“We’re not poor,” Tom says. “Poor is when you have no place to live, no food to eat, no internet, no monthly subscriptions.”

That’s true. But we’re not as comfortable as I’d like us to be yet either. Oh well. We’ll get there. It just may take forever and only last 5 minutes.

Tom is loving every minute of having his Mac back after nearly a year without it.

I sent Eileen a message a couple of days ago letting her know I hoped the move was going well and she thanked me for caring, saying she was throwing stuff out because she’s got so much stuff. She’s been cleaning out her old house and keeping busy.

Oh, she just emailed me again to say the move went smoothly and they arrived in one piece. I told her, “Yay, lucky you! Every long-distance move I’ve ever made was a sheer disaster so I’m glad one of us can “move smoothly.”

She also gave me her phone and address so I gave her ours.

Yesterday was a very peaceful day. Jesse didn’t go out at all. I would think that even if he left late morning/early afternoon, the dogs still would’ve gone off. They just don’t go off as long during those hours as they do in the very early morning hours. I don’t think I’ll get lucky enough to get two days off from them, so I’ve got the white noise going so I can concentrate on my writing since work is slow on weekends.

I’ve given up on Revtwt. That’s just no way to make extra money.

Although I still have to see us buy a house anywhere to believe it, Tom was saying that a retirement community might not be our only option if we can find the ideal piece of land. Of course I’d choose a house with elbow room over a “tooth house,” but I didn’t think we could afford land in California that wasn’t in the middle of nowhere like down in Death Valley. He said that this area is a bit more expensive, but we should be able to afford a parcel in an area called Grass Valley just 15 minutes from here because it’s off the grid. He says it might even be cheaper than a retirement community, although we would have to make our own electricity as with solar energy and have a well again. We’d have to weigh the pros and cons. The “ideal” land would be not having the nearest neighbors within a straight shot of us if they were closer than about 400’. If they were closer, we’d have to have a hill between us in which no one was at the summit. That’s what makes Jesse’s dogs so obnoxious. They may be up higher, but it’s a straight shot from no more than 200’ away. That’d be a little too close for one small dog, so I’m sure you can imagine what it’s like having 3 large dogs barking that close to us for hours on end.

A retirement community would mean being bombarded with barking just a stone’s throw away, and while it would probably be one small dog that was let in at least at night, it’d still be plenty obnoxious enough. So while rural folks tend to have big dogs and more than one, if the terrain was just right and we could fence out loose dogs that might otherwise come barking onto the land, we might be better off sticking with rural. I just hope we get the chance to decide!

I want to live everywhere! Seriously, I want to return to the desert, just not in Arizona. I want to move to Florida or some other tropical place. And I want to stay right here as well. The only place I don’t want to go is wherever it snows.