The troll peeked in again yesterday, but she’s still keeping her visits short and sweet and hasn’t made any new posts on her new blog since Aly alerted me to it.

I am curious by nature. I like to learn things about people, places and things. Therefore, I ask a lot of questions. People are often annoyed by this curious trait of mine that thirsts for knowledge, but I wonder about things all the time. I don’t just find the more complex things in life interesting, but sometimes even the simplest and trivial of things can be just as fascinating. I was just as wowed to learn Nane’s favorite colors are blue and orange as I am to learn about new discoveries in space and things like that.

It was this curious nature that got me interested in tracking visitors at least until my free trial expires in a couple of months. I’ve noticed that I seem to attract different states and countries to different blogging sites. On Thoughts the #1 visiting country is Australia. A check of my state visitors and the winner is… Louisiana!

I was glad to learn that Andy, after having a miserable 48 hours, is feeling better. As he said, “Better, stronger, faster, bionic.” LOL, love his sense of humor.

Gonna go relax now with some music or reading till we hit the city in a few hours for our weekend shopping.

Later...

I really REALLY hope my friend Maria (a Valleyhead sister) is doing nothing more than just scaring the shit out of people with the suicide note she left on her wall 18 hours ago. I hope it’s nothing but an empty threat borne of frustration and desperation and that we can all let her have it for scaring us once she’s either calmed down or gotten help. Last I knew her friends and daughter were investigating and so were the police. I guess she just moved in with a friend but I don’t see why one of her kids wouldn’t know where she was. Some people have tried to reach her by phone to no avail.

Maria’s always come across as a toughie and a survivor, so I think she’ll be ok. She’s going through the same hell we were going through, and it seems no one wants to give her a job. But hey, she’s white, female, older and covered in tattoos, so why should any employer out there give a damn, right? rolls eyes I know she’s had interviews lined up so hopefully, someone will give her the break she deserves.

Many people are offering to take her in based on the wall posts I’m reading, so it’s not like she would have no one to help her like what would’ve been the case for us had Tom not gotten a job when he did. You find out just who your true friends really are when you’re in need of a place to go, so I’m glad to see people offering to take her in. Eileen had offered to take Tom and me, which was really sweet of her, but the problem would’ve been getting to where she is. So even those who did give a damn that would’ve helped us, well, we were a wee bit out of reach of that help.

Just learned that she’s alive after all. Maybe not well, but alive. So now I’m both pissed and relieved. Damn her for scaring so many people like that! But thank God she’s alive.

What I don’t thank God for is that He let the pension people screw us even more. Totally something He would do, too. :( Don’t forget to screw us out of any inheritance money too, God, and make sure you screw us out of retirement money as well. Although Tom says that can’t happen because by the time they raised the retirement age, he was over 40 and so he was locked in at that point as far as what he’ll get for retirement money, and then there’s the 401K thing that he’ll be getting underway soon enough. But let me guess… God will be sure to think of some way to get the money away from us, right?

As for the retirement pension, unfortunately they were able to gamble with millions of people’s pensions in hopes of making a profit, and there were no laws protecting people like us when they lost. So now we’ve gone from expecting a lump sum of around 20K to $200 a month to $66 a month. Tom says that once we start receiving payments they can’t cut it any lower or take it away completely, but again, I’m sure God will find a way and see to it that we lose this too, even if it’s not much money to be losing in the first place.

On the bright side, the entire day wasn’t filled with scares and disappointments. No, we had some fun mixed in. We went to Walmart really early and did some shopping. I got a couple of those $3 imposter perfume sprays now that they have knock-offs of Angel and Love Spell. Love those scents! When are they gonna come out with White Shoulders? Black Orchid would be nice, too.

Even though I shouldn’t have, I got my usual slew of weekend snacks – cheese crackers, sweets and dried cherries I wanted to try. The cherries are boring and almost seem like they could be raisins, but the cheesecake I got was awesome.

I still believe we’ll spend most of our lives struggling, and again I’m used to it as much as it cuts down our options in life. I just wish we could never again have to worry about the necessities. I still have to wonder, though, why are people like my folks and siblings so much more deserving? What have they got that we don’t? My husband has worked his ass off all his life. Yet thanks to the bastard above who saw fit to curse me with a sleep disorder that prevents me from adding a second income to the household, along with usually seeing to it that Tom doesn’t get the pay and credit he deserves, I don’t know that we’ll ever really be able to afford anything nice in an adult community. And when I say “nice” I mean an average size house that isn’t so damn old and that has a washer, dryer, and dishwasher and is fully loaded with the works. Some of these communities have fitness rooms, pools and things like that which would be really nice to have. Especially the pool. There may be unruly grandkids visiting at times, but it can’t be as bad as a regular neighborhood, could it?

“I made the rent in one week,” Tom reminded me, assuring me we would get a decent enough place, but it’s not like he’s always going to work OT either, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Another option is getting an old doublewide for a few grand and renting a lot in a 55+ trailer park which may be cheaper. But the park would have to be a dumpy one since they don’t allow dumpy old trailers in nicer parks, and we still don’t want to own. Yes, I’d like a place I had more control over as far as what happened when, but I also don’t want to have to pay to fix everything that breaks either. I’m sick of old dumps anyway. Really, I just want to be in a house that’s younger than I am!

Gonna have to have Jesse prep the cooler and get our little homemade thermostat set up soon since the weather’s going to be in the 70s and we may even hit the 80s by the end of the week. He is going to be sooo fucking noisy all week. In fact, he just took off on the motorcycle and now the dogs are going off. beats head I really hope this dog curse ends here! But wherever the hell we end up, we’ve still got 3-4 months before we get there. But since the other sleep curse didn’t last forever, maybe the dog one won’t either. It’ll just have lasted a hell of a lot longer. From February of 1992 to around the time I moved into the Phoenix house with Tom in September of 1993 and I finally got the bright idea of sleeping with fans and sound machines on or both, my neighbors would not let me sleep in the 5 different places I lived in during that timeframe. Fans and sound machines probably wouldn’t have done me any good anyway since I was attached to these people. Every door they slammed, every cabinet they banged, every step they took, practically shook my entire place. So even when I’d had earplugs jammed in and radios playing, the vibration caused by their racket woke me up almost every day without fail. It was horrible. I was sicker than a dog half the time. But if that curse can end, can’t the noisy neighbor one end, too?

Either way, we’ll never have big bucks and we’ll never live in the perfect house with the perfect neighbors, but we will get out of this little old trailer and away from pesky Jesse.