Things are really shitty right now. Not as shitty as in October, but shitty enough, and it’s all over being just a lousy $100 short.

We’ve been hungry and losing weight again. I like how it makes rocking easier, but it’s totally no wonder most older folks are fat! Diets work, yes, but the people can’t stick to them cuz it makes them feel like shit. I just can’t cut it on diets like I could when I was younger. They just make me feel totally rundown.

The storage people said we may as well hang onto our money for now and just pay the $15 late fee (at least it’s not $50 or more) because even if we pay them in installments, we’d still have to pay the late fee.

For the millionth time I have to ask, are we always going to live our lives in poverty? Are money and noise forever an issue for us??? Is there really no escape? Well, each year that it’s the same old, same old, the answer gets more and more dismally obvious. I don’t know how much longer I can go on this way. I do not want to live another 40 years in misery, always scraping pennies and dealing with neighbor’s shit! This idea totally saps my will to live. What’s the point of winning all this money if we can’t have it when we need it? I don’t want to end up forced to die in a motel room, either. Tom says worst-case scenario we sell or pawn the TV, and hey, why not? I can’t seem to have anything I win anyway. I just won a satellite radio, though with no subscription, and although it’s only worth a couple hundred, I’m sure we’ll lose that, too.

Nancy responded to Tom’s email yesterday and said that last she knew the check would be sent “shortly.” But shortly could mean a few weeks or more, unfortunately, and I’m still weeks away from the $500 writing check from Clorox, plus the $200 Netwinner owes me, and they’ve cut just about all Tom’s overtime at work. For now, our stuff is unpaid for, we’re hungry and totally worn out. I told Jessie, whose new job sucks so much that it’s affecting her home life and she dreads going to work worse than before, to just be glad she has the security of a roof over her head and food to eat!

I also told her she can hug herself for getting me to see something I didn’t see before. That it’s the damn motel that’s holding us back, not the place itself. It’s like trying to kick someone’s ass while restrained in a body bag. I was beginning to worry that something was punishing me for trying to chase a dream and that it was the state, not the motel.

Renting is the least of our concerns, I told Jes. Sure we’d rather own, but if we could have a secure place without a lot of noise, we’d rent all our lives if we had to. If we survive to get the check, we’re still going to aim for a rental first, but if no one will take us, we’ll get a trailer. While the trailer would save us a ton of money, I’d really hate to be cramped into such confined spaces, and it may be noisier at a campground. Especially during the summer. But like I said, if my whole future is basically going to be what it is in the present, I don’t know that I want to live at all, period. Take the end room, for example, I think it’s empty right now, but just what is it with that room lately having to come and go so damn much of the time? The inner room doesn’t usually do that. So what’s up with the end room? Why is it that every 2-3 guests in there end up so obnoxious if not, really damn close to it?

If I, or we, are going to kill ourselves to escape this never-ending cycle of bullshit, we’d definitely want to do it on our own terms. As in a bathroom of a rental or in a trailer, not a motel. But if we can’t live the way we want to, who says we can die the way we want to?

Tom said what’s got him so excited about all the money we’re waiting on is that for once it’s enough. In the past, it’d never be enough. The money from the Phoenix house was more than we expected, but not enough. The money from Maricopa, not enough. The money coming down here, still not enough.

Tom feels sure I’d be having nightmares warning of impending disaster if we were headed that way, but it’s still been very stressful and depressing. It’s like God doesn’t want me to eat, sleep or have a place to live, and I’m rapidly losing the faith I’d gained in Him, too.

Meanwhile, we redid the spell we did at the duplex. Hopefully, it’ll kick in again for us really soon and make our lives a little easier for a change, cuz it’s been terrible since coming here and the bamboo is obviously not as powerful as I gave it credit for unless things would’ve been even worse had we not taken them, which we can never know, nor do I want to know. I totally regret coming here. Not cuz I hate it here, but cuz of how rough it’s been. Yet neither of us ever wants to return to Oregon.