So I’m in the kitchen when all of a sudden music starts blasting like crazy. I then run into the bedroom to shut Kid Cudi up and found that the rat had jumped on the laptop that’s hooked up to my stereo.

Then I go out into the living room and it’s raining! Yeah, he got onto the table where the sound machine is and turned that on too, the little devil, LOL. Other than getting stranded on top of the laundry hamper, trying to climb the blinds, knocking over pails, and running off with small objects like my flavored lip gloss, he’s doing better than we are.

First I woke up with period cramps an hour earlier than I would have liked. Then Tom ended up wasting time, gas and $15 on a new control box for the cooler, even though he loves Fry’s Electronics and had fun browsing through the store. We noticed yesterday it was smelling funny. Not like something was burning, but it was sort of a chemical smell. We figured the control box he put in the old piece of shit which we use to create a thermostat for using a computer program he wrote had burned up.

Then the poor guy wastes more time by installing the new controller just to find it was too big for the electrical box it needed to be in. So we put the cooler on and operated it manually. A few minutes later the smell returned. It went away when we switched it from ‘cool’ to ‘fan’ then came back when we switched back to ‘cool’ and so that’s when we knew it was the pump. When it’s on ‘cool’ it comes and it goes. Fortunately, we should only need it for cooling for just a few more days, and fortunately my schedule’s where it’s at right now so I can operate it manually.

I’m so sick of living in little old bummy places – argh! Are we really that less deserving in life?! In fact, I’m so fed up with all the problems this place has had that I’ve been thinking of moving. It may be worth a little snow, as much as I hate the shit, to get a halfway decent place that functions properly. So many things in here don’t work, but it’s not worth being put out even more by having Jesse fix some of the things that don’t work. We can live without the broken heater because we have alternatives that will actually save us money, but if we’re still here in the spring and the cooler still smells funny, we’ll have to deal with him dealing with it.

Everything has had a problem in here so far but the kitchen appliances and bathroom sink. The well, the kitchen sink, the faucet in the tub, the heater, the cooler, and the pressure tank have all been a problem.

I’m also sick of Jesse coming down without calling, even if he didn’t wake me up this morning when he rudely came down at 7:30 to get something from his shit pile, and I’m sick of him spending Friday nights elsewhere and leaving me to have to deal with his damn dogs when I’m up during those hours. I can’t do anything that requires a quiet background, and it’s going to be bad enough when the weather turns cold.

I know it’d be just as noisy if we moved, but like I said, if we can have a real house with a normal heating and cooling system and things that work as they should, it may be worth it. But we don’t want to decide this until and if he’s ever hired on somewhere permanently.

Although Tom said it was about a mile away, last night we heard a single gunshot after dark that was super loud. Someone was probably shooting at something that was threatening their livestock more than they were trying to get attention. But it serves as a reminder that going off the grid may be a very bad idea if we ever do get to buy our own place. If they’re shooting this much in an area that’s still technically within city limits and where you’re not supposed to, I can just imagine how bad it’d be in the more extreme rural locations.

I’m following Andy’s “famous” Fire Flies band on Twitter in which he’s the lead singer. He’s been in Honduras!

Nane posted 30 photos of her trip around Turkey. Some were nice, but it was too bad she wasn’t in any of them.

Maybe sometime tonight I can finally work on chapter 20, though it may be a day or two before anything else is posted.

Here goes my end-of-the-day heart palpitations. :( How annoying. At least I’m still psyching those scratch tickets into winning – woot!