Can’t sleep. Too much on my mind – the present, the future. The last thing I want is for Tom to be miserable in any way and so I worry the conditions at work will become just horrible for him. But at the same time, the thought of staying in this damn trailer another year or two to save enough money to get out of this damn state altogether makes my stomach turn. Most of our time in this state has sucked and I still regret coming here. Even so, we should just move as soon as we can and then if things don’t get better at work he can look for another job. He may still be older and white, but the economy is better now, so it shouldn’t take months for him to get something else if it got that bad.

I realize now more than ever that true security for us is just a dream whether we’re poor at the moment or we’re not. I want to just find the ideal rental and stay there for the rest of our lives! Or at least till he retires. Moving around was fun and adventurous for a while, but I’ve been moving every few months to every few years since I was 19 and I’m sick of it. It’s just that I had figured we’d stay in Cali at least till he retires and then head out of state when getting a job would no longer be an issue and we could get into a retirement community right away. Even if we had the 15K or so I’d feel comfortable moving with, it could take months for him to get a job in the new state and just about any decent adult community would probably want him to have a job for about a year before they rented to us. Then again we’ve gotten other rentals on jobs he’s had for just a few months, but a dumpy old rental in the mainstream of a small town is different than a decent rental in an adult community. They’re pickier.

I’ve known for about 5 years now that we’re not meant to have money. At my age, you have a good sense of what is and isn’t meant to be. Serious money isn’t one of them. So now that I know that just like God saw to it that Tom lost most of his pension, he’ll make sure my mother either drains her funds when her time comes on medical expenses or that my sister gets it all. More than likely, even if there’s no real cash on hand at the time, my sister will sell the condo, store and vehicles and keep the cash for herself. Sorry, but we’re all naturally selfish and I would do the same if I were the one in charge of things. But the point is that now that I know we’re not going to get anything inheritance-wise, that’s all the more reason we need to really watch our asses and not take any foolish risks. My mom’s not always going to be around to bail us out if we get in a jam again and I also don’t want to depend on anyone as a safety net. But who else would care enough to help us? Really, I wonder about this at times. If we were suddenly starving in the streets, whom do we know besides Tammy, Aly and Eileen that would give us a place to stay and food to eat till we got back on our feet again? It’s a scary question and I don’t know that I want to know the answer. On the other hand, I would still probably want to kill myself not just because of how miserable I’d be, but because I don’t like to put people out whether they want to help us or not. So I would off myself for their sake as well as mine. I just hope I’m never ever in that kind of a situation to actually learn who would do what for sure. We were scarily close enough last fall.

It may be foolish, as Andy, who I really REALLY wish would stop making me feel like he’s implying I’m a liar like he sometimes does by contradicting or arguing a fact that I’ll tell him about Tom or myself, said in regards to worrying about when we get old, but I can’t help it. I do worry that we’re gonna get fucked out of our retirement money. I do worry they’ll do away with Medicare. I do worry we’ll get to the point where we have no one to help us with the important things.

sighs There’s being smart and then there’s being miserable and sometimes being smart makes you miserable. Meaning that it would be smart to rent a cheap little apartment and stay there for the rest of our lives. But I would be totally miserable. Living attached to others simply isn’t for me. I wish to hell I could snap my fingers and make myself like the idea of an apartment. I’d move into one in a heartbeat if I could only make myself stand the noise! There we would never have to worry about taking care of the grounds and of course things would be fixed for us when they broke. But I wouldn’t get much sleep either or much peace when I was awake, so what would be the point?

Oh well. I am who I am. I also worry about Tom. I don’t want him to be miserable himself but I don’t want to stick around here longer than necessary or venture too far away too soon. I’d want to have way more money than we could need but that would mean sticking around here longer than necessary and I’m not sure a tropical climate would be right for us. I’m curious about it, yes, and I’d like to try it. I miss the beach and Florida’s beaches are much prettier than New England’s, IMO. But there are hurricane risks and immense humidity, and I’ve also heard that allergies are a real nightmare there. So I don’t know what to do or how much of a choice we’ll even have in the first place.

Later…

So I’ve had life’s usual doubts and worries on my mind. But as Tom pointed out, he could always get another job if things get that bad at his current job and it’s looking like that’s what he’ll end up doing because it’s looking more and more like they lied to him about being hired on. I think the poor guy’s destined to be forever a temp! When they told him he got the job he applied for we thought they’d make it official within a week or two, but here he is, still a temp, WTF??? sighs I’m just sick of losing and being lied to. This job looked so promising in so many ways. BUT…it is good pay, it’s better than nothing, and our savings is climbing fast. We should have way more than we need to move with. We were checking out rentals on Craigslist and he saw an ad for what seemed like a really good job, but he needs to update his résumé first. He said he’ll do that this weekend.

We saw an ad for a 1000-sq-ft, 2-bedroom, 2-bath house in a gated adult community with pools, tennis courts and other amenities for $950. That’s only $125 more than this tiny trailer that includes nothing but a noisy, pest of a landlord. The only thing I’ll miss here is not having anyone able to drive by or live so damn close to us. Tom thinks that an adult community may have as many loud car stereos as the mainstream because those entering these places these days were more from the time when they first hit the scene (I always did say each generation gets louder and less considerate), and therefore the rules there as far as noise goes may differ from the type of retirement community my mom’s in.

I see his point, but I sure hope not! Wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose of having an adult community in the first place? I guess to some people the idea is just to live with people their own age and not to seek out a quieter place. But even if there were just as many car stereos, I still find it awfully hard to believe they’d be allowed to leave their dogs outside round the clock like used old furniture. I would think they’d need to be brought indoors as household pets only. But we do live in an area where most people think it’s wrong to bring dogs indoors, so we’ll see. Worst case scenario I can at least have peace of mind in knowing that the Brady Bunch isn’t going to move in next to us, and neither will half a dozen college kids.

1000 square feet would be about as low as I’d like to go space-wise, and would actually be pretty ideal for us. It would give us enough space but not be too much to heat and cool.

We were reminiscing and laughing our asses off at some of the fun and funny experiences we’ve had in the various states we’ve lived in. It was a perfect reminder that life wasn’t all bad for us and I’m sure we’ll have more fun times in the future. I’m trying to get in the habit of thinking good thoughts after I worry about something negative. Every time I think of something that’s bad or an annoyance in our life or that we’re lacking, I try to think of things that make me laugh and smile.

Ask was loads of fun today, though I can’t figure out for the life of me who asked me some of the anonymous questions I was asked today. Every time I thought I had it figured out, I was back to guessing and wondering. I love these games, LOL. They’re fun and interesting and I love a good mystery, but I’m also curious. There are so many people it could be – Nane, Maliheh and any number of my Facebook friends. They’re the only ones that know about my account there.

The question about the ukulele made me think of Maliheh. The “What is up pretty lady?” made me think of Nane, but that would also be something that might come from Paul or Adonis. The questions about whether I like beer and ever tried yoga could be anyone. They last said they were hurt I hadn’t guessed who they were but never identified themselves. Other “suspects” include Alison, Lori, Cindy, Becky and Dorene. I tried to study writing styles, but they could change that to throw me off their scent. I asked Lori if it were her and she said she’d never heard of the site before. Oh well. Maybe I’ll find out tomorrow.

As for Medicare, Tom explained to me why there’s no need to worry about it running out (some new article he read) when we’re old enough for it, but I forgot what he said, LOL. Fewer people are having kids and the change in the population density is a big part of what’s messed it up. But it recently took in something like 9 billion more dollars than it put out, so that’s good.

At around 5pm this afternoon, just when I was thinking how utterly amazing it was that I hadn’t heard Jesse or his mutts in two days, he came buzzing down on the ATV. But not to bug us with anything; he just wanted to get something from his shit pile. It was so nice for a while there not hearing him. I hadn’t heard one single sound. Obviously, he and his mutts haven’t been around. If he were around I’d hear him. If he weren’t around but the dogs were, I’d hear them. But oh what peace of mind comes with knowing we shouldn’t be here much longer! I giggled to myself thinking how bummed out he’d be if he knew we were looking at rentals that very moment.

It rained on and off today, though it was nothing serious. Still, it was like waking up to a whole different season at 11am today. Where it had been warm and sunny, it was cool and cloudy. It’s supposed to be even cooler tomorrow, and after not needing any heat for days, we’re certainly going to need it tonight. Then the heat will return. :)