I had a vision of myself being shot to death at age 42, had we stayed on the mountain and built a house there. In the vision, I’m sitting out front when a car, seemingly lost, pulls up. I think it’s people asking for directions or about available land in the area. Two guys get out. One pulls a gun on me before I know what’s happening. I quickly wrestle the gun away and fist his face just as his friend whips out his own gun and guns me down. I get shot in the back and the bullet goes through and pierces my heart.

Dead. Dead in one shot.

Instead, I’ve been fated to live a going-nowhere life filled with hardships and struggles. Filled with settlements and failures. Really, it’s not going to get much better than this. Knowing that even the simplest of wishes can’t come true if we’re the ones doing the wishing, like wishing Walmart would call, is no way to live. Anyone can work at Walmart. Anyone. Except for Tom S. Tom S who was no doubt discriminated against because of his age. It’s just as much of a loss to them as it is to us, though, because they just passed up a damn good worker! Tom says they still may call him because his application will remain active for 60 days, and he reminded me that MCX and that place that made T-shirts didn’t call right away. I know they won’t call because whatever’s up there that’s so against us knows we want them to. I’m just surprised they granted him an interview in the first place. They had no other way of finding out his age until they saw him because it’s against the law to ask a person’s age in an application, and while the lady never came out and asked, you’re talking about a guy who looks like he’s in his early 50s. Walmart has hired older people, but only for petty jobs like greeting customers at the door. This lady was talking about stocking merchandise, in which case they’d want some young stud for the job. As soon as Tom told me she told him not to call him or else they’d be bombarded with calls, I knew she was full of shit when she mentioned contacting him by the end of the week. In other words, what she really meant was, “Don’t call us because we won’t call you because we don’t want you working here.”

So now he has to find a part-time job to supplement the one he’s got because just as I predicted, there’s no higher-paying job for him. At least not here there isn’t. First we were trapped in California by the breakdown and now we’re trapped in Oregon! He can only work two jobs for so long, so it may be a very long time before we can save up enough money to move to Redding. I think we should take advantage of the garage we’ve got and kill ourselves. I really do. The sooner we do it, the sooner we’ll be cutting out of a lot of bullshit in life. I’m sick of how unfair life is, watching all kinds of people with money and things we can never have, going places we can never go, doing things we can never do. It really is a rich man’s world, and I’m tired of looking at life through the window of a locked door, wanting to open it and participate, yet knowing I never can. I’m tired of being screwed by fate, screwed by society. Tom and I did nothing to deserve the shit luck we’ve had other than making some poor decisions. He didn’t work as long and as hard as he has over the years just to get stuck renting a duplex. We both realize it’s better than being homeless, but we’ve been through this before and I can personally say for both of us this: when you don’t have much of a life to go with wherever you’re living, be it a nice place or not, then what’s the point? Just like there was no point in me keeping the beautiful apartment I had in Deerfield just to be broke and miserable, what’s the point of continuing on? What I didn’t know then that I know now is that life is never going to change, and when it does improve, it’s only for a short while. Tom is smart, yet naïvely optimistic when he says that in a couple of years, this will all be history. No, it won’t be. Money will be a problem for us as long as we live. The only difference is that sometimes it’ll be more of an issue than others.

I still have no vibes about moving, but I don’t need to. Again, I know we won’t move because I want to. Seldom does anything happen that I want to happen, and when it does, it’s not that fast. So I know without being psychic that we’ll either be here till November or next May. Maybe even longer. Besides, I don’t think he really wants to move. He’s just not going to come out and say so because he knows I do. That’s just Tom for you. He did this with the kid and he’s done it with other things. Putting his foot down and saying “no” to something only I want to do isn’t an easy thing for him. I’ve learned long ago to go by his actions and not by his words. On the bright side of staying here – nothing’s broken here, the truck hasn’t had any major problems, etc. Why? Because we belong here. If we did have money, then yes, God would go after the truck to keep us broke. Oh well. As I’ve said before, why not stay down when going up only means an inevitable fall back down to where we are now or worse?

Meanwhile, since I know he’s never going to want us to hop in the truck, shut the garage door behind us, and carbon monoxide ourselves out of this sorry world, the queen will live on in luxury and we’ll continue to struggle and I’ll keep on writing stories that no one will ever publish.

As I told him, if he just looks for a job with shit pay, no benefits, no raises, no nothing, he’ll get it for damn sure. Then again, I think he should quit trying to fight fate as far as getting us more money which we’re not supposed to have and just stay put. Trying to change fate only gets us in trouble.

Mom and daughter were both out back early in the evening. Something to do with the cats, I guess, because I heard the mother say, “Don’t bring him in the house, Crystal.” She sounds rather harsh compared to her soft-spoken yet high-pitched kid. I guess they won’t be that big a deal in the summer even if they are out back a lot. Meaning that because they’re not black-loud and because there’s no music, barking or ball-bouncing (I hope not!), throwing the fan on low should cancel them out so long as there’s no knife-tossing or little kids brought over and taken out back. I wish people in Oregon were like they are in Arizona cuz then they’d all hang in front. Hopefully, we won’t need to bother putting the AC in. You need it more in Massachusetts because it’s so much more humid there, even though the temps are pretty similar. I don’t think we’ll need heat at night like we did in the RV either. Then again, we may until summer gets well underway. I remember those cold nights down in the 40s and 50s. Still, being on a mountain in an RV doesn’t compare to a normal building in town.

Later…

The assholes next door woke me up, which of course, was coincidentally after 4 hours of sleep. And also, of course, there’s nothing I can do to wake them up in return. Oh well. If it wasn’t them, it’d be something else. God has to do something to wake me up every now and then if I’m not going to have to have an alarm clock doing that 5 days a week like most people. It’s like He doesn’t want me getting off that easy.

I wonder if Oregon is like back East where you get to go month to month after your initial lease is up? I doubt it. I think they’ll want us to renew our lease, but either way, I already know we’re not moving in May, so it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they don’t drive me too crazy when it warms up. I’ve never seen a family so damn devoted! No mother and daughter are this close! They don’t miss a day together. Some days I only hear one or two doors close softly. Other times they have a handful of slamming sprees where they go back and forth and back and forth. They almost remind me of the fucking freeloaders and their car doors! Why, God, why???

Anyway, I’m not even going to bother looking at rental ads or insisting Tom take us out to look at places. I knew God would never let us out of here in just 6 months. It took us 6 years to get out of the Phoenix house. We may not be here that long, but I always knew deep down, once we left the land, that I wouldn’t be returning to the sticks anytime soon, and I also know we won’t be returning to a place that stands independently anytime soon with no one just outside the window, so why fight it? As hard as it is on me, I must simply accept that this is where we live and make the best of it. It’s better than jail.

He started a new job at work stamping cables that they “say” may pay more, but I know better. The company’s in shit shape financially. They’re barely getting by. I’m sure it’s why God led him to that job in the first place. He talked about getting a part-time job so I could buy things, and that’s really sweet of him, but like I told him, don’t get a part-time job and give up more of your life just so I can do a little shopping. Shopping is not a high priority right now as much as all women love to shop. Besides, I have a block as far as mail orders go and who knows how long that will go on?

It’s going to be in the mid-60s next week. In other words, our electric bill will go down while my wake-up calls go up.

I just hate feeling like I’m in an air balloon, not knowing where it’s going to land or when. I only know the big things in life won’t change – the financial struggles, the wake-up calls no matter where we live, etc. (though sometimes will be better than others). I know this is an unrealistic fantasy, but I sometimes wish we could go away once or twice a year for 2 nights and 3 days just to get away from it all, even when things aren’t necessarily a nightmare. Just get away from the same old, same old. I’d want to go to places like Vegas, Reno, California, etc. All I know is that as long as our wonderful God won’t allow him to make more than minimum wage, we can’t save money. He’s all sure that we can make it to Redding in November, and I’m like – come on, will you! Get off your naïvely optimistic horse and be reasonable. Maybe we could do it in January if the queen pays up, but I don’t know about that. We just have to hope that wherever we go in the meantime, we don’t get hit with a 1-year lease or else we couldn’t leave till next May. Well, we could, we’d just lose the deposit or last month (whichever applies). Then again, I’m almost positive we’re not moving in May anyway, and if they won’t let us go month to month, which I also doubt, they should at least allow us another 6-month lease and not a year. It’s the houses that normally start off at a year.

I would suggest he apply at other department stores, but I know God would forbid them from hiring him for the same reasons Walmart won’t – opportunity, discounts, etc.

I was looking at the statistics in my native town of Longmeadow, and the average annual income there is $75,000! That’s money we’ll certainly never make. There’s virtually no crime there either. They have no murders or rapes per year, just a few assaults and auto thefts. Redding has about 55 rapes a year and there was even a murder in ’01. Phoenix, however, has about 200 murders a year and LA has nearly 700.