I decided to call Paula and use some of these minutes up before they expire. She says they put a long-distance block on her phone and so she can’t call me. She asked about the incense, but again, I’m sick of doing for others who won’t do for me so the incense I don’t like is either going to sit here on a shelf or get thrown out. I’m not going to let her keep taking advantage of my generosity. Besides, we’re too broke right now for me to go sending packages. She says she’ll send a letter and $5 to send it, but I know better. Especially the $5 part.

My quads are sore today, that’s how strenuous this treadmill is. I should give my legs a rest today and work on my arms and abs. I’m down to 127 and I had been bouncing between 129-130 for days. I’m really surprised I’m not well into the 130s yet, but I probably will be sooner or later. People don’t just tend to gain weight upon entering their 30s and that’s it. They also tend to gain in 1- to 10-pound increments throughout their lives every 5-10 years.

A bang of some sort woke me up at 9:30, then again at 12:30, but I was ready to get up then anyway. Still, I’m sick of the periodic wake-up calls, and I’m sick of the renter’s fucking dogs having free rein in this place as well!

I guess it’s two to three. The two things I’d miss if we moved would be this house and having a decent convenience store 13 miles away versus the 20-30 it’d be if we moved. However, I still do like the idea of more land, being further away from civilization, and the extra money.

I’m back to thinking I’d prefer outer fences versus inner ones if we stay. We can still do inner ones, but with outer ones, we could be anywhere on the land we wanted to be and not have to worry about dogs. I know, for example, we’re seldom out by the well, but when we are, I’d want to know no dogs could run up to us.

These surveys have proven to be as much of a waste of time as I figured they’d be. On the rare occasion that I do get an offer for a survey in exchange for points or money, all I get is “Sorry, you don’t qualify for this survey.”

What’s going on with us right now is a prime example of why I totally disagree with those who believe we’re in control of our own destinies. Like Tom chose to spend all those years building himself up to where he was just to have someone come and tear it all down for him? Yeah, right! If that’s what people believe, then they might as well also believe I chose to get fat and to have asthma.

So much of my life has been out of my control, that in a sense, I’m surprised God didn’t make a kid part of my plans because then I’d really have no life I could call my own. I really truly believe that life ends with children and so many mothers have told me so. Not that some of them necessarily mind the trade-off, but once you have kids, your life belongs to them and not you at least till they’re on their own.

How strange it would be to have first thought we would lose the house to the welfare bums, then end up losing it to lack of money. I’m just sick of this up-and-down rollercoaster shit. It’s not fair! Each time we get kicked down I’m more afraid to pull back up because we always, always lose whatever we achieve. I’m sick of this ‘sometimes we have money, sometimes we don’t shit. No matter what we do, we just can’t seem to ever get ahead, and when we do, it’s always temporary.

Later…

I didn’t have the power to work my magic on the last 4 tickets, but it seems I’ve warded off cold number two of Tom’s. The morning should tell us for sure.

I told him about the bangs that woke me up, explaining that each time it was one quick bang. This is why I doubt it was a sonic boom. It didn’t have the rumble a sonic boom has and there was no vibration to go with it. Then he told me he heard bangs this weekend when I was sleeping with the fan on and he went out and checked to find it was coming from one of the farms several miles away.

I’ve got to start either sleeping with the fan on at least medium or a lower-pitched sound on the sound machine. It’s usually the low-pitched sounds that wake me up, so I have to match the pitch with the low rumble of the box fan or certain other sounds.