I was too tired to finish updating last night, so let me start with the saddest news of all. Tinkerbell has a tumor under her arm. It really is such a bummer knowing the best rat we’ve ever had won’t make it throughout the summer. She hasn’t lost her energy yet, but I know it’s only a matter of time.

Jessie said she’s so sorry about Tinkerbell, knows what I’m going through, and is sure Tinkerbell is happy to be comforted by me. 

She also said she had to hand it to us for having the guts to up and move with no job/home. Yeah, but sometimes being brave and adventurous is what gets us in trouble! I’ll just be glad to know that this time around there’ll be more job opportunities and Unemployment checks to help get us started. Tom’s also thinking it’d be worth it to spend the money on a GPS device so we don’t waste gas looking for places while we’re getting to know the area.

Tom and I were debating which was the biggest mistake, Maricopa or Oregon. He says Maricopa, but I say Oregon was our biggest fuck-up.

Before I get more into that, Tom said he’s seen those same two people next door doing what almost everyone here does in the summer – barbecuing. Other than that, there are no cars or activity going on in the side yard, and Kim’s been the same. She usually doesn’t play music, but when she does, it continues to be the same old song. It’s weird.

We went to Fred’s after the fourth failed attempt to get the check cashed, and I got a couple of new sports bras, and a pair of dull-looking, but comfortable gray cotton shorts.

The weight/metabolism spell experiments are still inconclusive, but I’ve had a breakthrough with influencing my period to be a record two days late, and I didn’t start spotting till another record-breaking two days in advance. Before I couldn’t prevent spotting any closer than 4 days before it’d start.

I had been bummed out for a few days between Tinkerbell and the fact that the more he investigated rentals in the Sacramento area, the more the houses seemed unaffordable and that we’d be stuck having to play house with others all over again. Sure a townhouse or a duplex would be better than an apartment in a complex, but that would still be bad enough. It’s just the nature of shared structures. While I don’t expect to ever find a house that’s peaceful either, thanks to the car stereos and all the dogs left outdoors 24/7 that no one will do a damn thing about, I’d rather limit the noise sources to cars and dogs than go and add people’s footsteps, cabinets, doors, TVs and house stereos to the picture as well. If living with others is the only way to get started down there, so be it, but I sure hope we won’t have to, and Tom’s latest research has given me hope for that.

Here’s what’s pretty neat. When he was looking at smaller cities that are still big enough to have enough jobs available, yet more affordable housing on the outskirts of the city where it’s more ruralized, one of the most promising cities to come up was Merced, which means mercy in Spanish. When he first said Merced, my eyes bulged and I was like, “Oh my God, oh my God!” Then I reminded him of how he said that something was testing us to see how much we really wanted to get to Oregon, since this was where we broke down on our way up here, and I had said, “Or maybe something’s trying to tell us to stay out of Oregon.” Well, maybe it was saying neither! Maybe it was really saying, “Stop! Don’t go any further. This is it. This is where you should stay.”

Merced was beautiful with all its miles and miles of colorful oleanders, banana trees and palm trees. I remember wishing we could stay in a climate like that and thinking how much I’d miss the flowers and the palms. I’d love to live there! I don’t like the fact that it’s only 37% white and that there are tons of Mexicans down there, but I’m not nearly as worried about them as I would be if it were as full of blacks.

It would add another hour or two to the trip, but it’d be worth it. Where Sacramento is 253 miles from Klamath Falls, Merced is 347 miles. And instead of being 351 miles from L.A. as Sacramento would be, it’s just 249 miles. Still a day’s drive, but quicker to get to if I win a trip there, and there are lots of sweeps for trips to Southern Cal. If Kate Jackson ever does any more autograph signings at a convention down there, it sure would be closer, and of course, if I ever get to be an extra in a movie, that’d help, too. The more congested areas are from the Mexican border to north of L.A., so we’re up high enough to be above the crowds, but not so high as to be where it’s colder, more expensive, or further away from things. It’s about the same distance from the coast as Springfield was to the beach in Old Lyme, CT we’d go to, just over an hour. That beats being 2-3 hours inland like we are here, and the 6 we were in Arizona.

I’m going to study Merced to see if I can find some pulled wisdom teeth amongst all those damn tooth houses I hate so much. Still, a tooth house would be better than any shared place! I’ll check the satellite images some more. I’ve seen what appears to be a patchy quilt-like design surrounding the heart of the city, which tells me what I’ve heard to be the case; that it’s surrounded by farmland. This won’t tell me if someone has an affordable rental for us on a farm or even on just an acre or two, but it’ll give me a better idea of the population density and what the general scoop is down there.