Surprisingly, there were no favors from Mary today or yesterday, but God am I ever so sorry I found José for her! Then again, she does tend to write in clumps. Today she should have my first letter saying I don’t think I should do any typing for her so she doesn’t have to worry about any false motives, and because the printer’s always so finicky. I started writing her a letter by hand, knowing that this other printer would go on the fritz any moment, and recommended she use my handwriting as a sample in letters to José. She should write rather than print and use pens, too. I also recommended the usage of punctuation and paragraphs whenever she changes subjects, but Mary’s always been hell-bent on writing her own way, so far.

Next door’s still quieter than usual. Is that the sign of the end to come of our time here? For some reason, things not only start off quiet when we move, but they go quiet before we move, too. Tom’s going to speak to Pam tomorrow. Meanwhile, I only heard them make a pass once yesterday and once today. I looked over there late last and things are still brightly lit as usual. I see the computer on in the daughter’s living room, but I never see anyone at it. There were balloons tied to the chair in front of it. What’s weird is that she’s got a nightlight in the kitchen yet you’d think it’d be a waste with the living room light streaming in.

They were all psyched at work yesterday because he fixed a printer that no one else could fix. The owners are a sister and brother team, and the sister talked about giving Tom a certificate to eat out as a way of saying “thanks,” but we’ll believe it when we see it. With all the people that have us do for them for nothing, I have to see it to believe it. It was funny, though, when Tom said that if they gave us the certificate and then he quit to go work elsewhere, he’d be like, thanks for dinner, have a good life now! Whether he stays or not, I think he deserves the certificate.

Meanwhile, he has an interview at a place that rebuilds old transmissions that starts off at $8 - $8.50. That’s what the bank started him off at, and at the end of his 8 years there, he was at $16, but I don’t expect to be in Oregon for 8 years! Anything’s possible, though. What looks promising about it is that it’s a bigger company so they’d be more likely to offer insurance for both of us without taking so much money. So, although it wouldn’t be significantly more money at first, we’d at least be insured, and he’d have a shot at overtime and advances.

The only sucky thing is that in order to get to California, we’d have to be torn down and start all over again. Even if we could manage to hang onto what stuff we have left without having to pawn things or play motel for too long, he’d still have to start from scratch and work his way up from the bottom. I don’t know, maybe our best bet would be better to stay in Oregon either until the queen dies or he retires. Then again, we aren’t out to do our “best bet” or else we would move into that $300 studio that includes utilities and suffer from the noise, the chaos and the lack of sleep we’d no doubt be in for. And of course that would also include a major lack of space and privacy in a studio.

I just hope we can find a house on a busy street. It’s the low-traffic streets that they tend to sit out in their vehicles blasting music. They’re not going to play them unless they know others can hear them, and while they could be heard here, they know it’s even easier to hear them when you don’t have all this traffic going by. Low-traffic streets also tend to have more kids out making a ruckus. I wish we could end up next to old folks or those who are single, but I know that if there were houses next to us, they’d contain families. God could never be that kind to us until and if we ever did make it into a retirement community. And dogs too, of course, but at least I could blast my stereo and not worry about what I did or about Bev moving and trouble moving in that we’d have to be attached to.

Something got jarred loose when he switched printers, so this weekend he’ll open up the case, unplug everything, then replug things in really tight.