I was flattered to receive a message from Nane saying she’d been thinking about me and to also see that she spent 20 minutes on my blog. :)

My diagram muscles no longer feel like someone took a bat to them and I only sneezed 10 times today instead of 100, so I’m not doing too bad right now.

I entered to win a beauty basket from Yves Rocher, who I haven’t ordered from in ages since they stopped selling my 3 favorite perfumes. Browsing their site, though, is a reminder of just how much French I really do know. I just can’t pull it out of thin air on my own if I wanted to say something in French, and can only understand some of it if I read it or hear it. Maybe I’ll enroll in LM’s French courses if we ever move.

But that’s just the thing. Will we ever move??? Every time we find what appears to be a great deal we always discover a nasty catch with it. Last night it was an updated doublewide with the perfect amount of space for just 5K on a lot that rents for $500 a month. But then the ad went on to say the backyard was perfect for a dog, which pretty much tells me that particular park allows people to just toss them outdoors and forget about them.

Tom seemed a bit annoyed with my reluctance at first, but as I reminded him, barking, screaming kids and car stereos are what we’re supposed to be avoiding. So why defeat the purpose and take a place that has “dog hangouts” which suggests that while they may limit the size and number of dogs you can have, they don’t care what you do with them or who it may affect?

Then Tom checked the place out by satellite and OMG! Not only did the roof look absolutely horrible, but the back of it ran alongside a bunch of cramped duplexes. There was a thin block wall between the places, but even he agreed it wouldn’t be worth it. The duplexes may not allow dogs, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have friends visiting with dogs, barbecues, parties, screaming kids, etc. There were also a couple of basketball hoops – right on the street, believe it or not – and any loud car stereos, house stereos or those with drums, bass guitars and shit like that would be heard in the place very easily. There were no dogs allowed in the duplex we lived in up in Oregon, but God just had to see to it that this bitch moved in next to us with a service dog that the management company couldn’t say no to. So why wouldn’t we “happen” to get some extremes and exceptions there, too?

The hunt for the right place may be going frustratingly slow, but all the while our savings is building up and up and up.