For some reason, I have been sooo cold! Tomorrow should be our last cold day, then the poor-assed bums here can kill the pilot on their heater and save on propane. Yeah, get ready folks, I’m about to hit you with another poverty rant!

It turns out we owe just $70 to the state, but a whopping $654 to our corrupt government thanks to the 9K I won in early ’08. (I still wonder why we never got a tax form for the ’07 cruise I also won). Anyway, I feel like I’m being punished for winning! Who the fuck should have to “pay” to win?! This is so fucked up and unfair, like demanding payment from someone you’re giving a gift to or something like that. And this supposedly comes after a “break.” I guess it’s normally $80 for every grand which they dropped to $60, but still – $654 in taxes, nearly $600 to get the pawned Mac and TV back – why not make it 6 grand?

If God didn’t have to go and curse me with this sleep disorder so I couldn’t work, I could’ve gone out right along with Tom and got a job wherever just as soon as they started hiring again. Even if we both made just $10 an hour, that’d be like him making $20 an hour alone! I totally resent Him for doing this to me! And as long as I’m never allowed the luxury of insurance, I can’t get my condition diagnosed in a sleep clinic so I can at least try to get my benefits reinstated.

I’m just sick of having to play poor-assed bums here! I’m sick of never having enough money for things we need and want, especially those that we need.

It seems that the only good winning the money did was to get us out of the motel. That in itself is a huge thing, but it makes me afraid to sweep anymore, not that I’ve been winning anything good anyway. Tom said a big win would be great now cuz then we could pay off what we owe. But then we’d have to pay taxes on that, I pointed out, though he said that the more I win, the more we make since you never pay more than the prize. Well, if things keep going the way they have been, I’m never going to win big again either way.

I swear the only time we didn’t have any money problems was the last couple of years in Oregon, and we’ve been married for almost 15 years. We did make close to 40K for several years down in Arizona, but it all went to the house. What a total fucking waste too, to have made that much money just to sink it all into a house we would ultimately lose just 5 years later.

The question is, why us? If things are supposed to happen for a reason, then why are we one of God’s designated little bums destined to struggle no matter how hard we work and try to get ahead? Why were we chosen to suffer financially? What am I supposed to do? Be a good little bum and hope we’re well rewarded in the afterlife or something?

People would probably say that I should be grateful for the things we do have, and I am. But having a nice computer doesn’t get my teeth fixed. Having someone else’s bummy old trailer doesn’t get us our own home. And being on unemployment sure as hell doesn’t buy us any security.

Sure, I’m blessed as hell to have a husband who loves me unconditionally. And also to have my only health problems be my teeth and ingrown toenail since even my ear and allergies have been better. But what about the new mattress we need so I can stop waking up with a backache? When can I stop wearing the same clothes year after year? When can my husband get a backup vehicle so we’re not stranded and possibly doomed if the main one craps out on us? He does all our car work, but what if it broke in such a way right now that it cost hundreds or even thousands to fix? Then what? So you see? We’re just as cursed as we are blessed. Maybe even more so.

I try to tell myself that living poorly won’t kill us and to quit letting it get to me or else I’m going to have a miserable life since things are never going to change. There’s only so much we can do to change it anyway. We’re poor, we’ve mostly always been poor, and we’ll mostly always be poor. It’s just who we were meant to be in this life. So crying about it won’t change things. But it’s not that easy. It frustrates the hell out of me more and more with time that instead of becoming easier to live with as time goes on, I only get more pissed off about it. The thought of never being able to own our own home and always having to scrape pennies is heartbreaking. And it infuriates the hell out of me even more! What the fuck did we do to deserve this?!

But you know good old optimistic Tom here. I’ll get a job soon enough, he says, and we’ll be ok. It won’t take forever to pay the taxes off, and no, we haven’t lost the Mac and TV. And hey, all it takes is a regular job and we can make a down payment on a house in a senior community in a few years.

The dogs went off at 5:50 yesterday and I was trying to concentrate on what I was doing and didn’t want to hear it, so I kicked the sound machine on. But then I was surprised by not hearing any barking when I went out to pee 15 minutes later, then into the kitchen a while after that. Tom said he saw a strange white pickup there, so I’m thinking that yeah, he may still be working, but someone’s obviously staying with him for the dogs not to have barked for hours. Maybe she’s had her puppies. I don’t think he went out and hired a dog sitter, as the guy would never give a damn about the peace of those around him enough to do so, but he’s had someone up there for some unrelated reason unless it’s really him.

I still wish someone would complain about the barking when it gets bad again – and it will – but all he has to do is say, “There’s nothing I can do about it. I work 12-hour days, too long to keep a dog indoors, so there’s nothing I can do.” No judge is going to tell him to cut his hours or get rid of the dogs, so I’m hoping that if worse comes to worst we can at least rent a place in a senior community in a few years. I still can’t believe barking would be an issue there, cursed with it or not.

The dogs may’ve been quieter the last few days, but what’s with all the helicopter activity lately? It’s never been like this before. Today there was a helicopter flying back and forth, sometimes hovering, and it was right as I was trying to sleep. We thought it may’ve been a police helicopter looking for someone. Well, if they were, then whatever the person did must’ve been pretty big. Unless they’re like Arizona where they make mountains out of molehills, it must’ve been pretty heavy-duty. I just hope those flying pigs don’t make a habit of this! Or whoever else it may be. Flying overhead is one thing, but lately they’ve been flying low and hovering at times and it’s tremendously loud.

I’m reviewing flashcards and I’m finding that it helps a lot more than I thought it would. It’s still more fun than frustrating to learn languages! At least for me, it is.

When I got up and weighed in today, I hit a new low, but not a new pound. My current low had been 128.8 and now it’s 128.6. I think I may’ve already slammed that 20-pound marker. According to what I wrote a year and 3 days ago when we first moved in here and unpacked the old scale, I was 138 pounds. Then when we went out and got the new one that guarantees its accuracy, it said I was really 10 pounds heavier. But when I officially started the diet I was 147 pounds, so 127 is when I’ll count it as a 20-pound loss. It’s probably really close to 25 pounds, though. I could’ve easily gotten into the low 150s in those final days at the motel.