Well, the time has come to deal with this ear and teeth of mine. I know I may be defying and pissing off God since He gets off on my suffering, but it’s ok because He can give me a whole new long-term problem to deal with after I square this one away, and I know He will. For now, I’m tired of this shit and I’m ready to deal with it and move on. I’m now getting about $400 a month in spending money. I’ll use half of it for a dentist and an ear doctor. Tom found an ear doctor who does ear surgery, so we’re hoping they can at least clean artificial canals. We’re still not sure if it’s the ear or teeth. Had the pain been on the other side that would’ve ruled the ear out since I have cavities everywhere, but being on the side of the bad ear, I don’t know what to think. Although I know it has to be one or the other, nothing I can think of makes sense. If it’s just a long-term build-up of dead skin that that ear doesn’t produce enough wax to shed and carry out, why aren’t the oil treatments softening it? If it’s the teeth, why is the pain only on one side? If it’s an infection, why don’t I have some of the symptoms that go along with infections like a fever? All I know is that I’m so backed up in bodily repairs right now that it’s going to cost thousands of dollars to fix! After I deal with this shit, then hopefully – hopefully – we’ll never be so poor again that I can’t afford to see doctors for regular check-ups. I don’t care to have yearly female exams, because I know I can trust my intuition on that, but I need to keep up on the ear and teeth with all the problems they cause. I just hope whatever the next problem is stays below the neck! Meanwhile, I wish I could get the canal sewn shut, my teeth replaced with dentures, and my uterus yanked out!

Just for the hell of it and because I was curious to see if it would draw any response, I registered at classmates.com. The good thing about it is that since I’m not a gold member, which costs a few bucks a month, no one can bother me in any way, which is a good thing because I’m not interested in buddying up with anyone I once knew. Especially with me being 3000 miles away since New Englanders rarely move. I’m sure that of those within the class of ’84, I could count those who moved out of state on one hand. Most people are closer than I ever was to their families and they tend to have a better selection of friends than I had at the time, so they wouldn’t be as quick to run cross country and not look back. I won’t bother telling Tom about it because knowing him since I gave mostly bullshit answers on the Q&A, he’ll fear the cops coming after me. He’s so paranoid at times that I’m surprised he had no objections to my ordering books in a bogus name, though I assured him I’d only do it once. I just thought it would be funny for gold members to read that I make over $200,000 a year, have a couple of kids, etc. Of course, if things continue to go well, everything I said, though I did mostly state the truth since most of the questions were personality-geared, all the BS could become a reality, except for the kids. Since I was out of the local school system before I was a sophomore, I was surprised to get one view so far, but Lori and Lisa are members, so it was probably one of them. It could’ve been Brenda P. She and I were friends for a while till we drifted apart. What’s confusing is that there’s an Elisa G as well as a Lisa G. Well, Lisa’s full name is Elisa, and there were no other Gs in town except for Nana and Pa, so I’m pretty sure they’re both her. The funny thing is that she said she had 3 kids as Elisa and 2 as Lisa. Anyway, whoever it was that viewed me obviously wasn’t a gold member because the thing said my photos and full Q&A were not accessed. As a non-gold member, all you can see is the person’s marital status and how many kids they’ve got. I was surprised at just how many don’t have kids since they were young before the women and work movement got so heavily underway.

They weren’t kidding by saying that this part of town is snowier being closer to the lake. It snowed all day on Monday. We ended up with 3-4 inches. Last winter it would be pretty much gone by noon, yet most of the shit has yet to melt. It started drizzling a bit from what I can see, so maybe more of it will melt. I hate the cold and snow, but it sure keeps the dogs quiet. I haven’t heard anybody’s music either and even the car stereos have lessened.

Like it or not, I feel like I’m already re-adapting to the cold climate. It took me 5 or 6 years to adapt to the desert climate, but after spending my first 26 years in a cold one, I’m getting used to the cold pretty fast, though I still hate it. Of course that could also be partly due to the fact that this year we can afford to heat the hell out of the place. I’m just so glad we’re not back in that miserable duplex! I’m sure it’s not as noisy now in that the bitch isn’t leaving the dog out back for hours at a time, and next door’s not hanging out back barbecuing for hours on end either, but it’d still be bad enough. We’d still hear the dog every other time it went out to shit, the TV would still be blaring away, and next door would be slamming back and forth several times a day.

My biggest question right now, besides what the hell’s going on with my ear and teeth, is whether or not Tom’s been sitting on a gold mine all this time with this job and not known it. When he couldn’t get hired at that auto parts place or at Walmart I said, “Well, there’s a reason for everything.” Only I thought that reason was to keep us poor since this job seemed to be going nowhere for so long. Now the stage is set for a potential partnership. This would literally mean us going from being the financial underdogs of our families to richer than any of them could ever be, and most of them are pretty close to being rich! Like Tom said, he doesn’t want to get overly optimistic, but if things continued to progress as they have been and he continues to score points with the owners, he could be made partner in which case we’d stay here 2-3 more years, then he’d sell his partnership, and we would go not to find him a new job in Sacramento, but to retire anywhere! Maybe not on a yacht or in Beverly Hills since we’d have the same problem we had in Maricopa by going to Beverly Hills where most of our money would be tied up in the house, leaving us not much extra for other things. Since I wouldn’t want to return to the intense dryness and heat or the giant spiders that deserts bring, I think we may settle somewhere along the coast of northern California. That way, with the water being so cold up there, we wouldn’t have a million sunbathers right outside our window. It’ll depend on the climate there. If it’s going to be too much like this, then I’d want to go tropical or back to the desert.

I know I shouldn’t go getting my hopes up. A few good months don’t necessarily mean that it’s not still in our cards to struggle for most of our lives, but I can’t help but hope for good things to happen!