had a Coke it was a diet Coke probably the last three times I had Cokes were diet Cokes and I haven't had any kind of Coke for years

So I mean it could have been like 5 7 I don't know a long time since I've had like a regular Coke

But it kind of takes like Pepsi to me

I mean I guess it's still got that tang that a coke has but it tastes more like a Pepsi than it should

I never liked Pepsi cuz it was too sweet and it didn't have that kind of bitter almond edge

I guess this still has the bitter almond edge but it's too sweet

Although I think the last time I had a real coke I said wow that's too sweet also

I want more of that bitter almond

I have some bubble water I could dilute it but I don't think I will like it better diluted although maybe maybe I will I don't know I don't know

Did they change the formula

Hey

You know I've given you floss recommendations but now I have a toothpaste recommendation

I have used fluoride free toothpaste

Most of my life

And every once in awhile I throw in some fluoride just in case

Like hedging my bets you know is it toxic is it not toxic or your teeth not okay if they don't have fluoride you know who knows

Plenty of indigenous people with beautiful teeth who never used fluoride

Plenty of people who've used fluoride toothpaste that have bad teeth

I don't think fluoride is like the answer

It does harden teeth I mean that's been scientifically proven

But it's fluoride good for your body

To be honest with you I just kind of believed the health foodie people and assumed it was not and maybe that wasn't right but whatever you know

But recently I have been all into Japanese stuff and somehow in the course of that I can't remember why or where or for what reason I found out that Japanese people in Japan mostly don't use fluoride toothpaste it's not recommended by their doctors what is recommended instead is nano hydroxyapatite

Which is allegedly the stuffed teeth are made of so if you brush with that it like fills in all your little holes and you know builds up your teeth and remineralizes them blah blah blah

And I haven't vetted that either like I haven't looked up all the scientific research and whatnot I just believed people

The toothpaste I've been using for years that I really like was out of stock and I needed something different and so I thought well I'll try this but I got a brand called Roswell no not Roswell risewell thank you except that should have been capitalized too but whatever and it's kind of a selfie product it looks really pretty but it's expensive and as I started using it I realized it's got some things that aren't the best about it like it's in a plastic tube so it doesn't squeeze down so it's really hard to tell how much you have left in there and it didn't seem to have that much I mean I went through it a lot faster at least I think I'm almost out of it I'm not really sure but it's not wanting to come out now so I don't know not really any way to squeeze the tube down and get the last little bit out

And it's kind of a gel-like texture but not like a thick gel like a kind of a thin gel and it's got a very delicate mint flavor it's okay I mean I don't hate it I like it but I was like well it seems to be almost empty so let's try something different because this has some issues so I don't think it's the winner so I found this one

and I really really like it

It's got a paste texture that's not exactly the same texture is like your crest or pepcid or whatever but it's a nice texture I like it I like it better in fact than traditional toothpaste texture and it's got a more assertive flavor it's got it's got some baking soda in it it's got peppermint oil spearmint oil anise seed extract and wintergreen oil as well as some stevia and it's got xylitol which birches really good for your teeth as well it's ant i-cavity really anti-cavity oh now you'll say anti-cavity okay and it's got calcium carbonate and silica plus the baking soda so it's it's a little bit whitening it says for sensitive and whitening but you know I find that my teeth are not naturally white they're naturally kind of translucent and so then when they get stained they have a tendency to look not the most beautiful so when something whitens my teeth I notice it pretty much right away and I've been using this for about I don't know 3 days and my teeth already look really good to me so obviously it's not the only nanohydroxy appetite toothpaste but it's a big too tube tube and it's good it's enjoyable oh and it comes with a tube key for you to roll down on the end of it which I haven't had to do yet because I've only been using it for 3 days but that is cool thing

But if you're going to buy it just be careful cuz there are a bunch of different kinds of David toothpaste most of them aren't nanohydroxy appetite but there is another one that's hydroxyapatite that's got charcoal in it

And if you can brush with charcoal toothpaste then you win

Because I could not do that I tried it's supposed to be whitening and so good for you and whatever but it just I cannot The flavor the texture the mess all of those things are just a big uhuh for me

Hope you're having a good day sweetheart 💋

I slept really badly last night

And I had been feeling bad all day

So I went to bed at like 6:30 or so

But I guess I didn't tell you I thought I did but I guess I didn't so I'm up now to pee

And I'm going back to bed

I think I should have slept well for the time I've been asleep

But I still don't feel very well I had hurt

I'm congested

Which could quite easily be allergies

The idea of food seems pretty unappealing

I'm going back to bed now

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

 well i finished   A Midsummer's Experiment

it was completely different than the Mas books

and

i think keigo higashino is like a best-selling type author in japan

the detective doesn't have as much personal importance in the novel

[it's the third, not the first, but still]

but

the mystery is very well constructed

and the world of the mystery is also

it's not like my favorite book ever or anything

but it was solid

highly recommend

i'm about half way through  snow country

by yasunai kawabata

which is beautifully written

but

a real downer

don't really recommend

i love you sweetheart

hope all is well 

💋💋💋💋💋

💋💋💋💋💋💋💋

💋💋💋💋💋

Oh and Venus Williams has a sunscreen well actually she's got two of them One is a sunscreen serum which I think just means it's very thin and absorbs into your skin very quickly and the other one I think is more of a normal cream texture

Their physical sunscreens made with zinc oxide and they are transparent which usually zinc is not transparent usually it leaves a white cast to some degree or another but this I've watched multiple people on videos applying it and it just absorbs right in and there's no white cast it looks amazing

But her sunscreen brand is called Eleven

And I don't know why

Seems like they would be a story with that

I did try to do a search on it

But as I said I'm exhausted and not very coherent so possibly I didn't do a very good search but I couldn't find a reason

And I'm super curious

Cuz for some reason I think it's really cool that it's called Eleven

So I like need the backstory

And when I was asleep I had these really involved dreams in locations I've had dreams in before

And it's just on the edge of my brain but I cannot remember

Okay so when I said good night last night I went and gotten to bed but I could not fall asleep so I just lay in bed for like 4 or 5 hours and then I said f*** it I'll just get up

And I had a couple things I needed to do so I did those and then I fell asleep in the chair but leaning back and made my neck very stiff and sore so that's fun

And then I woke up and said oh I fell asleep in the chair

And then I proceeded to fall asleep in the chair again

It gets dark too early now I don't like that

Anyway I think since I've well I mean I guess I can't say I've been up for more than 24 hours cuz I was just asleep for some amount of time but prior to being asleep for some amount of time I was up for 24 hours a little more than 24 hours I think but I'm disoriented and exhausted so so much for my oh I can totally stay up for 24 hours thing

I think sometimes I can but I think the fact that I went and laid down for 4 or 5 hours made my body think I was supposed to be asleep but then I wasn't so I don't know I'm all turned around

I'm going to go to sleep I'm probably not going to do it right this second but I'm going to go ahead and say good night because I don't trust myself to realize that I didn't do what already

I love you very much sweetheart 💋

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

I fell asleep

I didn't say goodnight

sorry

I'm not sure I'm up yet

I love you very much

Good morning sweetheart

💋💋💋💋💋

💋💋💋💋💋💋💋

💋💋💋💋💋

 

Love you

Love you

Sleeping now

💋💋💋💋💋

So in addition to the seven books I read last month

I read parts of like I don't know four or five more books that I just couldn't get into

So I don't know this month I think I'm going to set my goal for eight books

But I think some of them I'm going to actually read read instead of just listen to

But I've started on a Japanese another Japanese mystery audible was having a sale and so I got

It's called midsummer's equation

By keigo higashino

And this is actually not the first book in the series it's like the third book in a series

But with mysteries a lot of times you can pick up a book that's in the middle of the series and still enjoy it he has a bunch of books so if I like his writing there are I don't know 15 books or something

Not all in the same series

Just for clarification

Sometimes I need clarification

This is my telling you about my reading stuff might not be interesting to you but it's kind of a big deal to me because I used to read all the time constantly and then somehow I got out of it

I think maybe it was when I was working so much

Did I just got to be reading less

And I had a hard time finding things that I wanted to read

You know because like last month I read seven books but they were five I started that I didn't read and some of those I'll go back and read later but some of them I probably won't

And I'm kind of trying to analyze what it is about a book that makes it something I want to continue to read

And there is like a minimum requirement of a certain amount of writing style

But that isn't the only thing that's like a necessary but not sufficient kind of thing

So I'm telling you about this stuff for its own sake not to be trying to tell you something else

I love you very much sweetheart

Yes Please

 i'm going to sleep now

i love you very much sweetheart  *kiss*

i finished 7 books this month

i had to quit the moonstone for a while

i was enjoying it

but

i wasn't really connecting with it

and

i needed another naomi hirahara

iced in paradise

i just really connect with her characters for some reason