Finishing up watching Season 22 of Law & Order SVU. I can barely stand to get through it since it’s all political shit I’ve had enough of along with constantly blaming whites for the world’s problems and portraying everyone else as if they’re perfect little angels.

Andy received his diamond desert painting and said it was beautiful and thoughtful of me to send. Good to know it held up in transit! I figured it would, though.

Tom saw something parked next door that had to do with painting. We’re guessing they’re going to paint the interior and not the exterior since the exterior doesn’t look bad. It may be a while before it’s on the market but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if we were still here when the newcomers arrive, and of course, if there’s a cock in the picture, I can just imagine all the sawing and other projects coming from the garage that I’ll have to listen to.

But then again, I’m seriously beginning to wonder if we’re ever going to get out of here in the first place and if we aren’t already in our forever home. We’ve been ignored by everyone so far. If that’s not something that wants us trapped here then I don’t know what is. I just know I don’t want to work for something that isn’t meant to be. If we’re meant to live our lives here, then I think we should do what we can to make it our own and exactly what we want it to be, including soundproofing. He would probably have to work until he was 70 and refinance the house at some point because it’s expensive here but California gives breaks to seniors and would foot most of the bill when it came to replacing windows and things like that. He’s already talking about signing up with DoorDash or something like that if we’re still here in mid-June.

He still thinks we’re going to get out of here and that if worse comes to worst, he gets a job and we take out a loan to flip the place ourselves. But being ignored is very discouraging. I don’t doubt that if I suddenly loved it here, then I’m sure we would get a call today and a decent offer tomorrow. But for reasons I’ll never understand, I’m just not meant to be where I wanna be. I’ve been getting stuck in places almost all my life so I might as well stop trying to escape what I’m not meant to escape and make the best of it. Maybe it really is time to appreciate what we do have rather than fight for what we don’t. It may get a little too cold in the winter for me but at least it’s a dry climate and the state has Death with Dignity if we ever needed it.

I’m just tired of looking for this dream house that doesn’t exist. The pattern of being stuck in places I don’t want to be in goes too far back to think it could be a coincidence or random chance, but whatever is meant to be will be and there isn’t much we can do about it as much as we might like to tell ourselves otherwise. This is a reminder that quite often, we can’t just up and do whatever the hell we want in life.

If there is something up there that’s determined to keep me from having a great place in a great climate, I don’t know why. I assume it has its reasons even though those reasons may be scarily twisted. I don’t know what to think anymore. I just see a very obvious pattern and trend I’ve been on for decades and I think it’s time to quit trying to swim against the current and settling in to make do with what I’ve got. There are millions of people that would kill to live here and they wouldn’t give a shit about traffic or planes either. They would absolutely love it here. All those people starving in third world countries…so yeah, this is my home and I’m gonna make the best of it! Instead of being spoiled and complaining so much, every time I hear one plane after another, I’ll remind myself of how much worse it could be.

I was running Grammarly through some stories and was shocked and disappointed by the typos and grammatical errors I found in The Wrong Sister, which I had previously published. Even more so by the fact that I had a few people read it yet not one of them ever thought to point them out to me.