I feel so bad for my sister Maria. She’s not my biological sister, but she and I share a special kind of kinship that will forever bond us as sisters, and that was that we were both victims of Valleyhead. The so-called private school for girls that was run more like a prison. Everything we did, said, and ate, along with when was dictated to us, and that’s only the things that were allowed in the first place.

Today Maria is a victim of the economy much like we were. She’s staying with friends and while no one has asked her to leave, she’s only got a couple of weeks left of unemployment. After putting in zillions of applications only to be denied a lousy job, she’s about to journey elsewhere in hopes of someone allowing her to work. It’s not only tough to find work when you’re older, but when you’re female and white. These days it’s the so-called “minorities” that get first dibs on life’s opportunities. Like it or not, unfair or not, the young, male non-white is considered today’s favorite in society. This is why I damn near want to scream every time I hear them bitch about how rough they think they still have it in today’s world.

As Maria herself said, though, she’s teachable. She’s able-bodied, willing and ready. But the color of her skin and the date on her birth certificate has apparently held her back right along with her body parts. It’s sad. It really is. But it’s not only sad, it’s sick. Had I been magically cured of my sleep disorder and able to start job-hunting right along with Tom back when he was looking, I don’t doubt that I’d still be hunting today.

Anyway, my heart goes out to you, dear sis. I hope that someone somewhere soon enough will see past your age, color and gender and give you the chance you so richly deserve. I know you too, have nothing against the young and the not-so-white but are sick of the unfair treatment going on in order to “avenge” the past.

Later...

Tom’s in the shower now, then we’re FINALLY off to the IHOP, then to Walmart.

Except for a few yips and power tools that fortunately can only be heard outdoors, all’s been pretty quiet. It usually is quieter here in the summer anyway thanks to the heat. Wish it could be hot and dry all year long. Then all I would miss would be the rain.

I would have been down another pound for sure. No doubt about it. But with the combination of eating my last meal too early and being up for 18 hours, I had an extra 500 calories yesterday. I’m lucky I’m only up two-tenths of a pound and no more. I’m taking today off from the treadmill and the diet, though, like I usually do on Saturdays. Hey, IHOP alone is going to be like two days’ worth of food!

Later...

After a busy morning, I’m now kicking back and relaxing along with Tom. I probably won’t be online anymore today after I post this. Breakfast at the IHOP was great, although there was something making this strange sound every few minutes or so the entire time we were there. I’m not sure what it was. It was sort of in between a squeak and a chirp, like on someone’s gadget or something. It wasn’t that annoying, though, as opposed to screaming kids, but we were fortunate enough not to have to deal with any of those.

I was going to get a pitcher like the one on my desk to keep in the refrigerator so I could have a cold drink of water after my workouts. These pitchers hold about 4 cups. But then I saw these beverage dispensers that hold 6 cups and decided to keep that on my desk instead and throw the pitcher I had in the fridge.

I read online that nail polish remover with acetone was better for removing glitter nail polish, so I grabbed a jar of it, thinking it was like my non-acetone remover that had a sponge in it. This one’s so cool because you stick your finger in the center of it instead and there’s a little brush that helps scrape off the old polish. It still takes a little longer than removing non-glitter polish, but not as long as it used to when using cotton balls on even the non-glitter stuff. My fingers are a bit short and skinny, though.

Naturally, I couldn’t resist grabbing a bottle of Ice Queen to add to my ever-growing collection of nail polish. It’s just ok, though, and actually looks better in the bottle. It has different grades of glitter in it. The really fine kind I like best, plus some bigger pieces in the shape of a circle. The bigger pieces are hard to get on cuz the brush tends to pull them back off as you apply it. Every single one of my nails is long right now. Once they start interfering with my typing, I cut them. A week later they’re long again, though, LOL.

I also got that purple eyeliner with the pink glitter covering half the pencil.

Someone asked me “wherez your buddy Andy?!” on Ask and my first thought was Aly, Kim or Molly. I asked Aly on Facebook if it was her as she sometimes asks questions when she’s at work and doesn’t want to sign in. She said no, but wondered if it could be Kim because she asked her about Andy a couple of weeks ago. I guess the little skitzo thought that maybe he was harassing her or something, though I highly doubt he was.

As for Molly, last she heard was that her parents were keeping such tight strings on her that she was only allowed online a few hours a week. Yeah, I knew she didn’t just suddenly get sick of us after all these years. Thank God those damn parents are finally doing something about that fucking nut instead of making lame excuses for her and blaming her actions on everyone else. Sooner or later, though, the parents are going to think a miracle has entered their home and their lives and blessed their crazy daughter with a dose of sanity and forget the fact that the crazy don’t get uncrazied. Not by pills, not by outer forces, not by themselves, not by anyone giving them a pep talk, not by anything. Once crazy, always crazy. So knowing that the crazy stay crazy, I know I can count on her returning with a vengeance someday. Only difference is that next time around I will not allow her to drive me into hiding or to change my online habits. She will not steal my fun and ruin it for others as well! Sie wird nicht! Nein, sie wird nicht! But I will continue to hide my friend lists on Facebook and MO.

Although we plan to do more touring of adult communities tomorrow, we drove through a rather high-end 55+ park. It’s a beautiful gated community with a pool, a clubhouse and more. The cool thing is that they have no old dumpy, single-wide trailers there. They’re all doublewide modulars with garages. It wasn’t the most breathtaking place I’ve ever seen, but it was still very nice. It reminded me of an adult community my folks once lived in. The only thing this place didn’t have that their park had was more palm trees and the ocean. After a handful of years, they headed inland for fear of hurricanes, though remained fairly close to the coast.

But Jodi’s not allowed to have it as fine as her mommy and daddy had it, so even though we saw some promising signs there, I still have my doubts that we could get the financing necessary to get a place there since our credit isn’t that good. I went to their website when we got home and they mention helping those with lower credit scores get financing in months instead of years and all that, but I’m not going to get my hopes up. Not after living in little old dumps for so long because the longer we live in them the more they were obviously meant to be, whether we deserve it or not, right?

Someone once told me, “Always think negative. If you think positive and things don’t go your way, the harder it will hit you than if you thought negative and didn’t expect things to go your way in the first place. But if they do go well after you thought negative, that’s all the more delightfully surprised you’ll be.”

Well, there’s no need to literally get all negative cuz I know we’ll get in somewhere sooner or later. We’ll just have to do some settling, but isn’t that what life is about for most people anyway? But I’m definitely not going to get my hopes up for any of the nicer places either. I don’t think we’ll have to settle for another single-wide, but I think that the doublewide we end up with probably won’t be all that nice. But if it’s ours and the people can be civilized, control their dogs and not live outside so damn much of the time, that’ll make it well worth it. I just miss being the boss of our own place.

I like how there was a sign at the entrance saying No Soliciting. Back in the city, I used to hate it when perfect strangers would come to our door on sales or religious calls. The Avon lady, the Girl Scout cookie sellers, the Mormons wanting me to join their hate campaign…

We saw 4-5 houses for sale (their site says they have 12, ranging from 24K - 118K) and Tom said that makes him think we have a better chance of getting financing, along with the fact that there were several cars parked outside the garages, a sign that some people living there are still working which would mean they wouldn’t mind me being under 55. Usually only one of you has to be 55 and the other has to be at least 45, so that’s the least of my worries. Besides, most people don’t retire at 55 anyway. I’m sure God would make sure we got the home-all-the-time neighbors, though that might be better than working ones. Ones who are home a lot may have more company, but if they work all day, chances are they’ll throw their dogs outside for me to have to listen to. If they’re home, though, they may at least let them indoors some of the time. I find it hard to believe anyone in California would dare let their dogs remain indoors all day long while they worked, and unfortunately, it’s when a dog’s owner is away from home or is tossed outside when company arrives that’s most likely to get a dog going.

I was a bit surprised at how many cars I saw parked outside some of the garages. One driveway had 3 cars in it, and one was clearly a business vehicle of some kind. Not sure I’d want that much traffic coming and going so close to me, and again, the houses are a bit close and close to the roads as well, but there’s no way we’d have to worry about kids skateboarding and playing basketball on the streets or loud car stereos passing through since there’d be nowhere to go in a gated community, and you can only have two small pets per household. Unfortunately, I didn’t see anything that said you couldn’t leave them outside 24/7, so other than barking and car door slamming, I think it would be a pretty peaceful place to live. I just don’t think we could get in in just a few months.