I’m sitting here now just listening to the peace and quiet. And I’m enjoying every moment of it too because I know that in just a few hours it will be gone. Yeah, yesterday sucked dogwise. From right before 6am - 9am the dogs went crazy. That’s about when I crashed, and then Tom said there were just a few spatterings of barks from 2pm to right before I got up shortly after their last fit. I actually woke up sweating. Yeah, that’s the other of the two things I’m getting awfully sick of dealing with year after year living this far inland. Except for when it’s raining, I’m sick of the cold/warm fluctuations! I went to bed freezing. It was 34º out. But then it got up to 68º which meant it got just over 80º in here (I’m cold again now). The metal walls and roof of the trailer really makes this place retain heat like crazy. It’s to be 75º on Saturday so we’re going to have to get the cooler prepped soon and check the pads and all that. Hopefully, it won’t need new parts cuz that’s Jesse’s job. And the less I have to see of that rude, selfish asshole, the better.

Besides the extreme night/day temperature fluctuations, I’m sick of how almost everybody in the West refuses to allow their dogs indoors! These two things have got me thinking about a Florida retirement community more and more, but without a ton of money to move with, I’ll never again take a chance on moving long-distance. Not after nearly getting killed trying to get to Oregon, then coming even closer to doing just that here. I also wouldn’t want to go to a state Tom would be unhappy in. He says it doesn’t matter and that that’ll be our top priority if it means that much to me. Well, that’s really sweet, but it’s not possible. Besides, the humidity wouldn’t be all that good for me either. It may be good for my skin and hair, but that’s really about it. It’s just that people in the East typically get dogs as pets. Here they’re either for security reasons or for getting attention, and what better way to draw attention to yourself and your house than to get a dog you stick outside 24/7? Bad people may exist everywhere, but I’ve never seen such a degree of selfishness and insecurity in people anywhere else. I also think it’s cruel to the dogs. If they were wild dogs to begin with, that’d be one thing. But any animal born in captivity should stay that way and not be tossed outside like old trash.

I still don’t think we’ll ever own our own home anywhere. I think that Phoenix wouldn’t have been such a nightmare and that we wouldn’t have lost the Maricopa house if there was such a thing as home sweet home for us – oh, gosh, I’m crying now. Back in a minute…

Sorry ‘bout that. I just get so damn frustrated with wanting the simplest of things in life like a peaceful place to live and never being able to achieve them. And when I do it’s usually very short-lived. I just want an average house with average appliances, furniture and whatever else, where it’s just Tom and I. Not Tom, myself, the neighbor’s dogs, and maybe even their music and kids too, depending on whether or not we’re in the city. But if I’ve lived in noisy places basically all my adult life, why would that ever change? And if he’s been broke almost all his life and me almost all my adult life, why would that change either? The thought of rental-hopping in poverty the rest of our lives really makes me very sad and just totally saps my zest for life. And even though we’re not officially “poor” at the moment. We’re actually ok. Barely. But ok. That’s how it usually is for us. We’re either broke or just making it. We’re almost never comfortable, but that’s mostly our fault for getting too extravagant of a house in Maricopa and spending too much money in Oregon. He did, after all, have some good-paying jobs. So much for counting on divine guidance, too!

Like I said, this is the West. So I have to wonder if barking wouldn’t be just as much of a problem in a retirement community whether we could afford a house there or not. It sure would defeat the purpose of living in a retirement community if they were just going to leave dogs outside to bark around the clock. And people definitely do things that make no sense. Dogs defeat the purpose of living in the woods in seclusion too, I suppose, but then again, I’m the only one bothered by the fucking things. They rarely bark when Jesse’s here. It’s when he’s out that they’re a problem, and he’s never home anymore. He’s in and out on weekends and appears to be gone about 12 hours a day during the week, which makes us think he’s working in Reno. That would be where there’d be more construction jobs too, which means a two-hour drive to and from work – ugh!

Even Tom’s not bothered by the barking having grown up in the West. I guess I was born and raised on the wrong side of the country! Yet I still can’t believe that most people wouldn’t find the dogs just as annoying as I do. If they were 400 or more feet away, then no, but they’re barely half that distance. We all have our differences as to what we find annoying and what we don’t, but I just wish I could make myself not be bothered by them! I’m not bothered by the frogs that go off when it rains and they’re just as loud. Different types of sounds don’t bother me as much, but the day we can pick and choose what sounds do/don’t annoy us will be the day we can choose what genders we’re attracted to. Or what music we like or colors or foods. I tried to brainwash myself by telling myself that the noise would make the quiet times seem all the more special, but that was a bust. I’ve spent so many years in noisy places that a million years of peace could never be taken for granted. There are worse problems in life, I also tried telling myself. True. But this is bad enough. It makes no sense to compare problems. A problem is a problem.

Tom still insists that the dogs will get better and that Mondays will just be a little confusing for them, but I disagree. Totally. I think some days will be better than others (mostly the ones I’m sleeping through), but it’s not going to get better. If anything it’s going to get worse. Remember, Jesse wants to add yet a third dog to the scene. And the puppies that he’s eventually going to give away or sell are going to be a nightmare while they’re here. That’s like half a dozen dogs I’ll have to listen to!

I wish I could know if Tom was right about the debarker working. I still don’t think it will no matter what because yes, the West is riddled with barking dogs, but this isn’t just “bad luck” that’s been following me every place I’ve lived since 1992, it’s a curse. So whatever’s cursing me with this shit isn’t going to let any debarker get in its way. But I’ve got to try something, and the thing does have a money-back guarantee.

God, who’d have ever thought our own landlord would drive at least one of us crazy?! I’m not sure what’s worse, the barking or the engine gunning, although there hasn’t been much of the latter lately. Does everybody have a noisy landlord (those that live with them)? I wanted to make one more attempt to really spell it out bluntly for the guy and ask that the dogs be moved to the other side of the house, but you know paranoid Tom. He wants to wait until we have leverage, which could be months or years away. The more time that goes on, the more I doubt he’d do anything anyway. He already knows the dogs bark when he’s gone. If he gave a damn he’d have done something about it now that he’s aware of the situation. So I was wrong in hoping he’d want to work with us since we’re the ones paying him, and he runs the risk of losing good renters for bad ones. Guess he doesn’t mind taking that risk, though. After all, aren’t those who ride motorcycles risk-takers? Besides, he’d just get Maryann to do his dirty work for him. He’d still have to deal with it if they turned out to be a problem, but she’d be the one to have to meet and screen them.

I’m so torn between staying and moving, but right now we’re stuck here and we may be for months or even years like I said before unless we want to go from bad to worse and move to a dumpy old studio apartment. No thanks!

I miss living in a real home. A real, solid home. But that hasn’t been the case since we left Arizona. Since then it’s been nothing but RVs, motels, duplexes, a cottage-like house, more motels, and now this trailer. And I’m even sicker of having shit for space. I miss so many things like having a full-size washer/dryer readily hooked up. I miss having an extra half-bath. I miss dishwashers and garbage disposals. I miss having a normal cooling system that runs through vents and has a thermostat. I miss having an extra bedroom for the computers. I only want a couch, chair, TV, the rats, some collectibles, and whatever exercise equipment we may one day get in the living room. Even the way we have to hang the bathroom towels gets old! We have to hang them on a rack that hangs on the bathroom door. I’d prefer two separate racks for each towel, but there’s no room for that with the way this bathroom is laid out.

But no house that’s around 1000-1500 square feet and even has just a washer/dryer hookup is going to be under a grand in this state. Plus we’d have to pay utilities, plus there’d be tons more dogs and a whole lot more to listen to. I’d hate to give up this privacy and I love the way people can’t drive by. So despite all the barking, which is really the only problem right now with the rest being just minor nuisances, I’m not sure that having more space, appliances, counter space, plugs and other gadgets would be worth the noise and costs. Even if he got a great job right now and we could afford something better that was bigger and newer and just nicer all around, well, quiet or not, what if he got laid off? What if he got fired? He’s only been fired once, but if it can happen once, can’t it happen twice? Maybe some other place would also decide he’s not religious enough to work for them. Or maybe he’d be too white, too old, or just not sociable enough and too damn quiet. Even if the expenses were just a couple more hundred bucks a month, we’d probably be screwed. That’s all it would’ve taken to screw us here. Just a couple more hundred a month in expenses and the unemployment and stuff we’ve pawned and sold would never have cut it.

I was still a little tired so I went back to sleep after a couple of hours and got up again after 8:00. As I came awake, I tried to recall and make note of whatever dreams I could remember. In one dream I was being fitted for prescription glasses. A young girl was about to place a pair on me and she said “smile” right before she went to put them on. I don’t know why I had to smile to get my glasses put on, but anyway, it appeared to be in a mall somewhere and it was nighttime. When I was done I waited for Tom to get the car and then he dropped me off at our house (at least I get to live in real houses in dreams) and went to run a quick errand before coming home himself. The house was dark and I started to go upstairs (yep, it had stairs) to the bathroom. Then I thought to myself, I’m too tired to go to the upstairs bathroom in the dark, I’ll use the downstairs one (wow, two bathrooms!). Why I couldn’t just turn on a light beats me. So when I woke up I was hoping it was a sign of good things to come, but then I remembered my dream self thinking that it was a rental, not a place we owned, that was just 300 dollars and 4 cents a month. Only a microscopic studio in Klamath Falls, Oregon would be that cheap!

Wow, I’ve been typing this on and off for an hour now. Time to get a bite to eat.

Ah, that was good. Roast beef, veggies, smashed potatoes. I just lit a stick of incense, too. The White Ginger, I think I grabbed. This is the one guilty pleasure that I allow myself these days. I decided to order from SOS to get more for the money rather than IG. The question is, should I get the debarker first or the incense? Well, I’m not getting anything before mid-April.

I have a new sweeping method. I’m just not winning like I used to and am beyond fed up with the comment/blog sweeps at OLS and with most of their prizes being for kids. So instead of combing through hundreds of sweeps a day to get to the few gems they have, I’m just going to take advantage of the Shazam feature there and do the dailies, weeklies and monthlies until my membership expires. In the meantime, the only newbies I’m doing there are in the ‘big prizes’ and ‘instant wins’ sections. Everything else I’m now doing at that other site. I still may not win, but the prizes are for adults and I don’t have to leave a fucking comment or review just to enter. Or say what I would pick if I won a few bucks of credit at some stupid store. The other site does have some essay and recipe contests, but you mostly fill and submit forms which is just the way I like it!

No classes for me tonight. I wanted to take a break and get some other things done around here. Besides, all hell is going to break loose in less than an hour. I can work on my story then, but not the Italian. With the Italian, I need it quiet in here. With my story, I can just throw on the sound machine and “hiss” the dogs out. It won’t kill me to miss a day of classes every now and then anyway to let past lessons sink in. My long-term memory and my eye for detail are still fantastic, but because I’m older now my ability to memorize isn’t quite as good, and sometimes it requires a few takes for things to really register. I still remember most of what I’ve learned, but I should take a break to review flashcards and study some of this whacky grammar.

I thought I hit a plateau of 130 pounds and that’s where I’d be staying so long as I didn’t get lazy or start eating like a pig, but I’m dropping again. After I first hit 129 for two days in a row, I spent two days at 131, then at 130 for over a week. Now I’m back to 129. No working out for me today, though. I woke up reminded that different workouts work different muscles and that I’m 43, not 23. That means that my hips feel like someone took a bat to them because I decided to take advantage of the cooler weather we had two days ago and run in motion as opposed to stationary. I would mix the two more often if it wasn’t so hot some of the time. I like motion running for getting it out of the way all at once, but scattered bursts of stationary running are definitely easier on my joints. I fail to remember at times that just because I’m in shape for running doesn’t mean my joints are!