Upping my exercise time and working at the MT is going great so far! I’m down another pound, and Tom can easily see, after a few days of working at this site, that he could make at least $5 a day. And that’s a conservative guess, too. In another week or two, if it continues going well for him, we’ll open up my own account there. To bring in an extra $300 a month between the two of us would be awesome! In fact, it almost seems too good to be true as long as this site’s been around and as much praise as it’s gotten, so I’m not even going to get my hopes up just yet. Besides, I wouldn’t be living up to my pessimistic nature if I did, would I?

I was going to burn 400 calories on the bike each day, but if 350 is making a difference, then why go for 400 and aggravate my knees even more? My goal is to lose 13 more pounds which would put me at 110 pounds. Then, since it wouldn’t just stay there on its own at nearly 44 years of age, I’ll slack off on the diet/exercise till I float on up to 115. Once I hit 115, I’ll diet and ride on back down to 110 and just kind of bounce between that 5-pound range.

Once my schedule moves forward a little more we’re going to go apply for Medicaid since no one’s gonna give us shit. I tried to tell Tom that all this talk about insurance was bullshit. That’s how politics usually works; all talk and no action. If they really wanted to give us insurance, they would have. Seriously, why couldn’t they just have done it? I always believed that whether it’s a group or an individual, the more they talk about something without actually doing anything, the less serious they are about whatever it is they “say” they’re gonna do.

It’s getting down to 47º tonight so I’ve got the portable going in the bedroom. We agreed to sic the heating on Jesse. He’s the one with money. But we don’t want it to be too noticeable on the electric bill either, so we’re just going to stall firing up the trailer’s heater, which runs on propane, till it gets cold enough that we can’t open windows in the daytime. If it’s like it was last year, it shouldn’t get too bad till December.

Later…

I can already tell the barking is going to be an issue again soon. We’re having another cool day in what’s been over a week, and sure enough, I heard a few scattered barks throughout the wee hours of the night and into the early morning. Thank God construction workers get a lot of time off! However, he does go out every single day, working or not. It’s when he’s out that I have to deal with it. Brandy and Whiskey may know me, but the puppy doesn’t. So when it becomes a problem, yelling up to be quiet may not do me any good. I just hope this guy doesn’t go adding any more dogs to his collection for me to have to deal with while we’re still here! Why does everyone out here have to have at least 3 dogs and leave them outside 24/7???

At least we have the MT to look forward to, plus a few other neat sites that’ll pay a little here and a little there. We’re thinking we may use money from the MT to start his horse program at some point, but I can’t discuss that much here. The more people that know about it, the less we could make. He’s been fine-tuning/testing it since being laid off, but it’s needed about $50 to jump-start it and we haven’t wanted to spend the money till we were doing better. If the program could generate a lot of money fast, then we would have, but since we expect it to gradually build up, we didn’t see the need to rush into it.

For a while there, I didn’t want to kill myself, but I stopped feeling like I had anything worth living for. But now, for the first time in months, I actually feel like I have a reason to get up for each day (or night in some cases). Just maybe we won’t always be so damn broke, and just maybe we will have something above and beyond this quiet, cozy, but old and dumpy little trailer in a few years, and we too, can have our own share of that so-called American dream.

Or maybe God’s just waiting for the right moment to yank the carpet out from under our feet yet again, laugh and say, “And you thought you were going to get ahead and get into the driver’s seat of your life – ha!”

I sure hope not, though, and would like to think He could never hate us that much, but only time will tell. I don’t want to be negative, but I don’t want to get my hopes up either despite the more positive feeling and outlook I’m coming to have on things.

A fellow kiwier sent me a link to what seems to be a great site. It’s not for paid emails or surveys or anything. You just play their daily game, answer the daily question, refer friends, and you can choose from a huge variety of prizes with your points. The cool part is that it shouldn’t take forever to be able to get something. I’ve been working for months just to get a lousy $10 Walmart card from Memolink! Just as soon as I get it, I’m done with them.