This is the second day we didn’t need the AC. Yes, it’s slowly cooling down, though we’re supposed to have a few warmer days coming up. Naturally, the cooler weather has the dog going off from 6 PM to midnight, and probably in the mornings too, though I haven’t been up during those times lately. God, how do the owners stand it?!?! Tom’s got to be right about us being able to escape it all! I can’t live like this for another 40 or 50 years, listening to other people’s music, dogs and kids, though kids haven’t been a problem so far in this place. Today’s stereos haven’t been as bad as yesterday’s. Yesterday we didn’t drop from every few minutes to every half hour till around 11:00. It’s after 8:00 now so it’s picking up a little. It seems to get bad around lunchtime, then again between 3:00–5:00. Then there’s a bit of a lull till 8:00, and then it picks up again for a few hours.

Sometime before Tom goes to work we’ll be ordering those 4 Barbies – 2 swimsuit models that come with 2 spare outfits. One’s blond, and one’s got black hair. Also, a blond wearing a really nice gown for having shades of yellow and green, which aren’t my usual colors, that’s citrus-scented. I don’t care for that scent much, but it’ll fade fast enough. Especially with all the incense going. She’s called Citrus Obsession and is from the Flavor Obsession series. Because brown is such a dull color to me, I’m not the least bit interested in the Chocolate Obsession doll. Lastly, I’ll be getting the Diwali Barbie done up in an Indian theme with long black hair. The order will come to $122, a far cry cheaper than the $523 the 5 Tonners and Barbie just cost me! Next, I’ll save for a couple of vinyl Ashton-Drake baby dolls that will no doubt make any baby dolls I currently have seem utterly phony-looking!

The loud truck just drove out next door, but it wasn’t hauling anything. With Labor Day weekend coming up, I expect there’ll be all kinds of company, including animals on the swings. If they can have so much company when it’s not a holiday, then I can only imagine how it’ll be on holidays. I’m sure that dog will spend the long weekend over there, too. You know all our neighbors can rarely go to other people’s houses and that they have to have visitors nearly every day. At least I’ll be asleep through most of it.

The mail’s been coming late lately, like at 6:00. I guess the regular mailman’s on vacation. Especially since whoever’s been delivering it has been putting mail in her box. She must be regularly observing the box to see if the flap’s up because she came to get what was in it after Tom made sure it wasn’t any of our mail. There was one regular envelope and some junk. Not surprisingly, she just took the envelope and left the junk, too lazy to drop it in the dumpster on her way to her place. Who knows? Maybe she’s decided to drop her PO Box or wherever the hell she’s been getting her mail figuring she’s met us a few times and feels she can trust us to get her mail here. I hope not, though, and I still hope she sticks around till we split. She hasn’t been as bad lately with the door slamming, so I can’t complain. It’s like she’d go out more at night during the winter which is weird.

My wins lately consist of bandanas, blinky lights and a $20 Border’s certificate. I hope they come through with the Border’s certificate cuz I’d like to order some old favorites by Ruby Jean Jensen. They have used books which saves a lot of money.

I’ll be ordering 4 Barbies tomorrow, and getting a miniature Barbie and an exercise ball from the grocery store this Saturday. I’d still like to keep fit although I am going to let my weight climb to its heart’s desire. I don’t know if I’ll gain 20 pounds or 200, but I don’t care anymore. I’m just sick of going hungry all the time just to stay 30 pounds overweight. I’m currently 130 pounds, so we’ll see where I end up. I’ll probably gain a pound or so a week for quite a while. I figure if your average American can survive life at 50 pounds overweight, so can I.

I also know that the weight will help the next time someone’s dumb enough to threaten me. Nancy and I were about the same weight when she threatened me. But had I been 30 or 40 pounds heavier, I may’ve been able to take her. Oh, I’d still have gotten charged and lost my visitation and commissary since I can’t get away with shit no matter how justified I might be, but I probably could’ve taken her nonetheless. It’s okay. I’ll get the next one.

If there are two big things I’ve learned over the last decade it’s that not all prejudice is on account of fear, misunderstanding or insecurity, but of certain people’s sick, evil behavior. Also, not everyone who’s big eats like a pig.

Despite Tom’s always being overly optimistic, I have to give him the fact that I don’t know computers like he does. So if he says the program’s looking more and more promising by the minute, then I have to trust and believe him. This is a far different thing than when he’d tell me he wanted a kid when we knew he didn’t.

I had a funny thought earlier. Well, say our spirits really can float around and check on those who are still alive after we die, and say Doe and Art go belly up in a decade or so. Imagine them checking on their dogs first, which is what they’d do knowing them, then their friends, then family. Well, they sure as hell would be in for quite an eyeful when they got to checking on us! Especially if we really do get rich. This brilliant idea is all his, but I wonder if I “wrote a jinx” and helped? When I wrote Doe & Art I thought it’d be best to make like we were doing well financially so the real message – don’t forget to leave us some money when you assholes die – wouldn’t seem obvious. (though the Queen and Miss Perfect probably took the genuine pleasure of telling them how broke we were) I simply said we won a substantial amount in a sweepstake, though I didn’t elaborate. Besides, no matter what the real case was, I wasn’t about to be like – while you’re no doubt still living high off the hog, I’m still the same old underdog, a poor old loser, losing houses, losing land, getting shit on by society, living like a bum, sleeping on floors, scraping pennies, etc. Ah, but in the end, the underdog really does come out on top at times!

Meanwhile, do I regret the past? Well, sure it’s easy to say I wish I’d done certain things differently, but nah, I don’t think I really regret it because to say I did would be saying I wish I’d been perfect which would mean I’d have to be inhuman.

Tom didn’t see the dog when he went grocery shopping last Saturday, and he left late, which means that if by some freak chance they allow it indoors overnight, it certainly would’ve been out for the day by the time he rode by. So I guess it really does just visit a lot. Why people up here feel the need to take their dogs everywhere they go is still beyond me. Makes me wonder if they’re going to pass a law allowing them to be taken to work!

The animals are already back in school, I’m surprised to see. After all, it’s still August, and I know I never began school till right after Labor Day.

I made the stupid mistake of spending $30 on these pills called Hoodia, which is from a cactus plant, hoping against hope that they’d take my appetite away like the Claritin did and like they claim they do, but nope. Once again, my body’s completely out of my control. It’s either go hungry or get fatter, and I think I’m just about ready to eat a normal 1500-2000 calories a day and let myself gain another 30 pounds or so cuz I’m sick of stressing over it. Sometimes the best way to deal with a problem is not to deal with it at all. Especially when the aids that really work are either illegal or require a prescription. These Hoodia pills are backed by Oprah. Should’ve known better than to trust the word of a black.

I’m still having loads of fun with my incense, but am having an awful lot of sticks go out on me and I have to relight them. I wonder why?

My dolls came yesterday and look gorgeous all set up on display! The big 22” American Model is more impressive than I thought she’d be. The best of the 16” ones are definitely Aqua Angelina, then Carrie. Emme, the plus-size doll, is nice, too. The only ones that aren’t quite as dazzling as I expected are the Sydney and Barbie dolls, though they’re still plenty nice enough.

My palm tree died recently. I’m surprised. It had been doing so much better since coming to this state, so I don’t know what killed it. Maybe it got too big for its pot, though no roots were sticking out that I could see. Oh well. I’ll get new ones, probably fake, sometime in the future. Plants aren’t a high priority right now.

I wrote Paula a letter, but as I told her, I’m dropping my letters to once a month. I just don’t always have anything new to update her on every week or two, and she rarely answers any of my letters, so I think monthly letters will be sufficient enough. The cutback in stamps will help make up for the $9 package I’ll be sending in a few months consisting of unwanted incense, a few oils, that snot green bracelet I won, a dull purse, and a glow-in-the-dark celestial mobile.

Tomorrow we’ll have been in this house for a year. It’s been an incredible year, too! However, I’m starting to think we’re just being teased, as is usually the case when it comes to serious money where the horseracing thing is concerned. Tom’s still optimistic, but that’s just Tom for you, always optimistic, sometimes even when it’s more than obvious to the rest of the world that there’s no logical reason he should be. He said it’d take months and that it’s always looking promising, and while I’m glad it’s making at least a small profit rather than losing, I’m really starting to believe the joke’s on us. Again. This means we could easily be broke throughout most of our lives as I thought would be the case, and that we’re back to square one and with the same old questions – how long will we be stuck in Oregon? How long will we have to live with these fucking stereos, dogs and other shit till we can get into a retirement community? Who will help us when we’re old since we probably won’t have the money to hire anyone to take care of us?

The biggest discouragement is knowing that since before I was old enough to know about the DES, the effects of all the damn drugs they had me on could cause, etc., I was sterile. Or that it at least wasn’t in my cards to conceive. How could I know that practically all my life and be right about it despite Tom’s appointing himself to play designated birth controller, but be wrong about facing poverty so much of the time?

Another discouraging thing is how badly something up there obviously wants us in the mainstream by pulling us out of rural areas and trapping us in cities, something in which money would change.

I got my incense today, but my dolls are still out there. He really went all out, that’s for sure, enclosing a few extra 100-packs. There are a few I don’t care for, but so far I especially like the Vermont Maple Syrup, Night Blooming Jasmine, Blue Nile, Agree Soap, Grape Jolly Rancher and many others.

My latest win is an advanced reader’s copy of a book that has yet to be proofread. I couldn’t get into it, so it’ll stay here if it doesn’t get sold. Instead, we went to that bookstore where I grabbed a few more mysteries. The guy there only wanted a few of the many books I brought in to use to trade for credit, so I think I’ll order online next time. There’s more selection online than in this little store we go to anyway, and the shipping on media mail is next to nothing.

As for movies, we decided to go with Blockbuster instead. They have better deals. The only sucky thing is the in-store coupons they send which we have no interest in. The whole idea of having them mailed to us is so we don’t have to bother going to the stores. We’re in the process of ripping/burning season 3 of Charlie’s Angels.

The animals were out on the swings today, but truthfully, I’d never have known they were there had I not seen them when I was taking the trash out. There were 2-3 little ones with that pregnant teen. The reason I didn’t know they were there till I saw them is that I had the music on. Between the dogs, the stereos, and the overall sounds of the city, I always have either music or the sound machine going during the daytime. Today was horrible stereo-wise. It was one after another and they just totally drove me fucking crazy!

As for that black dog, we saw it two days in a row chained by the back left corner of the house, the furthest from our place. We haven’t heard it in here since the back right corner of their place would block it, but if it does get to be a problem, we’ll let their rental management know. Them having it chained there makes me again think it is still a rental. Why would you chain it to that small area when you have a huge fenced-in yard? To be kind to your neighbors? I don’t think so! It tells me they want to keep it out of view of the road. The only way you can see it is if you’re walking by where they park their cars.

They haven’t been driving that truck with the loud motor in and out lately. Guess boating season’s just about over.

At 2 PM a couple of days ago our power went out. I went over to see if Kim’s went out too, and it turned out the entire town went out, but not for long. Still, they have an awful lot of power failures here. I was surprised to see there wasn’t a huge pile of trash back there. Just an old TV and a bag or two of trash. I guess she’s been dumping it the night before the trash gets picked up. The midges have totally taken over like crazy, though, and the smell that wafted out from her door when she opened it was too horrible to even describe! I don’t know if it was rotting food or what, but it was totally gross.

Yesterday he really began to try out the program after doing a lot more work on it. It won 3 of 5 races and made a $30 profit. Still needs a lot of adjusting to turn that $30 a day into $300, but he now feels that the only way to do that is to really get serious about it and start betting regularly. It’s not going to happen overnight, but he still feels encouraged and that it will eventually happen. He’s gearing up to run some races later on today, too.

We rode to Fred’s early this morning and I got a Barbie I’ve had my eyes on for a while with brown hair and eyes that wears a lovely pink and purple glittery gown. For just a few bucks I picked up a pack of 7 lip/body glitter gels in different colors. They taste sort of funny and don’t moisturize well, but look cool. Tinkerbell sure had fun trying to lick it off.

Tom and I both got a kick out of this new Barbie that not only comes with a pet cat or dog but a litter box full of shit, too. Now that’s weird!

Kepa sent a message yesterday saying that due to an emergency move they had to make, although he never said what that move was, they were busy. I’m surprised no one died. However, he’s going to expedite my package to 3-day air at no additional cost to me so I’ll still get it on time as the 5-day ground would’ve been, which is so way nice of him. He said my order was looking great being the first customer and seeing the first finished set. I’m amazed at how psyched he is about this first customer thing since it’s not his first store, but I’m just as glad to be the first customer!

So next week will be loads of fun with the incense on Thursday and the dolls on Friday! At least that’s when I think they’ll come.

I cut my bangs back again for variety. I look better with them, but get too lazy to keep up with trimming them regularly cuz of how fast my hair grows.

I got a free 10-day trial thing in the mail for Netflix. It’s for new customers only, but the card is in his name, so who knows if it’ll go through? If not, we might resume our membership even though half of their DVDs are filthy and won’t play. This way I could rent season 3 of Charlie’s Angels which is now out and about.

I won some Truth or Dare cards, a stupid kiddy game. I put them up on one of the highest molding ledges above the front bedroom window. Another fun tactic to make them really work for that $450 since they might have to use a ladder to get them down. I got them up there using tongs while standing on the bed. They’re almost 9’ up.

Tom is still continuing to fine-tune the program and plans to run some more races this Friday. Assuming nothing’s teasing us and that we’re going to be able to escape the city animals, I won’t bother sending the legislative letter in about the car stereos. No one’s going to do a damn thing about the problem anyway. At least not until people start shooting each other over it.

Lately, I’ve won a leave-in hair conditioner, a candy bar, an ugly African beaded necklace I refused because they wanted to charge me shipping for it, and 3 Hallmark DVDs, one of which is broken. Fortunately, the one that’s cracked is of no interest to me. The other two, which are mysteries, may prove to be good.

I miss watching movies, but it’s a pain for Tom to record/send me movies, so I’m tempted to restart Netflix, even if half their DVDs are fucked up. For just $10 a month, I could get two at a time with no monthly limits.

For being the first official customer at Silk Splash (I placed a $50 order yesterday), Kepa said to just ask for free stuff with each order and I’d probably get some. How cool! And this is on top of a $10 discount for it being my first order and an additional $3 off because the shipping didn’t go through, so he said. The shipping was $12 and change, so I saved about $13 in all. I’m getting Green Leaf & Bamboo in a 1-oz. bottle of bubble bath, and a 16-oz. bottle of jasmine lotion. Everything else will be 10-packs. Aside from some old faves, I’ll be getting Agree Soap, Almond Joy, Apple Jolly Rancher, Bay Rum, Blue Raspberry Jolly Rancher, Bubble Gum, Bump & Grind, Butterscotch, Campfire & Marshmallows, Candied Apples, Caramel Coffee, Carrot Cake, Cedarwood, Cherry Jolly Rancher, Chocolate Decadence, Cola, Cucumber, Dark Chocolate, Dulce de Leche, Exotic Musk, Exotic Seabreeze, Frangipani (sweet), Ginger Ale, Gingerbread, Grape Jolly Rancher, Hawaiian Tropics Glade, Hot Buttered Rum, Jamaican Me Crazy, Krispy Kreme, Midnight Therapy, Midsummers Night, Navy, Night Blooming Jasmine, Ocean Water, Orgasm, Paris Hilton, Patchouli (Indonesian), Peach Jolly Rancher, Ponds, Psychedelic Dreams, Pumpkin Pie (sweet), Purple Rain, Rain (California), Realities, Red Musk, Rice Flower & Shea, Rye Bread, Sandalwood (sweet), Sex on the Beach (sweet), Southern Belle, Strawberry Jolly Rancher, Sugared Plums, Sun Tan, Sweet Green Grass, Sweet Milk, Sweetgrass, Cedar & Sage, Touch of Pink, Tropical Cream, Tropical Sunset, Vermont Maple Syrup, Walk in the Woods, Waterfall Mist, Wet Kisses, Wild Pansies, Witches Brew and Zen.

This Friday I’ll be making my biggest doll order yet of $500 at a place in Arkansas that I’ve ordered before, The Doll Peddlar, which is spelled wrong but that’s how they spell it. Still, they and Two Daydreamers in California are my main Tonner sources. I’ll be getting 3 regular 16” Tonners, a fat 16” Tonner based on Emme, a real-life heavyset model, a 22” Tonner and a Barbie.

Things are still running smoothly though not without scare/annoyance #2 from the property management. Today we got a letter threatening to charge us the next time the drains backed up now that they suddenly know it’s “tenant-caused.” What took them so long to figure this one out is beyond us, especially since one of the workers told Tom it had been building up over many years, and I could clearly see tons of calcium buildup in my vision that confirmed that yes, it would’ve taken many years to build up. Nonetheless, they submitted a copy of the $500 bill, and we assume Kim got one, too. We know it’s just a ploy for the owner to try to extort money from us should the filthy pig living behind us jam the drains up again before we move, which we’re hoping will be by next June, but Tom’s going to tell them in person the next time he pays the rent not to expect us to pay them a dime as long as we share a drain with someone else. Someone the handyman himself referred to as being “filthy.” They may try to raise the rent out of spite, but we’ll move if they do since the place isn’t even worth the $450 we’ve been paying being so small, old, tilted and on a shared lot. I know one thing for sure and that’s that if there was the slightest shred of guilt over the idea of us leaving the place dirty, along with whatever we don’t want that we don’t sell, it’s all gone now. And if they do anything else, the place will be damaged along with trashed to ensure that they have to pay a hell of a lot more than our $450 deposit to fix it, if we pour syrup all over the floor and carpet, for example. We already figured that we’d not only not have an address to give them for the deposit once we do move or need the money if we’re making a ton of it through the program, but that we would leave shit behind and a little dirt as well to make them have to work for some of that money. I know that when I was slaving over trying to clean the duplex’s oven that wasn’t self-cleaning, I wished we weren’t staying with the same company and that they’d given us a reason not to bother cleaning anything. Well, this time they’ll be the ones slaving! Yes, we can cost them a hell of a lot more than they could cost us, and it feels so good to be the ones with the hold on someone else for once! What are they planning to do if it happens again anyway? Send us both a copy of the bill and end up with twice the amount? Well, the ball’s in their court as to how many costly and time-consuming yet fun memories we’ll leave them with, and believe me when I say there’s no end to what we could do. They’d have to practically tear down and build this place back up from scratch. We could write on the wall by the door, “Oh shit! I forgot my mama taught me not to write on walls,” then trail a string of dots to the door and add, “Or on doors.” We could clog up the toilet and write on the lid in permanent marker – always permanent – “NOW you can blame us!” We could trash or sell the doors, windows, heater, ceiling fan, oven and fridge, and take a hammer to the walls and sink fixtures. We could write “Fuck AAA” outside the front door, and jam the keyholes and outlets with something. We could punch holes in the ceiling with something and cut up the blinds. We could smash the brick around the heater, and coat the carpet/floors in syrup or paint or both, then bust the cabinets. If we left the heater, we could drill holes in back of the pipe out of view so the future tenants in here die and AAA gets sued. We could leave all the lights on and the hose running full blast under the house to tilt it some more or at least cost them even more money. But we will forget about bothering to fix the kitchen light, and we will leave the place unbelievably messy!

In better news, my latest wins are a bottle of vitamins Tom’s going to try, $10 of bingo credit at an online gaming site (I didn’t win), a matchbox car, a DVD, a book, and a daily prize from this site that didn’t give me the last daily prize I won. That was okay, though, cuz it was just a magazine subscription for the year. Even so, I quit entering their contests.

The artificial neural network is going well. The computer has to literally “learn” the different things about each horse, each track, etc. He teaches it every day, then sees what it’s learned when he gets in from work. Let’s just say that this requires the best computer equipment money can buy! Had he gotten this idea a few years ago, we’d never have been able to pull it off. Computers just weren’t fast enough. He’s now got it down to an 8% error rate and would like to get it down to 3%. I think he’s going to take it for a pretend test run tonight.

I can’t wait to get out of here. Not just because of whatever other shit management may try to pull, but because I’m sick of the car stereos, the dogs barking, the people screaming, and of course, we’re both sick of being crammed into such a tiny dump. That’s another reason I’m putting Cheri off for now.

Despite any management troubles, cold, snow and noise, this last year since we moved out of the duplex has been incredible! Best year of our lives together, no doubt. If someone had told me a year ago that I’d get 2 mannequins, 2 porn star dolls, 9 Tonners and 13 Barbies, I’d never have believed it. And this isn’t counting clothes, a whole new bed ensemble, beauty supplies, incense/oils, wind chimes and other odds and ends. Definitely been having the time of my life despite how much I hate the cold, snow, noise and this house. It’s hard to believe that the girl who wanted to kill herself that summer of ’04 was me! It’s like we stepped out of our lives and into completely different ones. We were so, so dirt poor and no one gave a damn, and I was so sure we’d never ever have an extra dime to our names. If there’s any good poverty did us it’s that it makes us appreciate having money all the more, as opposed to someone who’s always had it and therefore doesn’t know anything else. I see it as a form of compensation, and Tom agrees with me. It helps to make up for every person that’s fucked us over that God knew would get away with it. Still, I can’t wait to own a place, preferably outright or close enough to it, and to work for ourselves instead of someone else so we don’t have to live with the threat of him getting fired or laid off over the next 15 years or so, so long as nothing’s teasing us with this potential money-making program.

My ankles have been giving me trouble when I jog, so I blew my exercise ball back up and am using that, along with doing my crunches.

I’ve decided to hold off on the debarker and mini washer I was going to get. For one, I don’t see how the debarker could be that effective at this distance, and secondly, if we’re going to have enough money for a real washer/dryer in the next year or so, why buy a cheap little piece of shit?

It’s coming up on 10:00 p.m. yet still sounds pretty cityish out there. We got the pounding of bass, horns honking, sirens and voices. Yeah, they’re camped out on their porch from what I can tell, so with no background sounds I can just barely make out a cackle of laughter every now and then. I love the in-between temps when it’s not too cold or too hot, but it sure makes things noisier. When it’s too cold or hot, the attention-getters have their car windows closed, and the dog’s quieter. For now, even though it’s getting late I had to put the music on just now in order to drown out the circus outside. It’s sick, really sick, that one has to live this way unless they either go to a really remote place or can get into a retirement community.

The AC is the cheapest to run and the portable heaters are cheaper than the gas heater, so we may still move my office into the bedroom, even though it doesn’t seem like next door is going to do much more than annoy me with their loud truck motor, driving that boat in and out a few times a day. I think that’s why they have the swings set up in the middle of the yard too; to be able to drive around them easier. Of course, there’s no saying how it’ll be in a month or so over there. Anyway, with me in the bedroom all the time, I wouldn’t run the gas heater as much. Just enough to keep the rat comfortable and to keep us from feeling like we stepped into the North Pole when we go into the kitchen. It’d also get me further away from the dog, though I do still plan on getting the debarker, even though I doubt it’ll reach that far. I think it’s meant for dogs that are just a few feet from you. I could’ve used the damn thing at the duplex if they really do work! What I end up doing for sure will depend on how the finances are in a month or so from now.

Tom’s getting better and getting his strength back. He was so damn dehydrated there for a while that he could hardly pee or sweat. We’ll never know just what invaded his digestive system, but we just hope that why it happened isn’t connected to the program! He got a lot of work done today and may even be able to test it on some races as soon as tomorrow. Assuming there’s no further interference from above or from anywhere else, it’s just a matter of it being a waiting game from here on out, but at least there’s something to wait for and we now have a sense of direction. I planned to get the Cheri mannequin sometime in the late fall, but if we’re making money like crazy then, I’ll just postpone her till we get settled somewhere. Meanwhile, the Barbies, Tonners and Ashton-Drake dolls would be a lot easier to move than any 6-foot mannequin.

Next door has me rather confused right now. Why would the truck drive in pulling the boat, then turn around 5 minutes later and leave with it? Maybe it wasn’t the boat it came in with. I couldn’t tell for sure with the leaves in full bloom, but I clearly saw him pull out with it after sitting with the engine idling for about 5 minutes. It’s a loud motor for such a new truck. That’s why it’s distracting. Kim’s car is almost silent. Anyway, I doubt they’ll be driving in back once it gets cold, and that’ll be starting in a month or so.

Tom still feels weak, tired, and has been very dehydrated. He slept 12 hours yesterday, something he hasn’t done in years, and didn’t even feel like he had to pee when he got up! We got him some Gatorade which is said to help hydrate the system. He said that although he’s still tired and had to go to bed early, it does seem to help. He even ate more than he has over the last couple of days.

I just hope there’s nothing else going on and that this isn’t whatever’s up there trying to tell us, “Hey! I still want you to be broke most of your lives so every time you get the bright idea of trying to make money so you can own a house outright that no one can take from you unless it burns down, I’m going to get you for it!”

Tom said that if it is, then he must be much closer than he realized since he expected it to take weeks, even months before he started generating any serious money. Close or not, though, you can’t fight fate and win. It’s like me once trying to be a singer and then a mother. No matter how good I got, I couldn’t become the singer I wasn’t meant to be. And no matter how often Tom let himself cum, and no matter how many procedures I had done to help me, no child could’ve been conceived that wasn’t meant to be conceived, and if it had been, I’d have lost it probably long before I even knew of its existence. Either way, if there’s a connection, we’ll find out just as soon as he gets better because something else will just come up to delay us. This is turning out to be enough of a curveball, though. He had expected to have the program written by tomorrow, yet he got so sick, so fast. Well, sooner or later we’re going to find out if we’re about to be compensated for the hell we’ve gone through, or if something’s out to tease us bad, and I mean bad!

We’re still not even sure what’s caused this. He thinks it could be either bacteria in the water that only some people are sensitive to, or his hot dogs were bad. Whatever the cause, I just hope to hell there’s no connection to the handicapping program!

Although Tom’s exhausted and had to go to bed early, he made it through the day. He didn’t think he’d make it after he walked up to drop the rent off, but he did, and they only gave him 6 minutes of overtime. Now hopefully there won’t be many more setbacks.

They drove in with their boat yesterday evening, but are still being quiet.

I can’t believe it’s August! It feels like we’re well into September. When I got up an hour ago it was 65º in here. It’s only to be a few degrees warmer today, but because it’s sunny today, the place should warm up nicely in a few hours.

Tom’s 99% sure we can make about $300 a day but doesn’t know if that’ll happen in a month from now or in 9 months, as he puts it. It’s hard to believe his income could more than triple! He makes about $400 a week, so to go from that to $300 a day would be utterly amazing! And of course, he only gets paid for 5 days a week and not 7. This would be a little over $100,000 a year! What a wonderful way to be wrong too, because I was so sure we’d be broke for most of our lives. I always used to say that it’d be nice if our struggles weren’t mere punishments, but simply compensation for future riches. Well, just maybe it was. I wouldn’t just get the things I slowly planned on getting on this income, but the things I’d never bother to consider that I’d like to have, but that weren’t high priorities on my list. There’s still a lot of work to be done, Tom says, but it’s way cool to know that there’s a way out of Oregon after all. The handicapping program won’t hit every single race, but once he goes through the motions of fine-tuning the steps he needs to complete, it should hit about a third of the races and then we can simply pack up and go. We can go anywhere we want that has an internet connection until we decide where we want to settle. Pretty neat, considering the fact that just a few weeks ago there seemed to be no way out of Oregon. I’d have had to stop shopping altogether and we’d have had to save which would’ve taken years without a big win or that partnership he’s never going to get. That’s okay, though, as far as the partnership goes because we’d rather work for ourselves than for someone else. We can’t get fired or laid off if we’re our own bosses, nor can anyone take our house away if it’s all paid for.

Later…

Tom came home sick after just two hours of work. He said he was up all night with the runs and throwing up. He’s been sleeping since he got in. He’s pretty sure it’s just a 24-hour bug. I hope that’s all it is and not something trying to punish or delay him from getting the programming done. I suggested it could be because he got run down by not sleeping enough, but he doesn’t think that’s it. They’ve also been giving him overtime lately because someone quit. We wish they’d either hire someone else or give him a raise, but that’s life for you. It’s when you don’t need/want the overtime that you get it. And it’s the person who wishes she could puke her weight off that can’t while the one who doesn’t want to can’t help it.

It’s been a little noisier today. Less Kim and more dog. There have been more animals going up and down the street too, on roller skates and skateboards, but they haven’t been a problem so far.