I lied. The next step in the expatriation project via education is to determine whether any of the master's program finalists provides courses in English. I already know that my original choice does not, that it requires a CEFR level B1, but it's the program that interests me the least; I chose it for the generous associated scholarship and the fact that it's specifically geared towards getting foreign students to Mandarin fluency. Following a program that includes English courses won't help me as much with my goal of integrating into Taiwan, but it would be much more interesting, motivating, and, I hope, fulfilling. As much as I would like to think of myself as a superstudent capable of achieving, between now and next fall, the Mandarin level necessary to complete a graduate degree in Philosophy, that'd probably be impossible. Philosophy is probably the most linguistically tricky academic subject there is. However, a lot of the material on the department websites is in English, even course names and at least one book title were in English, and, strangely, these departments seem to focus on European and USian philosophy, so it seems there's a strong possibility that I'd be able to understand the course material.

So I emailed the two philosophy departments and put off contacting the history department. My interest is sort of in between history and philosophy; I want to understand how the philosophy developed from the original experiements into the physics theory we have today. The history department's offerings seem more focused on the cultural elements surrounding scientific developments, and I'm not interested in that. Ideally I'd do a philosophy program and be able to supplement that with relevant history courses (assuming there are any). The USian graduate programs have this combination of fields built in; too bad I cannot stay here and follow one without fear of getting harassed or assaulted.

I get so incredibly bored. I'm a little disappointed that I cannot study all day. I feel like I'm wasting time with a computer game I play, but I guess I do need the breaks. Maybe I will take up my neighbor on her invitations. I sort of didn't trust her because she said some fake, virtue signally stuff to me first time we spoke. I sort of provisionally lumped her in with all the other fake white-privileged womyn in town.

Nah, I'd better keep my distance. I don't need any more regret or ugly memories. I just need to keep finding engaging things to do. My books are projected to arrive one week from today, which feels like an eternity. I'll be done with my Chinese book tomorrow. I noticed just a couple of days ago that only the beginner-level books are available with traditional characters, so I have three more to go (which won't take more than a week or two to read), and as of today I have another Chinese reader called Oh China! lined up. The bootleg version was apparently deleted from the file-sharing site where it's supposed to be, so I did a bit of shopping this afternoon and found an earlier version for ten bucks online. I would like to buy it right now but I'll put it off until next month, which is only like twelve days away anyhow.

I was considering buying the traditional character versions of the Mandarin Companion readers at the next reading level, but they're mostly simplified translations of other books. I HATE translations. Plus these Mandarin Companion books are too expensive, about fifteen bucks each, and they're short. Modern textbooks and the like in general are a ripoff, dumbed down and full of pictures. I've found that buying old texts is almost always cheaper and the best way to get the most information and best instruction.

It's ten twenty pm now and I just got home. I moved my walk to the evening and today was the first day. I didn't take any wet wipes, so I walked from the track to the park to use the public restroom. And found yet another guy in there. I figured something was off as soon as I walked in. I saw someone walking back and forth at the far end of disabled users' stall, away from the toilet. I just stood and observed for a bit. A few seconds after I walked in, the guy started playing loud music, from a smartphone, it sounded like. Then he started talking loudly. I left the bathroom and waited outside. He came out with a backpack a few minutes later and said "oh sorry" when he saw me. I called him a creep and he got angry. He said he'd been getting high, and I gestured towards the men's room. He kept talking shit and telling me that he wasn't a creep. I walked off.

I went into one of the porta-pottys, but I didn't want to use that either. People can hide cameras in there too. So I just blew my nose, then leaned against the wall and thought about how tired, trapped, and disgusted I am for maybe ten minutes. I had been energetic and in a good mood and that asshole ruined it. I didn't want to be out walking at night anymore, especially not without my mace, so I came home early.

Evening is a better time for walking for me because I tend to feel more energetic later in the day. Now is a good time for evening walks because there's daylight until nine pm.

I need to start going around with a small camera mounted on my shoulder or something so I can catch these assholes. Honestly, American men are absolute garbage; I don't know how womyn here even find someone to date let alone stay with long-term. There need to be security cameras at bathroom entrances. The sheer number of them that are either in prison or ex-felons alone is staggering. And there's no escape from those who are out or haven't been caught yet. They're everywhere.

Yesterday I went into town for my dermatology appointment. As the bus driver pulled away from the stop before I got off, a guy started banging on the outside of bus. First he banged on windows and cracked the glass in the back door. Then he hit something on the side of the bus and the engine cut out. When the driver opened the forward door, he got on. The driver told him to disembark and threatened to call the cops, then went out and apparently restarted the bus. Apparently there's some button on the side of the bus that stops the engine, a design that makes no sense to me.

The driver got back on and argued with the guy, who apparently had been just sitting at the stop until the bus was leaving, giving no indication that he wanted to get on. The guy's pants kept falling down, giving us a peak of his ass. The driver started to call dispatch and then the guy finally got off and we left the stop.

High or crazy; I couldn't tell.

After my appointment, I went to the dollar store and found that the prices of some items had been raised from a dollar twenty-five to a dollar fifty. I spent more than I'd intended to spend, and that annoyed me, but at least I now have metal forks rather than one plastic takeout fork I keep re-using.

I went into town again today. I wanted a book on semiconductors, an introduction. I've become somewhat curious about semiconductors because Taiwan is such a large player in the industry. I'm particularly interested in more environmentally friendly fabrication technology. But first I'd have to understand what semiconductors are and how they work. While searching for books online just before leaving, it occurred to me that the information I sought would build on knowledge of electronics. I have the basics, having learned them in the military and some as part of my university coursework, but...I'm dissatisfied with the the theory behind it.

Electronics is built on the theory of electricity, which is built on the theory of atoms and subatomic particles. The problem with physics theories, however (and it's a huge problem in my opinion), is that they're largely made up of models, metaphors, and narratives and, more problematically, where these three end and actual physical phenomena begin isn't clear. This was a major stumbling block for me as an undergraduate, and it's the reason why I wouldn't be able to continue studying physics now: I can't accept seemingly arbitrary abstract models as explanations for how the physical world works. I'm still not entirely sure as to whether atoms are actual physical things, things which have been observed somehow, or whether they are just a model, and, as someone with a degree in physics, I absolutely should know that. I was simply never taught. Anyone who's had even a modicum of science education will have observed that people/books sure do discuss atoms as if they were physically real, but I've learned the hard way that the way scientists talk about the world doesn't necessarily comport with what's physically real, that is, what can be observed (with animal senses or instrumentation).

So it seems to me that the only way to truly understand the knowledge that's been built up about the physical world, without the fluff and bullshit particles scientists seemingly fabricate, is to learn it as the series of experiments from which the theories have emerged. The experiments necessarily deal directly with physical reality, even though the interpretation of the results may depart from it. In other words, I have to work through the history of physics.

Physics has existed for so long and has so many sub-disciplines that this is a large undertaking. However, I intend to focus my efforts, firstly and mainly on electromagnetism, the first sub-discipline that made me aware of this problem with physical theories, the one I got "stuck" on, and the one most relevant to semiconductors, a topic I may abandon altogether for lack of time. Modern physics is also just crying out to be delved into, what with the bizarre proclamations of relatively and all, and thermodynamics is also a curious one.

But where would I find the time? Universities offer degrees in this sort of thing, the history and philosophy of science. If I'm going to pursue a graduate degree, I may as well pursue a topic that's haunted me for years. All I need is funding and a university in a good location. The public library doesn't seem to have many real science textbooks (mostly just watered down "popular science" books), and proper textbooks take too long to read to be borrowed anyhow, so I'll have to buy my own sooner or later. I looked up some books on this topic and they are quite pricey, so funding will be a must. Beyond that, I will need to dig up very old research papers; which ones, I do not yet know, and the guidance of professors will be very valuable to this end. In the meantime, I have Maxwell's papers on electromagnetism, and I can start there. I've had these two volumes for years and have not been able to focus on them; I hope that I can now.

Though I'll probably never have the clout to bring this about myself, I would like for physics education and even the theories themselves to change. I would like educators to stop confusing and indoctrinating students with these arbitrary models. At the very least, all physics courses should include clear explanations of what is a model and what is real.

I went to the thrift store hoping to get some cheap clothes, but the fitting rooms have been closed down indefinitely. I was waiting at the cash register to ask about them when the person being rung up asked first. The employee said that the store didn't have the manpower to monitor the rooms, that all manner of shady things went on in there, including drug use and urination (more highness or craziness), so I walked away and put back the clothes I'd hoped to try on, which probably wouldn't have fit well anyhow. Accursed thigh fat.

Yesterday on my way home from my morning walk I came across a newsstand that had been filled with books. The free mini-libraries we have around town are another nice thing about this place. Most of them are charming little birdhouse-like structures standing in front of people's houses, but there's at least one other local newsstand that's being used to house donated books. Most of the books are not to my taste. I was a bit surprised to find what seemed to be a science fiction novel, especially one that sounded so interesting: scientists, observing an alien species from Earth, with no way to communicate, trying to understand what they see. I read thirty or forty pages of this book on the bus yesterday, and it turned out to be of the Drama Masquerading as Science Fiction genre. I hate these kinds of books with a passion. I flipped through the rest of the book and, as in the beginning, there was hardly any reference to the alien species. The book was almost entirely about the drama unfolding between the people on the scientific installation. A hundred pages in, I could no longer stomach the writing style of the Stanley Kim Robinson novel, and I stopped reading it days ago; so, once again, I'm without an English-language novel to read.

Today I came across one of the people who live in my neighborhood, the first person here who spoke to me after I'd moved in actually. I had the energy to chat, so I spoke to her (I usually only return her greeting, if I even notice her). I asked her how long she'd lived here and what she thought of the town. To my surprise, she said that she found people here entitled. Me too!

We ended up talking about weightloss and she told me that she has an elderly friend who is going to start Ozempic soon. The combination of old age and Ozempic made me cringe. I have read a little bit about Ozempic and heard about the rebound weight gain. The friend is one of those people who has supposedly been big all her life, and so diet has been surpassed as an option it seems. The neighbor has another friend who is going to start another weight-loss drug soon.

Oh these people who cannot figure out how to lose weight by cutting calories are kind of mentally exhausting. If they truly have the genetic problems they claim to have, they should have a doctor check it out. I remember watching a presentation by a doctor who's treated people with such genetic issues, and he said that all or almost off them were sort of inbred people of Persian descent. I'm sure non-Persians can have it as well, but such conditions are rare. Most people just eat too much. Why a seventy-seven year old cannot run a successful diet is something I'd like to get to the bottom of.

Once again, the sellers of my current shoes being out of the same style/size has turned out to be a blessing. If the shoes I was originally going to buy had been in stock, I wouldn't have taken the time to consider that the brand is cheap and I'd likely have walked another hole in them five months from now. I had to shop some more, and I ended up buying what I hope is a sturdier brand on sale.

I feel empty now so I'm going to force myself to study and/or do online shopping.

I finally decided to take a brief break from Mandarin textbooks, and I've just finished creating the flahcards for the vocab from my first Mandarin video. Actually, it's not the first; it's the first that I've ever finished, not counting a couple of simple fifteen-second videos I studied in between quitting Pimsleur and starting with textbooks. The video is only about two minutes long but includes about sixty-seven terms that are new to me, so I had to split it up phrase by phrase, with at least one flashcard per phrase, and that, along with looking up the definitions and pronunciation, took hours. That huge time commitment was a major reason why I hadn't done this sooner. Given how much of the video I could understand without looking anything up, this is a small milestone for me.

I don't know how well I'll do in terms of retaining this new vocabulary. One of the best things about the textbooks is that they reinforce vocabularly by re-using it in successive lessons, but there are no successive lesons for individual videos. I'll just have to gorge on isolated pieces of Mandarin content to increase my chances of coming across the terms again. Most of them were fairly basic, so I'll likely come across them in my textbooks.

I tried to reorder my dermatological treatment today but the prescription has expired. To get it renewed, I must get an appointment with the dermatology clinic. To get that appointment, I need to request a referral from primary care, and to make the request, I need an appointment with primary care. It's frustrating.

The company that makes my shoes is out of my size, so I'm stuck with holey shoes for a bit longer. I also was not able to find any affordable and attractive sandals. Xero shoes has some cheap minimalist sandals (minimalist shoes are the only ones I'll wear), but the ones that'll fit me are ugly, feminine colors. Xero gets on my nerves, and the loud colors for women's shoes isn't the only reason. I'd prefer to never shop with them again, but minimalist shoes are so difficult to find that I check them out on occasion. Now that I'm reminded of my previous shopping experiences, sandals are the only shoe I'd ever buy from Xero because all their other shoes, including at least one pair that were supposed to be waterproof, take on water even if there is no rain and the street is merely wet.

I need a better Chinese-French dictionary. There is a rather extensive one available on Pleco, but it costs sixty bucks. Plus using a smart phone to look up vocab is less convenient than looking it up on the desktop (where I create the flashcards that require the translations).

I am unhappy but I'm trying to focus on improving things in my life one-by-one.

To be eligible for a Fullbright scholarship for a Master's program in Chinese culture and Sinology in Taiwan, I need to be at level B1 in Mandarin. I think I can achieve that level in reading by next summer and in aural comprehension too if I bust my ass a bit. But speaking? I'm not going to have many opportunities to speak. I can do the same thing I do with French: speak to myself. But the results will be limited.

I have been sleeping about seven hours per night for the past three nights. I don't feel as rested or as energetic as I thought I would. Proper bowel function, however, is returning, just not to the extent that I'd anticipated, probably due to the side effects of progesterone, which I've been taking every other day.

The Asian grocery store had only one package of mung bean noodles today and no shittake mushrooms. I was disappointed about the noodles because I'd gotten there early and waited around in the cold for them to open. I will try the other Asian grocery store, the one I found the same morning I found my mobile phone.

That one package of mung bean noodles is the best I've ever had. They are made of pure mung beans, whereas the others were cut with potato starch and water. The texture is much nicer.

Instead of spending a fortune on miso, I decided to try a cheap Korean fermented soybean product from the discount grocery store even though it contains wheat. It is quite tasty. That small amount of wheat shouldn't pose problems, and maybe it won't pose any, assuming Korean wheat isn't GMO, as usian wheat is. I'm not actually sure whether I just have problems with all wheat or whether it's something to do with GMO wheat.

Outside the discount grocery store, I saw from the back a womon who looked attractive. Not only was she wearing something comfortable-looking and neutral (meaning not typical women's clothing), as I sit here remembering it, she wasn't overweight. Usually when I think about so many people being overweight, I think about it in terms of a public health crisis. I can't recall having thought much about how widespread weight issues limits attraction.

Anyways, she looked tasty in her sweatsuit and I was somewhat struck by how automatic the physical attraction was. I don't have that kind of reaction to men. With them it starts in the mind and makes its way to the groin. I guess with womyn it's more like something in the solar plexus, if we are going to body-map it, then it radiates outward to mind, heart (meaning emotions), and groin.

What if it's not enough, that attraction that flows from mind to groin. What if I cannot make it work, can't sustain a relationship, get bored with whatever hapless guy I might be with? What if i can't sustain a relationship with anyone who is available to me? Not psychologically attracted enough to womyn, not physically attracted enough to men. What a bleak prospect.

I treated myself to some moisturizing hair gel I found at the discount grocery store today. I cannot afford to pay my next energy bill installment and I'm kind of beyond caring today. Juggling expenses with no money is just too difficult.

Today I finished Lovecraft's short story The Lurking Fear. Now that I'm reading him again, what stands out is something that seems to have barely cracked the surface of my consciousness: the guy overuses horror-specific adjectives. Sometimes, there are so many "morbid"'s, "hellish,"'s, "sepulchral"'s, and "otherworldly"'s in a row that the phrase loses all meaning. Today I got bogged down in a whole paragraph that seemed to contain almost nothing but a string of these adjectives. The passage started off making sense, and then it didn't anymore. It was like a glimpse of insanity in print form. Maybe that was the point.

And via the magic of the Internet, here it is:

Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness
chasing one another through endless, ensanguined corridors of purple
fulgurous sky ... formless phantasms and kaleidoscopic mutations of a
ghoulish, remembered scene; forests of monstrous overnourished oaks
with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an
earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils; moundlike tentacles
groping from underground nuclei of polypous perversion ... insane
lightning over malignant ivied walls and demon arcades choked with
fungous vegetation.... Heaven be thanked for the instinct which led me
unconscious to places where men dwell; to the peaceful village that
slept under the calm stars of clearing skies.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/70486/pg70486.txt

Today is grocery day and it's nice to finally have food again! I have advised people who complained about stupid bullshit like existential depression to simply go without eating for a day or lock themselves out of their homes. In other words, get some real problems. Once a person feels the bite of cold or hunger, I think, she will begin to understand that self-created problems that are basically nothing but thoughts are not worth one's time. They are worse than trivial.

As soon as I got home, I made one of my favorite types of meal: double carbs! Rice plus hash browns. Carbs are where it's at. All that keto and carnivore shit is moronic. Carbs = energy. Carbs are life.

I have been researching Bhutan more and I haven't found an avenue to citizenship. There is an immigrant status based on marriage to a Bhutanese citizen, but I'm not sure whether that's the same as citizenship. So far, it seems that my best bet (as a first step) is to become a student at one of the national universities. Once there, I can study something that is useful to the government and learn the language (as well as check out the culture). The tuition is low plus there are scholarships.

Two more vehicles pulled out right in front of me as I was crossing an intersection today. I'm going to start carrying something that scratches cars with me as I cross streets, and cars that pull up a few feet away from me are going to start having accidents. I have been nearly hit by cars so many times in the five years since I've moved here that I feel traumatized. Last week, a car pulled up to the stop sign right next to me and I was so freaked out that all I could think to do was freeze in the middle of the street. That's the best way to make sure drivers see me, I reasoned through my fear. Spending the rest of my life dodging cars is such a bleak view of the future. Sooner or later, one is going to hit me.

I am exhausted and also quite agitated right now. I forced myself to go out shopping to a third store late this afternoon despite my exhaustion, and I'm sort of paying for that now. This is one of those times at which I try to watch a movie (I normally only rarely watch movies), but I feel like I can't really bear yet another glimpse into usian culture. I just want a story, but you never get just a story with our movies. Or any movie, I suppose, but ignorance of the details of foreign culture would allow me to enjoy a foreign movie more. But I don't have the energy to deal with subtitles nor the energy to search for something I might like nor the energy to even decipher something in French, which is the only foreign language I understand remotely well enough to even think of attempting a movie in. Awkward sentence, no idea how to fix it.

Maybe I'll just lie down for a while.

I wrote a whole other post for today; it is about people being defensive and delusional about how crappy the united states is. But some of it might be bullshit and I don't have the cognitive ability to really think it out at the moment.

Maybe the progesterone is working after all. Maybe that's why I've been able to take naps. Maybe it's why I've been able to fall asleep without quick-release melatonin. Maybe that's why I feel drowsy even after I have the dark chocolate bars I used to use for wakefulness (I've given up on them, mainly because they no longer work). But I'm still waking up too early. I'll finish my one-month supply and see whether things improve.

I have such dark thoughts about dating today. I was reading some sub-reddit called fucktheccp or something and a bunch of posts there about the racism of Chinese people plus the prospect of being a single female in a foreign country I know nothing about. I just hope I get murdered instead. Murder I can deal with. I cannot take much more life. And I'm tired of being alive anyways.

I let myself get dehydrated again today. I took my migraine meds, but my head still hurts a little. Dehydration is always a problem when I go shopping because I'm gone for hours and never have an easy way to take liquids with me. I've had several different water bottles, the aluminum kind that cost ten+ dollars, but they always end up so gross that I have to throw them away, so I've stopped buying them. I have problems keeping stuff clean.

I'm finally back to my old study routine. I feel productive again, I feel mobile again, whereas I was still and stagnant before. I got my newly built software up and running yesterday afternoon (or was it morning?) and got rid of all the runtime errors a bit later. I'm having to go back and re-learn vocabulary I couldn't retain with the other software I tried, something called Mnemosyne. I'll be done with these new terms by tomorrow, however.

I'm on the second-to-last chapter of my first volume of my Mandarin textbook. It feels good to be so close to a goal. I will be done with this volume in less than a few days. I'm curious to see how much more difficult the second volume will be.

I cannot eat bananas without peanut butter powder. They do not taste good. Yet they are the foundation of my fruitarian diet. So I decided to buy some more pb powder even though I cannot really afford it. I'll run out of food stamps and have to use some cash once I get my monthly income next month.

I didn't have time to walk to the grocery store across town, so I went to the one downtown. The pb powder is two bucks more. (Two bucks could get me two extra pounds of organic bananas, it's not an insignificant sum of money.) I hesitated for a long time in the store, then finally bought it anyways. I decided I could have a little bit of pleasure in this life of mine.

I was so pissed when I got that over-priced jar home and tasted it. It doesn't even taste like peanuts. Apparently, the store downtown sells a different brand. It tastes almost like pure sugar. My precious food stamps, wasted.

Last night I dreamt that I'd traveled to England. But the architecture looked like stuff I'd seen in images of Italy or maybe the broader Mediterranean.

The dream started with me going into a rather posh-looking convenience store to find a snack (always a struggle for a vegan with chronic hypoglycemia). It was a bit awkward because I couldn't figure out what some of the items were or I couldn't decide on what I wanted because of the human bustle in the store (in real life this is distracting and makes shopping difficult). I found some good looking crackers that were sold separately rather than in a package. They were just lying out, the package open so that people could take individual crackers. I smeared something jelly-like on the crackers and went up to pay at the register, then the dream sort of faded out to the next scene, me walking down streets that looked like streets of Italy.

I did wake up prematurely last night, but I fell back to sleep easily and got nearly a full night of sleep. I'm not sure whether that was due to the mildness of the night (it was warmer than usual, as always when it rains) or because of the extra supplements I took : a second, lower dose of extended release melatonin, glycine in a capsule (instead of powder form, which is more quickly absorbed), and potassium citrate.

The potassium I took because I always wake up feeling dehydrated. But I woke up feeling even more dehydrated this morning, so I'm not sure what to do. Having extra salt before bed seemed to work, but I woke up with such a horribly puffy face when I did that that I backed off it. Having extra salt first thing in the morning seemed to work, but I still wake up with the beginnings of a dehydration headache, albeit one that fades away as the morning progresses.

My new shoes arrived today. Now that walking should be more comfortable, plus I have an updated diet plan coming up starting next grocery day, we enter phase 2 of my weight-loss diet.

I ran out of food today but put off going to the grocery store until this evening because of the heavy rain. I just kept going through the random bit of food I had left, which was mainly a small bag of oat groats. They weren't pleasant because I don't really have any sweetener here except molasses (which I tried yesterday on oat groats...it was bad). I ate until my stomach felt uncomfortably full, yet still I was hungry. That's what insufficient vegetable intake is like.

Finally I went out and bought a bag of rice and a bag of red beans. Five bucks, rather pricey. Now there's just twelve dollars in my checking account. I didn't have the energy to go to the cheaper grocery store up the hill. The payment machine wouldn't take my EBT card (for food stamps), so I had to pay the whole price with my own money. Annoying. I have a dollar something just sitting on the card, unused.

Finished shopping at one thirty pm, didn't get home until around four pm. Waiting on buses.

At least I got some walking in. Missed the morning walk due to constipation. Constipation due to not sleeping. Not sleeping due to the bedroom being too warm. Now I know that after it rains, I need to sleep with the bedroom window open; otherwise, it's too cold to sleep with the bedroom window open. In winter only. Or late fall too, I guess. It's not even winter yet.

Why is it so warm after the rain?

I got to walk the last mile home with a migraine. Migraine due to skipping my daily magnesium. Skipped the magnesium because I'm almost out and can scarcely afford more, plus going out shopping was a last minute decision I made because I missed the morning walk. Plus it's sunny days that give me migraines. The weather report said today would be cloudy. The sun came out early in the afternoon.

Because it's rained for the past two days and because today was supposed to be cold and cloudy, I thought there might be surprise rain, so I took my umbrella. Wasn't thinking straight due to the migraine and noise on the bus, so I left the umbrella on the bus. Or maybe at the bus stop. Too sick to go back for it. So I've lost my last umbrella for nothing. No idea where the other two umbrellas are. In fact, I missed the first bus because I took too long looking for them.

Can't stop thinking about this guy who works at the community market.

He may have been on the bus with me today, sitting right across from me. Probably not, but maybe. I made sure to not look over there. Not many ethnic minorities in this area, especially not Asians.

No, no, no. He's too young for me. Or is he? East Asians age well. Everybody seems to think I'm half my age and it's awkward at best. I shouldn't do the same to others.

I got another bar of whitening soap at the Filipin@ market today. I didn't see any mung bean cake, but there was red bean cake up at the cash register. But the person who rung me up couldn't find the price. And I don't need junk food, empty calories, anyhow. So I said never mind, paid for my soap, and left. They didn't have the same brand of soap I got the first time I was there, and they didn't have the whitening, sunblocking facial moisturizer I saw and wanted and decided to come back for the first time I was there. So I don't know how well this soap will work, but I'm thinking it'll be ok because it has similar ingredients.

I'm still not used to going to bed at seven forty pm and getting up at three thirty am. It's not difficult; it's just weird, and my mental representation of the day's plans isn't completely aligned with this new schedule.

I looked for some quick-dissolve melatonin again today. Every brand I came acros had sucralose in it.

I put some cooked food items back on the shelves while grocery shopping today. I need to get used to focusing more on fruit. I have a five pound bag of rice, a month's supply of mung bean noodles, and pounds of potatoes in the fridge. Plus veggies and my tofu. That's enough for cooked meals.

I want this guy so bad,

I want x-rated things from him. I had a sudden flush (flash?) of modesty so I erased the last part of that last sentence.

He may be older than he looks but he can't be as old as me. I'm ancient.

I went to the local thrift store early this evening and found a device I couldn't identify in the eletronics section. I took it up to the front of the store to test it (plug it in), thinking I might be able to figure out what it was once it came on. A middle-aged lady had just finished checking out and the cashierperson seemed to be asking her about getting her armful of items to her car. I offered to help her carry her things and she said that was "sweet" (this is another example of womyn's behavior I dislike—calling things/people "sweet," "cute," etc., especially when the thing is me).

Then she saw what I had in my hands and said "cool." I asked her what it was and she said it was a vibrator. I was a bit surprised although the item's shape had put me in the mind of a vibrator the first time I'd seen it. I must have put that out of my mind because who would donate a giant acient vibrator to a thrift store? The thing was huge and looked like it was from the seventies. I mentioned the size and she said that people (couples, I guess) use it together. She told me to plug it in but I said I was no longer interested. I just now thought about the germs and grossness of handling somebody's old vibrator, although given the community we live in, they probably cleaned it first. On the other hand, it wasn't necessarily a local donation...

After leaving the thrift store (where I bought a floor-pedal thing for just ten bucks—another way to exercise indoors, and cheaper than a waterproof pair of shoes, an expense I'll probably have to put off until next month), I walked a couple of doors down to the health food store community market and found some liquid melatonin, which, I hope, will take the place of my current quick-dissolve melatonin. I did a good deal of online shopping yesterday but could find only one brand of quick-dissolve melatonin (an expensive one) that didn't contain sucralose, which I'm guessing is what's giving me weird side effects. Or maybe it's the crospovidone, whatever that is.

What a relief to finally be able to afford the skincare products I need! I just ordered another peel, a mild one this time, so hopefully I won't be giving myself anymore PIH. I also ordered something to help with skin hydration. It came to fifty bucks.

The money I just got is disappearing fast. Yesterday, I had to buy a second bottle of quick-dissolve melatonin after deciding, after some trial-and-error, that my latest bottle was behind my not sleeping for three days straight. I used to use that brand all the time; I'm not sure what's changed.

I also bought a new pair of earrings this evening. The only way, it seems, to find a pair of earrings that isn't overly ornamental is to search for men's earrings, so that's where I started off. Finding suitable earrings at any local store is out of the question, unless I lived in a metropolis like San Francisco maybe. I got myself a nice pair of walnut wooden studs. I was going to buy two pairs of earrings because each of my lobes is pierced twice, but I decided to hold off, both to save money and to figure out what look I like best.

I've have earrings in all four of my lobe piercings before, and I didn't like it, but that may have been the earrings I had (black studs). The ones I just bought have a more neutral look. I'm thinking I'll try a darker set of wood for one set of piercings and a lighter set for the other. Then I'll have one more piercing to fill, one on my upper ear that I can't remember the name of. I'm thinking a metallic blue huggie hoop will look good for that one. I had completely forgotten about this piercing until a couple of months ago and had to force it back open from it's partially healed state with safety pins. Then I kept the hoop from the opposite ear in it for a while.

I'm shifting my bedtime and get-up-time back by thirty minutes. Thanks to daylight savings time, the early morning is no longer dark for as long as it was before, and my neighbors are up and about earlier as well (to my annoyance). I feel rushed, and, once again, crowded out of my own neighborhood.

Today was grocery day. There wasn't much at the discount grocery store, which is one of the places I usually shop at. I got the last few boxes of pea protein pasta, so that's a "staple" that I'll have to figure out how to replace come next month (everything that comes from the discount grocery store is at best a temporary staple because the store, whose stock consists of surplus and unpopular items from mainstream stores, inevitably runs out of everything).

I didn't get to do all the shopping I'd planned because I decided to come home early to accept the phone appointment I was supposed to have with the women's health division. I'd tried and failed several times to cancel this appointment, so I was expecting someone to call me, but no one did as far as I could tell. The provider with whom these appointments are scheduled is in only once per week, so it's going to be yet another eternity before I get another appointment with her. Exasperating. All the birth control methods are horrible anyways; maybe I should just give up on this. I wanted to have a consultation at least, however.

Something is still dehydrating me at night and I have no idea what. The filling of my new quilt is only 95% cotton, 5% polyester. Is that five percent responsible? I don't feel over-heated while sleeping underneath it. I'm so sick of this shit. This is utter madness, how sensitive I am to so many seemingly minor sleep-related variables.

I should be studying right now but shifting from online shopping mode to studying mode, especially while I'm tired, is not easy.

Yesterday was the first time in a long time that I've been light enough to do a pull-up. And the United States has elected a convicted felon to the presidency. USians are so trashy. I hope that Trump will at least do something about the immigration debacle. By do something, I mean stop it and deport a bunch of people. Crossing the border at will should be for refugees only.

Forcing myself to go study now.