Another day filled with struggle, uncertainty and conflicting emotions. Tom doesn’t want to die, but I’m ready. However, I can’t die and leave him feeling deserted. It’d have to be something we both did together if we’re going to do it at all. I’m just ready to go because I’m sick of feeling like a little marionette with an unseen puppeteer guiding me wherever it wants me to go, which is almost always places I don’t want to be. Like motels! I’m still surviving, but every single morning they wake me up with the door-slamming. I sleep through traffic noise, but not those fucking doors everyone thinks they have to slam in order to shut.

I got up at 11:00 this morning and found they let us stay another day. Tomorrow though, whether or not they’ve got an opening, we’re going to do something we shouldn’t be having to do and that’s going motel sampling and comparing. He’s going to get me up with coffee at 10:15, leaving us 45 minutes to gather up our stuff and get out. Then we’re going to a place that says their weekly rates are $175 and they have DSL hookups, plus microwaves. A microwave would be great for popcorn and hot drinks. I just hope they have a desk to put this damn laptop on and that it’s not any noisier than this place is. Asking for quieter would be asking for a miracle, so I’ll settle for it being comparable to this place, which is $32 a night for nothing. I mean, the water’s hot, and the room’s not too small, but without anything else, it’s a bit much to pay. The more we save, the faster we get into a house somewhere. I just hope to hell we get in a house and not an apartment! I don’t care anymore about neighbors being just a few feet away and their antics. We can deal with them afterward. For now, I just want out of motels where people are adjacent to us! I want a place to set up the desktops, my stereo, etc., and I want to stay there forever.

But I know better. We’ll be rental-hopping like crazy, no doubt, as we face one nightmare of a neighbor after another that God protects and makes sure we can’t fight back against.

The truck is going to fall apart any minute. The question is, can it wait till after we have the money to fix it? Somehow, I doubt it. Life just isn’t that good and considerate to us. It’ll probably be weeks before we can make it back to the land. Right now it’s just too risky with the truck clanking along. I’m sure it’ll be after the plants have had plenty of time to die so I can add two more losses to my ever-growing list.

One thing I wonder, though, is if that couple was telling the truth about someone complaining about us. Why haven’t we heard about it then? Tom thinks it could be because the person complains so damn much that they’re sick of dealing with it. That’s what happened with us in Phoenix. Not that our complaints weren’t legit, but the city got sick of hearing it and so they turned on us, citing us for this, citing us for that. Besides, the white man simply didn’t rule down there.

We stopped at storage today and pulled out some things to pawn and sell once we find the best place to take the shit to if the truck will let us get there. We pulled things like power tools, the guitar, and some CDs. Shit we shouldn’t be having to do at our ages, but like I said, I’m coming to see and accept more and more that like it or not, we were destined to struggle financially, and we always will. There’s nothing we can do to change that, period. No amount of hard work, no winning lottery ticket, no nothing, is going to change what’s fated to be in that department. Whatever’s up there simply does not want us to have money. If you can’t pay for the things you need half of the time, you know you’ll never really have money for extras. All I’m going to get from time to time is incense. I’m sick of being teased with wanting dolls and other things, so I’m simply going to forget about it. I’m just sick of this up-and-down rollercoaster we’ve been on. If we can’t stay up, then I’m ready to just stay down at this point.

We may transfer the rat, who had his final run of this room earlier, to the small wire cage. He’s in a glass tank now. The tank keeps his stinkiness in and makes him stink more. With it being just him, he can go in the wire cage where he can climb a bit and we don’t have to worry about him getting out, not that he’d go far or do much damage. With as much freedom as we give him, he shouldn’t feel too cooped up in the wire cage, even though it’s a bit smaller than the tank. He’s getting older now and is losing his spunk anyway, I’m sad to say. I feel so bad for him. I mean, I know he’s just a rat, but I hate to see him subjected to all this moving around we’re so fated to do.

I’m still taking antihistamines to sleep at night, but there is one thing that’s miraculously changed. Despite the fact that God just won’t let me sleep straight through without the interruptions, I’ve been getting up without alarms. Tomorrow, though, he’ll have to wake me up because I usually don’t get up till between 11:00 and noon. But when am I going to have the luxury and the freedom of not having to take anything to fall asleep, and to let my schedule be whatever it’s going to be?

Got a Bob letter. He’s had trouble breathing, and he got some of the excerpts I sent him covering the trip. They were first delivered to another floor in the prison before they got to him.

We went to the Chinese place. The usual crew was there. The last time we were waited on by this unfriendly waitress we’d never seen before whom we only left a buck for instead of the usual two bucks.