And today I’m 119 pounds.

I still never see any lights on at night in any of the rentals. In fact, last night, even the usual outside light wasn’t on. I still believe they’ll be a problem once it gets more built up back there.

It’s hard to believe we’ve only had a two-hour drizzle spell since late August-early September! Makes me wonder if it’ll ever rain again here.

Later...

The weather’s warmed up to the point where it’s getting to be nearly 80º in here by the time 4:00 rolls around. We’re looking at using the AC soon for sure. I’ve got the heat set to come on at 70º, but it may not even come on before the crack of dawn when it’s the coldest like it’s been doing.

Tom’s mom gave us a check for not $500, but $750! I could hug that woman to death! Speaking of that, she’s nowhere near it, according to Tom. He says she’s doing so unusually well, including her blood count, that the doctor doesn’t want to see her for four months. He said all he’s gonna do is take her to get her toenails trimmed and fix Mary’s printer. No problem. They’ve done so much for us what with helping us with money and letting us get water there and use her washer and dryer that Tom can work over there for weeks if he wants to. And there I was thinking that things would go wrong with her after we got settled in the house. Maybe my vibes of her dying around her 77th birthday will be wrong. Maybe she’ll surprise us all, including the doctors, and live for a few more years.

Also, to my utter amazement, Steven kept his word and sent us the check for the money for a new washer/dryer. I really thought he was gonna stall and stall and stall.

I got our new address labels too, which are boring compared to what I usually get. I didn’t want to order anything too plain, though, either. They consist of five different butterfly pictures. All drawings of course. Not actual photos. I got these because I don’t do letters a lot anymore, and they’re just mostly gonna get stuck on bills. It’s still faster and more convenient for us to slap on stickers, rather than write out our return address.

I’m stealing seven books from the Double Day book club since Tom plans on stealing Internet access, or something that has to do with the satellite, but I’m sure he’ll do everything he can to talk me out of it, insisting that it’s far more dangerous to get caught than it is with what he intends to do. I know this isn’t true, though, since I’ve done this before, but if he’s gonna get too overly paranoid, I won’t bother to have him mail the card. It’s in a bogus name, of course, addressed to our PO Box.

We didn’t end up screwing last night. I guess both of our subconscious fears sex, even though one of us knows we have nothing to worry about anyway. I just couldn’t get in the mood. Not after a discussion of how strapped we’re gonna be for the next few months, thanks to fucking assholes like Steven, Dan, and Dennis. I’m so sick of others interfering with our plans and finances! Will I ever escape other people’s control? Anyway, he took advantage of my not being in the mood as a great opportunity to escape something he’d rather not do and decided to nap till it was time to go to work. He asked if I was mad at him because he said we’d get together. No, I wasn’t mad. We can screw some other time when he’s more comfortable. From here on out, though, I’m not going to tell him when I’ve got my period, so he doesn’t have to needlessly worry about something that’s not medically possible in the first place. Although, he may worry more often if he doesn’t know where I am in my cycle. If he knew I just finished my period, for example, he’d at least be able to know he had some time there to safely let go if he wanted to.

He’s been doing a good job of getting his stuff organized which he has in his office and the guest room. I didn’t think he’d work this fast, but this doesn’t mean he won’t take to trashing at times. It’s what he’s used to and what he grew up with. He likes clutter strewn about. That’d be fine for his office if it wouldn’t hinder my dusting and vacuuming, but it does, and I want to keep my record going here. Notice how long it’s been since I’ve had an all-day allergy attack? I want to keep it this way if I can help it!

We’ve agreed that I’d give him the chapters I complete during the week for him to read over the weekends. So far, he’s been into it and that’s pretty flattering. I didn’t have to beg him to read what I wrote. He did it on his own. He said that the first time around he wants to just read it, then the second time he’ll critique it in more detail.