Tom got the truck fixed, so now it can go ahead and break again and cost us more money we don’t have. While he was working on it, he was close to the road and Shelvin walked by at one point. Wow, that’s a long walk from his place to here! Anyway, he said his dad would’ve let him work on it at their place and that he and his father are mechanics of sorts.

We were trying to figure out just why the motels were packed at this time, besides because we’re here, and it hit Tom that the college semester just started and most of the people here are probably seeing their kids off to school. Yeah, well either way, them and the Mexicans costing us the extra money they’re going to cost us since we can’t get a weekly deal at the Townhouse, the only place around that isn’t going to be infested with them, is just another example of how my life is forced to rule around others. Always others affect me and my life! Anyway, I’m sure the motels will die down just as soon as we’re out of them.

Tomorrow we’re going up to the land. If my plants have beat the odds and my “water spells” have kept them alive, I’m going to bring them more water. I’d say they’re dead, though. I just don’t see how they could go two weeks without water. The desert palm – maybe – but the tropical spider plant? It hardly seems possible it could be alive. I just hope no one fucked with the place while we were gone! If they did, it may actually make me glad we can’t keep the land because if they could break into an old dumpy RV, they’d certainly be enticed by a house or a cabin.

The more I get to know this town, the more I see just how small it really is. I know God’s going to send us trouble for neighbors no matter where we go, though. He’ll be all the more certain to sic loud car stereos on us because it’s too cold for people and dogs to be outside year-round bouncing balls, barking and screaming their heads off. However, it’d sure be nice to get a place with a cellar, and even nicer to get a place that had a washer and a dryer down in it, but I doubt either of these things will happen because they’d be too expensive. We noticed that only some of the houses have cellars. They’re not as abundant as they are in New England, though they’re not as scarce as in Arizona. Too many of them have driveways that go between the houses like in Arizona. This makes me even more vulnerable to the noisy neighbor curse, but oh well. Anything’s better than motels, and if we’re forced to deal with problem neighbors, we’ll do it right this time and in a place dominated by whites. I just wonder how long it’ll be before they can possibly be a problem for us to have to deal with!

I keep thinking of that chick at the Chinese place. It’s not that she’s oh-so-gorgeous or anything, and she may not be my type at all personality-wise. She seems too hyper, too chatty, too ditzy and like she comes on too strong. I see Brenda in her. I think she smothers people and it wouldn’t surprise me if she smokes and does drugs. Still, I do look forward to seeing her again, and somehow I get the feeling that she does, too. At first I thought – nah, she doesn’t have a thing for me, but that’s what I said with the idea of Palma and Teddy Bear liking me and I turned out to be wrong. They did like me. Either way, it’ll be cool to see how she behaves the next time I see her. I’d be her friend if she was clean and wouldn’t mind being just friends, but like I said, she may have some traits I could do without.

Later…

Tom said he thinks gay marriages are going to be on the ballot because he’s seen a lot of bumper stickers about it. Bigoted ones, that is. He reminded me that sooner or later it has to be either legal everywhere or illegal everywhere, and I’m sure it’ll be illegal. He thinks it’ll be legal because - who cares? But that’s just the thing – everyone always cares about what’s going on with everyone else. Except for us, people always want to control others and are more interested in what’s going on with other people than they are with themselves. People live to butt into other people’s lives and get them to conform to their ways. Gays will never have much in the way of rights. Meanwhile, the blacks will keep racking up more rights than anyone else ever had or will have.

Anyway, we went to the land we almost had and found that no one tampered with anything. That wasn’t such a shocker. What was unbelievable was that not only were the palm and the spider plant alive and well, but so was the big leaf plant that’s been looking on the verge of death for so long! I was really amazed. The spider actually looked better and like it had grown.

While we were there we got the generator to pawn or sell, some more tools, and then I brought our canned goods, some makeup, my dreadlocks machine, and my airbed for when we have to sleep on the rock-hard beds at the Townhouse. Only thing is, how are we going to blow it up? We didn’t bring the blower. Besides, the thing’s made to plug into cigarette lighters.