I was thinking of Nissan earlier – yes, that was her real name – and looked her up out of curiosity. It’s almost as if she never existed. Almost. All I found was that she’s now 58 years old. She’s that old? I didn’t realize she was that much older than me when I last saw her when I was 22 years old. Then again, I always did go for older women, and the bisexual local bus driver was one helluva hottie. Naturally, the feeling was anything but mutual, even if she hadn’t been with a woman named Julie like she was at the time, which she later split from before marrying some guy.

She and someone else I once knew indulged in some prank calls to me later on. They were actually quite interesting and I was actually disappointed when the calls stopped. But they stopped before I could fully learn who was behind them for sure and what their game was.

I almost feel kind of bad for myself when I think of all the women who so cruelly and needlessly led me on. These days I wouldn’t waste my time on people like this if I could help it, but I wonder… if I had chased men just as often, would they too, have led me on? Was I simply just a magnet for that before I met Tom, regardless of the gender involved? I wonder this at times, but I will never know for sure if they’d have done the same thing. I just know that meeting Tom makes me just as glad things didn’t work out as I was pissed and heartbroken over having my head played with. Fucking bitches. But if karma applies even to those who have wronged me, then they got their own asses dumped or at least led on at some point later on.

Nissan does seem to be single now. I’m not surprised. Gamers like that usually are. Wonder if they ever have any regrets, though. We can’t help who we’re not interested in any more than we can help who we are interested in, but I wonder if they ever said to themselves when the shit hit the fan with whoever they did end up with, “If only I’d see past her shortness. Maybe I should’ve given her a chance and looked beyond her femininity and the fact that she was poor, carless and on disability.”

But people tend to focus more on our negatives than our positives. Just one negative trait, no matter how trivial and harmless it may be, can override dozens of positive traits in the eyes of many.

I wonder how many people I’ve messaged on Facebook that never appeared to get my messages, but that really did and sent a reply I never got. That site really pisses the shit out of me. But with the types of connections I have now over there, it’s not that easy to just dump the damn thing or else I’d do so in a heartbeat like I did with Thoughts. I guess a sensible compromise would be to just not use it as much. I just wish, for once and for all, I could get people to stop “liking” public cover photos. Goes to show that not all my posts or journal entries get read, but oh well. There’s only so much looking out for others I can do anyway. I can’t be expected to protect everyone all the time. I can only warn them about what may happen.

Later…

So what racket will my landlord make for me today that I’ll have to listen to? I’m sure this ONE guy 200’ away will think of something. Should be out working on the land gunning, sawing, drilling, beating or riding around on something. Then again, it is Monday, and those are a little more peaceful.

And why the hell is Firefox crashing on me like crazy all of a sudden? It hasn’t crashed in ages, but today it’s crashed on me 3 times already.

Tom emailed the realtor about the house we’re interested in, and we learned more pros and cons about it. We don’t mind that it’s still not close to where he works, even though gas is sometimes outrageous. He makes a lot of money, the space rent on this place is low, and it’s not like he has to drive that far. In Maricopa, he had a 50-minute drive to work. That was long. It would’ve been close to that amount of time had things worked out with the land we bought in Oregon, too. Here it’s about 25-30 minutes depending on traffic. This may not be the prettiest town, but it’s still a nice little town with enough stores and mostly white people.

He makes something like $600 more than they require, and that’s without OT, and the realtor didn’t mention credit or anything like that. She did, however, say that all the place has is a dishwasher. There’s no range, refrigerator, washer or dryer, and although it looks like it’s got brand-new sculpted carpet, she said it needs new carpet and paint. That seems a bit much for a relatively small house priced at 10K. But then we would be able to pick out what we wanted. I don’t care about the fridge or even the washer and dryer. I was keen on the idea of a combo washer and dryer but we heard those take forever, so a basic washer and dryer is enough. Just to have a washer and dryer – ANY washer and dryer – would be heaven. For years we had to go to Laundromats, then for years, we’ve had to hang clothes. Well, I’m sick of hanging clothes! Our portable washer isn’t that small and actually does a surprising amount. But I can’t do comforters in them and I miss being able to do those at home without having to go to a Laundromat. So a basic washer and dryer are fine. Same with the fridge. We don’t need ice makers or anything like that. We never use ice anyway.

I would, however, love a flat stovetop. That would be so much easier to clean! I HATE cleaning regular stovetops. We might have to get new cookware, but I don’t care. Except for our skillet, our pots and pans are kinda old. We’re not big on cooking, but we do use the stove at times. Not as much as the oven, but we do use it.

As for the carpet, I’d love to get right what they fucked up in Maricopa. I wanted champagne pink carpet, but they didn’t have any pinks. Just neutral colors and blue. So our pink champagne carpet ended up being denim blue. I’d take blue over neutrals, but I’d still prefer pink, lavender or mauve. Even sky blue would be okay.

I don’t know how much of the place has to be painted, but we’d probably hire someone to do it for us if it was that much.

The only other negative I remember was that the ceiling had cracks in it. This means that it either wasn’t set up right or the ground may’ve settled beneath it. She didn’t say it needed to be re-leveled, though.

Outside negatives are, well, I’m not sure about the street. It’s on a corner. The street actually wraps around the place. This is good as it keeps other houses and cars from parking on the left side of it as well as in back, but it could also be bad depending on how often loud vehicles traveled through it and how many mutts were out and about. The pet restrictions there means you can only have one dog, 20 pounds max. I’d still prefer a corner. It’s not as ideal a location as that older house that Tom went to see, but it’s still pretty good.

Another outside negative is the grass (which Andy thought was a hedge) between the places. We’re hoping it’s ours, but if not, that it belongs to the park instead of the neighbors to our right. If it belongs to the park then I should have a better idea of when they’re going to mow it as opposed to if it’s the neighbor’s.

the neighbor’s shed is on the other side of their house, but their porch is next to the place. It’s enclosed, but tell me they won’t be in it with the windows open most of the year AND with their mutt barking at every single sound it hears, and I’ll tell you you’re full of shit. Almost everyone has dogs that can have them, so I’d say that percentage-wise, chances are in the 90s that they’ll have a dog. They may not like having to have it as a pet as much as they’d like to turn it into a lawn ornament, but at least they’ll still have a dog. I’d prefer my rats to live in the living room. But if it was a case of no rats or rats living in the bedroom, I’d keep them in the bedroom if that was the only way I could have them. I LOVE my ratties.

Anyway, it could get a little noisy during the daytime when it wasn’t cold, raining or hot, but it shouldn’t be anything I couldn’t deal with. Even when a place isn’t “noisy” I do get distracted easily and I am a curious person. So if I hear something, I’ll lose my train of thought when writing and be like, what was that? Then I’ll want to go check it out. So I will probably have to run sound machines during the daytime depending on the weather. I still do worry about daytime sleeping and things like landscaping and delivery trucks that could override the sound machines.

There’s definitely no seclusion or privacy like there is here, but I’m not very outdoorsy anyway, and I don’t make a habit of parading around naked in front of open windows, not that I’d be much to look at.

Wax earplugs do block more sound than foam ones, but they don’t render you totally deaf, you can still feel vibrations, and I don’t exactly want to have to sleep with objects stuck in my ear. At least it would’ve been only one ear. My “fake” ear had been bothering me, and Tom could see lots of dead skin built up in it. We oiled it for several days and he was able to get some out. He’s always worried about hurting me, but most of it is scar tissue that has no feeling. I have some feeling toward the outer edge of the canal, but that’s about it.

So those are the negs of the house. The pros are that it’s built like a real house. A modern house. There would be outlets galore in the place, thicker, better-insulated windows, roofing and flooring. The place also has copper wiring, dual-paned windows and washerless faucets. What was a little weird was the shower curtain in the full bath. Starting in the 70s, sliding doors became the norm. Nothing we couldn’t install, though. I like the wood skirting instead of the flimsy aluminum skirting our other place had that sometimes blew away in the fierce winds. Love the solid, sturdy stairs leading to it instead of the cheap wooden stairs that broke at our other place. There are ceiling fans in the living room and I think one of the bedrooms has one, too. Here you can’t have ceiling fans cuz the ceiling is only 7’.

I still want to see the place even if it may not be perfect and even if it goes against my dreams. The few dreams I’ve had did suggest the color blue (this place is blue) or tan, but they also suggest a bigger place in Citrus Heights. The dreams also suggest he’d park on the right of it, not on the left. But not every single dream of mine means anything, so we’ll see. I’d really like to check it out. Yeah, it would cost us several grand to get the appliances, paint and carpet, but I think the low space rent and the house itself would make it worth it.

We agreed we want a “survivable” place should he ever be on unemployment again with absolutely zero savings. We’d probably get the same thing we got last time we were on unemployment - $1200 a month. We barely survived on that here with the rent being $825 and had to play pawn it and do all kinds of other things just to stay afloat. But there the space rent and utilities would equal less than just the rent here. If he kept making the kind of money he makes now, the monthly savings there would be like oh my freakin gawd. Close to 2K a month. OMG, just OMFG. That’d really help cuz when he retires we’re not going to make nearly as much. Probably only around 2K a month if even that, and by then things will be more expensive. But if we saved around 20K a year for 10 years we could be close to a quarter mil, OMG. OMFG.