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!