It’s not even midnight yet and it’s already down to 35º. Maricopa really is colder in the winter and hotter in the summer than Phoenix. Even the floors get cool along with our 6” walls! Especially because there’s no cellar or concrete slab for the house to rest on.

I was able to psych $15 on the last Slingo ticket and I’m going to keep on plugging away at it. I’m just sick of God punishing us for every little blessing he does give us. Things were running smoothly for months and now we gotta pay for it. Lovely. Just lovely.

Anyway, we talked about the possibilities of both staying and leaving. We definitely agree that if there was a way we could’ve fucked up when leaving Phoenix, we definitely did. We should never have gotten the well or a big fancy house. The nearly $1000 payments are a real killer. Like I said before, I don’t like the idea of trading this place in for a single-paned, thin-walled, tiny piece of shit, but I’m sick of struggling and I’d like more land and fewer people. Moving here and the way we went about it was definitely a dumb mistake, but we were fated to fail. Again, what would be the point of cursing us with psychotic neighbors if we were only going to know how to escape it 4 years sooner than we did? There was no way God was going to let us stumble onto the fact that we could’ve gotten out as soon as the shit hit the fan, and done so without suffering as much as we did. We didn’t have to spend 4 months in trailers and motels and we didn’t have to lose so much money. But like I said, why curse someone, then show them the way?

Another mistake was these mice because they’re dying off one by one. As Tom pointed out, feeder mice that have been inbred so much tend to be more diseased. If they all die off (there are 4 left) I’m not going to replace them with anything new till we know for sure what’s going on. I’d say we’re going to end up staying for a few more years because I’m getting to like the idea of leaving more and more. Like I said, it’s only the house itself I’ll miss. I’m just glad that for however long we end up here we’re not stuck in a desperate situation like we were before with seemingly no way out.

I’m also not going to miss the waves of foul smells we get in here. Tom can’t smell them as much, but when you’ve been cursed with a nose just as keen as any bloodhound’s, you smell all kinds of shit. Most of the smells are from the septic, but I’d only have to put up with this in the next place too, because there’d be a septic there as well.