These last couple of days have been pretty shitty and it’s mostly due to the big sweeps I’ve won. In fact, I’m seriously considering stopping sweeping till after the damn cruise I never should’ve won, thanks to all the fucking hassles. It’s been more work and stress than fun lately and it’s been costing us big time as well. I entered the record-high count of 300 sweeps that came in on the 1st and most of yesterday’s newbies, but I haven’t done the dailies or today’s newbies. Believe me, I’m tempted to, though, because it gets addicting and it’s been my job for a year and a half now, and perhaps there won’t be any more big wins to sweat over for a while, seeing how compensated I was with a record low of just 6 wins last month. But then again, maybe I would win big again, depending on how long the compensation is scheduled to last. Either way, when the fun turns to a loss of money, sleep and time, it loses its appeal. It really does. It seems our only gain lately is stress and the only good that brings is weight loss, even if it’s only a few pounds. Meanwhile, I guess I’ll try to focus on writing for the remainder of the year.

The only good thing is that my clothes from Bluefly should get here today. Tom says bad things always happen to us in groups and that there’s no threat of being evicted, but first he couldn’t pay the rent cuz of his cold, then yesterday when he went to withdraw money for a money order to take to the management company during lunch, the ATM locked up and froze a certain amount of money in our account. It’s still locked too, which means that he’ll have to go in and explain it to them at lunch and why he can only pay half the rent at this time and deal with the late fees, etc. Plus there’s a good chance the cable will be turned off in a few days because Bluefly needs 3-5 business days to transfer the $200 credit to our card, according to what they told me when I called them, assuming they don’t fuck up again.

All this shit started with the cruise which spawned all kinds of other problems. It’s like I’m being punished for winning! If it hadn’t been for the cruise, Bluefly’s fuck-up wouldn’t have caused us to be in the jam we’re in now, and if it hadn’t been for us waiting on that $2500 check, I wouldn’t have been up 21 hours yesterday for no reason at all. Here we are stressing over money all over again just like old times and it really pisses me off! And once again, when others fuck up, we pay. But I knew that all good things eventually come to an end and that we were only given a temporary break from struggling. How many of these win punishments are connected to EFO, I don’t know, but I do know that if there is a connection, things are bound to get worse. If whatever’s up there doesn’t want us getting rich, it’s not going to just stop it from happening, it’s going to break us down, kick us back to where we were before, and see to it that we’re dirt poor for the millionth time.

The reason I was up so long yesterday was that UPS left a delivery-attempt notice on the door the day before with something that required a signature. We thought it was the check, but all it was was that damn shirt and cap I won on account of the Tonners which didn’t get delivered till the early evening! So I was up forever and on top of it all Tom’s been having to work all kinds of unwanted overtime, is pretty exhausted himself, and has not fully recovered from his cold. He’s still got a bad cough. What was even more frustrating was that Tom got the package and wasn’t even asked to sign for it. Why the fuck would someone have to sign for a damn shirt and cap in the first place, then not have to sign at all the next day?

Lastly, to add even more annoyance to the picture was Century. Yeah, despite the rainy weather, she came around when I was trying to rest in peace and slammed doors on and off for a half-hour doing whatever shit they do when she visits. Yet to put on music to drown her out would’ve been drowning out anyone knocking on the door, so I was forced to deal with it.

Just why is this all happening to us all of a sudden? What did we do to ask for this shit? Is it compensation for winning big? A warning to back off of EFO? I know one thing for sure and that’s that we’re going to start paying the rent a few days before the 1st so that when he’s sick or the account gets frozen or whatever, at least there’s no issue there. I sure as hell would rather lose the cable than get evicted. Unless God wants to force us to move into a place that’s noisier than this, there shouldn’t be any real threat of eviction because this place is noisy enough. You know those are the hardest places for us to escape.

I suppose if I get too bored I can do limiting sweeping by staying away from those that’ll cost us or that require credit card info. If I win any of those I’ve already entered, I guess I could always forfeit the prize.