Although my decision not to associate with Tammy still stands (although knowing her, she told people it was her decision), I posted a happy birthday message to Lisa on my wall on Facebook, not that I expected anyone to see it.

Lisa would be in her mid-20s now. Hope she hasn’t gotten knocked up yet. I mean, that’s still a little young to be having kids, no matter how much money and support you may have.

I wonder how many of them had to be drugged up (besides just Lisa) in order to deal with Tammy. Did Tammy carry on the “funny farm” tradition that began with me? Although my folks and Tammy are far from the worst people in existence, they never seemed to get that while you can lead a horse to water, you cannot make it drink. It’s that way with the typical teenage bullshit every parent seems to think is oh-so extreme in their case. Every parent seems to think they’ve got it the worst. But guess what? You can dope them up, you can lock them up, but they’re still going to be who they are. Only time, age and experience can change and shape who we are, and that’s still got to be up to us as individuals. Not our families, not our friends, not society, and not doctors.

So, although I don’t ever expect to talk to Lisa again either, I hope she’s doing well in life and getting at least some of the things she wants.

As for me, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll never own anything again and so I’m still bummed out. We went out today which perked me up a little, but just being cursed with this sleep disorder alone is enough to tell me I’ll never win a house or enough money to buy one. Or at least most of it with anyway. To win a house or big bucks would totally defeat the purpose of cursing me with the sleep disorder in the first place. I was cursed with it to keep me from working outside of the house, thus providing us with two incomes. Therefore, why would I ever be allowed to win enough to buy a house and some real security in life? To compensate us for the years we suffered financially? I don’t think so. If that were the case, what’s taking so long?

So this reality check has had me feeling rather down. Even if I knew we’d never be so bad off that we’d end up on the streets, the thought of living in other people’s places for the rest of my life really sucks. I’m trying to look on the bright side of things to counter my dreary, hopeless mood. At least we didn’t get stuck in some rocking apartment complex like I thought we would. I would’ve been utterly miserable and who knows when I’d have finally gotten pushed too far by one unruly neighbor after another that I’d have lost it and beaten them into silence.

Tom said he believes we can buy something in a retirement community when he’s 55, but he also believed the program would pay off and he was wrong.

If we survive and continue to make shitty money, I still need to see a dentist, an optometrist and an ear doctor. Plus, we need things like a new mattress, a couch, some clothes, and to fix the car’s AC. This doesn’t include doing things around here to make the place more comfortable for us like redoing the carpet and floors if we were to stay here indefinitely, which I doubt Jesse would mind. He may be noisy at times, but he’s easygoing in that he pretty much wouldn’t care what we did with the place as long as we weren’t hurting anything. Tom said that except for the dentist, these things are insignificant, but to me, they still add up to be enough of a cost.

One thing’s for sure and that’s that if we make it, we’ll never leave NorCal. I wasn’t kidding when I said I wouldn’t move long distance ever again without a ton of money. Sometimes I wish we were in the east where it rains more and dogs are house pets. I get sick of the extreme night/day temperature fluctuations and how it’s customary in the West to toss your dogs outside and forget about them. And these are always big dogs with big barks. Rarely does anyone out here get small dogs. I guess I should just be glad that if we have to remain anywhere, it’s here. This is the best climate I’ve lived in so far. A little dry at times, and a little cold in the winter, but it’s nice not to have the killer winters Massachusetts and Oregon did or the killer summers Arizona had. I’d still take extreme heat over extreme cold, though.

Because it was quiet two days in a row, now three, we put the note to Jesse on hold for now. I’m sure they’ll be a problem again soon enough, but for now, we’re holding off till he starts taking off more often again, which I think he would at some point.

Oddly enough, though, we didn’t see any vehicles or the dogs when we came and went earlier today.

We picked up our mail. I finally got one of my prizes from Kiwi which was the lotion. Then we went to the drugstore where we found they had a surprisingly large selection of incense, some of which I’d never heard of like Caribbean Nights. At just a dime a stick, I got 50, 10 of which are patchouli, one of my favorites. Lastly, we grabbed some things from the grocery store.

Oh, shit. There goes the dogs right now. There’s one that barks much more than the other and so it’s the usual one I’m hearing right now. I knew the peace wouldn’t last long.