My rash has gotten worse, so Tom got a special cream for it that says it’ll clear it up in a few days. It’s itchy as hell! It started on the insides of my ankles, but now it’s crept up most of the length of my calves and there are a few spots on the tops of my feet. We still don’t know what caused it. The way it’s isolated to my lower legs suggests something I came in contact with, but what could I possibly have brushed up against that could do this? I haven’t been traipsing around in the woods or anything. If it were a food allergy or the ditch water, then why just pick on my legs? Wouldn’t it be all over me?

Tom wondered if it could be stress, but if that were the case, you’d think I’d have been plenty plastered from head to toe in the motels. I am a little stressed out, though, because they’re getting ready to go out of business at work. Tom says everything will be ok. That’s what he said when we moved down here, I reminded him, but he assures me that was a totally different situation and that there was nothing to worry about. He says we have enough money saved to get us by for a month or a little more if we were careful. Yeah, but I don’t want to have to be that careful. It’s always the transition period that’s the scariest when you’re hanging in limbo. If we had 5 grand saved, then no, I wouldn’t be nervous. I know it probably wouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks for him to find a job, even if it had to be another shitty-paying one, but still, that’s two weeks, plus another week or two that there’d be no income coming in. Our rent isn’t $450, and we now have to pay a fortune in gas, so even just a few weeks without money coming in is scary at least to me. He says he’s eligible for unemployment, though I can’t believe it could be nearly as much as we’d need.

For $10, Tom’s sending a request off to Arizona for a certified copy of his birth certificate. Hopefully, this won’t take long, and hopefully he’ll stumble across his passport, but I doubt it. I think someone connected to the house stole it if Tom didn’t lose it. He has been losing things and being forgetful a lot lately and it gets old. It really does. He’s always so damn disorganized. He also lost the non-certified copy of his birth certificate. It’s like something up there doesn’t want him having any ID! Like it wants to make getting a job harder for him.

Anyway, I just hope whatever’s up there will care enough to look out for us and protect us from yet another financial crisis. We’ve been reduced to that humiliation enough, and there’d be no one to turn to. My parents have obviously decided they don’t want anything to do with me. The only ones who care about us can’t help us. Tom’s right, this is a different situation. Ah, but one thing still hasn’t changed yet and that’s that we never get to stay long in the few nice, peaceful places we’ve had the blessing of residing in. I fear the risk of losing this place is way up there because of how whatever’s up there hates to see us be where we’re happy. But I will not be thrown back into the city again! Then again, if we couldn’t afford to stay here, we couldn’t afford to go anywhere else. This is pretty much as cheap as it gets around here. This would be a much more comfortable place to kill ourselves if we were faced with homelessness, and no one could interfere, but I really, really hope it doesn’t come to that! Sometimes I don’t know what’s worse, being in the middle of a crisis, or fearing we’re going to be!

I guess our latest mouse visitor decided we weren’t worth coming to visit now that we’ve hidden our food from it, cuz I can’t believe it would miss every single trap that I’ve got set up in here.

In the city it’s firecrackers for July 4th, in the country it’s gunshots! Yeah, we could hear them off in the distance. I just hope we get to stay here longer than a few months to a few years (unless we win enough to buy a house)!

Later…

Another day of disrupted sleep. First my rash, which is finally getting better (I think), woke me up. Then as I was falling back asleep I heard that fucking ATV. The sound reflects off the mountain and makes it seem much louder than it really is. This time the stupid cock had yet another leak and it turned out that he had a valve set wrong. So once again I had to be put out by his stupidity. He had wanted to let us know that if we heard anyone prowling around, it was only him. I guess he filled his tank last night which holds 1500 gallons, then because he had things set up wrong, the water got pushed out of the tank and back down into the ditch. We’re still hooked to the ditch water, but in two days I’ll have to be put out yet again cuz the asshole’s gonna hook us up to the well at that point when it’s had enough recovery time.

I’m so sick of having to see or hear him! We can’t even go two weeks without something going on. It’s still way worth living here for the peace and quiet I get when I am awake, but I wonder if we’ll ever get to go a whole month without him coming down here. I doubt it, though.

We got a kick out of his saying he’s been so worried over the well that he hasn’t been able to sleep. Good. He’s fucking with my sleep so it serves him right to get a taste of his own medicine!

Another thing I’m sick of is the responsibility having to fall on me to get my own prizes. I’m not going to bother fighting for the Karmaloop shopping spree. That one just isn’t worth the effort. But I do intend to fight for those Apple cards.

The good news is that I’m still 142 pounds and have regained a lot of my mobility since leaving the motel. I can once again sit down on the floor in Indian style position with no hands and have lost a lot of the joint soreness I had accumulated from sitting in that damn room. Losing weight and being more active have really helped a lot. Starting tomorrow I’m going to adjust my diet from 1200 calories to 1000 and see if I can lose any more weight. If not, I’ll be ok with staying where I’m at so long as I don’t gain any more. Being fit is more important to me than being skinny.