Got a long letter from Mary. The good news is that Nathan’s starting a blog and is going to post her writings. She’s going to send him short stories she’s written for him to type and post.

The bad news is that her case has been bumped up to March. She thought she’d be home for Christmas for sure, so she’s bummed out. I, of course, am not the least bit surprised. She didn’t need to hear this from me, so I didn’t say anything, but if there’s really ever an end or any kind of closure to her case, they’re going to drag it out as long as possible. I still think she’s going to end up in prison with the max, or more than she ever expected she’d get, which would be something her lawyer may not tell her. He may be a paid lawyer as opposed to a public pretender, but that still doesn’t mean I’d trust him to be completely honest and open as to the extent of possibilities that could go wrong. I think that given the times, the nature of the case, and the fact that she’s white, they’re going to want to keep her in for as many more childbearing years as they possibly can. She’s got about 14 of those left, but they may very well figure that the more they can take from her, the less likely she’ll be to have more kids with abusive guys who only want to abuse them.

Anyway, I hit a couple of instants. I won a Birds Eye Steamfresh Meals for Two coupon which has a $9 value, and a $5 Chevron GC!

I dropped back down to 135 pounds, too.

I’ve been having trouble getting back on track since jumping up two pounds to 136, mostly because of hunger. So I decided that since I don’t mind being fat and was mostly out to just get in shape and get to where bending over to trim my toenails was easier, I’m just not going to lose any more weight if the hunger persists. This is where I usually plateau anyway.

I agree with Tom that I don’t look 136, but more like between 120-125. It’s cuz of the muscle.

It rained a couple of days ago and each time it does it gets a little greener out there. The leaves have thinned out a bit, but we still have major privacy. It’s the dogs I could do without. They went barking by in the afternoon and I saw one of the dogs heading up towards Jesse’s place, though it’s still been quieter overall. That’s good too, cuz as long as we don’t shoot these dogs, they’re going to be here as long as we are. If money ever improves we’ll have to decide if we want to do something about them (since no one else will) or do we just live with them?

I hate the cooler weather! My robe keeps me nice and warm, but I hate being bundled up like this. It really restricts my movements and the sleeves get in the way and catch on things all the time.

I know Apple’s expensive and that $50 doesn’t go a long way with them, but it’s my Christmas present to Tom anyway, which I’m sure he’ll love. He just may not get to use it till after the promotion ends on the day before Christmas.

Thanksgiving turned out to be quiet. Tom didn’t see Jesse’s truck, his dogs, or the freeloader’s dogs, which is good considering that the dangerous one is a pit bull.

How many more days, weeks or months am I going to have to see Obama’s fucking face everywhere I go on the web! God, I’m so sick of it and hearing about the same damn people over and over again! Everything’s black this, black that. Meanwhile, whites, and especially gays, continue to get shit on and treated like 2nd class citizens.

Meanwhile, there’s not much to do at nearly 6:00 in the morning. I’m done sweeping, so I guess I could do some story-proofing. The fucking dogs are going to be going off any minute, so I’ll put the sound machine on so I’m not interrupted.

I hope Mary goes home soon. I really do! I’m just worried she’s going to go right back to her old ways. Abusive guys and having babies like crazy were all she knew. I hope she’ll choose life over children, but it’s like she doesn’t think she can live or will be complete without them. As it is she’s already talking about moving in with Nathan. Not right away, and he may not be like most other guys she’s known, but the point’s still the same. First it was Todd, then Jose, and now Nathan. I’ve tried to point out to her that she doesn’t need a man to survive, and that if she wants a shot at doing the things she says she wants to do, then she can’t be tied down by a baby. And who knows if she could even afford one with the fortune they cost these days, not to mention the fact that there are enough damn people in this world and we don’t need anymore. In the end, though, it’s her life. If she’s going to throw it away on babies and bad boys, well, that’s her choice.

Well, well, Amber decided to unsubby from my journal. So I subbied to hers instead! Then I’ll drop her as well. I love to ruffle this bitch’s feathers.

Yay, Florida for doing the right thing and overturning a bigoted ban on gays adopting! It’s the person that makes a parent, not the gender or marital status, although I am all for banning the poor from parenting, as well as other children. No one should have kids under 30, but I’d be willing to extend that down to 25 in some cases. If it was a male judge, though, the ban probably wouldn’t have been overturned. They’re just more hateful for some reason.

With half the kids being born to singles these days, it’s amazing the religious bigots aren’t trying to take them away!

I’m desert dreamin’ of a bigger piece of land but with a smaller house next time around. Oh, how I miss the desert and hope we’ll one day be back in it, even if it won’t be the same desert!

Tom got $36 for selling CDs and DVDs I’ve won over the last year and $600 for pawning the TV and the Mac which he says actually has a 20” screen and not a 22”. Either way, I’ve still got mixed emotions about the whole thing. I’m glad to get the money we need but tired of these poor spells. Whatever possessed God to decide we don’t deserve to have money? I’m tired of Him letting others have it all for nothing! Meanwhile, we work our asses off just to live like little bums! What’s wrong with THAT picture? I try to tell myself it’s better than living in some third-world country, but this is still bad enough. Why compare or try to play down something when it’s bad enough in itself? It’s good that we’ll be ok for at least a while, but bad that we’re still going through this shit this late in life.

He’s got 4½ months to buy the stuff back for $660. That’s a lot of money if he can only get a shitty-paying job and the horses turn out to be a joke yet again. Of course, I’m still wondering if he’s going to get a job in the first place!

Next time I win something good, I’ll know better. I’ll know that it’s not just for our own enjoyment, but something to pawn next time whatever’s up there feels like whipping our asses with money problems for the millionth time. It sure would be nice to win another TV of the same or greater size and be able to just forget about this one. If not we WILL get the stuff back. I’ve already decided that one way or the other, Jesse’s going to pay whatever we can’t. We’ll pay him back, we’ll give him collateral, but he IS going to help us if we need it. We’re not going to suffer to make a rich man richer!

I do NOT want to do another 40 years or so in the poorhouse! It’s just too hard, too stressful. It’s simply no way to live. That program HAS to work this time around or I HAVE to win big. Even if it’s just enough to buy a place of our own. But I know I should quit dreaming and just accept my fate as it is, for that’s all anyone can do. A poor person is who I was meant to be. Just like I was meant to be short.

Tom took a bunch of bottles to a recycling center he found close by. He said he had to wait a while. I guess a lot of people are recycling these days.

He also said Jesse appeared to have returned to work and that there was very little barking. I heard more than “very little” early this morning.

I guess we whites can be lazy too, because I should be cleaning now, but instead I’m typing this. After this, I’m going to enter sweeps and do more proofreading.

Tom is going to pawn the TV and Mac tomorrow. It’s nice to know we can do this and get the money we need, but it still pisses me off that we not only have to do this but are doing it for a guy who doesn’t need the money. He bugs us, his dogs annoy the hell out of me, and he’s loaded, yet we’re giving this stuff up for him. What’s wrong with that picture?

Jessie says she too, is worried about her and David’s jobs.

I just hope that between the horses, my prayers and spells, and my helping to jinx-write lots of money coming our way, we’ll find our home in the Mojave Desert by 2010. I want to be queen of the desert again! I miss it all; the dry heat, the fierce winds, the wild monsoon storms. The only scary thing about going extreme rural like we’d be going is that here, if he got hurt I could call and an ambulance would pick him up in minutes. Not where we’re talking about going! We’d also have to get a gun if we didn’t get one here. The snakes don’t bother me. I’ve lived with them before. There wouldn’t be bears or wolves, but there could be big cats. Cougars in particular. And of course, I wouldn’t like rejoining the tarantulas, but I’ve survived them before. If I can deal with the baby tarantulas we had invading the Sonoran Desert house, I’ll deal with them again. The idea is to go where no one else is around and to a place that’s not building up, the land being divvied up like crazy. So what if we had to take an icebox and drive an hour a few times a week to go grocery shopping? It sure would beat him having to drive 50 minutes from Maricopa to Mesa and back like he used to 5 days a week.

Gas prices are lower than they were before we went to Oregon!

After working on it for the last year and a half, even though it’s been an on-and-off thing, I finally finished my book! Woot! The skeleton of the story is complete. Now it’s time to fine-tune and flesh things out, then do the final proofreading with the reader.

Finishing my book is the good news. The bad news is the same old shit we’ve been dealing with since the early 90s – problem neighbors. See, this is a prime example of why I have a hard time agreeing with Tom that things just happen randomly. Getting next to freeloaders - blacks and Hispanics in particular - for over 15 years is not RANDOM, it’s a PATTERN. That’s some outer, higher force cursing us. Why, I do not know. Were we horrible neighbors ourselves in a previous life or something?

I’m sick and tired of Mexicans being a problem everywhere we go. Everywhere we go! Not once have we had Mexican neighbors who were quiet, civilized and working. Instead, all they’ve wanted to do was sit on their asses at our tax dollar’s expense and make as much trouble as possible. These people simply do not want to get along with anybody. Hell, they LOOK for trouble! I swear it’s like they live to annoy whoever they possibly can. It’s like they’re trying to score a huge record as to how many people they can make miserable during their lives. They don’t want to work, they don’t want to respect others, yet society continues to put them up on this pedestal they don’t deserve to be on, and they continue to give, give, and give while the freeloaders take, take, take. How backward can things get? Why are people kissing the asses of such assholes and giving to such undeserving people?! Meanwhile, we work hard, we respect others, yet we’re pawning our lives away! No one’s giving us shit! Why is that? Are we perhaps too damn white?

Between the shooting, the dogs, and being home all the time, I knew they were not only renters but probably freeloaders as well. And when Jesse, who obviously isn’t much more respectful himself, came down with their address and the name of José G, that pretty much wiped out any lingering doubts about them being welfare bums. The only thing we’re not getting this time around, and I hope to hell it stays this way, is the damn car stereos. I have heard an occasional beat thumping every now and then, but nothing frequent or for longer than a few minutes at a time. Everything else is the same old bullshit, though.

So here’s what happened as far as I know. Dumb cock came down on his ATV at 2:00, and miraculously I slept through it. Tom didn’t take my advice about ignoring him by SHOWING him since TELLING him obviously won’t work, that we’re not going to run to the door every time he runs down here. Earlier, from 6:00 - 6:30, the dogs were barking their asses off and pissing me the hell off, of course, so I had to put the sound machine on.

Jesse came down to warn us that one of the dogs is dangerous. It’s a pit bull. Yeah, I knew trying to restrain them was a crazy idea. I don’t think he got bit, but he wasn’t able to tie them up. Instead, they hurt one of his dogs and it can barely walk, so he took the day off to deal with that. Now maybe the dumb shit will smarten up and start taking them inside if only at night, but I doubt it. Leaving them out would really be asking for trouble, but that all depends on how much he cares about his own dogs, and so far he doesn’t seem to care much. Somehow I doubt he’ll take just a day off. I think that once again, he’s got money and would prefer to just hang out here and fiddle with shit around the land. So we may soon be switching back from barking to engine-gunning. The engine gunning is harder to drown out, but at least I know it won’t be happening at midnight. Also, since he’s proven that he can be just as much of a pest whether he works or not, I guess I’d rather have him around in case of a problem. And I see a few problems that could result from this, and I have to wonder if we’re going to get caught up in the middle in any way. I’m all for fighting back as opposed to not doing anything and sending the wrong message, but I still worry about this.

Jesse says he filed a report and that the more people that complain means they could lose their dogs and not be allowed to get anymore. I laughed at this one of course, knowing he obviously hasn’t had the experience we’ve had with these kinds of people. These are the most defiant people there are, next to terrorists. They will literally die for us or for anyone else and all for the dumbest of things, too. I can guarantee you that if they were given the choice right now to either be shot dead or give up their dogs, they would gladly take a bullet all in the name of not “giving in.” These people aren’t just unwilling to cooperate, they’re vindictive, unreasonable and potentially deadly. These are the kinds of people that shoot people. The shots they fired last week were no doubt in regards to him having just gone down there to tell them off. It’s their way of saying, “We’re gonna do what we’re gonna do, and to hell with neighbors, cops or anyone else.” It’s the people that cops, landlords or city officials can’t even tame that are the scariest. If they can’t get them to do the right thing, who can?

Tom doesn’t think they’ll do anything, but if Jesse succeeds in getting the dogs taken away, or if he finally gets fed up enough to shoot them, what’s to say these crazy freeloaders won’t shoot at us or torch the place? That’s simply the way they handle things. They don’t run, they don’t reason, they don’t negotiate. They get violent. The Phoenix Mexicans only ran because they were illegals with God only knew how many outstanding warrants.

It’s going to take a long time to go about it the way Jesse’s trying to go about it, and if they do lose their dogs, they WILL get new ones while they’re busy crying racism. No doubt about that. It’d be quicker and easier to just shoot them as they got them.

Once again, I’m not sure that rural is the way to go. If it’s going to take a few years to build up the money anyway, we may be better off in a retirement community. The only thing I wouldn’t like about that would be the lack of space, but cursed or not with neighbors, I can’t believe they would come and go a dozen times a day, have tons of company, blast music, and leave their dogs outside 24/7. These things are simply not allowed there. And I know there wouldn’t be any freeloaders there to raise hell or screaming kids bouncing basketballs just a few feet away.

I hope we’ll live to get to decide these things, as well as whether or not we should continue to stay here in the meantime. I asked Tom if he would consider Jesse a pest if he lived alone and he said no since nothing’s being manufactured in any way. Oh, I know these are real issues. It’s just that there’s always SOMETHING. If this dog thing ever did get resolved, which I doubt, we’d just go right into a whole new problem where he’d just have to come down every few days to a few weeks, because he’s too stupid to get that we want him to pick up the phone instead. Or doesn’t WANT to get it. I’m still not sure which is which. He is pretty dumb. He may be good with building and fixing shit, but he’s stupid otherwise. The guy’s too hyper to really talk to, and since he butts in before we can finish explaining whatever, he doesn’t give himself a chance to comprehend. Maybe he has ADD cuz he sure doesn’t stay focused very well. He interrupts us, tells us the same things over and over, and it just gets frustratingly old. It really does!

But if we left, would we really be better off if this curse is just going to follow us everywhere we go? Sure, it’s easy to say that if we’re going to have to listen to the barking and deal with people coming to our door anyway, we may as well do it in the convenience of the city in a bigger place, but this is about as cheap as it gets. Plus, if we moved we would no longer have just dogs to deal with. Then we’d be back with the stereos, the door-slamming, the screaming kids, etc.

I told Tom to make sure he backs up his Mac real good, cuz there’s no guarantee that what goes out is ever coming back. He reminded me that if we can’t afford to buy back the TV and Mac, we’ve got problems a hell of a lot worse than that! Yeah, I know. That’s what I’m afraid of. I still haven’t had any scary dreams, but no one’s called yet either. He originally said he’d be worried if no one called by the 1st, and then he remembered Thanksgiving is this week. He thinks that by next week they’ll call.

The problem is that we may or may not have enough money to have the horses rescue us if a job doesn’t do it first, and there just aren’t any jobs. No one’s hiring anywhere. Although it’s still looking really good, there are only a few dollars in the horse account right now and it’s hit or miss as to whether or not the amount would go up with just one shot. It’s going to take a few hundred to make a few thousand. Because he’s going to get more than we need from pawning stuff, he may use some of that, but I’d rather not have to go that route. I’d rather he get a job and use some of that because it’s “looked good” before. Test profits are one thing, real profits are another. So until I actually see it make money consistently, I’ve got to believe that nothing’s changed, we’ll be poor most of our lives, living in dumps, etc.

Welfare bums really make my blood boil. The fact that “minorities” are getting first dibs on all kinds of golden opportunities tells me that people like this CHOOSE to be the way they are. Meanwhile, my husband, who would love such opportunities to come his way, can’t get them because he is white. It pisses me the fuck off – AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

I cleaned out the fatty fryer and am not going to use it for a while. I was really getting carried away with it, frying French fries and chicken wings like crazy. I’ll fry potatoes in the skillet in margarine later. That way I can use the slicer again. It’s so fun and easy! It’s so cool to be able to slice a potato in just a minute. Before it would take me forever to do it by hand.

What’s weird is that while I had jumped two pounds to 136, I’m almost down to 135. It must be the tea. I ran out of the Oolong tea I’d gotten from eBay up in Oregon, and so Tom got me this tea that contains Oolong, jasmine and green tea from the local store. It seems to help with water and my metabolism just as well, along with running nearly every day.

I’m jam-packed with muscle, though I still have 25 more pounds of fat to lose – ugh! I’ve been rather muscular since my 20s, though it sure would be nice to have a Bowflex machine after the fat has been shed. That’d really show them off! I like for my muscles to show, especially in my shoulders and arms. If it shows through all this fat, I ought to look pretty scary without it!

Amazingly, we made it through the weekend without Jesse coming down. I really thought he’d find something to bug us about. As I told Tom, I think we should stop answering his every beck and call. Maybe if he sees he won’t get a response that way, THEN he’ll start using the phone.

It’s been surprisingly quiet the last few days. I still wouldn’t be surprised if the dogs barked all day tomorrow as soon as Jesse leaves for work, but I’ll be asleep through most of it anyway.

The horses are continuing to test very well. So well that Tom’s starting to think he may be able to quit working (if he ever gets a job in the first place) by the end of the year. It’ll still take a year or two to save up for land and a house and all that, though, as you’re talking a few hundred grand.

Meanwhile, we’ll be reduced to having to play pawn-it this week. I just wonder how many more times we’ll have to go through this shit if the horses don’t work out? How many more times??? Well, they BETTER work out because if they don’t, and if I never win big, we’re very likely looking at being poor for the rest of our lives. If he were in his 20s he’d have a shot at big bucks, but not at 51 years of age.

I dreamt that the horses won $220 the other day. Funny how the number 2 is always present in these kinds of dreams. First they won 2 grand, then 2 million, and now 2 hundred. I just hope these dreams are a sign that yes, they will indeed make money! I’ve never had a negative horse dream yet.

I could’ve easily jumped back on track with my diet, but when our new deep fryer arrived, I knew I just had to be a bad girl! I made fried chicken and later I’ll make French fries. Oh, and of course I had to have caramel-filled candies for dessert!

This fryer is way better than the one we used to have. It’s half the size, but perfect for just two people. He hates chicken so I’m the only one I make that for. This one has a screen so it doesn’t make the mess our old one did and splatter all over. That, and the slicer I have yet to use, sure is a hell of a consolation prize!

The trip to the temp company in Roseville turned out to be a total waste of time. Definitely not a dream come true. This is because I dreamt he got offered a job for $10 with no insurance. Well, he didn’t get offered a damn thing! All they did was tell him to call every week to see what they’ve got. Now why did they have to tell him this in person? They’re obviously not going to give him shit, and I wonder if anyone else ever will either. If the horses let us down again, we’re dead if he doesn’t get something by February. That’s when the car insurance and other things will be an issue, although we probably won’t bother with the renter’s insurance.

He not only let them know how upset he is with them but tried to find out what his prize is. They had a raffle and he supposedly won something which they claim they don’t know about yet. I say it’s all bullshit. There is no prize, there is no job, and so something else better rescue us soon enough.

The good news is that the testing is still going well, and the dogs seem to have been a little quieter today.

The bad news is that it looks like I may not be able to lose any more weight which doesn’t surprise me much. I haven’t been able to lose more than 10-15 pounds since getting over 35. Now I have to decide if I want to keep on dieting anyway to keep the weight off a while longer, or take a break and let it come back, then re-lose the weight again. It would come back in just a couple of weeks, so I’ll probably keep at it a while longer. I’ll exercise no matter what to keep fit.

Tomorrow our deep fryer will be here so I won’t be dieting at all then!

Strangely enough, the temp company called Tom today to set up an appointment for 9:30 tomorrow morning to “see what kind of job he wants.” What he doesn’t get is why they need to ask this when they should have enough information already, and why they didn’t do this a week ago if they just had to do it. This makes us both think they’re probably going to give him a shitty job without benefits or with benefits we could never afford. With the exception of the last two years in Oregon, we’re usually pretty broke, so I was never expecting a high-paying job in the first place. Even when he was making $16 an hour in Arizona, most of the money went to the house so we were still broke. We’re broke when we are, we’re broke when we aren’t! So except for those two years, it’s nothing new. We’ll take the damn $8 - $9 job if we have to, and I’ll freeze my gums and pull my own teeth.

He still thinks the horses will work out, and although he doesn’t know how much time it will take, he’ll eventually be able to make us more money than we need just from that. I hope he’s right, but after so many letdowns, seeing is believing for me. I believe that the longer something is a certain way, the more likely it’s meant to be that way forever. So if we’re in our 40s and 50s and still broke, it’s hard to believe that would ever change, be it suddenly or slowly. For now, though, I agree that it would be nice if he could get a job at a company that wasn’t going out of business and be hired on. Working at temp jobs with companies that are going out of business is no way to have security in life.

Poverty. Couldn’t imagine life without it! They say God picks on at least one member per family and Tom and I are definitely it within ours!

The most important thing is being able to pay for the things we NEED in life. If you can’t pay for the necessities, you’re really screwed! So yeah, we’ll take the shitty pay, cuz shit pay is better than no pay, but it’ll suck that we’ll have to stay here no matter what. I’d prefer to stay here until and if we can ever get our own place, but I also like to have choices. The more choices in life, the better. I hate to have to be locked into anything, even if it’s a good thing, or mostly good anyway.

What’s up with all the foreign friend requests I’ve been getting lately? Not that I mind, but strangely enough I’ve been getting hit with a few a day on Kiwibox. I’ve got friends in Pakistan, Canada, India, Australia, Russia, the Philippines, and probably other places I’m forgetting!

Yet again the barking has been a real nightmare! We turned the air cleaner up to ‘medium’ in the living room to try to drown most of it out, but you can still hear it a little. So as long as people are going to be stupid and not deal with the problem properly, we’ll just have to live with it. I am going to try to get Jesse to move his own damn dogs to the other side of the house at some point. I can’t believe all the barking is other things stirring them up. I think they’re just lonely and sick of being tossed outside and left alone. I don’t think they’re going to get used to no one being around all day. Therefore, if we make it through these tough times but it doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to get a place of our own anytime soon, I’m going to push for a rent deduction. And fuck pawning things, too! He’ll just have to wait till we can come up with the rent, although Tom says it may provide us with extra cushion for other things anyway. Meanwhile, I still don’t see why he can’t take the fucking things in at least at night. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about being woken up at night, and we wouldn’t have to deal with it either.

I suppose Jesse may be down to bug us anytime now. It sucks that he’s finding just as much time to be a pest, even though the guy’s apparently working long hours. He seems to be gone for about 12 hours a day.

I wish it would rain more often. Rain and heat helps shut them up, but it’s been incredibly dry so far compared to last year. Somehow this doesn’t surprise me either, now that we’re here, but it’s been desert-dry. I don’t think it’s rained more than half a dozen times in over half a year.

Tom’s “horsing around” is still seemingly great. I hope this is finally it! Another letdown in this area would be SUCH a cruel tease!

The Supreme Court is going to hear arguments about the gay marriage ban, but you know me, I’ll have to see them win to believe they will. Tom says he would think they’d have a good chance or else why would they bother hearing the argument in the first place?

I jumped up 3 pounds and would really like to not eat until tomorrow so I can undo the damage caused by all those Fritos, shrimp chips and caramel cake in less time, but I don’t think I can do that. As it is that Jimmy Dean breakfast bowl with yummy cheesy eggs, bacon and potatoes is really calling out to me!

I actually feel bad for Jesse now, even though he’s still pestering us with coming down here. I feel bad for him for the same reason I feel bad for us; the renters absolutely refuse to tie up their dogs and are continuing to stir up his dogs like crazy. Last night’s 2 AM disturbance woke him up. This is why I learned years ago to sleep with fans or sound machines. Right now I have my radio off-tuned to a station to create white noise so I can concentrate.

Anyway, he came to give us a business card with the Animal Patrol number which differed from the one I got online. Again I asked if he had Tom’s cell phone so he could save himself a trip and just call if there are any updates on the situation and when he gets their address. He says he’ll give us a ring, but I’ve got to see it to believe it. The guy’s just dumb. Good with building and fixing things, but dumb. Very hard to talk to, too. He interrupts a lot and it’s hard to get a word in edgewise at times. Repeats things a lot, too.

Jesse also says that this weekend he’s going to try to tie the dogs up when they come around and then call AP which would result in the owners having to pay a fine to get them back. He said he’s never had a problem like this before. I know he hasn’t. He’s having it cuz we’re here. WE’RE the one the dog curse is on. I totally believe this, too. I don’t just believe it, I KNOW it. I don’t think he understands, though, since he obviously hasn’t had the experience we’ve had with neighboring dogs, that the only way to solve the problem is to either hope they move or shoot the dogs dead. A fine isn’t going to change anything. They’ll just pay the fine, turn them loose all over again, then cry, “But they don’t DO anything!” See, waking people up and annoying the hell out of them when they are awake just isn’t “doing” anything according to most people. Nonetheless, people just don’t care and some are so damn defiant they’ll gladly pay to make others miserable.

I know I’M not going to try tying them up if I see them down here! I don’t mess with anything inhuman that weighs more than me. If you’re a person and you way more than me and would like to get into it, fine, bring it on. Even if I thought I would lose, I’d rather get beat down than send the wrong message by not at least trying to defend myself. Not defending yourself basically says, “Do it again, cuz I won’t fight back.”

So much for being able to call this place quieter than Maricopa!

Still no job calls for Tom. I asked if he’s stressed out yet, and he said no, not unless there are still no calls by the 1st. Worst-case scenario, he never gets a job, the unemployment eventually expires, and we kill ourselves so we don’t have to die slowly and miserably on the streets and or shelters. Ain’t life grand? Yeah, it’s so damn nice to know we can die in the comfort of our own bed as the carbon monoxide from the charcoals quickly shuts our brains down!

I jumped up a couple of pounds because I’ve been horribly stuck lately and took a couple of days off of dieting. Oh well. I’ll get back on track soon enough.

I decided that since I’m so much busier these days, it’s a waste of time to enter the daily sweeps every day. Multiple entries really don’t up your chances of winning. It isn’t how many entries you’ve got, it’s how many entries other people have got. So I wiped out most of my dailies from My Sweeps, keeping only the instants and the huge cash prizes.

¡Un otro gana bien (another good win)! I almost didn’t get to today’s entry because I’ve been so busy. Busy with the usual work and chores, plus picking out what I wanted from the cooking site I won from. It was actually a consolation prize. They had an instant sweep and it told me I won a coupon for a free Bird’s Eye Steamfresh meal for two on one page, then the next page told me I wasn’t a winner and to try again the next day. So I complained, along with others who were experiencing the same glitch, and was surprised with this generous consolation prize. At first I thought they’d send the coupon, plus maybe an extra one. Then I thought they weren’t going to do anything since I hadn’t heard from them and there are a lot of scam sweeps going on now due to the economy. But today I got the email with the prize code and was like, wow, that’s quite a consolation!

It’s a pretty big site and there was much to go through. We’ve been talking about getting a new deep fryer for too many years now, so I got one of those, plus a fruit and veggie slicer they call a Mandoline. It slices, shreds and juliennes. I especially like it for slicing potatoes!

Speaking of food, I’ve been rather fatigued from having under 1000 calories a day for several days in a row, so I ate a little more today. Better to lose weight slower and feel better, than to lose it faster and be tired.

Got a letter from Mary. She says I should email my mother and maybe accept the spa win and go see her, but as I’ll be reminding her in my letter to her, A, the spa turned out to be a scam. B, my mother decided she doesn’t want anything to do with me. C, I don’t want anything to do with those who don’t want anything to do with me. D, I don’t know what my mother’s email addy is. E, I appreciate her saving our asses, but I don’t wish to associate with anyone even remotely like her.

I did find a couple of email addresses for a certain black bitch that once made my life a living hell when I got curious and searched various names and various sites. You can only get so much info without a premium membership, but I did find a couple on the sick bitch and couldn’t resist sending her my MD journal link. Whether or not she’ll really get it and check it out, I’ll never know. I would think she’d be curious. If she is, she’s not going to leave me any feedback about it. She’ll run to her pig pal instead or some other pig.

Mary says she’s pretty sure my family’s reading my journal out of natural curiosity, being someone they know, especially their daughter. She says they’d be curious as to how they’re described and what’s going on with my life.

I asked Tom what he thought and he has no idea.

Ugh, damn bugs! You KNOW you’re not in a seasonal climate when bugs are attracted to your monitor in November.

It’s under 80º in here now, so I can turn the fan off.

Anyway, I go back and forth between thinking yes, they’re reading my journals, and no they’re not. It’s easy for me to think they’re not because if they’re not interested in keeping in touch with me, then why bother with the journals? But I also think they are because they’re only human, and it’s a way of keeping in touch without really keeping in touch. I know that if I suddenly knew that someone I personally knew had a journal, even if I hated their guts, I’d be naturally curious. It’s just normal human nature, even though my mother doesn’t always do the so-called “normal” thing, so I’ll never really know. I don’t even know if they bothered giving the link to Tammy, but if they did, she’d be more likely to check it out. I’ll admit the idea of it is rather amusing, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. I like to write and so my journals will go on even if no one ever reads another word again.

Jessie’s been busy but is okay. She says her husband infested their computer with all kinds of viruses, so she doesn’t use it much. She also said she’s not looking forward to the week she’ll be spending in Vegas at all because all she’ll be doing is working. She won’t even have much time to eat and sleep. It sucks that we won’t be able to see each other, but oh well.

The dogs were going crazy again at sundown, but I was surprised to learn they were quiet all morning, according to Tom. They’ve also been quiet since it’s been dark, but they could go off anytime. Tom said he heard them in back calling their dogs when he was in the bathroom.

In other news, no job news yet for Tom, who plans to hit the local job center. Unlike in Oregon, though, he can do it online here which is definitely more convenient.

Hopefully, the horseracing testing will keep doing as well as it has been so he doesn’t have to work anywhere but right here, and we can get our own place! I’m not moving with less than 20K, though. Not after what happened the last two times we changed states!

Let’s see, other than the usual ear and teeth pain, plus my annoying ingrown toenail, I’m doing ok. I ended up being up forever yesterday and only sleeping for 5 hours, so I’ll probably crash earlier and sleep longer tonight.

13 pounds bite the dust! My waist is down 4” so far.

Today’s been quieter dog-wise because of the heat. As it is they’re saying it could be 85º tomorrow. Ah, but that’s still not hot enough for me! If the horseracing program works out or I win big, we’re going back to the desert! If we really ever get to build/buy our own place, it’ll probably be in the California desert around the Death Valley area. You know, where Charles Manson and his “family” holed up on some ranch.

The program will be in the testing phase for about a month. We know better than to jump the gun and get our hopes up after just a couple of good days. I hope this is finally it, though, I really do! Even if it were dead quiet here all the time, this place is still too old and definitely too small. In today’s test picks, if he’d have bet $18 for real, he’d have profited by $8. Had he bet $144, he’d have profited by just over $300. Had he bet $400, that would’ve made an $1100 profit!

It’s rather ironic that right after we reapply the Return to Sender spell we get good news from Unemployment, plus these awesome test results.

We got a letter from Unemployment today saying we’d be getting $300 a week! Tom said that’s way better than the $230 he expected. We don’t know yet if we’ll need to pawn the TV and one of the Macs, but if we’re really careful, we could make it on $300 a week till he finds a new job. That’s only $75 less than he was taking home, and since he hasn’t been driving 45 minutes a day or more, he’s been saving on gas. It lasts for 6 months, but we know he’ll certainly have a job by then.

Jasmine said that while she can understand that having to pawn things may be humiliating, you gotta do what you gotta do to save yourselves, and there’s nothing humiliating about escaping death or the streets.

She’s got a point there! We’ve all gotta do things we don’t want to do, and the humiliation of pawning things could never compare to the sorrow, fear and just downright horror of having to kill ourselves to escape a slow, miserable death on the streets. No one wants to die. I just hope we won’t continue to be teased about our survival like this every so often. The stress is a killer! It still is a little scary and it probably will be until he gets hired wherever.

Anyway, the reason the unemployment checks are this high is because of all the overtime he was getting for a while back in the motel.

I won a Blu-ray movie and got another coffee sample. It’s a dark roast, so I don’t know if I’ll like it. I can’t believe the amount of coffee I’ve been winning and receiving samples of lately!

In gay news, they’re protesting up a storm, but I’ve still got to see them conquer all the bigots of this world before I’ll believe they ever will. Some say what happened here was the best thing because it stirred up lots of support all over the country, but until gays have a full bag of rights in every state, I don’t see any improvement coming anytime soon.

The only bad thing, other than the stress of being unemployed of course, is the barking. It’s been terrible lately. Just terrible. Even worse than Oregon in some ways. Like I said, I’m not sure Jesse’s returning to work is a good thing after all. I like how it doesn’t give him as much time to come down and bug us, but it’s just as noisy, so what’s the point?

I’m also not sure if we’re better off here than in the city. I guess maybe we still are because it’s cheaper here. Besides, we can deal with the dogs, but there’s nothing we could do about all the car stereos and door-slamming in the city. Then again, if we do shoot the dogs, it’d only be a matter of time before they got new ones. People just don’t care. I don’t know why they’d get dogs just to toss them outside 24/7 and risk someone getting as fed up as we are, but that’s just what they do around here. They get dogs, they throw them outside, and they basically forget about them. And if the neighbors have a problem with it, tough shit.

We’ll have to just wait and see what kind of job he gets and then weigh the pros and cons of moving or staying. I know I’m just sick of moving and sick of this shit following us every fucking place we go! Then again, if he gets a shitty-paying job, we’ll HAVE to stay here. This is a classic example of how I can’t believe some things don’t happen for a reason. No one “happens” to get this shit everywhere they go. This is a definite curse and it’s been on me since the early 90s. I’m sick of running as I said. We’re not the problem here, the dogs are. So I think we should take care of the problem. If we leave and find a quiet place, we may have a bigger more modern place, but it’d only cost more and it too, would get noisy in just a few months, so we may as well stay put, face the problem and deal with it. The only thing is that it might be a while before we’ve got the money to deal with it properly, the only way it can be dealt with.

For now, we’re not going to say anything in case we need a few days extra to pay the rent, but Jesse needs to control his own dogs, too. They’ve been barking like crazy, more than the renter’s dogs. I don’t know what kind of setup he has up there, but I’d like to see if we can get him to put the dogs on the other side of the house.

Tom’s been taking this extra free time to work on the horseracing program. Not wanting to jump the gun again until it’s been tested enough, he’s been making picks without betting, and so far it looks good. It’s seemed that way before, though, so it still needs more testing time.

Wouldn’t it be oh so wonderful if I was wrong? I mean first I thought what happened last year happened to reunite my family and I, then I came to fear it was just preparation for death after all, only it would be a year later. Well, wouldn’t it be nice if this layoff was meant to be so he could have more time to fine-tune the program?!

Tom had originally planned to sell the TV on Craigslist if necessary, but then he was like, wait a minute. We’ve got a $1000 TV and two $1200 Macs. All it would take is one Mac and the TV to pay the rent, so while he still thinks some job will come through for him before we have to do that, that’s what we’re going to do if need be. He could always pull out one of the old monitors from the shed if he had to till he could buy them back. It’s a bit humiliating to have to be reduced to playing “pawn it” yet again, but at the same time, I thank God for pawn shops!

We’re not completely out of the woods yet (yes, I know that sounds funny since we live in the woods), but things aren’t looking as hopeless as they were.

Unfortunately, no one called today, but Tom said that Fridays are always iffy for interviews. Meanwhile, the unemployment should kick in soon, and while he still thinks the temp agency will come through first, he’s excited about Best Buy and Sears, which he applied for online because they would have excellent benefits. He’s also going to the local job hunt center on Monday and will be within good signal range should he get a call to go in for an interview. He feels that because he’s older and a Vet they’ll really push to get him a job.

Part of what was stressing me out so badly was this huge misunderstanding I had about his past online efforts at getting a job. A few months ago Tom put in job applications and not one of them responded. I was freaking out wondering how the hell he could possibly get a job in a few days or even a few weeks if no one would give him a job for months. That’s when he explained to me about a certain boo-boo he made at the online job search company he used. He wasn’t aware of it for a while and thought the lack of calls was due to the economy. Anyway, he said he wouldn’t work for less than 40K a year! And I guess this company doesn’t let you fix things like this and so now he couldn’t use this service for 6 months to a year. I had to admit it was funny and it felt good to laugh after being so stressed out. So he was asking for 40K at jobs that said they paid $9 an hour! LOL, I just hope this wasn’t a case of divine guidance in a bad kind of way, though, designed to hold us back.

Of course I also had to freak out a bit at the thought of being denied unemployment, but Tom says that’s not possible. He quit his job in Oregon, but here he was laid off. There’s a difference, so we’ve learned. When it comes to jobs and taxes and things like that Oregon and California are like two different countries!

As much as I hate a zillion things in life, I’d still prefer to live. Even if that means having to deal with the renter’s shit like we did today. They fired 3 shots. Tom said he couldn’t tell where it was coming from since gunshots are so loud (it was loud alright), saying that it could’ve come from up at the summit. Sure sounded like it was down in the canyon to me. On the flip side, though, the dogs were quiet all day. It was nearly 80º today, so that was part of it. I swear I wish it would either be hot all the time or rain 24/7! The Klammers are going down to 27º tonight while we still haven’t even come close to freezing. The rain we had sure greened things up a bit around here.

With the pawnshop giving me a bit more hope of rescuing us, I reentered the land of the living a little more today. I didn’t work on my story, but I entered sweeps, did laundry and even cleaned most of the place. I ran too, and went back on my homemade timer diet, ready to kill the 13th pound.

Jasmine says her idea of reincarnation makes it so that if you commit suicide to get out of something, you will have to face that same pain again in your next life. She believes that life is a challenge for every person and that by the end of it, our souls get wiser because we have learned what it is we came into the world to learn in the first place. She doesn’t think the lesson is exactly the same for each person. So when she has thought of suicide as a way out, she didn’t do it because she strongly feels that whatever she’s running from now will definitely find her again and she would have to deal with it anyway. So her argument for “preparing to die” would be that no one is preparing to die but rather everyone is preparing for the next step, the next lesson, the next challenge(s). We’re all working to become better beings and you can’t become something better in just one life so that’s why she believes in reincarnation.

I still don’t believe in reincarnation myself.

Got up at 7:00 and it’s been terrible around here so far. Just terrible. I haven’t seen them yet, but the renter’s dogs are going off and stirring up Jesse’s dogs and so it’s been a non-stop symphony of barking ever since. It’s going to be warm today, so hopefully the heat will shut them up in a few hours from now.

I can’t believe some people, though! I mean that’s really asking for someone to shoot the fucking things! Some people really just don’t give a damn about those around them or even what may happen to their own pets. And sooner or later they’re going to kill someone’s chickens or get into something and someone around here will shoot them. It’s just a matter of time. I can only hope it happens soon because I’m just itching to get a gun and do it myself!

Meanwhile, if Tom gets that job we’ll have a tough decision to make. If noise is going to follow us everywhere we go, maybe we should get out of here and listen to it in a bigger, newer place without the landlord in the picture to conveniently bug us so often. Or maybe we should stay put and continue to put up with it because this place is cheaper and we can save money faster.

Later…

It got into the 80s in here and we had to run the cooler for a while. Meanwhile, just when we thought that for the first time in 16 years, we found a place where barking wouldn’t be an issue, the dogs have been stirring each other up every couple of hours or so. So it’s not much quieter with Jesse back at work. There just has to be a problem everywhere we go. No one’s going to do anything about these dogs. Not the owners, not Jesse, not Animal Patrol, not anyone. It’s going to have to be up to us, but it’s looking more and more unlikely that we’ll get the chance. So that’s one less thing we’ll have to deal with, I remind myself, every time I get sad, mad or scared knowing that our number’s almost up. That and the fact that we’ll get to die in the comfort of our bed and not on the bathroom floor of a motel.

I can’t believe I named the last chapter of my autobiography Paz en las Maderas! We’re at anything but “peace in the woods.” But Tom isn’t ready to face it yet. He said he’d rather not discuss it or make any final plans till after he gets to watch the last car race of the season on Sunday.

Instinctively I start to think of ways out of this mess, but then I’m like, hey! This is bullshit! I’m not going to be reduced and humiliated into begging and pleading for our lives and our survival every 1-3 years! This is utterly ridiculous! I’m sick of being teased with life! It’s maddening, just utterly maddening. In another week, if we last that long, I would think I’ll have descended way down into the bowels of insanity by then. My will to fight to live is already slipping away, so why not my sanity too, right?

I’ve decided that the last things I want to do during my final days on earth is diet, exercise or clean. But dieting is what I’m used to, running makes me feel good, and I hate a dirty, dusty house. I also said I wasn’t going to sweep anymore, but I’ve been doing it just to be doing something. I can’t concentrate on my stories, so We’ll Meet Again Someday, The Influencer and Rainbow Dreams will just have to remain unfinished.

Some would say that suicide is a cowardly thing, but if not wanting to be on the streets means I’m a coward, then so be it. I’d rather be a dead coward, than alive on the streets until it killed us, and eventually it would. Maybe not Tom, but it would kill me for sure.

I’m pretty emotional right now as the pros and cons of living versus dying run through my head in torrents. I want to live to see if my husband and I can one day own our own home again, but I don’t want to live for my eyes to get any worse. I want to lose more weight, but I don’t want to listen to the barking fits day after day. I want to get ahead, but I don’t want to get kicked back like we do every time we get ahead.

I still wonder about the afterlife. Is there any such thing? The last thing I believe in is reincarnation, but if that’s what happens then maybe I’ll be born to a family who truly loves and accepts me as I am next time around. Maybe there won’t be any foster homes or funny farms. Maybe I won’t have a sleep disorder that gets worse with time and that prevents me from working outside of the house and doubling our income. If there is an afterlife, but it’s not reincarnation, I hope to hell there’s no such thing as money there! Money has a way of killing people.

People say I should focus on my blessings when things get rough and remind myself that I have Tom, I can sing, I’m good with languages, I can draw, I can play instruments, I can dance, I learn faster and easier than most people, I’m still prettier than most, I’m psychic, I’m a good writer and a damn good actress, too. But none of these things can save Tom and I in the end.

Later…

I won’t miss getting older and grayer, but I’ll miss my favorite websites.

We reapplied the Return to Sender spell. I don’t know if it’ll help save us any more than the bamboo plants or my spells and prayers will, but we’ll see. I wish we got around to picking up a horseshoe, but we never did.

I just can’t shake the feeling that yes, things do happen for a reason, and what happened last year happened to help prepare me to die with my husband so we don’t have to die on the streets in a much slower, agonizing way. But can anyone ever really be prepared to die?

I also can’t shake the feeling that I was crazy for thinking there was a good God after all that gave a damn about us. Was I really just a naïve, silly little fool in that department?

I’m so bummed out right now. I can’t believe we came this far just to quite possibly end up dead since we don’t want to lose everything and live in shelters or on the streets. I still don’t have doom vibes, I haven’t had nightmares, but no one called at all today. Tom thinks he’ll hear something by noon tomorrow. Let’s hope he’s right!

Then again, do I really want to be saved this time? Would it matter if we had family who cared enough to save us? My mother, for some reason, decided she didn’t want anything to do with us after she helped us last year, so there’s no way I can see her helping us now. Besides, we can’t go running to others for help every year or two. We’ve got to either sink or swim on our own, and if he doesn’t get a job in time to save us, we’ll just have to sink.

His family quit caring about us years ago and made it clear that they would never again be there for us to help us if we ever needed it, and our friends, who don’t live in the area, aren’t able to help us even though I’m sure they would if they could.

So we are right where we were the day they laid him off, waiting to see what happens. Again, I’m not sure that I totally want saving this time. I’m just so tired of trying to get ahead just to get kicked back like this, especially if that good-paying job doesn’t hire him real soon. Quiet or not, I don’t want to live in old bummy places all my life. I don’t want to save and save and save just to end up struggling anyway. I don’t want to grow old and deal with the problems old age brings. I have enough problems as it is with my ear and teeth. I don’t want to have to worry about who’s going to take care of us when we get too old to fend for ourselves.

So I guess I’m okay with whatever happens. There are pros and cons to both living and dying, and I got to do the things I wanted to live to do anyway when we were in the jam we were in last year. I got to listen to my stereo again, have my stuff and wear the clothes that had been packed for so long, hang my wind chimes, etc. So as sad and as scary as it still may be, I’m ready to move onto the next plane, whatever that may be, if that’s what it comes down to.

Death has always scared me. Any form of death at any age has always been a terrifying thought because we can never really know for sure what happens afterward until we’re actually dead. Maybe God really does hate gays and I’ll go to hell for the half a dozen women I’ve been with, even if all but two were one-night stands. Maybe I’ll just float about, able to drop in on anyone or anyplace I want. Maybe I’ll be reincarnated. Maybe I’ll just sink into total nothingness. The point is the same, I’m going to find out someday anyway, so does it really matter when it happens if it can keep us from being homeless? There are just as many bad things in life to escape in our 40s and 50s as there would be in our 70s and 80s.

We would prefer for him to get a better job, for me to win more like I used to before the economy went to hell, for me to be able to go to a dentist, and for us to one day buy a home of our own. But life isn’t usually what we plan it to be. Most folks don’t want to believe this, but it’s true.

We got $100 worth of propane, so at least we won’t have to die cold if it does come down to the streets or death, although the afternoons have been nice. I’ve got the windows open now, the fan running, and I’m not wearing much either. Propane’s down a bit, too. Last time it was $2.34 a gallon and now it’s $1.99.

The dogs haven’t been as barky as I thought they’d be, not used to Jesse being gone all day, and I got a small win in the mail. Just air freshener and Ziploc bags for steaming veggies in the microwave. I guess it’s better than nothing.

Meanwhile, It’s back to waiting on death row. Are we going to make it or not? Guess time will tell and whatever’s meant to be will be as I’ve said before.

Jesse ended up engine-gunning as usual yesterday, but no one came down here. His dogs have been barking on and off since I got up at 6:00, but right now he’s the least of my concerns. I wish I could have slept longer so I wouldn’t have to deal with reality!

The phone rang while we were talking yesterday, but instead of it being a job for Tom, it was a year’s supply of baby wipes for me. I use wet wipes mainly to freshen up during periods, so I figured if these can be used on babies, why not me? So I’ll be getting 24 70-count packs and 12 tubes of cream. Hope I live to get to use them all! What’s funny is that it’s an ongoing daily sweep in which they pick a monthly winner each month, and I quit entering a long time ago, focusing on mostly big prizes. So I’m winning what I haven’t entered for, in a sense.

I hit 135 lbs which I should be happy about. I am, but I wasn’t supposed to hit it because I was too stressed out to eat much, not knowing if we were going to live or die. So much for thinking there wouldn’t be a “next time.” And after we scrambled to save as much as we could to prevent this from happening all over again! Are we being punished for escaping the city yet again, or does something up there just love to tease us that badly financially? Why can’t we just live in peace?!?! Why are we so destined to struggle in poverty like little lazy bums?! Well, we’re NOT lazy, we’re NOT drunks, we’re NOT druggies, so why does this happen to us every few years?! If we can never get rich, why can’t we at least have enough to live on?!

I know a lot of people would be quick to say that suicide is not the answer, and I agree that for most people it isn’t because most people have families who give a damn about them. Tom and I have no family that cares and the few friends we have that would help us if they could, aren’t exactly in the position to do so. Imagine if it was you who was suddenly faced with either losing everything and living on the streets, or dying. I would think most people would agree that the streets are no place to be. That’s just no way to live at all! We would still prefer to be ok, but what’s meant to be is going to be no matter how hard we try to survive. We just may not be meant to live anymore, depending on what happens. And I think I know what’s going to happen. I think it’s kind of obvious. Unlike Tom, I still think things happen for a reason, and I thought that what happened last year happened in order to bring me and my family back together again, but now it looks like it was to prepare me to die. God, or whatever, knew we weren’t meant to live much longer. We only got an extension, not a reprieve. So once again the “trigger-happy psycho” has his gun pointed at our heads, and I can only hope for a miracle to remove it before he squeezes the trigger. Tom could probably make it on the streets, but I certainly can’t. He always promised me he wouldn’t let me die alone, and so that’s why we’d both go together if we do end up backed into the corner I think we’re being pushed into. We’ll know for sure in a few weeks.

Tom tells me that I should have a positive attitude and go on living as normal until and if the end truly comes, but that’s very hard for me to do. Why enter to win prizes I’ll probably never be able to receive?

I can’t believe there isn’t a law that requires temp companies to replace their laid-off workers! As I’ve always said, though, we have so many laws we shouldn’t have, and we lack so many we should have. Yet unless a miracle happens and he’s able to start a new job no later than next Monday, despite the horrible economy, I don’t see any way out of this jam. Therefore, I’ve got to try my hardest to focus on the bad things in life we’ll no longer have to deal with and not the good things we’ll miss. I won’t live to see my 43rd birthday on the 4th, but I won’t get another period either. Yes, I wanted to lose more weight now that I finally found a diet that works for me, but I won’t have to be hungry anymore. I won’t have to deal with my ear and teeth anymore, and if we have to go, now’s the best time of year to go, since December and January will be cold.

It’s still a terrifying thought; the thought of actually going through the steps to kill ourselves, which I’m not going to get into now, then the dying process, then whatever afterlife may await us. I just hope it’s better than this if nothing saves us!!!

Later…

Now we’re not safe from Jesse even after dark! The pest came storming down in his truck right before dark, obviously a little tipsy and very mad, cussing up a storm, saying he was just in back complaining to the people about their dogs running loose all over this land and stirring up his own dogs. Apparently, they gave him a hard time, not surprisingly, insisting their dogs are little sweethearts. But they refuse to tie them up so obviously they don’t have a problem with someone getting fed up enough to shoot them.

Jesse said he was calling the cops and would send them down here so we could back him up, but they never came down. They only went up to his place which is fine with us. You know how we feel about pigs. The pest himself came down again, this time on the ATV, to ask that we call Animal Patrol if we see them. He said, “We could get in a brawl and I could go to jail,” which has probably happened before from the feeling I get, but as he added in the end, he’d rather they just keep the damn things tied up. So do we, but as we didn’t need to bother pointing out to him, people who let their dogs run loose in the first place could care less about what happens to them, or how their neighbors feel about it, and they’re not easily bullied by Animal Patrol either. Still, we’ll definitely call them.

I got the impression he was out all day today because there were tons of barking on and off all day that I feared the cooler weather would bring. It seems to be that we get engine-gunning when he’s here and barking when he’s not. And he’s not going to be here tomorrow. He’s FINALLY going back to work tomorrow, so he says. Hopefully, his extra income will make him all the more willing to work with us if we have any real setbacks, but with the call that came at 4:00, we’re hoping there won’t be any.

The temp agency called and asked for his resume to be sent to a company here in Auburn that makes ceramics. He’d be working 3rd shift, lifting and getting very dirty to the tune of $13.20 an hour. He’d settle for any job, but $13.20 an hour would be awesome! And it would enable us to move if things ever got ugly with the neighbor curse that obviously still hasn’t gone away, even if it’s not technically our neighbors. God, I hope there aren’t any real problems there! We don’t need to get caught in the middle of anyone else’s shit. We really want to stay here until and if we can own our place again.

Most of the morning I spent feeling stressed and doomed. I couldn’t help thinking that just when I was proud of myself for not getting anything but incense for several months, which doesn’t cost much, this shit has to happen. While there are always things we’d like to have, I have been disciplining myself really well and haven’t even wanted dolls lately. When we get so much of something, even if it’s a good thing, we tend to get sick of it. And I’ve definitely had my fill of dolls and my share of dusting them, too. So to be rewarded with financial ruin after being so good about saving, even if I don’t always get the cheapest groceries, would really suck.

To try to calm me and reassure me, Tom pointed out that I hadn’t had any death dreams, which was true. Then at around 10:00, the feeling of doom and gloom suddenly lifted. I didn’t exactly have any positive vibes either, and I still don’t since we’re not officially out of the woods until and if he’s hired before the money runs out, but then the call came and so hopefully he’ll start there real soon. No psychic is perfect, but I definitely have better feelings than I did earlier. He applied for jobs online, including Walmart, and plans to go out hunting in person tomorrow, but hopefully this company will save him the time and gas and just have him come in for an interview tomorrow morning. It would be awesome money, and we’d save a ton of gas. We don’t know if insurance is included, but if not, we should be able to save a hell of a lot faster to get me into a dentist with him working here for $13.20 than with him working in Rocklin for $10.

If Jesse’s working 1st shift, and if Tom works 3rd shift, that may keep Tom from being woken up by him since he’d do most of his sleeping during 1st shift hours. Of course, he could still be a pest after 3:00 or whenever it would be that he got home, plus weekends.

We saw tons of dead trees along the side of the drive when we went to the store and the mail place yesterday. I can see where it would be a lot of work and why it has to be done, too. Dead trees like that could fall across the drive or hit cars and cause all kinds of headaches.

The propane people had an emergency call today, so they said they’d be out first thing in the morning.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to have the positive attitude Tom wants me to have and consider the fact that it’s unlikely the temp lady would’ve asked that he submit his resume for this company if there wasn’t a good chance of him getting the job. I mean, certainly she’s got to have asked for it for a reason, right? Well, I’ll certainly be praying and doing spells!