At last, the light is shining at the end of the tunnel!!! I was about to resign myself to the idea that this motel room was to be our permanent home and so be it. I told myself that never again could the Gods tease me with getting out of here if I just stop hoping and trying, and just learn to accept our fate as it is. Fate is something we can’t change anyway. Besides, if we were meant to live where we wanted, I also told myself, we wouldn’t have lost our beautiful brand-new home 4 years ago. I told myself I’d get my dream house someday. Just not in this life. In the next one, though, I’d have a beautiful home with all the peace and security I could ever need and want and I’d have a nice garden, too. In this life, it was time to start looking at the good to being here and to start being grateful for what we do have and to keep in mind that there are worse places to be than motel rooms. I thought of how we’d eventually have to sell most of the stuff in storage like the dolls and things like that because there’s only so much room in here and most of it won’t be needed here anyway.

Then I remembered the dream I had last night and told Tom about it before he went to shower and head out for work. I dreamt I was spying on a house that was wonderfully far away from the one I was in through a pair of binoculars. It was nighttime and I could see into the lighted windows, but saw no people. Just furniture and wall hangings. Then I turned around and faced the center of the room where 3 baby rats stood on their hind legs looking at me expectantly as if to say, “Well, aren’t you gonna come play with us and give us more cheese, too?”

He decided to check his email one last time and a few minutes later he said to me, “Well, I know you’re not going to believe this, but I got an email from Nancy. She says the check’s been cut and we should receive it this week.”

And we were just about to sic Consumer Affairs on them! I was laughing and crying with joy, grinning like a mad idiot, squealing with delight, dashing around the room, and nearly dropping the can of chickpeas I’d just opened!

How ironic that in the end, God granted every single one of my prayers. Some much later than I’d have liked, but better later than never! Then again, He still hasn’t granted the horses.

Our plans for the money are to get a vehicle first which should only take a few days. Then, if we can’t find a house in about a week, we’ll take advantage of the $1000 apartment rate they now have if we still can, since Mike, the manager, said there were only so many of those they were allowed to have. This way we’ll have a whole month to look for a place. If we still haven’t found a place right before the month is up, we’ll jump into a trailer. This is still something I’d rather not have to do, but it’d beat motels/apartments and be the cheapest route to take. So hopefully we won’t be here past the beginning of May!

I haven’t felt this good in sooo long! No, our only choices are not to either stay forever in this room or die on the bathroom floor!

Did I mention Tom got a new phone with internet access? Two weeks ago I was freaking out when the net was down and was awaiting his return so he could book the room after cashing his check and getting the money onto the card, failing to remember that he could now do this by phone if he ever had to.

Got a jump start on learning what little I could of Italian for free, and learned to count to venti (20), some words, and a little about the pronunciation and grammar. Last night I mentioned to Tom that I still wanted to learn Italian and Hawaiian if we made it out of this room, and how easy Italian should be as opposed to Hawaiian, my first non-European language, and he pointed out that I couldn’t even count in Italian yet. So I jumped online and proved him wrong on that one in under 10 minutes! It would’ve taken hours, though, had it not been so similar to Spanish. To say that knowing Spanish helps is an understatement! It seems its grammar is very different than English as is the case with Spanish, but unlike with Spanish, I’d say the pronunciation is not as easy.