disappointed_lesbian

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I'm in a fantastic mood because I just had a sandwich. Almost any sandwich could put me in a good mood because I love sandwiches, but this was a particularly nice sandwich. I have to toast the rye bread twice on the toaster's highest setting to get it crispy, but it is quite good when crispy. Baked tofu, red onions, green bell pepper (which I haven't had in a long time because I was on the low fodmap diet for IBS, plus it's expensive), shredded carrots, zucchini, iceberg lettuce, roma tomato, salt and pepper. Simple but delicious.

And! Trader Joe's is a paradise. I was scouring the chip aisle for something made without oil this morning. Nothing goes with sandwiches as well as chips, but chips are almost always non-filling calorie bombs. I usually cannot find the right kind of chip in any store and was about to give up as I came to the end of the aisle. Then I saw them: rice crackers. The kind that are in the Asian section at larger grocery stores (where they cost a fortune). With a mixture of eagerness and dread, I grabbed a bag, flipped it over, and read the ingredients. No oil! Zero grams of fat, in fact.

The flavors are not the best complement for the standard sandwich, but the chips are crispy and not gross, and that's what really matters. When I got home, I found that the crispiness of the toasted bread was pretty much good enough that I didn't need any kind of chip, but I had some of the crackers anyhow. The satisfyingly crispy bread is an added bonus that will allow me to avoid bingeing the chips. I bought only three bags because they aren't cheap and because I cannot justify to myself spending too much on junk food. Trader joe's always has cool items.

This month is going to be focused on skin hydration. I'm going to try to run the humidifier regularly without giving myself a mold problem. I need to create a more humid environment. My research indicates that distilled water is less likely to lead to mold, so I'll need to buy a shitload of that. Probably I won't even be able to afford to run the humidifier daily. It's weird that I get mold given how dry this air is. I thought mold was a humidity problem, but I had no mold when I was living in the much more humid Sacramento even though my room was never aired out and there was no window in the bathroom.

Current Mood: just fine

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.

Current Mood: depressed

I wanted something to watch while I ate, and I cannot access youtube via invidious anymore unless I enable cookies, so I turned to odyssee, an alternative video hosting site. It doesn't seem to have a lot of content or activity. Somehow I ended up on a video by someone called Chocmiel. So far she seems to film herself from the shoulders up only, yet it's still obvious that she's overweight. I distinctly remember having the video paused and noticing a roll of fat on her neck.

The video was about a Korean restaurant she was trying. But most of what she and her companion ordered appeared to be American-style junk food: fries, mozzarella sticks, some type of fried nuggets, and burgers. I was expecting something fancier. I looked at her main channel page and half the videos were about food. There's something special about watching overweight people vlog when most or all of their channel is about eating, especially eating out, especially eating junk food. It's something akin to watching a drug addict consume drugs. But the addicts have far less control over their behavior. And the thing is that these vloggers probably would not be overweight if they just stopped eating the particular shit they eat in their videos. Of course, they could make junk food at home—but how often would they? and how calorific would it be in comparison to the restaurant food?

I tried a couple more videos and was treated to her and her travel companion in Normandy eating fries again, with a side of poutine, which contains...fries. Maybe the channel is primarily for her family and friends. This is the third overweight vlogger...no, the fourth or fifth...I've come across with a channel about food. I don't even generally watch or search for personal vlogs, so that's not nothing.

Grocery day went well today thanks to bike lockers. With my transit card I have access to bike lockers over in the town where I do most of my grocery shopping, and I use the lockers to store some of my groceries so that I'll be unencumbered when I go finish the shopping. However, getting initial access to the lockers was kind of a pain in the ass: I had to create an online account and register my transit card with the account, whereas I usually just swipe the card across the electronic detector thing when I want to pay for something. I'd tried the latter with the lockers before registering my new card and ended up having to go home early and finish shopping another day because the locker wouldn't open. That was unpleasant.

I treated myself to a frozen pizza this month, which I haven't done in months, mainly because of the cost. I'm going to run out of food stamps again this month; there seems to be no way to avoid it. I put back some stuff I wanted to buy but it wasn't enough; it's never enough. Maybe if I put no seasoning except salt and pepper and sugar in any of my food, I'd be able to afford all the calories and nutrients I need. The coconut aminos, soy sauce, cinnamon, applesauce, barbecue sauce, chili paste, peanut butter powder, etc. add up.

I caught a look at myself in the mirror today when I stopped at the public library to use the restroom. I don't look like a happy person, which I guess is not very attractive. But what can I do, I cannot erase from my face the life I have lived. And I'm not an actress. Actually maybe I just looked tired. Still not very attractive, though.

Speaking of attractive, the Russian bus driver was on duty again today. I have been thinking about what I like so much about this guy and I think it has something to do with his being a foreigner in some way and not saying much. I like foreigners because they are a nice break from USians. USians run their mouths too much. Of course there are those of us who don't talk much, but talking too much is part of our culture, so it's everywhere, it's invasive, and the quieter people cannot really make up for it because we're dispersed amongst the chattering masses.

In my complaint letter to the bus company, I mentioned bus drivers having long conversations with passengers, which is against the rules (while the bus is in motion). I wonder how the company administration will respond to that.

I'm going back to going to bed at seven forty pm. I felt more rested and, at least some of the time, I got more sleep.

I want to study today's flashcards, but my head is hurting.

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.

Current Mood: tired

I was going to call this post 'worst grocery day ever,' but the time I got stranded out of town and had to walk back home, on that same trail where the attempted sexual assault happened last year, with my arms burning under the weight of my groceries, was worse. I probably had a migraine too.

The bus is too noisy and shopping out of town is tiring, so I tried to avoid multiple trips by doing as much of my shopping as I could in one day. I left at just before seven in the morning today. I went to four stores and ended up with three medium-sized boxes and one grocery bag, plus the stuff I fit into my backpack. I had forgotten to drink anything until late in the day, so, by the time my bus came, I once again had a migraine starting.

I was the last passenger to try to board. The driver shut the door in my face. He said some things to me, but I couldn't understand more than a few words through the door. Eventually I figured out that, according to him, I had too much stuff to board with. I'd never had a bus driver tell me that before. I had no other way home and I sure as hell wasn't going to end up stranded in a different town while fifty dollars worth of food went bad. He was busy negotiating something with the second-to-last passenger, so I parked my stuff at the curb, moved in front of the bus, and pulled down the bike rack. He said no and shook his hand at me. I tried to yell through the front window that he wasn't going anywhere without me, but my voice maybe didn't carry well. He called someone, probably dispatch. And dispatch called the police, apparently.

I had been standing in the same spot in front of the bus for maybe fifteen minutes when a local police officer arrived. He asked me what was going on and I said the driver was going to strand me there. He spoke to the driver briefly and then came back to me. He told me that I had to get out of the road (we weren't actually on any public road; we were in the "transit mall," a one-block stretch where only buses and pedestrians are allowed. I wasn't blocking any traffic whatsoever except that one bus.) He said that it was against the law. So I had to give up or be arrested. Honestly, it burns me up to think about it. Part of the reason I had so much stuff is the bus being so exhausting. Nothing can be done about the sound of the motor, but the drivers don't enforce the no cell phone policy, and the cell phones are worse than the motor. I know they probably cannot hear the cell phones sometimes, but I doubt they enforce the policy even when they can. Plus their paratransit services don't accommodate my disability. So I tried to ameliorate the situation for myself and this was the result. I'm just continually running into walls trying to live with auditory sensitivity. How do I live? In continual stress and poverty, I guess.

I wonder whether I can sue the bus company. I took down the bus number and the police officer's name and badge number just in case, even if I just make a complaint. At first I couldn't think of a good reason to ask for money other than pain and suffering. Then it hit me: a bicycle. So I can bike that trail instead of relying on the bus. Plus a cart I can attach to the bike to carry my groceries in. I'm not sure how good my case is, though. There is a lawyer who offers free advice in the library; I could ask that person. As far as I know, the policy concerning the amount of baggage passengers can bring is not posted.

Well. I got plenty of exercise today. And ate very little. It's a good thing I picked up an energy bar from the last store I was at, otherwise I might have felt even more ill. I had fruit with me, but no fat or protein. I waited for the next bus, hungry, tired, with a migraine, wearing a soaked pad. The next driver was suspicious and said that I couldn't board with a dolly. But I wasn't pushing a dolly; I had my boxes piled on top of a small basket. I explained that it folded up and he let me on. If the first driver had spoken to me, maybe the same thing would have happened.

I didn't have the energy to walk all that stuff back to my apartment, so I had to wait until the local shuttle made its loop around town before I finally got home, about ten and a half hours after I'd left. That was just over an hour ago; bedtime is in one hour. My whole day is gone. I wonder how much my grocery bill would be if I did all my shopping in town.

I finally got a decent amount of sleep last night. This new melatonin I have is supposed to be taken at bedtime, but my digestion is off and I have to take it before then to feel the effects by bedtime. I didn't expect that with a chewable supplement.

I spent too much money at the dollar store today, but I needed cleaning supplies. I just bought a sponge last month and it was ruined weeks ago, or, at least, I have no idea how to clean hair off of it. It won't rinse off and the hairs are too short to pull off. They're basically embedded in the sponge. I also stopped at the hardware store and bought some better quality cleaning supplies, some washclothes that I can wash hair out of, the kind that won't end up ruined by lint. Plus I had forgotten my prescription ibuprofen, so I bought ibuprofen so that I could finish my shopping without being in pain, plus I bought some nuts because I have to take the ibuprofen with food or it'll hurt my stomach. Going shopping is just a huge event.

Current Mood: tired

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

Current Mood: tired

I am in pain. I just took my fourth ibuprofen. The first was about two and a half hours ago. I can't get rid of the menstrual cramps. This is my fault. I started eating wheat again even though I knew it worsens my cramps. My sleep improved (or seemed to) when I had wheat with my last meal, and I started half-mindlessly chasing that extra half-hour or whatever it may have been. No more. I'm down to my last pita today, and I won't be buying any more, at least not in this country. I wouldn't be surprised if GMO wheat was the culprit.

I finally feel somewhat better now. I am coming down off a stress high. My fridge stopped refrigerating and I was afraid that I'd lose a lot of food. Food that I cannot afford to replace. So I called the property manager (which I always avoid doing). He left about half an hour ago. Said that I'd need to clean the fridge if the fridge repair person were to come. Yes, yes of course. I was nervous about having the property manager come in because my apartment isn't the cleanest, it's never terribly clean. I looked around before he arrived and was surprised that it was even presentable for once. I've been doing better with cleaning this past year or so because I stopped over-dosing and wrong-timing melatonin, which was leaving me drowsy and low-energy during the day.

Damn, I just had the longest and deepest nap I've had in probably a decade if not more. And I was comfortable and warm even though I was fully dressed and had nothing but my quilt haphazardly pulled over me.

As I was saying, my apartment is looking much better than it used to, but I hadn't progressed enough to have a presentable fridge, and so the non-working fridge situation took me by surprise. Shit, I just remembered that the fridge repair guy won't be here until Wednesday. I'm going to lose my food. All my tofu, which is my main source of protein. I'm going to have to buy some ice or something. With food stamps. I've got less than twenty cents in my checking account. I'd forgotten all about my accursed phone bill. Every month I waste money on shitty voip service because landline service has become unaffordable. This is yet another reason I want to leave this country: the march of technology is stamping out basic services, such as landline phone service. It's either a mobile phone, voip, or forty bucks per month plus an eighty-dollar converter thingie for landline service.

I was at the dollar store trying to buy cleaning and hygiene supplies this morning, but my debit card wouldn't go through. Turns out all but two dollars and ninety-seven cents had been earmarked for the phone bill. But I didn't know that until I'd stopped at the bank across town. But I absolutely needed laundry detergent, so I went back to the dollar store and used my two ninety-seven to buy the soap plus a new can opener. Then I went shopping for canned peaches and missed the bus home by seven minutes. And that's how I spent eight hours out of town, dehydrated, in pain, and stuck wearing an uncomfortably wet menstrual pad that I wasn't able to change because I couldn't afford pads at the dollar store and because the library had not restocked the charity pads it gives away. My nap and the unexpectedly low price of canned peaches were the highlights of my day.

Since I've been using publicly available wifi to sync my flashcards on the smartphone, I've become aware of how ubiquitous wifi networks are. Ten networks are reachable from any one spot. Half a block away, there are ten different networks. There is no goddamned way that wifi is harmless to animals, except perhaps at so great a distance that the network is all but unusable if it's even detectable. I have my Internet set to Ethernet only, but the ubiquitous Xfinity wifi and my neighbors' networks probably affect me as well.

I've been thinking about making a post about living without internet access. The internet has become so full of user tracking, advertising, trolling, spamming, porn, sociopathy, cracking, and experience-degrading cracking mitigation measures that it's becoming less and less worth anyone's time, but especially my time, as I'm quite protective of my privacy. I find myself unable to even view more and more websites because my vpn is blocked. More and more sites will not allow users to even read a web page without enabling cookies and javascript. Sites are littered with tracking shit from Google and social media sites. Everybody is looking for a way to monetize their garbage content or get internet-famous, and personal authenticity has decreased or at least been drowned out, at least in the online anglosphere. Somehow, French internet articles have the same generic tone that English ones do. The promise of digital social connection has been squandered by the proliferation of personality-disordered behavior and ignorant, hostile, and hateful people. Some of these problems may be less common or less intense on the non-anglophone Internet, but some are not.

So when it comes to possibly moving somewhere that has spotty or limited or perhaps even non-existent Internet access...I wouldn't be missing terribly much. It's survivable.

Current Mood: groggy

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.

Current Mood: discontent

I should be lifting, but I feel weak as hell. Lifting sixty+ pounds over my face and chest while feeling weak seems like a bad idea. I've been trying to stick to my workout routine, but it's tough with so little energy.

I don't weigh 125 after all. The diet I thought I was failing is actually working, just super slowly, which is expected because I cannot undereat much and I'm not walking as much as I was before. The scale said 124.5 while I was dehydrated and still a bit constipated, so I know I weight a little less than that.

Finding out that what I've been trying to do is actually working motivated me to eat a little bit less. It is taking a toll. I have to let go of the expectation that I can eat this little and accomplish everything I accomplished during the first phase of the diet, the easier phase. The energy costs, especially given my lack of sleep, are simply too high. My inability to focus with this level of hunger is another factor. I actually won't be able to keep this up for as long as I need to, not continuously anyhow. Maybe I'll do one week on, one week off (the diet). Maybe one day eating less, one day exercising more.

I have an appointment to discuss treatment for my chronic hypoglycemia next week. If we can come up with some solutions, I won't be struggling so much with this diet.

Now is a good time to get this over with. I wouldn't be able to do this while working a job.

Maybe I should stop browsing a certain social networking site. It's way too goddamned arousing.

It would be nice to find a job where I could use my Mandarin, but I don't know nearly enough Mandarin for that.

Last night I tried sleeping with my feet inside the drawstring laundry bag again. It worked quite well to keep my feet warm, but I still had trouble sleeping, still woke up too early. But I didn't use my sunlamp yesterday; that may be why. Tonight will be a better test.

I spend so many hours a day too sleepy to do anything. My life is slipping away from me a day at a time, being wasted.

I'm glad this is a short month because I'll get next month's food stamps and income sooner. I sorely need them. I had to buy more of the meds the VA won't give me enough of this morning, and I'm down to about four bucks, with forty-two cents left in my checking account. I still haven't figured out how to get all the groceries I need with just three hundred dollars per month. I guess I could buy something more calorific than the twenty-four dollars' worth of dried apple slices I bought these past couple of months, but they are so insanely delicious that resistance is difficult. I'll force myself to buy date rolls instead. Let's hope I manage to sleep enough to be able to eat them without stomach cramps. The progesterone has had no noticeable effect so far.

I found a new scalp massager in a discount department store a few days ago. I went to check out the men's department while I was there; there's always something interesting or attractive there. There were various bars of soap that all had to-die-for fragrances. I noticed while I was smelling them how at-home and grounded I felt. I felt like myself, at peace with myself, that I was in the right place, that the fragrances matched me, touched me (but not in an overly arousing way). I don't know the best way to explain what it was like. Something about the scents chosen for men's products, the earthy fragrances like citrus, trees, ocean water are so soothing and...relatable I guess.

Intellectually, I know that stuff in the men's department was not created with me or people like me in mind. Sometimes I'm acutely aware of that (not so much now that I've been buying this stuff for decades), but in this particular instance, the awareness was so distant, so unimportant, it was almost like what I imagine an out-of-body experience to be. The moment just before you begin to rise out of your body. Nothing really much matters, nothing can touch you if you have no corporeal body that can be hurt or destroyed. I was safe there, safe to be unaware of my surroundings, of the people who might find my shopping habits weird. There was nothing in those moments except my personality, the fragrance, and the bridge between the two, my sense of smell.

Part of me wants to go back and buy some of that soap, it smelled so good. Smelling like men's grooming products probably won't help me find a boyfriend, but I don't care. But I don't use soap anymore except to wash my hands, and for that I get a cheap ultra-moisturzing bar. I'm guessing those soaps I sampled aren't very moisturizing. Maybe I could just keep one of them sitting unwrapped and unused in the bathroom purely for the fragrance.

I'm supposed to be trying my damndest to get a real haircut next month, but I...feel tired just thinking about it.

Current Mood: weak

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.

Current Mood: disappointed

Yesterday while grocery shopping, I found a humidifier at a thrift store. I went back and bought it today. On sale at half off, it cost me just ten dollars. I was happy.

Then I got it home and couldn't figure out how to get it to work. The paper directions in the box and the instructions on the box lid weren't much help. I had to look it up online to figure out that a crucial piece is missing. I ended up on the manufacturer's website, and I'm not sure they sell that piece. Even if they do, by the time the piece arrives by mail, my return window will have closed and I'll be out of ten bucks if the humidifier doesn't work even with a new part. I have only like sixty bucks right now.

There is at least one interest that I hate more than an interest in people/emotions/drama: interest in cars. There was a guy on the bus ride home today who would not shut up about cars. We as passengers are not even supposed to talk to the driver while the bus is moving; there's a sign up above the driver that says so. I wonder how many other people have even noticed that sign. What's demotivating is that the drivers never enforce the rule; they usually participate in the conversation. I'd prefer that they focus on the road.

Sports obsession and car obsession are two typical guy things that I absolutely loathe. I can't think of any interests I hate more. Especially when it comes to being obsessed with other people playing sports. Like, get your own life/hobby/exercise. Who cares whether other people can run/throw/hit things? Someone who plays a sport himself can learn something as a spectator or at least watch his sport from a position of primary understanding, but ham planets who couldn't mount a flight of stairs without having an asthma attack bellowing about "my team" when somebody on TV makes a goal? is a new kind of cringe. In my mind there's too much of a disconnect between being super interested in a sport and being unable to play it oneself at even the most basic level. Like how does continually watching athletes not remind them of being horribly out of shape?

As for playing sports oneself, I can understand that exercise feels good and that strategizing a game can be engaging, but I can't relate at all to the competition aspect nor the team aspect of some sports.

And the stadium/lockerroom full of the testosterone stink of dozens of sweaty males, I don't know how they can bear it. Once in boot camp, my unit was led into the men's barracks for a lecture or something, and the odor was like nothing I ever had or have since experienced. This wasn't while they were exercising; it was after morning exercise, after we'd all showered and breakfasted. But there was clearly more than one day's worth of funk lingering in the air anyhow.

This was an experience that helped cement in my mind how revolting and unattractive men were. Handsome and pleasantly dressed/groomed though they may be, to get physically intimate with one of them was to be bombarded by odors alien in their intensity and bodily fluids alien in that they spurt out of the body. I'm still not sure about that shit. From a couple of sources I've heard that east Asians don't smell as strongly, but they still spurt. We'll see, we'll see.

What's creepy is when guys glance at a car and immediately know the make, model, sometimes even the goddamned year of manufacture. Like, yeah, it's autistic to have that database of largely useless details in their heads, but it's in the creepy autistic traits department, from my perspective.

Maybe I only really like systematizing when it comes to academics and puzzles.

Current Mood: tired

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.

Current Mood: tired

At the price of sleeping for maybe half the amount of time I normally sleep, I've found the key to warm feet throughout the night. I thought of it before, but, like other solutions I've come up with, I sort of forgot because sleepiness and fatigue sort of impair my memory. Or so it seems. It's like my mind is reset each day; I can barely remember what I planned or thought up in previous days.

I was right about filling up the empty space in my sleeping bag liner, it seems. I folded up the throw that I usually sleep under, and wrapped it around my feet at the bottom of the sleeping bag liner. I was so warm that I couldn't fall asleep for quite some time. I got to take off that damned hat, hallelujah. I was surprised that I was able to sleep at all with a hat on; usually I cannot sleep unless totally nude.

So I should sleep the full night tonight. If not, the next thing I should look into is my blood sugar. I'll have to appeal my health insurance company's denying coverage of a glucose monitor.

I did finally fall asleep somehow. I dreamed that I took a bus, public transportation. I don't know where I was going. At the end of the ride, the driver came to the back of the bus where I was sitting and spoke to me in quiet tones. At first I couldn't make out anything he said, he spoke so softly, then I understood that he was speaking Mandarin, but I couldn't understand, then I understood some of what he said, a few words, perhaps. First I was surprised that I understand any Mandarin at all. Then I felt aroused.

While he was talking apparently, the back of the bus morphed into the back of a classroom, and I was sitting at a desk and the driver was standing and leaning down to speak to me.

I've studied French since high school, and it took me years and years to ever have a dream in French. I've been studying Mandarin for six months. I'm doing it right.

I got my monthly income early, so I can buy shoes before January after all, hooray. But I cannot find any that I want. The ones I planned to buy, turns out the smallest size is probably too small. They are children's shoes.

I cannot keep shoelaces tied; they continually come loose, I must continually stop to re-tie them, and it drives me insane. So I prefer laceless shoes, which are often children's shoes. I like the velcro closures that go across the shoe because they allow me to tighten the shoe as much or as little as I want. I (as an adult) used to buy children's shoes from a discount shoe store called Payless; that's why I expect to be able to fit into kids' shoes. But maybe I cannot fit them anymore? Maybe my feet grew. Maybe that's why the last pair of shoes I bought were too tight.

Well, I'm quite disappointed. I've spent a couple of hours shopping online. As if to mock me, most of the kids' shoes stop one size below the size I'm assuming that I need. I cannot wear anything but minimalist shoes (many of which are hideous), so my options are quite limited. They're even more limited because I need something I can wear in the rain or at least in the aftermath of the rain (wet streets and small puddles). I'm so ready for an end to the misery of arriving home with soaked shoes and socks every morning. I want high-top boots to protect my socks from water. And I'll buy a vegan option only.

Oh duh, those shoes I wanted seem to be the right size after all. I was mixing up inches and centimeters and insole length and insole width. Sleep is so important. I just wasted my evening.

I hope these goddamned shoes fit because I can't afford shipping to send them back.

Current Mood: sleepy

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.

Current Mood: headachy

Now that I get up so early, it's easier to beat the crowds/noise on the bus.

Yesterday, I got to the asian food market first thing in the morning and had a good look at the wares.

A long time ago, I thought that east Asian cuisine was generally healthy because east Asians are generally slim and didn't seem to eat a lot of processed garbage. Now I know better.

Nearly every processed food in the market contained MSG, even the spices. I don't know what MSG is beyond some type of flavoring, but, because of all "no MSG" food labels and a couple anti-MSG health warnings I've seen, I have the notion that it's something to be avoided. There were also lots of food coloring and dyes and other industrial-sounding ingredients, the kind I generally avoid.

I wanted to try something beyond my usual mung bean noodles, especially some spices. I managed to find a packet of Vietnamese stew base. The food is roughly divided up by aisle: there's a Philipin@ and Vietnamese aisle, maybe a Thai/Chinese/Japanese aisle, and an Indian food aisle. The Indian food was much healthier, mostly pure spices and unprocessed stuff. I found a box of Indian barbecue seasoning that is delicious and didn't cost much.

Spices have become particularly important because I think I've discovered the secret to improving my blood sugar issues: avoiding added and refined oils. That means that I'm trying to get my fats only from food that naturally contains fat, such as nuts and olives. So I can no longer rely on seasonings that contain added oil. I used to lean heavily on bouillon cubes that contained a lot of shea butter. I've noticed that I'm no longer starving and low-blood-sugary an hour after eating rice now that I've stopped adding oil to it. I thought the oil was the key to keeping my blood sugar from crashing, but it seems to do the exact opposite. I once saw a video of another hypoglycemic person saying that oil prevents the body from absorbing the carbs properly, and that leads to post-meal hypoglycemic blood sugar crashes. I think she may have been right.

I also finally bought a package of dried shitake mushrooms. I used to always worry about the price, and, indeed, at five bucks for a ~10 ounce package, they aren't cheap. I felt that I could afford them this month. I actually didn't know the price until I got up to the register. A lot of items in the store don't have visible prices. It adds to the adventure. Shitake mushrooms seem to hold a special place in Chinese cuisine, I think they are supposed to have some special health properties (I guess all food does), and I want in on that, whatever it is. Before I was done looking around, other customers arrived and we were all in one another's way, so I didn't dawdle much longer.

Next I went to the dollar store and finally found some compression items for my hands and feet. I tried them for the first time this morning, an exceptionally cold morning. I had to position the wrist compression thingies so that they were on my hands, not on my wrists, lest they cut off my circulation again. They did indeed keep my hands warm, but they also cut off circulation to my fingertips, which eventually began to hurt. I loosened them again and again, but it didn't help or maybe I didn't wait long enough for my fingertips to stop hurting.

I didn't get much experience with the ankle compressors (which I positioned on my feet instead of on my ankles) because my feet don't really start to get cold until late in the morning walk (which I abandoned early due to the cold-induced discomfort). I did begin to feel my toes going numb, however. So compression isn't the answer. I was so distracted by my discomfort that I couldn't pay attention to my Mandarin lesson, and I shut it off less than halfway through and hobbled home on my numb and compressed feet with only maybe two-thirds of my usual brain function. The cold is robbing me of exercise.

I went out and did more grocery shopping after the walk, missed the next bus home, and ended up waiting around at the mall, dozing next to the Santa feature. I am surprised that people still bring their kids to this crap, even dress them up for it. I saw a couple little girls with tights on and it made me a bit angry. Don't parents know that those tights itch like crazy? Or was that just me? Surely not.

Finally, it was time to catch the next bus. I felt exhausted, so I bumbled and allowed my groceries to topple over a couple of times. I've been getting more sleep than usual for the past couple of nights, about six hours instead of my usual five, but, ever since I started getting up early, something about being out in the late morning/early afternoon sun seems to make me sleepier than any other time of day except maybe bedtime. If I stay indoors, I don't experience this. It's like my body is ready for a nap at noon, but I cannot take one. Not here at home anyhow. I felt able to fall asleep in the mall but of course I couldn't have done that. Thieves and sexual predators would take advantage.

After I got off the intercity bus, I decided to wait for the local bus, which takes me almost right up to my apartment complex. I waited for ten minutes before I remembered that it doesn't run today. So I had to haul my groceries another mile on the walk home. It took something out of me, even with a wheeled cart.

Finally I got home and it was time to eat. First I had an unbelievable meal of fruit: a couple of organic bananas with PB powder and a fruit salad of dates, canned pears, and thawed strawberries. It tasted incredible, put me in a great mood, and gave me a ton of energy.

Then I tore into my bag of Calrose rice. Rice is one of the most satisfying foods I've ever eaten, and I'm over the moon that I can, it seems, have it again. I'd been craving cabbage for days, so I added red cabbage, spinach, green chard, green onion, red bell pepper, and another spice I bought today. This meal was also fantastic. There are few things in life that rival the pleasure of a sufficient serving of vegetables. I usually hold back on veggies because (organic) produce is so expensive (and of course I'm not going to significantly increase my intake of non-organic produce, like some prole).

This is going to be a wonderful month for my tastebuds.

Mandarin is taking over my life and I'm finding it difficult to work in my other languages. If I could just get a bit more sleep/energy, I think I can make it happen. Along with the extra hour of sleep I've been getting, I've been waking up dehydrated to the point of being headachey and fatigued, and I don't know why nor what to do other than keep taking salt first thing in the morning. The salt prevents the headache from worsening, but it doesn't relieve the fatigue. I guess I'll try taking some tonight before bed...or maybe I won't. I've tried taking electrolytes at bedtime before, and it sort of dried me out so badly that it brought on dehydration. Maybe I'll try adding just a modest amount of extra salt to my last meal. That shouldn't be as damaging as a whole electrolyte capsule.

I have a lot more to say but it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Current Mood: tired

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.

Current Mood: rushed

Yesterday I went out shopping again. First I went to the Asian grocery store, primarily for mung bean noodles, but I also got some attractive bamboo chopsticks. Something about eating noodles with chopsticks just feels right. Forks get on my nerves in this capacity. The Asian grocery store is a magical place full of products that most Americans have never seen nor tasted before. A godzillion different types of noodles and more. I always want to take an hour and just stroll the aisles examining everything, but I feel anxious that the store owners would think that I'm stealing or something. Also it'd be awkward to do because the place is small and crowded.

They had no mung bean cake, which I found somewhat disappointing.

I had basically almost no dishes (I'd been drinking out of fruit cans, applesauce jars, and eating most meals out of the one serviceable dish I had), so I then went next door to the dollar store. I got two plates, two glasses, and two bowls. I hope that I will someday soon have someone over to use those second dishes, otherwise I will have wasted...only about four dollars, actually. No, actually I don't want to cook for anybody else. Although I guess I wouldn't so much mind making mung bean noodles since it takes only a few minutes of boiling. Actually the one pot I have is barely big enough to cook for two. Men eat a shit ton. That's an English unit, not SI.

I spent hours this evening trying to find a barber and decide what cut I want. Like shopping online for jewelry, researching hairstyles can be a pain in the ass because there is such a sharp division between styles considered to be men's vs. women's. Normally I just ignore women's because the probability that I'll find anything I'd actually like is abysmally low, but sometimes I look at them for inspiration. Short hairstyles for womyn are often modelled with large hoop earrings, which I absolutely hate the look of. Am I the only person alive who's noticed that they stretch the ear hole horribly?? It ends up looking like a slit.

Also I get exasperated with images of men's haircuts for afro-textured hair because they often have line-ups so severe that the clients' heads look a bit alien. They are also very often overly stylized with wave patterns that distract from the actual cut of the hair. The seeming obsession with wavy hair texture makes me wonder whether internalized racism/looksism is coming into play.

I think I'm going to try a Caesar cut, although I can't yet quite envision just what it would look like. I'm not sure the students at the barber school will be able to pull it off. There may not even be any female barbers, and I'm kinda just done with male barbers touching me. Maybe I will just try to cut it myself. The barbers I found on the sensory-friendly list haven't answered my emails and I'm not sure they even still work at the listed barbershops. Surveying local barbering prices, however, I doubt that I would have been able to afford them.

I found a promising (professional) female barber, but she charges forty dollars for a haircut. My monthly income is about 170 usd, so I cannot afford that. Plus my hair grows quickly, so I need two haircuts per month at a bare minimum.

I kinda wanted to be able to share such things, the search for barbers and clothes that fit properly and just the life of not being a femininity-conforming person, with a girlfriend. No, I didn't really want to share them so much as I wanted to be able to relate to someone on similar grounds. Oh well. I can relate to a guy.

I guess I've finally found some kind of solution to sleeping with cold feet: wearing a hat. Thanks to Reddit, I tried it last night. I still woke up too early, but my feet weren't freezing cold. I had a bite of the date I'd brought to bed, and I managed to fall back to sleep eventually. So things are yet improving on the insomnia front. I didn't much like sleeping with a hat on, however.

It's an insanely cold autumn. I'm going to have to buy slippers. I'm not used to my feet freezing while I'm just sitting around in the middle of the day. I'm having to go outside and sit in the sun for a good long while, like a lizard. I also need some type of heated gloves for when I'm outside. I've tried wearing two pairs of regular gloves but my hands still freeze. I guess first I should go get my blood drawn in case I just need more iron or something.

Part 2 of this gets posted tomorrow, I plan.

Current Mood: rushed

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.

Current Mood: inertial

I finally decided to get started and create my dating profile(s). I discovered that I'd already created an account on the first site I tried. I edited my profile and then fished around for the smartphone I never use to take a picture. The things doesn't seem to hold a charge anymore so I have to charge it just before using it. It seems the settings were changed somehow because most of the pictures came out blurry. The pics I tried taking inside were too dark to be usable, so I went out, but it was already late and getting darker, so the pics I took outside were still too dark and some of them still blurry after I altered the resolution, so I gave up. I look terrible in all my pictures anyhow. Even when I think I'm smiling slightly, I'm not, but I don't know it until I look at the pictre. Maybe I'll just use an older picture until I figure out the phone. I don't look much different in the older pics I have.

I was disappointed because the site didn't have a lot of activity. There are a decent number of members, but many haven't been active for years.

Jesus christ I'm so goddamned tired. I've been so caught up in beautifying myself and getting a boyfriend that my plans to move have fallen by the wayside. I'm no longer so sure that moving would help me sleep, but it still seems like a good bet. In the meantime, I'm going back to sleeping in the hallway. Sleeping in a cool environment seemed to help (at least for a night or two), but the bedroom gets too cold and I don't have the right kind of bedclothes to warm myself up. My polyester blanket was giving me night sweats, so I had to go out and buy a non-synthetic alternative. More shit I couldn't afford. The most affordable option was a 100% cotton throw I found at a going-out-of-business sale. Being a throw rather than a blanket, it isn't big enough, it's been slipping of my feet during the night and thereby failing to keep me warm enough to sleep, and it sheds fibers that end up in my hair.

Either the timed release melatonin I bought isn't working or the night temperature issues I've been having prevent it from working.

I found a pair of Xero shoes on sale and seized the opportunity to purchase them. They arrived yesterday. They hurt my feet. They hurt so much that I'm thinking that breaking them in won't be enough. They feel a bit too small. The accompanying information said that they fit true to size and that customers should purchase their normal size. I guess that information was wrong. I cannot afford another pair of shoes so this is a bummer.

I've found that if I put a zillion products in my hair, I can almost make it look nice.

Current Mood: sleepy

The discount grocery store was out of canned peaches today, so I'll have to go to another...branch? Whatever it's called. I got twelve cans each of pears and pineapple, but that won't provide enough calories for the month. I also want to go to the other branch to see if I can find some more cheap coconut water, which is excellent for treating dehydration. I've been waking up dehydrated for the past week or so. No idea why. Maybe because I'm having less salt now that I'm eating mostly fruit and unsalted nuts? In that case I'd be better off with more salt rather than the ever-pricey coconut water.

I have a headache and I feel a bit depressed this evening.

I didn't sleep at all last night because the bedroom was a little too warm. I didn't feel too warm, I just know the room temperature was the problem because I also did not sleep the other times that my neck was sweating all night. Unfortunately, I did not figure this out in time to cool the room down and put myself to sleep. I haven't figured out the exact formula for keeping the bedclothes warm enough yet the room cool enough so that I won't be awake all night. I guess I could use the electric warmer without turning on the heat in the room. Only in summer, however.

If I don't get some sleep tonight, I'm going to be in trouble because I'm skirting the inability to eat the food I have without stomach pain. The less sleep I get, the less I can eat pain-free, and, on this fruit-heavy diet, I don't have many low-fiber foods to fall back on.

Today is the first day I was able to comfortably fit into the jeans I used to wear most often. It's weird because they were still too tight less than a week ago, if I recall. I have another pair of pants I was surprised to fit into, a tighter pair, but that pair is still too tight to wear in public not to mention too tight to be comfortable.

I found a bootleg ebook version of the Korean textbook I wanted to try. Hooray. I need something to supplement the app I'm using.

I can't wait until my new facial wash arrives because my skin looks rough.

My skin peeled more today. It's weird that it's peeling so late; it peeled sooner after the peel the other times it peeled at all.

I'm sobering up on the reality of dating males. ( I don't like calling them "men" anymore for some reason. ) What if I just died in my sleep. No more lust, no more stress, no more depressing thoughts. Finally taking my leave from this shit world. Early, yes, but too early might be better than too late.

Staring at the computer screen for too long makes my headaches worse, so I should end this here.

Current Mood: headachey

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