Tom’s running some errands right now and I had thought I’d save my updating for the road, but I don’t want to get too backed up. I also may be too excited and stressed to concentrate on writing on the road anyway and wanting to take in the magnificent scenery. I can’t wait to see Mt. Shasta again!

It doesn’t look like next door’s moving after all. They cleaned up the trash and planted a garden and didn’t party at all last night, according to Tom.

The good news, although it’s not etched in stone yet, is that we may not have to do motels after all. We got a UPS mailing box in Carmichael and we might have a 2-bed/2-bath, 2nd-floor apartment that’s 900 square feet and $805 a month, in neighboring Citrus Heights. I like these towns because they have almost as many whites as opposed to off-brands as K-Falls does. It’s the Summer Hill complex, and it sure seems a lot fancier than any of the complexes I lived in in Phoenix. They don’t have washers and dryers in the apartments, but they’ve got laundry rooms, pools, spas, clubhouses, fitness rooms, tennis courts and basketball courts. No playgrounds for kids, so it makes me think there are not many of them there if any at all. Hopefully, if there are, they’ll spend time at the tennis and basketball courts.

The last thing I want is to live attached to others again, but it seems to be as good as an apartment complex could possibly be for a light sleeper who’s not always on the same schedule, and who works at home, wanting peace and quiet. For now, I’m trying to stay on days as long as I can till we get settled.

We should know for sure by Monday if we’re going to get in. It would make things so much easier on us if we could, and it might even prevent us from extreme financial troubles as we had coming here. Could God be that nice to us for once and compensate us for the disaster we went through coming here? I hope so! I’m still doing my little prayer experiment, praying for good health, no money problems, no neighbor/noise problems. Over the next month, I should know if it’s paid off at all.

We just have to hope that MCX and AAA are willing to give us good references, though we don’t see why they wouldn’t. More so, we have to hope the queen and the black sicko don’t go fucking things up for us. We still don’t know what would appear on any background check they did on me. I got into this place ok, but did they even bother to check? They have a time limit on misdemeanors, which is good, but we still don’t know what our credit report may say. Those problems didn’t really finish playing out till after AAA took us in.

I went through the pain-in-the-ass job of changing my Robo passcards and updating account information at various sites at which I have a membership.

I finally got to redeem points for a $100 Walmart card too, so now I’m back down to 38,880 points. Hopefully, I’ll get my first card without any problems. If so, then by the time I do, I should be almost ready for another card! Rent.com is going to give us a $100 Visa card for getting a place through them if we really do. It looks promising, but there are no guarantees. It’s a fourplex, so like I said, it’s as good as one can get for an apartment. I don’t know what the outside noise will sound like, but this way we’d only have whoever was under us, plus part of the one sidewall that’d be shared in the area where the stairwell wasn’t present.

A couple of days ago I went in the truck to Albertson’s for the first time since moving to this house. Deciding to assume we’d be broke soon enough, I got some incense, a colorful skirt and a new oil warmer while I could. We also ate at KFC with the $1 coupon I won, but he just got potato wedges, since he hates chicken.

I spoke briefly with Paula this morning and let her know we’d be taking off next week. I sent her a quick note with our new address.

I also got a surprise email from Mary which I almost marked as spam at first. Then when I saw it said: It’s me, Mary. Please do contact me. It came from a Jeff W. I asked who he was and how Mary was, and let him know I’d contact her. Why not? I do kinda miss her, even if she annoys me at times. The question is, is she wanting contact to ask me for favors? To tell me she’s getting out soon? Going to prison? Well, I guess I’ll find out soon enough. I gave her the new address too, and we should definitely be down there before she has a chance to receive my letter and then write back.

Later…

I got a reply from Jeff W. It’s actually Shirley, a friend of Mary’s mother, Elaine. She said Mary writes her once in a while, is ok, and asked to pass along the message about writing to her.

Here’s something hilarious. Tom just came in to say he couldn’t believe it when Yahoo, his homepage, just said it was 94º. He said, but it can’t be more than 80º out there! And he thought it was weird when he’d get up real early and see it say it was already 75º, surprised it wasn’t in the 50s. That’s when he realized he’d already set it to Sacramento weather! Ha, ha, ha, ha!!! I should secretly switch it back to here in a few months so he can wake up to have it tell him it’s freezing!