According to Tom’s research, the RV park rates vary depending on how long you rent space. For a night it’s $35, not much cheaper than here. For a week it’s $800, $400 less than it costs to stay here a month. For a month, though, it’s just $450, plus utilities. They should also have some of the things apartments have without as much chaos like pools and laundry and fitness rooms. Until we can find an ideal house, it may not be perfect, but it should be much better than an apartment. Maybe we’ll still be annoyed by car doors, car stereos, dogs barking and kids screaming, but we won’t have to listen to their TVs, cabinets or footsteps.

We also don’t have to worry about them forbidding rats, which we intend to get ASAP and which would’ve been harder to sneak into an apartment versus an individually owned house. Most individuals will bend on that, but in apartments, if they ok it, they want a hefty deposit first.

Another good thing about a trailer is that we can move if we don’t like where we are, and take comfort in knowing that anyone we don’t like nearby that may be noisy, isn’t going to be around for long. In an apartment, what you get next to is pretty much what you’re going to be stuck with for months, maybe even years.

To think that I won the money to get us here, figured out a way to save our lives a couple of months back, and now saved us from apartments, is pretty mind-boggling since an apartment is exactly where we were heading! I just hope I’ll never have to save us again! Still, all that stress and depression over apartments for nothing! Oh well. Better to worry for nothing than for something, right?

So, all’s running smoothly except for the truck and my eyes, which think they’re 48 years old. Yeah, I had to jump from a 1.00 to a 2.00 in reading glasses, yet according to the chart, I shouldn’t have to do that till I’m between 48-50! Bummer, huh?

Tom’s creating a BOT for Netwinner. We figure that as long as we’re careful with it and don’t go running it like crazy, we should be ok. I just hope I get my e-card! I’m really starting to wonder about them, alright.

It’s been relatively quiet around here for the last week or so. The rooms next to us mostly have been empty lately, and the last few guests were one-nighters, which is fine with me. Unless they get firecracker-happy around here tonight, I’ll be asleep as the New Year rolls in. This will probably be my last entry of the year. Let’s hope 2008 brings us a nice peaceful place to live, more money, more wins, great rats, and insurance for both of us!

Got a message from Jessie saying her daughter had an ear infection and now she has a cold, she hates driving in snow and wishes she had my sweeping luck. She asked where we’d live if we got a trailer and if we looked at apartments. I told her we’ve looked at those as well as duplexes and houses. We always like to keep our eyes peeled for what’s out there. I reminded her why we’re so anti-apartment and that while apartments would be the most convenient route, a trailer would probably end up saving us money till we could get what we wanted. Besides, we probably wouldn’t qualify for a rental house that was run by a management company. Their standards are ridiculous. They want you to make 3 times the rent. While he has pay stubs to show, what do I show them? My win list? Then tell them, “Why work when I can just win?” Not to mention the fact that my win list looks seriously exaggerated! What do I say to that one, that it’s only cuz I’m psychic, though I fully understand that while I can’t seem to win a million bucks, I know it’s not “normal” for people to win trips, cruises, ATVs, gift cards galore, thousands in cash, etc.? So anyway, what we’re hoping the trailer and new car will give us is the chance to hunt for houses owned by individuals that suit us best. They can’t afford to advertise online like the houses managed by companies that are all paid for, so they put signs in their windows and they aren’t as picky. They simply can’t afford to be. On the other hand, we don’t even know if we can stay in this area with the way it’s so damn expensive here! We’re gonna just take it one step at a time. That’s all we really can do anyway.

Remember how I said Tom and I agreed I’d one day win a vehicle? Well, I sorta did! That is if you want to call a 2007 Yamaha Rhino ATV valued at $9000 a vehicle! What a win!!! Yes, it’s too bad it’s not a regular car, but we might be able to get around 4 grand for it. The question is how long it’ll take and what hassles we have to go through while we’re at it. You know we have to fight tooth and nail for most of my wins. We don’t know if we’ll be required to come up with licensing fees and all that in order to sell it, or if the dealership would trade us a cheap car for it or what. We don’t know anything yet other than that fortunately we won’t have to pay taxes on it till ’09.

We’re glad we didn’t win it up in Oregon. Klamath didn’t have a Yamaha dealer, so we’d have had to go up to Medford just to get the thing. It seems I’ve won more since being in this state than the two years I swept in Oregon!

We’re hoping to get 4 or 5 grand for it. What we’d do with the money will depend on a lot of things. I played mix-n-match in my mind with all the possibilities, but we won’t know anything for sure till we find out what we can get for it. We both agree that the number one priority is getting a new vehicle! One that’ll be reliable for more than 5 minutes.

When Tom got the overnight letter about it two days ago, our first thought was to get a car, then hope for a house, but probably end up stuck in an apartment with hopefully a little money left over for some furniture and other things while we had to listen to the neighbor’s shit all around us and he looked for a better-paying job that would insure us both. Then maybe in a year or two, we could finally find a suitable house till we either came up with the money to buy land and have something built, or to buy something in a retirement community in 5 years. But as much as I love this state, it’s just so damn expensive here that I still think getting a house may be too hard. Plus, it’s not like he could just go out and get a better job overnight, and we may never be able to afford land here anyway, which means we may have to shoot over the Nevada border a couple of hours away. We’re kind of hoping we don’t have to do that, though, and have him be jobless again. We nearly lost everything twice and that’s more than enough!

Then an idea came to me. We both agree the worst places to be are apartments and motels, so why not get a cheap motor home or trailer if it truly does turn out to be that our only options are to either stay here or join the circus in a complex? Yes, campgrounds and trailer parks can get a bit wild too, but at least we’d own the thing outright and it wouldn’t be attached to someone else’s place, and the cost of renting the space to put it on would be cheaper. We’d be cramped in, but this way we could take our time in figuring out where to go from there. Finding the right rental house and a new job takes time, so a trailer may give us the time to do things right, and of course, if he did find a job that paid big bucks, that’s not something we’d want to just throw away, so there are going to be a lot of variables as to where we end up, but I just want to get there! So hopefully we’ll soon be on our way to a place we can one day finally call home for good.

As long as he has to drive around in a piece of shit that won’t even idle and that has an expired plate, we can’t cruise around looking for individuals who will rent houses to just about anybody because they can’t afford to advertise online (so they stick a sign in their window) and who can’t afford to be too picky like those going through property managements. Most of them require you to make 3 times the rent when it comes to houses. All we could get would be a 1-bedroom apartment. Maybe 2, if it were especially cheap and kind of dumpy.

There’s a chance we’d either have to keep our stuff in storage indefinitely or that I’d have to sell a lot of the dolls and definitely the mannequins if we did get a trailer, but I’ll gladly do just that if it means keeping out of apartments. This may explain why I haven’t had apartment dreams like crazy. I’d think I’d be bombarded with apartment nightmares if that’s truly where we were headed.

If we never win enough to buy a place outright, or close to it, then I’m still hoping we can get a reliable vehicle, get into a house here, then buy a house in a retirement community also here. I think that’d be the easiest thing. Either that or still get into a house here, then save 10-20 grand to get a trailer and take it to some cheap land elsewhere. I’d just hate for him to have to be jobless again! Even if we owned a trailer and they fired him or laid him off, we’d still have to find a way to pay for the space it was on. Who knows, a trailer might be what we should’ve done from the get-go. We should’ve maybe done here what failed in Oregon. I still wish Satish would call to say he was ready to rent his house to us! That’d make life easier, alright, and I could keep my stuff and get a few more goodies, too.

Tom and I laughed when we remembered getting excited over my first “big win” which was the $630 special edition guitar. Even diamonds are pennies compared to this one!

The net came back up, but something was still against us. Tom did over 20 races yet lost $30. Figures, huh? I asked him if he thought we did the right thing in coming here. He said yes and our future is brighter.

It is? How’s that? How is the future brighter when we’ve been living like bums in a motel for nearly half a year, and are soon headed for a complex and all its chaos?

As I lay in bed thinking that maybe we should’ve gone that night when we had the chance, when the opportunity was perfect, instead of wasting time calling my folks, I realized something and that’s that it’s never too late. I’ll never have my peaceful, modest home with even just a little money left over each month, but I don’t have to settle the rest of my life away either just because Tom, as he put it, is never going to want to go. And why should he want to? He doesn’t mind noise, he can sleep through anything, and he wouldn’t be in the apartment all the time like I would be. But that’s just it; I’m not going to be either. I can’t make God grant me that one prayer of living where I want to live, but He can’t make me live the rest of my life where I don’t want to live either. The best I could’ve hoped for was to suffer the complex till he was 55, then maybe rent a duplex in a retirement community. Well, I’ve done my time suffering and settling! It’s either my life or no life at this point, and so far I don’t see any indication that it could ever belong to me. If God hasn’t let me be in the driver’s seat of it yet, why would He start now?

Tom said he’d “make a deal” with me. He said let’s just get into the apartment first, and then see where we stand. I said that’d be okay, even though I know where we’ll stand. We’ll stand with a bunch of rude, obnoxious assholes that can’t shut up. Well, I don’t want to return to the days of arguing over neighbors and how they should be dealt with, and seeing him get upset when I get upset. I don’t want to hear him defend them when I get upset over getting woken up or having my train of concentration constantly disrupted when I’m trying to work. There’s simply no excuse for the shit people do, and no reason any normal, rational person wouldn’t get upset over it either. But I’m not going to stick around and defend myself while he defends them on why they’ve just got to slam their doors, bang around inside their place, blast their TVs and car stereos, and let their animalistic children scream bloody murder by our windows.

And so that’s why I intend to kill myself just as soon as I’ve had a little reunion time with my stereo. Sure, it’ll be scary, and no one wants to die alone, but this way I won’t have the guilt of taking him with me if he really doesn’t want to go. I also won’t have to worry about carbon monoxide detectors that might go off in the office, and then he can have a better life afterward. There’ll be no one to complain about wild neighbors, not having certain things, or interrupting him when he’s doing the things he likes to do.

I told him he could notify Jessie, Paula and Mary, but don’t even waste time with the folks. They wouldn’t get it. They may’ve had their share of problems, but they have no concept of what it’s like to be denied such simple little things as the right to live in peace that they’d just be totally clueless. They’d just be like, “That’s not much to ask for at all, so why couldn’t you two just have done it?” They just don’t understand curses and how things tend to work with us. It doesn’t matter that it’s a simple little request. It’s my request. That’s all that matters.

Despite all the money he’s been making, it’s so damn expensive here that we’re still kind of struggling. Meaning, we don’t have the $500 or so we’d need for a new piece of shit to drive, so since I have a reliable browser now and don’t need the TV I won as a monitor and don’t plan to be around much longer anyway, we agreed he’d see if he could trade it for a car.

I don’t know who’s got it worse, me being bummed out with the hard, cold reality slapping me in the face, or him for having his head buried in the sand. He’s in as much denial over the horses as he always was about his pitiful performances in bed. To this day he’d tell me he was oh so virile if I asked. Right, so much so that he’s kept it hidden all these years? Yeah, right! Why can’t he admit there’s no money to be made with the horses any more than he could admit he was a sexual flub? One who’s probably only been horny a dozen times in his entire life and whose “problem” was his own doing that would never have “gone away” without birth control. Why are women so much stronger in that they’re the only ones who can face reality and admit their shortcomings?

At the same time, I’ll admit I sometimes envy him and wish I could believe all would be just peachy keen in time. Sure I’d only be kidding myself, but at least I’d have that hope, false or not, to keep me going. It’s hard to look forward to life when you know that for reasons you’ll never fathom, you can never live in a nice peaceful place.

I was able to catch up on my sleep after all.

Not surprisingly, Tom didn’t make any more money today. He actually told them he isn’t working tomorrow, though, since he got a big paycheck, plus the Oregon refund, and has worked enough overtime for these people as it is. This means he’ll be able to do lots of races tomorrow, but I still won’t get my hopes up.

The net’s down right now. I really hope it’ll be back soon or else I’m really gonna wonder if something’s not against us!

Tom made a $90 profit with the horses today and almost an additional $135. While this is great, I know better than to get my hopes up. I think this will be an occasional occurrence, not a regular one. He says that right now he’d gladly settle for making a couple hundred a week. He’d still have to work outside of the house, and we’d still be doomed to apartments, but it would get us a new car and make things much easier on us what with how expensive this area is. Most of the state is just so damn expensive!

Anyway, we are going to go ahead and settle for an apartment probably next month. Right now our only two choices are to stay here or go there, and as much as I dread returning to apartment life, I’m excited to get out of here. At least in an apartment, we’ll have our stuff, more than one room, be closer to where he works, and save a little money while we’re at it. The peaceful house prayer is simply one prayer that’s never going to be granted, but at least God’s been granting most of my other prayers. If we’re meant to live our lives in apartments, along with other places we don’t want to live in, then there must be a reason for it.

Ever since we left Oregon I’ve been trying to figure out why the motels were part of the plan. I think I know now. Obviously, it was to make the transition into an apartment a little easier on me, and going to one from a motel is certainly easier than going to one from a house, even if that house wasn’t always quiet.

Both side rooms are occupied right now with people who are quiet enough that I hope don’t leave anytime soon.

So much for Michelle having them do this room last when I spoke to her yesterday. Some older lady I’ve never seen before not only came to this room at 10:00, but she woke me up a half-hour earlier doing the other rooms. I ended up taking one of those naps I rarely take. Hopefully, since this room and the neighboring ones have been done, I’ll be able to sleep peacefully enough tomorrow without any interruptions. Oh, the story of my life – dodging those wake-up calls!

We had been fortunate enough to have the rooms on the sides of us, as well as underneath, empty all weekend. However, someone just checked in on the end. They closed the door fairly quietly so that meant that they just had to slam and bang shit around like crazy inside the room, and believe me, they wasted no time! Guess that’s just proper motel etiquette; if you come and go quietly, you have to be noisy inside the room. If you slam doors, you can be quiet inside the room. Well, either they’ve shut up or the wax earplug I stuck in is doing a great job.

He came back from work on Friday informing me of the truck’s latest problem. It now won’t idle. He had the whole weekend off and it at least let us do our errands, even though he often had to start it back up again after sitting at lights. No pig problems either, although we heard sirens a few times in the area.

On Saturday we went to cash his work check and to the mail place. The incense I won was there along with books from book clubs and the Armani paperwork. Like with Bluefly, another designer boutique, we had to pay $10 to have the $100 shopping spree notarized. I’ll just have to remember to make sure to leave a note when we order for them to take from the credit won and not our debit card like Bluefly did which caused a lot of headaches.

The $100 Best Buy card was there too, and we got a smoking deal online on a laser printer, and some memory, later on when we returned to the room.

After leaving the mail place we got some pizza, then to another place to cash our Oregon refund check which we both had to sign for. Lastly, we hopped on over next door to Starbucks where he got hot chocolate and I got an eggnog latte.

Sunday we went to pick up the memory at Best Buy, then to Walmart where we got groceries, plus some fun stuff. I got a Hannah Montana doll, this big pink furry rug I’ve been wanting for ages, one of those really cheap perfume knock-offs, and some pens, paper and post-its.

A temporary tattoo came with the doll. Those things are so cool! I hope to get more temp tats soon enough. Why not? There’s no house or even a trailer to be saving for.

I can see and feel without a scale that I’ve lost a little weight since I began the tea diet again which I’m adjusting nicely to, but don’t know if I’ll lose much more than 10 pounds or so.

Tom finally solved my online crashing problems by switching my browser from Microsoft Explorer to Firefox. Ever since I got this laptop all I’ve done is crash up a storm and I was beginning to seriously regret getting the thing, calling it nothing more than a pretty piece of shit, but now I can once again sweep without the constant crashing. I thought it was an operating system issue since I’m using Vista and not Windows XP, but nope, it was a browser compatibility issue. What’s just as amazing as how well it runs is how fast I can shazam open 50 or more sweeps at once! What once took minutes now takes just seconds.

If only all my problems could be solved that easily! Yet I’ve been rather depressed, pissed, frustrated and downright confused. Why oh why am I so not allowed to live where I want to? Why must I spend my entire life struggling to be where I can never be? Well, I really grabbed myself by the shoulders, so to speak, and told myself I could either waste time sitting here dreaming, or I could face reality and just roll with the punches. We can’t fight fate, period. I’ll never live where I want to. My dream house is just that – a dream. All I can do is just be glad I get to live in the state of my choosing. Other than that, our only choices are to either remain here or get into an apartment. Although an apartment could be worse depending on what extremes God decides to make sure we end up with, we’ll at least have more than one room there, plus all our stuff, plus we should save at least a few hundred a month, maybe more.

Speaking of God, I’m once again wondering just how much of a friend He really is and if it really is worth it to pray every day. I suppose that if it is I shouldn’t bother to include what’s obviously not meant to be in my round of prayers. Praying for good health is one thing, but praying to live where we want is another. To ask to live where we want to live would be like asking to be tall.

I’m trying not to think of the inevitable fate that lies ahead and of returning to life in apartments because I know I’ll only break down in tears or scream my lungs out if I do. I just have to assume I must’ve done something along the way to deserve to be denied the right to live where I want to, for to think otherwise can only mean I’m being singled out and picked on for no good reason at all, and well, that possibility is a bit chilling. So when reality pops into mind that I’m doomed for life in apartments, I just try to look at the pros to them, even if there are not that many. There won’t be any peace or privacy, and we lose the money, but at least Tom won’t have the hassles of having to do yard work and things like that.

I considered telling Satish to call us in a year when he’s ready to rent his house but then decided against it. With our shit luck, he’ll call, then call back saying he’s changed his mind yet again. I’ve had enough of the housing and financial teases!

Hell, I wish I was an action freak! A real people-lover who didn’t mind noise and lack of privacy. While you lose money in an apartment and can’t do things like paint or wallpaper it to your tastes, they offer so much more here for so much less. For an average of $1400 a month, most houses don’t even offer refrigerators, let alone dishwashers, disposals, washers and dryers. But for an average of $800, we can not only get all that but also pools, Jacuzzis, fitness rooms and other amenities as well. So despite the circus we’re in for, I try to tell myself that there are worse places to live than apartments, like the street, for example. And jail, and projects, and funny farms, and reform schools…

What surprised me was Tom’s reaction to my being upset over the reality of never being able to get what we want. At one point he was saying that I was spiraling out of control and heading for a breakdown, so would I like him to take me to a hospital for some medication to calm my nerves? And he would think that I should be happy at least some of the time with the printer on its way and other stuff I’ve gotten.

But I am happy some of the time. I also don’t see how laying in bed crying about being forced to live where I don’t want to is “spiraling out of control and heading for a breakdown.” Therefore, I try to suppress my feelings as best I can because my getting upset obviously gets him upset and that only makes us both feel worse.

I don’t know why I’m destined to live where I don’t want to. I only know a part of me regrets leaving the tiny tilted dump that was too cold and snowy. Another part regrets leaving the Phoenix house and not putting up with the freeloader’s shit. Most of all, I’m sorry that Maricopa didn’t work out and that we had to lose our beautiful brand-new house on its sprawling 10 acres. I don’t even want to think of that one right now or I’ll just bawl my eyes out.

Tom thinks the winter here has been warmer than in Arizona. He’s losing it, I told him, because I remember Arizona winter highs and lows to average 60s and 40s, not 50s and 30s. It’s a little too chilly for my tastes, but it sure beats the 30s and teens!

We contacted Simple Green, the one that was putting on various contests we thought we won the $500 Walmart GC from, and it turns out we didn’t win that one. What a pisser! Instead, we won a year’s supply of Simple Green products. Oh well. At least it’s something.

I ordered the Cher doll I wanted from Walmart before we found out what prize we really won, but Tom said that due to all the overtime, it’s ok. Besides, I got such a good deal on it. She’s normally $40 and I’m getting her for $25.

Once they updated their stats on the horse site, we saw that two days ago we actually did great, but yesterday we lost a little money. Tom says it’s just cuz he was rushed and couldn’t do it right. I say I see a familiar pattern and that we’ll soon be settling for a rocking apartment with no peace, no privacy, for who knows how many years. I’m sick of not having our stuff and having to live in one room, so if it’s inevitable anyway, then we may as well get the settling over with and just get a fucking apartment. It would be economically smart, I wouldn’t have to be pestered by housekeepers, I could have an oven (I miss baking) and Tom wouldn’t have to do yard work. I mean, as long as it’s not in the slums, could it really be that much noisier than this place? Besides, noise and settling are all I know anyway, so it wouldn’t be anything new. I’m so used to it I couldn’t imagine life any other way, and if by some miracle I could’ve lived in peace, I’d have only been paranoid about losing it. We don’t have to be here. We should’ve and could’ve settled months ago had we not been so damn stubborn. As I’ve said a zillion times before, if we were meant to live where we wanted, we’d be doing it. The more we sit around dreaming, the less we’ll accomplish.

I just wish that truck was licensed! Something up there likes to see us lose things. If we could lose a house, why not a truck, too?

Yesterday’s races were encouraging, but inconclusive since there are still not enough races bet on to really get a good enough idea. We’ve only done 5 straight wins so far and we need to do at least 20 and see how many out of that wins. By the weekend, when there’s more time, we should be able to accomplish this. We won 2 of yesterday’s 5, and when Tom first told me that I didn’t think that was encouraging at all, he assured me that all we need is to win 2 out of every 6 to make money with this type of bet. Still, after just one day, he said he’s not going to jump the gun by either getting all psyched up or all bummed out.

As for what I think, I think it’s still hard to believe that fate can be changed after so many decades. I’m not kidding when I say that something up there is really obsessed with me living where I don’t want to live! So I’d say no, we’re not going to make enough to live where we want to. I think we’ll either stay here or end up in an apartment and maybe get Satish’s house if he feels like renting it to us a year from now.

Anyway, all he had time to bet on this morning was 4 races after just 4 hours of sleep and 15 hours of work yesterday on this special project they were doing. He made $200 yesterday!

Thay did the room a little while ago. Both rooms next to us are occupied, but they’ve been out all day which is why it’s been quiet. I hope they check out tomorrow so Tom and I can have the “house” all to ourselves.

Yesterday turned out to be an incredible day! I hope we’re not going to be compensated for it with bad things to come, but if anything, it should be just the opposite. This should be compensation for some of the hell we went through a couple of months ago. I still cringe when I think of it, too!

The only dark spot is the noise around here, although the inside room checked out yesterday morning. The end people also still scuffle around more than I’d like, seemingly around the clock, but they’re not as bad as the other side was.

Also, the truck still isn’t taken care of yet, but I have confidence that I’d be having dreams signaling impending trouble if we were in any serious danger security-wise.

Less than two hours after winning the Armani GC, I won a $100 Spa Finder GC! Jessie said, “I wish I had your sweeping luck. How do you do it?” I told her she just has to master the art of influencing! I just hope I’ve mastered it enough, along with his hard work, to get out of here soon enough! Yup, we started with 5 small bets before he left for work. This won’t tell us anything 100% concrete, but should be a good enough indicator. If this doesn’t work out, then it’s either be stuck in an apartment complex or stuck here long enough to get Satish’s house after all in a year from now! Neither of which we’d prefer!

She also asked about Italy. That’s still a few years away, I told her. We need to either get the horses established or get him into a job where he can qualify for vacations, insurance, raises, etc. As a temp, he can’t get squat. On the other hand, a part of me doesn’t want to go seeing that we’ve been on a “trip” long enough! Really, if I never see another motel room again it’ll be too soon! I’d really love for my biggest travel adventures to be simply going from one room to another in a nice peaceful little house.

It gets even better. I not only have $100 more coming to me from Netwinner if I can ever get the $50 they’re processing right now, but we got a check from Oregon! Not from Unemployment, but a check we’re not sure why we got. According to what Tom read it had to do with a percentage of revenues exceeding this and that and other legal mumbo-jumbo, and as I told him, he may as well be talking Chinese and that ain’t one of my languages, so just cut to the chase. Anyway, the check’s for $350! We sure could’ve used this check on October 4th, but you get money when you already have it.

Things really do seem to run smoother when I pray for the basic necessities. When I’m not praying, things aren’t as good. I knew he’d be doing more driving yesterday than usual when he went to pick up the TV. I prayed a few times during the day on and off that he not get pulled over until he could finally pass emissions. At one point he ends up with a cop in the next lane, one car behind him at a very long light. Plenty long enough for the cop to notice the nice bold “11” in the rear window and 2-year expired Arizona plate. So after what seemed like an agonizing eternity, the light’s green, then they get stuck at another long light. This time the cop’s two lanes away with no one in between. Tom didn’t want to look at him, but didn’t want to appear nervous and like he was trying to go out of his way to avoid eye contact either. Then the cop accelerates around the corner. Of course the truck takes forever to catch up, but meanwhile, as he’s pulling around the corner himself, he expects to see the cop pulled over waiting for him, but he turned down a different side street instead. Talk about breathing a sigh of relief! Had he been in Arizona or Texas that pig would’ve jumped all over him like he was the FBI’s most wanted!

There’s still more good news, too. This is unfuckingbelievable! When Tom picked up the TV yesterday there was a card from Simple Green saying we’d won a prize that was returned from Oregon. He said he’d call them, but that it was probably just a small win that was no big deal. It came to mind this morning and I thought it odd that they’d notify me of returning a “small” prize. The prize itself should’ve been forwarded if it were “no big deal.” Sure enough, when I checked in the ‘expired sweeps’ section, I saw that I was July’s winner for a $500 GC to the online store of my choice!!! (I chose Walmart from their list of options). Is that just incredible compensation for some of the hell we went through or what?! I just hope we get it. I emailed Simple Green and texted Tom. We’re not even two weeks into the month yet and I’ve already won $750 worth of stuff!

Later…

Someone just checked into the inside room. They kind of slammed the door, so I guess that means they won’t bop around the room as much. Amazingly, the end folks have been out all day. Maybe they’ve checked out and the housekeeper just hasn’t gotten to that room yet. If so, will the next people be worse or just as annoying? As for quieter – not likely!

Tom called FedEx and they said my prize is in the process of being returned to Simple Green. I emailed Simple Green and am awaiting their response. He couldn’t call them because he didn’t have their number. I got it from their site, so he’ll call them tomorrow.

The TV is finally on its way. It’s gonna be a Philips TV from Best Buy. The incense from both Kepa and the Stickman should be shipped today, too.

Meanwhile, does anyone ever sleep at night anymore? The end room didn’t turn out to be as noisy as I thought it would, but there sure is something wrong with them. It’s an older couple with an accent I couldn’t even begin to place. Just some foreigners no doubt come to take what’s ours. The guy left the woman alone most of the day and I could hear her crying over there.

When Tom got up I asked if the room on the other side was still empty and he said no. I realized they had come in quietly enough not to wake me up and therefore there’d be all kinds of bumps and bangs from inside the room. Sure enough, even though it was 3:00 in the morning, we could hear things going bump over there from time to time, and even the door softly opening twice, a few minutes apart. I figure they came out to smoke. Why don’t these people just get smoking rooms? Are they just that scarce here or not allowed at all? Anyway, I can see that since they’re up this late and were going through drawers, they’re not checking out anytime too soon either. I like that neither side slams the doors, but hopefully they won’t be too distracting when they make up for it by banging around inside the rooms. Hopefully, some of them will be out most of the day, too.

Tomorrow the betting begins! He was just trying to figure out the best way to bet for starters. I suggested superfectas, but he said that right now it’s either one or show. Just as long as it gets us outa here! The dream I had was certainly encouraging. Either that or it was a hell of a cruel tease. I dreamt I was standing back looking at the kitchen and some shelves in our home, deciding the best way to set up the kitchen and some dolls. That is after I watered the plants outside.

Later…

Now this helps make up for too many things going bump around here! Just won a $100 Armani Exchange gift card in an instant!

From the sound of it, the same old shit that just left the end room is back to annoy me. Tom said they came in quietly a couple of hours after I crashed, but when I got up after 1 AM I could hear spurts of banging over there. Fortunately, they don’t seem to stomp, too. Why is it, though, that those who come and go quieter are the ones who bang around in the rooms, while those who slam doors tend to be quieter in the rooms? Anyway, they seemed to crash around 1:30 and I think they’re up showering now. Hopefully, they won’t be as bad as the last people, but being a special room, I know I’ve usually got to put up with whatever they give me for at least a week. Any more than that and I’ll complain to the office. I don’t care if this is the West!

I know we’re finally getting close for real with the horses when even I feel we’re getting closer. We should definitely be wagering this week. He had to make a few more changes, then find out what tracks he could place bets on early in the mornings. He may have to do some by phone. It’s neat to see the computer do in seconds what used to take him hours, even days.

What made it start getting “real” was when he finally, after so many months, got to update his account info. Now we just gotta hope TUT (The Ultimate Tease) turns back into EFO (Escape From Oregon), the original name I gave it. Hopefully, it kicks ass and gets us outa here! He doesn’t expect it to spit out a few hundred a day from the get-go, but to gradually make more and more of a profit. Hopefully not too gradual, but we’ll see.

Even though I have no scale to track my progress, I’ve started the tea diet up again, cut my calories, and increased my workouts. I can track my progress by how I feel, and believe me, I’ve been feeling awfully fat and out of shape cooped up in this little room! It’s a simple regimen: A fruit cup when I get up, a 400-500 meal 2 hours later, then soups or yogurts and things like that that are between 100-200 calories every 4 hours after that. So I’ll eat 4 times a day, plus have light snacks in between like veggies and crackers.

I’m a few thousand points from another $100 on Netwinner, and therefore, a new microwave. The question is, will we ever have a place in which to use one?

As always, things take longer than planned. So while the programming is going well, it’s definitely not going fast. He still hopes to do at least a few races within the next few days. Yesterday was the first Saturday he didn’t have to work in ages, so he got a lot of time to spend on it. What seems really promising is the fact that due to the changes he’s made, he may very well be able to change the way he bets. Before he could only bet exactas, which were inconsistent. Now he thinks he can do trifectas and perfectas.

The truck is running fantastic, he says, and so we hope we can get the damn thing taken care of soon enough. The pigs here may not make going after expired vehicles a top priority, but we don’t want to take risks, minimal or not.

I’m so glad the people on the end left yesterday as they were horribly noisy! I was surprised when Tom said there was someone on the other side a few days ago. The end people were so damn noisy I couldn’t tell. I wish both rooms could stay empty as long as we’re here! But we’ll be here for months or even years. They don’t race as much in the winter, so even if he can make money at it, and enough to not have to work elsewhere, this still doesn’t necessarily mean we’d finally get to choose where to go. We could very well still be stuck with either this place or an apartment as our only options. I just hope that 50K dream was connected to the horses! If it was, then we could certainly be in the driver’s seat of our housing situation for once!

Another day as God’s little puppet. The room on our left has been wonderfully empty for two weeks now, but the end room’s been occupied by people who are horribly noisy. It’s been terrible! If it weren’t for me hearing that they’re leaving tomorrow, I’d be complaining for damn sure. They bang and stomp around all morning long. There’s a couple there. The lady, who’s the only one who can walk normally, leaves around 8:00. The guy follows a couple of hours later. The mother-fucker walks harder than Andy ever did! How can a human being walk so hard and not hurt themselves? Stomping like that has to wreak havoc on the joints. The reason I know they’re leaving tomorrow is cuz the cock talks so damn loud that I could make out enough words he was saying to whoever he was talking to on the phone when I put my ear to the wall yesterday morning. He’ll be home on Saturday and in Florida on Sunday. Good, cuz after nearly a week of this shit, I’ve had enough! I’m sure new trouble will replace this because there are hardly any people left in this world who can be quiet, but if I can get a few days in between loud, rude obnoxious assholes, great.

They’ve been putting people under us more often lately, which sucks, too. They’ve just got to slam the door along with everyone else and so the vibration jolts me awake when they do it when I’m asleep.

Right now I’ve got my headphones on cuz I don’t want to hear the shit next door. How can I possibly have faith in God after so many years of being hounded by noise like this everywhere I go??? Well, I don’t as far as Him ever allowing us to live in peace because I know He’ll never let us. Of that much, I’m sure of. That alone just makes me want to kill myself at times! I just hate living a life that can never be my own and that I can’t have much say in.

Without those horses performing a miracle, we’re stuck in this room indefinitely, and this is no way to live. I wish I was a noise freak like most people! If I could only dig noise and not care about ever seeing our stuff again, Tom could just get a job within walking distance of this place, quit driving again, get rid of our stuff, and see about getting into an end room on the other side. At least that room’s bigger and has two beds.

Sae or Sei came to do our room yesterday if that’s how you spell her name. It’s short for something but definitely pronounced like the word "say." This is the scrawny Asian woman in her late 40s or so. The housekeepers are taking longer lately cuz they’ve gotten to know me, so they like to chat more. All except for the last time the Indian bitch was here, and the two times the other Indian was here. I don’t think she even knows enough English to chat as it is.

As for the truck, he wants to work on it some more before he makes a second attempt at emissions. Meanwhile, he says there have been cops all around him, yet no one’s bothered paying any attention to him, so I guess there’s no immediate hurry. Still, if we’re going to be stupid enough to keep on living lives that can never belong to us, I want it done and over with real soon!

I still don’t know if we’ll make it, but I do know I had the shittiest birthday since my 35th one in jail. If the truck continues to fail emissions and we lose it, then no, we won’t make it. Especially since our savings is now gone and we couldn’t just run out and get a new heap of shit. Not unless the horses surprised me. Tom insists it was a major breakthrough when I commented on how rough it would’ve been had he had to start over if the asshole that broke into our truck had gotten his computer, too. I guess he decided this would be a damn good idea in some areas of the programming. He thinks we might be able to test it this weekend. Meanwhile, tomorrow he’s going to take the truck in for a tune-up and take another shot at getting it to pass emissions.

Satish woke me up after a few hours of sleep to tell me what I figured he’d tell me; that he’s going to hold out another year. He also needed to do something in the bathroom cuz the room below us was leaking (I also figured it was about time someone needed to come in for something).

I haven’t had any nightmares, so maybe we aren’t being pushed toward death like last time, but I’m losing my will to survive. If my only choices are to die, live in this room, or an apartment, then I’d rather be dead. I’m sick of trying to be where I can never be!

Some people are strange, not to mention downright rude. They were gabbing away a few doors down as if it were the middle of a lovely afternoon rather than a late chilly night. These are smokeless rooms, so a lot of the coming and going you hear are people going outside to smoke.

Later…

Tom ended up getting the truck worked on for $70 instead of $110, so we went out for KFC afterward since we saved money and might not live past the weekend. He hates chicken, but because his chicken sandwich was honey barbecue, he didn’t even know the difference.

My left hip hurt when we first started on our way, but then it loosened up. No one ages that fast, plus I’m 42 and not 82, so I’m thinking it’s due to being confined in such a tiny space. Even the dump we lived in was bigger! Funny how we keep getting smaller and smaller. Any of the good things I was looking forward to doing like learning Italian just isn’t worth life’s bullshit anymore. As I’ve said before, if we’re still not meant to be in the driver’s seat of our lives in this day and age, we never will be. We’ll just continue to be forced to live where we don’t want to and teased for nothing in more ways and extremes than the norm. There are also the millions of little things that add up too, that we’re pretty fed up with. I can’t even get a day in my life without pain for the most part. Was that really an unreasonable request too, to want to live pain-free? To want to sleep normally? To not have to hear our neighbor’s every move?

He didn’t get a chance to take another shot at getting the heap of shit to pass emissions, so maybe tomorrow, though I still think it’s too old to stand much of a chance, and as he said, there’s no way to know for sure if what was done to it today really helped it or not.

Whether or not it passes will tell me what God’s up to this time around. If it passes, He just wanted us to lose our savings in order to keep us trapped even longer in this room. That is unless there’s a miracle with the horses. I’m pretty sure this is why we were denied the Citrus Heights apartment and why the housing cost had to coincidentally drop when it did too; to keep us trapped here. Well, we came here to better our lives, not live like bums in a motel! So while He can stop us from going where we want to, He can’t keep us in this room forever either. I hate for the only way out to be suicide, but I’m sure most people would rather that than this!

But that’s exactly what may be happening here. God may’ve set us on the road to death once again, just not as quickly as the last time. If so, this time we’re not running to anyone for help, even if they have the means to do so. That wouldn’t be fair to them any more than to us. So if the truck keeps failing to pass, we’re out of here. Period. Whether we want out or not, the truck would eventually get pulled off the road, even though Tom said he saw a ‘9’ vehicle on the road the other day. If it was us, though, it would get yanked off the road, he’d be out of work, and if the horses were really just another joke on us or a reality that couldn’t happen fast enough, we’d end up starving on the streets if we didn’t kill ourselves first.

So much for thinking God really did care after all. He denied my prayers to get into Satish’s house and so far He’s been ignoring my emissions request. Guess you just can’t ask for what isn’t meant to be or else the horses would’ve taken off over a year ago. We might’ve ended up screwed for a while if they had, though, with the lousy internet connection we had to deal with our first couple of months here.

The truck’s either gonna pass, the horses are going to take off, we’re going to get out of this damn room and live where we want to for once, or the truck’s going to keep failing, get taken away, causing him to lose his job and us to die because we absolutely won’t be reduced to street life. I don’t see much else that could happen at this point. When our time’s up, it’s up, but I hope it’s not up just yet if the horses could work out. If the truck passes, but they’re not working out, then I still wouldn’t feel we had much hope, but we’ll see.

The truck failed emissions. Fucking figures, huh? Why did I bother running to mommy and daddy for temporary help? Why didn’t we just get the fuck out of this world two months ago? There’s no place for us here or anywhere else. I see what that was too, a few months ago. Just like I knew I was being prepared for something the night they took me to Florence, what happened two months ago was just a training drill. God knew I was too chicken to die that night, afraid of what awaited me on the other side and of the dying process itself. So He obviously felt that having us nearly lose our lives like we did would toughen me up and make me a little braver. Well, it worked! It worked because I’m no longer nearly as scared or as sad as I am mad! I’m tired of sitting in this room month after month, living on impossible dreams! All our dreams, as simple and as reasonable as they may be since all we ever really wanted was a decent, peaceful place to live and a reliable vehicle, are totally impossible. Why? Oh, just because it’s what we want. What’s possible for most others is simply out of the question for Tom and Jodi S.

We would prefer to live and do the things we’d like to do in life, but as I said before, we have to go someday anyway so why stick around for another 40 years or so of bullshit and trying to get to where we can never be? Besides, I see where God’s going here. Once again, He’s having us slowly backed into a corner with no way out. So much for thinking we were friends now. Well, He can back us into any corner He wants because this time I’m not running to anyone! I’m not going to live to keep on being kicked back and forbidden from being in the driver’s seat of our lives. And as Tom said, so what if the truck eats our savings, cuz he’s resigned himself to the fact that it’s either the horses or nothing since no one gives a damn about us and those who do can’t help us. Well, I know the horses aren’t going to save us, so yeah, it’s ok if all the money’s gone by the weekend because we’ll be gone then, too.

He said he’s had vehicles fail emissions before and that the Ford Tempo he had when we were newly married and living in Phoenix took 3 times to pass. He was right about it passing the carbon monoxide test, but its timing is off and it idles too fast. But even if it did pass with the quick oil change his online research suggests, that wouldn’t change anything. Especially if I’m the one who’s right about the horses and him being naively optimistic. We’d still be stuck in this room forever, dreaming of the impossible.

I wanted to live to receive the new TV we won if they’d ever send it. I wanted to live to see my stuff again, get new rats and do all kinds of things. But there are pros to dying, too. I won’t have to deal with my teeth and ear anymore or suffer the effects of growing old. No more poverty spells or noisy neighbors. All this would be gone.

I don’t know why I didn’t have any dreams about this last night, but I guess I’ve finally accepted the fact that if God doesn’t want us to live, He won’t let us. I just wish He would’ve been kinder to us and had us killed off instantly in an accident or something! But He never cared. Never has, never will. Meanwhile, there are plenty of others He can bless with our dreams instead. Others can live them out. And others can have our stuff, too.

Sometimes I wonder, did we do the right thing by calling my folks and not killing ourselves that night? Oh, I’d still prefer to live and so would he. But where we want to, not where fate says we have to. Yet I’ve been stuck in places I didn’t want to be in since I was 15 years old, so I don’t see this changing anytime soon. Just like we all have certain physical traits, both good and bad, I think we all have certain life traits too, also good and bad. I’ve definitely been cursed when it comes to sex, sleep, noise, and being stuck where I don’t want to be.

After not having anyone on the end for one wonderful week, we’ve now got someone slamming in and out of there. No one’s been on the other side for a few days, but I’m sure that’ll all change soon enough, too. I hear more inside movement from that room because its closet area, dresser, table and cabinets are by the dividing wall, but I don’t know what’s worse – hearing inside scuffling that goes on and on that annoys me rather than wakes me up, or the doors slamming less often that does wake me up.

Tom had a frustrating setback with the horses this afternoon but is now just 2-3 hours from knowing how much longer we’ll be stuck here. He got tired, though, and needed to hit the sack since he’s got to get up so early. I’ve been saying that I wish he could make a copy of himself just like you can make copies of MP3s. If he could copy himself, he’d have had it done a long time ago so one copy could stay back and work on the horses. This still doesn’t mean this may not be just another tease on us, but we’d at least have a better idea of it by now if he’d had more time.

Now they’re talking about not starting second shift till next year which tells me they’re really not all that serious and are all talk and no action. If the horses could just work out, though, then he won’t need to be there long enough to find out for sure!

So for a while longer, we’ll be “unsentenced inmates” stuck in this room anywhere from a couple of weeks to forever. We just don’t know.

Meanwhile, he got an idea that sounded appealing, but that could also take forever. That’s the problem, though. If God really does care about us, then why must everything take so long if they even happen at all? Why can’t anything come fast and easy for us?

His idea was to get an RV. My first thought, upon remembering Gert, as I called the old piece of shit we went to Oregon in, was NO WAY! It’s like living on a full-wave waterbed. Just the slightest movement on his part and I’m vibrated wide awake when trying to sleep. But then Tom said to get that $1500 piece of shit out of my head. He’s talking about one that might cost 10 grand or more, but this way I wouldn’t have to worry about us losing it since we’d own it outright, and we could move it if it got noisy wherever we were at the moment. It’d be an alternative to spending a few months to a year in a rocking complex while we waited to be able to buy a place. Then, as soon as we bought land, we could move it onto it while we had something built.

I really like this idea better than a motel/apartment/duplex, but I don’t know if it’ll ever happen. The problem is that it could take many months to buy an RV, and I still believe something up there is trying to hold us back and wants to keep us where we don’t want to be, so it’s hard to be very hopeful. I think it’ll be either here or in an apartment. Maybe the best we could do would be a duplex so we’d only have to listen to the neighbors and not so much outside activity as well.

I wish that if we couldn’t be rich at least Jessie could be. If she could give us 10 grand to get something now, there’s no reason we couldn’t give her a grand a month, and that’s the least we could give her. If things did pick up, we could pay more. But that way we’d be dealing with someone we knew and trusted.

For now, though, we have to hope to hell that truck passes emissions tomorrow!