Before we take off for Home Depot, Target and the pet store for more bedding for the rats, I’m sitting here wondering if tonight will be the last night we ever sleep in this little old trailer. I hope so! They’ve now decided it’s to be 111° in Citrus Heights on Monday. That’d call for one hot move, but it's worth it to move into what will be our home for the next 15 years at the very least. We’re hoping to get the keys by early afternoon tomorrow. Absolute worst-case scenario (since they have the paperwork marked till the 3rd at the latest) is that we move after work on Wednesday. We don’t want to move on Thursday cuz that’s when the parade is going on.

For now, there’s not much else to do other than tie up loose ends and keep on waiting. Just remember that if you’re a friend that I regularly keep in touch with, it could be a few days before I have a chance to get back to you or pick up email and things like that. We should be online pretty much right away, but we expect to be busy settling in and getting to know the place. So just be patient! I won’t forget about you.

Later…

Went out to look at things at Home Depot and get ideas for shades for the bedroom and other things like locks/knobs, ceiling fans for the bedroom, flooring, carpet, etc.

Then we went to the pet store for bedding, but it wasn’t open so we got some from Target, which was our next stop. We got a couple of days of groceries and some more storage bins in 3 different sizes to pack the final odds and ends in. Love the clear ones so we can see what’s in each one without having to not only open them up but also dig through them to see what’s toward the bottom.

Brought in some packing peanuts we had in the shed to pack things like my delicate all-porcelain ballerinas, and next, I’ll clean the smaller cage in the tub, then hose down the big cage. We felt it’d be easier to move them to the smaller cage, even though these humongous rats probably won’t like being stuck in it for a few days. I’ll let them run around loose for exercise like I usually do anyway.

I’m amazed at how many questions I’m still getting on Ask. A few questions, particularly the one about wondering what’s the point of living, and whether or not to confront a friend who wrote that they’re lazy and whiny, seems Aly-ish, but I’m not going to ask her. I figure if it was her and if she wanted to identify herself, she would have.

Anyway, sure enough, we’ve had some delays and now we won’t be getting the fucking keys to our new house till next week. We’re waiting on documents that have been overnighted and need signing, and Brenda has some disclosure forms for us to sign. We don’t know what, though, since we already signed those (no one died there).

Is this where things start going wrong? I asked myself yesterday. Then when we finally do get in does God set the stage for enough things to break to drain our savings, then have him laid off so we can struggle really badly and maybe even lose the place? Well, we’ve got a 1-year warranty for even things as small as a drippy pipe/faucet, and seeing that business is always booming where he works and they just asked him to start a new job there that pays more, I think we’ll be ok. Can’t guarantee that I’ll get as much sleep and peace there as I’d like, but we’ll soon find out.

Our monthly expenses should come to around $1200 a month excluding gas and food. Once the place is paid off, it should be closer to around $900. We now owe 19 grand on the loan. How fast we pay that off will depend on OT, what money I make online, and what I can win.

Escrow has been signed and closed and Brenda took the sellers to do their signing, too. Everything must be precisely worded and in order. Many people refer to these types of homes as trailers or mobile homes and that’s technically incorrect. The correct terms are manufactured homes or modular homes, which are built like on-site homes and don’t have taillights and whatnot on them like the trailer we’re in now does. It’s been taken off its wheels and its steel frame sits on concrete blocks, but this is still a definite trailer. It would blow away in a heartbeat once the first monsoon storm hit the area if it were on our old land in Maricopa, as opposed to the 42,000-pound manufactured home we had on it.

I think they were also confused at first cuz they asked if our new home had already been set up and strapped down (those 3’ screws I already explained). Well, our home isn’t strapped, it’s grounded, but trust me when I say that on the windiest day of all, she ain’t going anywhere.

When it’s super windy here you can feel this place shudder. Arizona would toss this old heap of shit around like it was a toy.

The good thing is that the escrow people will pay for any days after the first that we’re not in our new home. We were also able to cancel the U-Haul without being charged and decided we’ll just spontaneously grab one on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. It sucks that we couldn’t start bringing shit over there (particularly bulky and breakable stuff) over the weekend, but going out of here in one big sweep isn’t that big of a deal. It’s just harder to move from a small place. We’re practically climbing over shit here. There’s no rain in the forecast, so we might move some stuff out onto the porch that’s sealed up in plastic containers.

So it’s just an annoying waiting game we have to play as we’ll be pretty much grounded all weekend, unable to do much but maybe go through the shed and sort through some more things out there and try to organize shit overall as best we can with what little space we have to do it in. I really want to just get the hell over there so we can have fun setting up and enjoying being back on cable for the first time since 2007! Then I can move on to new worries and wonder if I’ll be able to sleep well there and if there’ll be more daytime distractions than I’d like for when I’m up and about. Now would be the perfect time to dive into their pool, but no, we gotta be stuck here over the weekend. I’m dying to dive into their fitness room too, and take advantage of most of their amenities.

It’s to be 105° up here on Monday and 110° where we’re moving to. I hope Nane isn’t back from Spain yet seeing that it’s 55° and raining today in Munich, LOL.

Today’s Tom’s 56th birthday and hopefully it will be celebrated by getting the keys to our new house. If worse comes to absolute worse, we get the keys on Monday and we move out in one clean sweep instead of making half a dozen or so runs over the weekend before renting the truck for the big stuff on Monday as planned.

Damn! Just damn! I never thought this day would come. For years I told myself it would never happen because that’s what I truly believed. But I was wrong. Very wrong.

Anyway, I’m glad I took Tom’s advice and slept a little later. I needed it. I was all wound up from the excitement and had trouble falling asleep. Besides, what good would getting up really early do us when nothing’s open then and we can’t do anything anyway? Tom woke up early cuz he too, is super excited.

Even if we get the keys today, we probably won’t be sleeping at the new place till tomorrow night at the earliest.

Right now we’re changing addresses on some of our online accounts, but I won’t change my town on Facebook till we actually get to it.

Tom’s looking at a new job at work that will call for less OT and more money, but that’s all I can say about that right now. Other than that the hours will be more stable and it involves working more on computers than overseeing warehouse activities.

The only thing I’m a bit concerned with right now is that Kathy hasn’t notified us yet to say they received the final loan document they’re waiting on, and this could pose a potential delay in getting in the house and cause us (as well as others) all kinds of headaches. Let’s hope things continue to run on time!

I’m both nervous and excited to get the move done and over with. I just hope that living there won’t be too much like an apartment complex without the apartments. In the apartments I had back east they pretty much mowed in the summer and shoveled in the winter and that was it. But in the Arizona apartments, there was always, always something going on and a lot more activity. It was a climate thing, of course, but this is a nice climate, too. I just hope there isn’t too much activity going on there, though I think most of it will still be confined to the pool and clubhouse. I sure hope so anyway! They may come around every now and then with a street sweeper, but there are no sidewalks to blow or heavy landscaping to do. Still, I just want to get it over with and see what it’s really going to be like there.

Someone asked if there was any particular event that caused me not to believe in prayer, but nope. It was an accumulation of unanswered prayers that made me a non-believer. Not being granted a singing career (I still can’t believe I ever wanted to do that) was one thing, but what was really depressing and a scary eye-opener was when I was denied a child. It was then that I came to believe that it didn’t matter if what I asked for was off the wall or “normal.” It just had to be me asking for it and it was automatically forbidden.

I’d heard it said that if we prayed for what was fair, right, reasonable and correct, we would receive our request. Was a child not “correct?” Well, perhaps it wouldn’t have been the more I came to value my life and my freedom. After having to deal with other people’s screaming kids for so long I came to realize the value of peace. I also admit I got a bit selfish, not wanting to give up my life to something that would take from us more than it could ever give. You puke your guts out when you get pregnant, you gain a million pounds, you go through a world of pain having it, you get depressed afterward, and then you are swamped with nothing but constant noise and expenses with barely 5 minutes for yourself. Did I really want that? No, I didn’t. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that I had prayed for something that was supposed to be natural and that was when a cold hard reality began to sink in; that either nothing was listening to me, or it simply didn’t give a shit about me.

“Eh, it just wasn’t meant to be,” someone told me.

“But then why pray? If things are either meant to be or not meant to be, why pray?”

But I was stubborn and not ready to give up just yet on the idea of getting God to like/accept me and to give me what I wanted too, even though just the mother He had me born to was enough to tell me otherwise. I prayed for a child. He gave me a miscarriage. I prayed for help with my weight. I now struggle with 30 extra pounds. I prayed that the move from Oregon to Cali would go smoothly. He led us to the streets. I prayed that Tom not be one of the 10% to become unemployed back in 2008. He gave him years of unemployment. And so I quit talking to myself and let fate/destiny play itself out the way it was meant to be anyway. This doesn’t mean I won’t put effort into achieving the things I want in life, it just means that I know I’m on my own. If I’m going to get any of these things it will be because of me only, and if anyone does help me, they’ll walk on two legs just like I do. No, I’m not going to leave my weight to fate. I’m still going to try to diet and exercise and hope my body responds to it. If not then only a doctor can help me. Not any God.

Not one single blessing in my life, from Tom to our new home or from my writing/language abilities to our income has been prayed for. Every good thing I got in life was simply meant to be and I never had to ask for it. They may’ve taken work to achieve, but the point is that I’ve learned that praying doesn’t necessarily equal good things coming my way any more than it means being able to ward off or change bad things that happen. If I’m meant to have something, I’ll get it, and I won’t get what I’m not meant to have either. I know this and I know no prayers are necessary either, but as always, to each their own.

Later…

The Supreme Court ruling that DOMA is unconstitutional yesterday was a great thing. But when will gays be able to marry in every state???

Believe it or not, I’ve got about 90% of this place packed up now, including the mouse that fell prey to the sticky board under the sink. Yeah, he’s been bagged and sent to the outside trash bin. He was so cute, but oh the smell and the turds!

At first I thought the brown paper lunch bags he never used that he got a while back were a waste, but I find them great for mugs, glasses and other breakables.

Had a little scare this morning with the cooler. It was dripping off the roof and I’m thinking, Oh fucking no! Can’t shit just wait 3 more days to break? But Tom climbed up and checked it and said it overflowed a bit but wasn’t leaking. We’ve got triple-digit temps coming up, so it better fucking work!

Guess I’ll go pack and proofread some more and hope there are no delays. We really need them to call with the final numbers so we can make the damn down payment, sign the escrow papers that are set to close tomorrow, and go home!

The people in our house are gone now and I’m getting more emotional (in a good way) as the days begin to melt down into just hours. I think, OMG, this is almost it! Unless a meteorite strikes us dead, a U-Haul is really going to take our perfectly live bodies out of here and not some coroner in a couple of body bags as what came so, so terrifyingly close to being the case.

It must’ve been a sad day for Gene and Audrey, the people we bought the house from. I feel a twinge of sadness for them knowing they’re going into an assisted living apartment just to begin the end of their lives while I’m thinking, OMG, our new home is now sitting there empty just waiting for us and a couple of cute rats!

What I saw in here earlier made me think of going petless once these rats go so we can use the bug plug that emits a high-frequency pitch at the new place. It was the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in the 6 years we’ve been in Cali! I went into the bathroom, parked my ass on the toilet, then sort of glanced upwards. And then I saw it. My vision is so shitty I can’t distinguish small objects, but this thing was SO big that I instantly knew what it was. I shot up from that toilet so fucking fast. I hated to have to run underneath the thing to escape it, and of course you can imagine that trying to pull up your panties while running isn’t an easy thing. I woke poor Tom up to kill it that’s how huge and scary the damn thing was. Its guts are mashed all over the ceiling. If it weren’t for the fact that we’ll be out of here in a few days I’d scrub it off.

That nocturnal nightmare was compliments of the two days of rain we’ve had. We had more rainfall in the last two days than in nearly a year! It was amazing and so hard to believe it was late June and not late fall. We haven’t needed the cooler for two days, and it was also hard to believe that in just a few days we’d be in for triple digits. It’ll be 85° today, then 95°, then over 100°. Today, if I remember, I’ll shoot some of the ugliest exterior pics so we can all laugh at how we had to live for so long, though for the longest time, it wasn’t funny at all.

Tom scheduled the cable to be turned on on Friday. No more shitty slow DSL!!! Woo-hoo!!! And yes, we really are going home!!!

If there is a God up there that picks and chooses what happens to us and if things really do happen for a “reason” and He gets it in mind to beat someone over the head with money, I’ll be damned if it’ll be us. We can’t guarantee we’ll never get cancer or anything like that, but we’re going to always do everything we can to see to it that we never end up back in the poorhouse. But even though he makes a lot of money and the dream premonitions have backed off almost completely, a “bad” money dream would still scare the shit out of me. Once you’ve had just half of the dream premonitions I’ve had you can never ever return to assuming a nightmare was just a nightmare. Psychics go dormant at times. We don’t go away.

The only thing that could delay us is that the loan lady is waiting on one final document. She expects it today, though, and I hope she gets it! We don’t want to have to pay the Jes pest for OT spent here AND the park.

Ok, gotta get packing some more shit. Damn, it’s tough with so little space, but fun! Totally worth it. I think I’ll bag up some of the clothes we don’t wear as much and toss them in some cheap trash bags we got for cans and bottles.

Beat the alarm by 3 minutes and learned that Mark’s surgery went well. They didn’t find anything they believed to be cancerous. But he’s still got his heart, a much bigger issue, to contend with.

Got another super busy day ahead, so I’ve got to make this quick. Amazingly, it rained all day yesterday. It was great. It shut the Jes pest up and made sleeping better. It’s going to rain throughout the morning too, the pest’s prime time. Like I said, though, I’m mostly on days now, so he can’t wake me up. He shouldn’t even be able to annoy me much when I am awake since he certainly won’t be re-roofing or bulldozing anytime soon while the ground is still wet. I’m so glad I’ll never have to hear that insanely loud dozer again!

Tom checks online every day to see if they’ve disconnected their cable so we can get it set up in our name, but nope, not yet. So someone’s still there. That’s no real surprise since they said they would be out by the 28th.

I first want to say that yesterday’s rant about the reverse discrimination running rampant in this country that no one seems to care about, and my lack of trust in God and belief in prayer wasn’t meant to sway anyone’s opinion one way or the other. You’re all welcome to have a mind of your own. Remember, I’m selfish. :) Meaning that I write for myself first and foremost. You readers are just an afterthought, so to speak. I’m going to say what I’ve got to say regardless of whether it’s the “norm” or things others can relate to or not simply because that’s part of what keeping a journal is all about. It’s about documenting one’s life, thoughts, feelings, opinions and beliefs, not about trying to change others. If someone happens to be influenced by anything I’ve written, however, then so be it. I can’t control the world or help what people are going to think or do. I kind of see journaling as I do walking down the street in my favorite shirt. Some will like it. Some won’t. Some won’t even notice. But I like it and that’s all that matters with no offense or persuasion intended.

Having fun making people wait on me on Ask. Nothing from Kathy today, but I got a few questions that might be from Kim. They asked if I had a lot of online friends, if I like getting email, and if I know anyone named Carol. Well, she has a sister Carol, and the other two questions seem like questions she’d ask. Just when I thought she’d forgotten about me.

We went to Walgreens yesterday to take advantage of our AARP discount. You get $10 just for signing up, so the sculpted dog I got was basically free. Getting older has its advantages, though I’m 3 years shy of my own AARP membership. It’s a very realistic-looking sculpt, which I like as opposed to cartoonish-looking things. It’s an Irish Setter holding a ‘welcome’ sign in its mouth.

“Only they’re not welcome,” Tom joked.

LOL, he’s got a point there as funny as it may sound. I’m no social butterfly. I’ll still be seeing a lot more people than I have been when I’m out and about; just not at home. I can’t wait to go swimming!!! It may be a week or two before we finally have the time to do that, but this is a great time of year to be moving. I’d hate to move in December and know I had to wait 5 months or so before I could swim.

The house isn’t as big as we thought it was, according to the appraisers and inspectors. It’s 56’ long by 24’ wide, which comes to 1344 square feet, not that that’s not more than enough room for us. The master bedroom alone is 12x20.

Tom said Jesse was blasting music on Saturday that couldn’t be heard in here. Every time he went outside, though, he could tell he was listening to a Bruce Springsteen concert. He could hear him talking in between songs. His kid is probably there now. Someone’s been there keeping the mutts quiet for the last half a year or so. I’m surprised we never heard his music before. Tom said he thinks he kept it down in the past so as not to annoy us. Well, that’s nice cuz his vehicles, power tools and mutts were certainly more than enough.

We’ve been having amazingly cool weather for June. Although I prefer it hot, it’s better for sleeping. It was nice to be able to shut the bedroom door and window and not have to wear my eye mask when I crashed yesterday afternoon. They say we’re on for rain and sun today and just rain tomorrow, but I’ll believe it when I see it. It’d be awesome if it would rain really hard if only for an hour because then the Jes pest won’t be as likely to do anything down here before we leave, particularly bulldozing and re-roofing. Oh, the work that guy’s gonna have to do in here with all the damn drippy faucets alone! I’m sure he’ll want to balance the doors, too. He may not care that the bathroom door flops open, but he’ll definitely care that I’ve had to make a hook on the wall to keep the bedroom door from flopping shut. Oh, to soon be able to place a door halfway open and see it stay there! The next place is going to have 7 interior doors. I’m not counting bedroom closets cuz those are sliders.

Later…

Tom woke up early because his mind was racing a mile a minute. We’re both excited but also nervous about the move. I’m nervous about what it’ll be like when we get there, and he’s nervous about just getting there. As he said, everything’s running smoothly and that’s the problem, which is exactly what I was thinking. Things just don’t normally go as planned for us yet as far as we know there are no delays to be expected, no one’s out to get us and to ruin our plans, and we’re still on for moving this weekend. After having things go so shitty for us for so long, and after seeing every single one of our plans, simple or complex, fall to pieces, we tend to get a little suspicious when things go well for us. Really, why is life being so good to us all of a sudden? From a logical standpoint, we deserve good things and it’s simply our compensation for the hell we went through year after year, but something up there has a way of seeing it the other way around and I worry that we’re going to pay tenfold for this good fortune we’ve been having.

For now, life is being so good to us that it’s even raining out there as I write this, LOL. That’ll keep the Jes pest at bay. I’m mostly back on days now, though, so it’s unlikely there’ll ever be a risk of him waking me up again. I’ll be setting alarms so my schedule doesn’t jump more than an hour a day. So today it’s into bed at 1pm to read for an hour, then back up at 11pm.

Although we’re not in an area where natural disasters are likely to strike, if something happened that was out of our control like that, that’d be one thing. But if any person, group, agency or whatever even thinks of turning our dreams into a living nightmare like it has in the past I will totally destroy anyone responsible. TOTALLY.

That being said I can move on to say that I’ve organized and packed a few more things. Tom can get tons of boxes at work so that’s not an issue. The issue is where to put them. We don’t have much room to pile boxes in here but some can go out on the porch if they have to. I had my emotional moments along the way thinking, wow! It’s really happening. We’re going home. Yes, we are!

The PTSD still eats at me at times, so it will be nice to finally be in a place that doesn’t have such terrifying and stressful memories attached to it, and that hopefully never will either.

Mark should be out of surgery by now and hopefully, he’ll soon learn that he’s cancer-free!

Kathy’s brother asked again why I’m such a “cray beeyatch,” but I think I’ll ignore his childish shit this time around.

Enjoying our last full weekend under the shadow of the Jes pest, though we’re carrying on with our usual errands. Changed the bed here for the last time and will sleep here just 7 more times!

Heard a mouse chewing like hell somewhere under the bathroom. The next people better hope they’re not afraid of mice cuz there sure are a lot of them here in these woods.

When I realized that focusing too much on my German (thanks to Nane, LOL) was hurting my Spanish and Italian and I was starting to forget some things, I went back to Lang-8 where I can do some quick entries in both languages and have any errors corrected by native speakers. Or at least what should be native speakers anyway. I don’t post what I usually post in English in my regular journals, and my entries there are usually short and sweet. The main idea is to just write a few minutes a day in these languages.

“How many answered prayers would it take for you to believe in prayer?” someone asked me. Well, if half of them were answered I’d say it was a coincidence. If 80% of them were answered then I’d seriously start to wonder if there really was something up there listening to me, but as long as I’m at 5% or less and not seeing us all get everything we want in life (or most of us anyway), then I still say it’s about fate and not what we want/don’t want. But whether or not it’s happenstance or something deciding what we get/don’t get is still a mystery to me.

What the hell’s wrong with the Mac’s mail program? It won’t let me send mail. It asks for my PW but keeps rejecting it even though I know I typed it in correctly. Oh well. Guess I’ll have to send it directly from Outlook till Tom gets up and can investigate.

Why is it that whites are being fired like crazy for racial slurring, yet whenever blacks mouth off about whites no one gives a shit? Just wondering why the double standards and when the hell they’re ever going to end. This trend has been going on since the 90s and it’s getting really old. I was saddened and sickened to read in someone else’s journal that someone on the Food Network channel was fired for using the N-word 25 YEARS AGO while they were being robbed at gunpoint. I don’t know who she was and I don’t watch TV, but that didn’t make hearing about it any less appalling. Yet if a black person gets on national TV and whines about how terrible we white people are and calls us names, it’s perfectly ok.

“We have it all,” they so often complain. We do? Tell that to us when we too, can have a White History Month, white TV station, white pageants, white this, white that WITHOUT being called racists. And also when we can have a black, Hispanic or Asian person charged with any hate crimes against us, and we aren’t getting passed over in the workplace so often for non-whites.

Seriously, instead of being the second angriest group of people who think the right way to solve problems is through public screaming matches or violence, have you ever asked yourselves if maybe it’s about YOU and not your color? Contrary to popular belief, most people really do base their opinions on behavior and not color. So when you treat people like shit and you unfairly play the race card cuz it’s the “in” thing to do today and you know you’ll be believed, what do you expect? For us to pat you on the back and say, “Good job, buddy, good job?”

Other than backing up old journals on MyOpera and a little on Tumblr as well, I really don’t have much to update at the moment. We’re just waiting to move and I’m rolling my schedule back onto days. Amazingly, the Jes pest didn’t come down all week, but next week wouldn’t surprise me. Who knows, though? Maybe he’s waiting till we leave. The better he’s doing financially these days, the more he can take time prepping the place in between renters.

Even though it’s a hassle to work out here since I have to clear so many things away from the treadmill to have room to unfold it, I really gotta walk at least 20 minutes tonight so I don’t start having joint pain. Just one more week of this lack of space shit!

Tammy and Mark continue to have it rough physically. I guess her situation has been the same, but Mark, who not only has to have polyps surgery on Monday morning to make sure no cancer is present, was also rushed in to see his cardiologist. He apparently has a couple of clogged arteries and to quote Tammy's words, “If that one goes, he’s instantly dead. There’s no heart attack, no warning, no nothing.”

So things have certainly been scary, hectic and frustrating for them.

Not surprisingly, Kathy’s shit has started back up again after a few days of silence. I guess she’s my official replacement for Kim unless Kim’s doing a great job of making any of the anonymous questions I get seem like they’re not from her. Her brother – or at least supposedly her brother – asked: why you gotz to be hatin on my sis beeyatch?

I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls and should probably have ignored the “question,” but instead I deleted it and re-asked myself the same question only I changed it to: why you gotz to be hatin on my sis beeyatch?

LOL, I replied with: I’m married, buddy. I look, I flirt, but I definitely don’t date.

This will really fuck with their heads. Hopefully, they’ll think they made a typo. Hahaha

Later…

Nothing from Kathy and her cronies today. Alison said she almost never talks to her but that’s ok because she’s tried to reach out to her before just to be ignored. Well, as I’ve learned, Kathy is a very spoiled, selfish person, so if there’s nothing for her to gain by being closer to Aly, then she won’t bother. I’m kind of hoping she and her family will be too busy to pester people once the kid is born. Why dump someone, though, if you don’t want anything to do with them? I still can’t believe she of all people would dump someone, and then harass them! I’d seen her harass Molly, but that was different, or so I thought. That was her picking on a stalker, not someone she dumped for not being a God-lover.

Aly’s still struggling with skin issues, anemia, insomnia and depression. Others tell her to just “smile” and think “happy thoughts.” God, the day it’s that easy, no one will ever be depressed again! Really, that’s like telling a gay person to just not be attracted to the same sex.

Andy has a form of asthma and has to use inhalers. This sucks, but it’s better than having cancer. Tom has exercise-induced asthma. Strenuous activity can cause him to have a tough time breathing.

Someone on Ask told me that the older I get, the more selfish I get. Gosh, I hope so! I would hope I’ve matured, grown and smartened up enough not to be so damn naïve, trusting and forgiving as I once was. As I told them, I would still help a friend in need, of course, but would be more selective about who I did what for. Sometimes our generosity is taken advantage of and this causes us to be less generous, thus giving the impression we’re stingy. Being too trusting, forgiving and generous can really get us in trouble if we’re not careful. I’ll still help the old lady cross the street, but I won’t give money to the guy on the street and take his word for it that he’ll get the food he needs with it. For all I know that “food” is really drugs, alcohol or cigarettes.

I think most of us become more selfish with age as we lose our sensitivity and care less about what others think of us, how we look, etc.

I get the impression this is someone who’s been reading quite a bit of my journal but won’t identify themselves because it’s someone who knows they’re not supposed to be contacting me. Either that or they’re afraid of me for some reason. Ah, but I don’t bite, so hopefully they’ll step out of the shadows and introduce themselves sometime.

As the move approaches, we begin the last of the last. Last sheet change, last period, last this, last that. I’m so excited and nervous, but fortunately, I’m much more excited.

Can’t wait to be more active and go back to dieting even if it means having to deal with constant hunger again. I once prayed for any God that may be up there and that may hear me to please help me help myself by giving me more strength not to cave into the hunger or take shortcuts with working out, but was ignored, of course. So I stopped talking and started doing, knowing I was on my own, as always. Still not sure, though, if there once was a God who abandoned us and that’s why prayer is just wishful thinking for most of us and why so many people have such shitty lives, or if there is one and it’s just playing favorites. I know some people think it’s the devil that does evil and not God, but if God’s supposed to be the most powerful thing, then why doesn’t He overthrow the devil? Hmm… I gotta go with there being a God that created the universe and the things in it, but that doesn’t have any influence over our day-to-day lives.

BUT… the timing of the job was way too coincidental. I have a feeling that if anything up there did lead us on the road to death, it wasn’t the same thing that saved us for why would you push someone so far into the dark just to yank them out of it at the end? What happened to us was literally like falling from the sky with no parachute just to have a giant hand reach out and catch us as we were about to hit the ground. Things were THAT close to over for us. I don’t know what saved us in the end. I only know it wasn’t God. I don’t know how I know it, though. Just a gut feeling, I guess.

Ok, I should quit analyzing and guessing things none of us can ever know for sure anyway, and go hit the shower.

Just 10 days left! Kathy emailed Tom the insurance forms to print, sign, scan and email back so they can go ahead with the loan stuff.

I’ve been organizing things both on and offline. Every now and then I like to clean out my email accounts and delete everything I’ve received and sent. You just never know if someone may hack in and get the password you may’ve requested or whatever. So I decided it was time to clean house.

Went through some more stuff in the dark, creepy closet, which I won’t miss at all no matter how spacious it may be for a little old trailer, but there’s only so much I can pack right now because most of what’s not yet packed are things we’ll need or don’t have boxes for. The hard part is where to put all the boxes we pack. We’re hoping to bring some big, bulky items over to the house before we get the truck.

The dream I had of Teddy Bear was weird. She was still in her late 30s, as I believed her to be when I last knew her. Only instead of just getting transferred to Madison for flirting with the ladies at Estrella, she was married with a 12-year-old daughter in the dream, rumor had it. The person telling me about it (I don’t know who) said Teddy Bear was from a very conservative, hateful family that pushed her until she succumbed to the pressure and married her high school sweetheart. Or, more appropriately, the boy she pretended to love and be all into, the person also told me.

“So by day she’s following her heart and chasing the ladies, and at night she’s this old-fashioned person going home to this husband and child she never wanted?” I asked incredulously.

The person nodded just as I was coming awake. In real life, there’s no way she’d have ever let anyone pressure her into marriage, kids or both. By then married people having kids was no longer the norm anyway, and then even marriage itself got less common. Too busy trying to keep gays from marrying, I guess, to worry about their own marriages. She also doesn’t strike me as the type to marry another woman, not that Arizona would ever allow it being the bigoted state it is towards people like gays, Jews and whites. Everything down there is basically black this, Mexican that.

Not where Tom works, though, so he’s learning. His place is one of those few places left that still underpays its minorities. Pam, his coworker who also lives in an adult community, says that’s just so horrible and so unfair. LOL, so typical of a white person to say, but I can’t say I don’t agree. I always thought nothing but one’s qualifications should be considered when it comes to employment and that everyone should be paid equally and fairly despite color, race, gender, nationality or sexual preference. But sadly, minorities tend to be favored in most places, gays are still getting fired, and women still aren’t getting the pay men get.

Later…

I guess I’m going to be ghostwriting for Tammy after the move. She’s been wanting to start a journal for a while now but has been too sick to do so. Even when she’s not sick, her meds make her shaky so it’s hard for her to type. Hopefully, by the end of the year, the doctors will have her in much better health than she is now. She’ll still probably have to take medication for the rest of her life, though, even if she doesn’t need the transplant done.

Anyway, I thought of how she paid Sarah to help her around the house and said, “Hey, wanna hire me to ghostwrite your life story?” Well, she is interested in my offer, but we won’t discuss it till we get settled at the new place, though the pay is up to her.

I only ghostwrote one other story and that was Mary’s story, none of which I ever got any credit for. People don’t always realize that not everyone can afford to work for free, and even when they can, they still shouldn’t have to. Nonetheless, I saw it as helping out a friend, or what I thought was a friend. One I also thought trusted me. Sometimes being friends with someone who can’t take us at face value can be as difficult as trying to be friends with those who are crazy. You spend more time trying to reason, assure and explain yourself than you do actually enjoying having them in your life. They’re not worth it no matter how much you may like them otherwise.

Anyway, I am going to be sooo busy after the move, but I look forward to keeping wonderfully busy and active. I just want people to know this if I’m not around as much and not take it personally. Don’t know how much time I’ll have for social sites and blogging, but will still make a point of doing at least one quick entry a day. Work, sweepstakes, writing, language studies, pools, gyms, shopping, decorating… I am sooo excited and it’s going to be sooo much fun! And very time-consuming. Still gotta cook, clean and do laundry, even though I’m not much of a cook. I wonder if there’ll be enough hours in a day to do all I want to do! Can’t wait to do things online I couldn’t do here either at all or very easily – stream movies, download high-res pics, explore new music to add to my music library…

We decided to just start with a new desk and a couch because we don’t want the savings to drop too much. This place is beautiful and affordable, but ONLY if you make good money. Yeah, that’s the only thing I don’t like about this place, besides the bad memories I’ll always have of our toughest and scariest moments in Auburn, it’s NOT unemployment safe. On the bright side, this is easily the most secure job he’s ever had what with all the OT. You don’t usually throw so much OT at people just to go laying them off soon afterward.

It’s going to be so much more fun than the last house we bought. After all was set up and done there, that was it. It was over and I didn’t have much else to do or look forward to. There were no pools or clubhouses I could go to, the Internet wasn’t what it is today, and so there wasn’t much to do other than clean and write. Well, that is until a knock on the door at 8:30 on the morning of January 6, 2000 came and put an end to my boredom. That sure as hell won’t be happening at this place! Not unless it’s in my cards to end up filthy rich after all.

All the little things like changing town names on Facebook (that won’t happen till we get over there) are made more special by the fact that I wasn’t supposed to live to be able to do them. Like drink the emergency water. LOL, yeah, that’s another thing we’ll do in about a week or so is finish off the little jug of water for when the Jes pest would have one of his famous well or pressure tank problems. You see things differently after you’ve stared death in the eye. Things are funnier. Stupid things that you wouldn’t ordinarily laugh about or give a second thought to. Like drinking down that “emergency” water. hahaha

This should be the last night we’ll have to close windows and the cooler vent while we’re still here. Last night got chilly as hell in here. The propane tank hit 12% last weekend, so the next people in here are definitely not going to take many showers at our expense, LOL.

No calls or emails today, so I guess everything is on track as scheduled. No bad dreams either.

Been having dreams of Teddy Bear, the one woman I came to really truly love (though I have had feelings for a few others) after getting married. She really taught me a lot. For one, she reminded me that some people are full of shit no matter what they say, and yes, no matter how in love and committed you are to one person, people can still be attracted to and even have feelings for others along the way. We really are only human.

I wonder what her life is like today. Is she still a detention officer? Or did all that flirting finally catch up to her and get her fired? I wonder about Palma and Pérez, too.

Jesse let me sleep so far this week. I’ve had the sound machines cranked up and I’ve also added an earplug to my good ear for good measure. If he’s been down here I haven’t heard him. I don’t think he has been, though, as there’s no evidence of weeding, trimming, bulldozing or anything.

The Jes pest is almost just a memory and I’m wondering why the heavy period. So much for menopausal dreamin’.

I’m also wondering why I’m still Stephane’s only friend on Facebook. If it weren’t for a fellow VH sister confirming that she’s another “sister,” I’d be beyond suspicious. But why join FB just to friend only me, someone she never met? She was at VH from 1984-1986 and I was there from 1982-1984.

Poor Nane was sick, but will soon be off to enjoy a vacation in Spain!

I hope Alison’s doctor’s appointment went well today. The poor girl’s skin is all broken out and she’s lucky to get just 2 hours of sleep a night. Damn! I can’t even live on just 6, so I don’t know how she does just 2. Her last round of blood tests came back as “unusual,” so I worry about her. She herself says she doesn’t know how much more she can take. She’s been as cursed medically as we were financially.

At this point, I’m just hoping to hell there are no last-minute delays. Things have been running smoothly and on schedule so far which is pretty damn amazing for us, so that’s why I worry someone’s gonna throw a kink in our plans at some point. I hope not, though! It’s just that no one’s asked us for money yet and we can’t get in the house till we make the down payment. The loan lady said everything’s fine, so I guess we should just trust her and assume she knows what she’s doing.

Why has life been so good to us lately anyway? I wonder. I know we deserve this compensation after the hell we went through for so long, but still, I’m not used to things going this well for this long and I tend to get a little suspicious when they do. I suppose I should just shut up and enjoy it! If the shit’s gonna hit the fan again at some point, and if there really is a God that’s pissed off at what we’re doing and is going to “punish” us with breakage or health issues, there’s nothing we can do about it now.

I laugh to myself when I read back on some of my old journal entries. Damn, was I naïve! Back when I didn’t always talk right, sometimes by choice when I’d alter words, I then saw it as cute, creative and funny. But like most people when they get older, what I once saw as cute now seems immature. Sometimes it still brings humor to me (if not convenience) to either abbreviate or alter words amongst friends and whatnot, but if I were reading a journal like mine from the 80s and 90s I wouldn’t take them very seriously or consider them very bright. I guess that the more serious I became about writing, the less I wanted to sound like I was in my teens or 20s, unless it’s a character in one of my books that’s that age or something.

The growing illiteracy rate and poor spelling, grammar and punctuation are still alarming. Especially when people are looking for love or jobs where the last thing you want to come off as is some dumb-ass, uneducated person from the slums. As a writer, though, you tend to not only hate it when you make a typo, but you notice the errors of others more and are more annoyed by such things, especially when the writing is so bad you can’t even understand them or you have to read whatever it is they wrote a few times just to get what they’re trying to say.

OMG, this is so fucking funny! I walked into the room Tom was in and said, “Wow, someone on Ask asked about my unfinished Bunny Nose story. I’m surprised anyone remembers that. I told them that I plan, as time permits, to finish that and other unfinished stories I’ve put off once we get moved, or something like that.”

Then I pointed to his eye that’s been watery for some reason and said, “You still have a crying eye.”

“Yeah,” he said, “That could be Bunny Nose’s sequel; Crying Eye.

LMAO!

I may eventually share stories, or at least parts of stories, in my blogs. Can’t share anything that’s already been published, though, and if I post anything that I later end up getting published, I’ll have to take those posts down.

Tom and I are having a relaxing anniversary. The only real work I’m doing is laundry, though I don’t mind. I hope I will be able to say on our 20th anniversary how wonderful our first year in our new home has been, and not that the people there have pestered us or that we’ve had all kinds of problems with the house or anything like that.

I don’t like that Mary was in my blog if only for 20 seconds. What for? I don’t want to be friends with her again, so why can’t those who either dump me or that I dump just let go? Just ignore me and move on, goddamnit! But it’s like no one’s willing to forgive you when you try to apologize and resume your friendship with them, yet they sure won’t leave you alone for long if you’re the one that decides to walk away.

I accused her of having trust issues and being paranoid, but again, Jenny had a point in saying I was “almost” paranoid. How do I know she isn’t coming in to see if there’s something she can sue me for? Until she loses her rich “BF” she could use extra money, no doubt. I still worry that within a few months after the move God will send someone or something to fuck it up for us. If not to the devastating degree that the freeloaders did, then to at least be a highly annoying long-term issue that we’ll be less than thrilled to have to be dealing with when all we want to do is live our lives in peace and enjoy our new home. Well, we WILL fight back this time. Sure hope we won’t have to, though.

Got a couple of messages from Tammy. Because she spoke for 12 minutes and is putting off her health issues till the fall (due to Mark’s issues), I’m hopeful she won’t need the transplant and that her condition won’t get any worse. It’s still not the greatest, though. She’s not physically up to traveling. But she really wants to see us and says they could help with tickets. I think we could swing it ourselves and then she could just house and feed us. But if we really do go there, it’s way in the future. We need to move and get settled first, plus we have a trip to Hawaii coming up this winter.

Also, if we did go there it would only be for a few days. I’d hate to go there and not see Andy, so I guess we could rent a car and have him either drop down and meet us in CT, or we could shoot up over the MA border before we were due to go to the airport or something like that and see him if only for an hour or two.

She said, “I know you don’t like big dogs, but Peppy’s a real baby.” LOL, baby or not, 86 pounds is more than half my body weight! But does SHE realize how big these rats are? They’re like guinea pigs only skinnier, cuter, smarter, and with pointy noses and 8” tails that are about a half-inch thick at the base. Romeo loves to chase the dusting wand when I wave it around, and Sugar’s a real sweetie. Very playful, but gentle, unlike Romeo who can get to really nipping at times. Sugar literally stands straight up when I open the roof of the cage and gives me hugs and kisses.

Tammy’s been redecorating and installing new carpet and flooring so things have been hectic for her. The girls and Mark help her with what she doesn’t have the lungs to do.

Been having fun getting ideas online for new stuff of our own.

I love knowing we’ll soon be getting right what they fucked up on in Maricopa. Besides, our choices were so limited there. It was either white linoleum for the floor or “wooden” linoleum. I chose the white but of course it was marred with streaks of red where they made vent cut-outs and the lazies never cared to fix it. The pink Champaign carpet ended up being denim blue. Better than neutral colors, but still not what I wanted. I was thinking I may go with crème colored furniture with a medium shade of pink carpet, but that’s subject to change.

I love how I’ll get to pick out 3 different designs for floors. One for the kitchen, one for the master bath, and one for the second bath and laundry area. I like the bamboo wallpaper in the master bath and don’t want to redo that, so I’ll probably get something that will go with that. I don’t remember the wallpaper in the other bath, and the kitchen was boring.

I am sooo excited about our new home and all the fun games and activities I look forward to when I’m not writing or doing other work. I had said that I’d always feel some degree of resentment that we had to live so shabbily for so long, and while that’s true, a small part of it ended up being by choice so that we could really live it up in the end. We could’ve moved years ago. We just didn’t want to rent another dump or buy an old dump in a dumpy park with no pool. But because we lived cramped in here for so long we can now enjoy a luxury home in a luxury park with tons of amenities. I am NOT going to let any person, group or God ruin things for us there either. Oh no, not this time around! If anyone makes trouble for us we WILL fight back and we WILL win. Sure hope we won’t have to bother, though. Can’t imagine we would, but that’s just my paranoid side coming out after meeting with disasters of different kinds in two other states.

I laughed when Tom reminded me that we gotta “act” like old people at the pool. No diving, handstands or horseplay. It’ll still be fun, even if all I can do is float and swim.

I am having the PMS from hell with the water bloating. It’s really ridiculous that a 47-year-old has to have a uterus. Why does God hate women so damn much? Better yet, why did He create us if He knew he hated us? Just to have someone to pick on?

Less than 6 more hours till our 19th wedding anniversary! Not bad for one who once could barely keep a relationship for more than 5 minutes. If I wasn’t busy getting dumped I was busy realizing fast what a mistake I’d made in which case I was doing the dumping.

No one could ever compare to Tom no matter what they said, did, earned or looked like!

The real mystery is who the hell really is fucking with me on MD. I still say Kathy was behind some of it, but in regards to my saying how much I liked the motto “Freedom of speech is wonderful, right up there with the freedom not to listen,” I also said that any decent lawyer would’ve told that sick fuck of a twist next to us in Phoenix, “You had the right not to read your mail. No one forced you at gunpoint!”

Then someone with a bogus email came in with: then stop crying that people are responding to your emails idiot!! hah

What emails??? Kim would use words like “idiot” and “moron,” but we haven’t exchanged emails in like forever. Kathy and I never responded to emails. That leaves one very chilling possibility. Yeah, the black bitch in Phoenix. She’s the only one who “responded” by running to the pigs if the pig was even real at all. The only people I exchange emails with are friends and family. Regardless, their statement still makes no sense in response to what I wrote.

Aly just emailed me saying she wondered if Jenny could be behind the messages, cuz a mutual friend of hers and Kathy’s said Kathy was on vacation. Yeah, that’s what someone said on Ask. But someone connected to Kathy was harassing me.

I’ve got comments disabled for all blogs. That way if anyone there gets curious enough to look us up and they find my blog, they can’t say, “Hi, it’s so and so from the park. Welcome to LV!” I’d not only want to wring their necks for that, but I’d be like, jeez, why don’t you just spill our address and socials, too!

Didn’t hear from the Jes pest today, though I didn’t get up till noon. He was ATVing to the electrical box when we returned from yesterday’s signing. Brenda had wanted to be there but she had her own signing to attend to. Brenda’s been asking weird questions and we suspect she may have it in for Joy and want to catch her doing something wrong so she can complain on her. When the park changed management they fired everybody cuz they wanted to hire their own staff. So that’s why Brenda isn’t too fond of Joy.

I’m enjoying the beginning of the end of our time here in this little shitbox. Just changed the sheets and should only have to struggle to make this bed, with barely any space to one side and the foot, one more time!

I just hope nothing critical breaks in our last two weeks here and that that damn pest lets me sleep next week! I need to make one more schedule flip before we get out of here. I’m sure he’ll douse the tanks with bleach at least one more time, though. I hope he’s doing ok financially. The more desperate he is, the quicker he’ll want to start prepping the outside so he can get this place listed faster. On the other hand, it shouldn’t take him more than a day to bulldoze and trim some trees, so long as he doesn’t plan to paint or do anything too extravagant.

Except for the seclusion, I’m not going to miss this place one bit. I took some indoor pics of the ugliest parts of this trailer – behind the toilet, the mismatched bathroom colors, the hallway ceiling/grille, and I just shot the ugly kitchen door, too.

There’s always this faint smell of propane every time I get near the stove like there’s a leak or something. I’m not going to miss that either!

Tom said his coworkers were all jealous of us when he told them all about the place, LOL. Good and bad news for him there. He may continue getting the entire weekend off, but the weekday OT isn’t going to end anytime soon, but at nearly a grand a week it’s hard to complain. He only worked a half-day today due to their systems being down for maintenance but was paid for a full day’s work.

I can’t wait to explore the funhouse, as I’ve dubbed the clubhouse, more thoroughly. I’m surprised how deserted it was. You had half a dozen people at the pool yet not a single soul in sight at the funhouse. I suppose I should be more correct in my journal and call it the clubhouse cuz no one’s going to have a clue as to what the hell I’m talking about otherwise! Oh, there was a billiards room too, but I don’t think I’ll care for that.

The appraisal and inspection were done and everything’s looking good. They found a few minor things. The shower drain in the second bath is loose and the dryer vents underneath the house so there’s some lint down there, not that we care. Some small cuts in the kitchen floor (I remember those, though we’re going to replace the flooring anyway cuz it’s dull), and a few nicks in the outside trim. There’s a small dent in one of the carport supports too, which we may wall off into a garage so Tom could work on the car inside of it if he needed to. They don’t allow that there otherwise.

They’re installing a carbon monoxide monitor, and that was pretty much it. The report was emailed to Tom with very specific photos and descriptions. The patio table and chairs are still there, along with some wind chimes. I also liked that I didn’t see two new vehicles or something like that in next door’s driveway which was visible in one of the pics.

I may bitch about the high space rent, and I may worry about things going wrong and setting the stage for us to return to financial disaster (with a little help from whatever’s above that wasn’t very kind to us for so time), but it’s actually one of the cheapest there because the last people were there for so long. Most of the lots are over $800, as with most of the luxury parks in the area. I would have been thrilled and stunned to know we were going to a 1975, 1000-square-foot elevated home in a typical senior park, but a 1983, 1550-square-foot ground-level home in a luxury park is just mind-boggling! I just never would’ve believed it after living so shabbily for so long.

There are 3 trash bins. One’s for regular trash, which gets picked up weekly. Then there’s one for recyclables and one for green waste. They get alternated each week but picked up on the same day as your regular trash.

At first I wondered how the hell to care for all the trees and plants and what needed to be watered when, but it turns out there’s a drip system in place that’s on a timer located underneath the house. We just have to trim whatever needs trimming.

They had water problems due to some people landscaping in areas they shouldn’t have and damaging some pipes. We may get a couple of 5-gallon gravity-fed water tanks for the toilets just in case, but we don’t know for sure yet. Joy said it’s only occasionally that they have to turn the water off and usually only for a couple of hours.

We may eventually switch to LED lighting because it’s even cheaper than fluorescent. It’s costly at first but will pay for itself in a year, according to Tom’s research.

I love the opaque curtains throughout the place that lets light in but keeps eyes out. I used to be more into blinds, but I’ve gotten sick of them cuz they’re a bitch to dust. These I can just toss in the washer every now and then. The only room I want dark is the bedroom, but it will be in such a way that will be easier to let light in whenever I want to. Here I have rods holding blackout material flush against the window. I can take it out in seconds, but it looks ridiculous without curtains and having to flip the bottom of the material over the outer rod. There I intend to get room-darkening shades with blackout drapes like they use in hotels.

I was bummed to learn the bedrooms have no overhead lights. I hate lamps that operate on wall switches that you plug into special plugs! I used to hate entering a room at night, flipping on the switch, then turning the lamp off using the lamp’s switch, then going to flip the wall switch on the next night just to find it was already on but the lamp was off.

I’ll have to get a really good lamp in the master bedroom and probably more than one. That’s a HUGE room! I won’t use it as much, though, since I now read with the Kindle, but I still want to have something for when I’m going through drawers and closets at night.

I read the resident directory and it turns out that Gene and Audrey S are in our house now, and Robert and Virginia S are next door. Tom thinks they’re older than us, saying that there aren’t many younger Virginias. I would’ve really preferred not to have any male neighbors, though. They’re the ones more likely to be out in their garages hammering, sawing, etc.

The only other name I remember is Marion because that’s – what the fuck is our current “male neighbor” (the Jes pest) up there gunning at 8:30 at night? – Nane’s first name.

Other than for Tammy, Andy and Nane, I will have to be sure to edit out any info that could identify the specific park we’re in, even though the back gate is always locked and the front one is locked at night. If you go to the side of the guardhouse that isn’t gated in front, the tire spikes will be sure to get you. :) I love that security feature! If you drive up to the gate from the inside, it will automatically open, but you need either a code or a transmitter to get in. Might have to have any food deliveries done before 8pm cuz they ask that you don’t give the code to anyone. So… unless you climb the wall, make sure you have about $450 set aside for new tires cuz you’re getting tire-spiked if you don’t live there! I’m sure some of the residents give the code out to some of their family and friends, though. We’ll have to either pick Tammy and Mark up from the airport or have them come in the daytime if they rent a car. If they arrive after dark it’s still no biggie cuz one of us could walk to the gate with the transmitter if we had to.

Got up at 10:30, listened to the Jes pest cruise around on the ATV (probably to pick up our trash at the fork), then Tom and I headed for the park shortly after he got home at 12:30 for what turned out to be a very long and tedious meeting. But Joy was nothing like Stacy, nor did she look like I pictured her to look like. She wasn’t snippy and she wasn’t the frail, old, gray-haired woman with short hair I expected to see. She was around my age and was tall and heavy. She had long straight black hair to her waist and looked to be American Indian.

We had to sign so many damn forms it reminded me of when I first met with Scot back in 2001.

The diagram of trees and bushes on our lot was initialed with B’s, T’s and C’s. I joked about them meaning bitch, tit and cunt, but we really knew the B’s and T’s were bushes and trees. But we didn’t know what the C’s meant till we asked her and she told us cypress trees. So that’s what those tall skinny, boring trees are called that you see all over Tuscany, huh? She asked that we keep them at 6’ and clear of the ground to deter rats, possums and skunks from wanting to nest inside them. I almost lost it when she mentioned rats and put a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing, knowing what rats were going to be nesting inside our place, but skunks? I thought we were getting away from those things there. We wonder where the turkeys sleep at night but didn’t think to ask her.

I was hoping she’d volunteer some info on the neighbors but didn’t want to seem nosy by asking. I’m curious, but at the same time, I really don’t want to know they exist.

She asked about pets, and while we are allowed to have small indoor pets like birds, fish and rodents, we decided it’d be best to just say we were petless, figuring what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Allowed or not, most people there wouldn’t be thrilled at the thought of any of their residents having a couple of monster-sized rats. “Things like fish are fine, just no big snakes or lizards,” she said.

I faked a shiver, pretending to be afraid of reptiles and rodents alike, LOL. Giving someone the gift of ignorance really can be bliss for them, though we have no desire to get any reptiles. The rats wouldn’t like that, I’m sure.

There are some things she said I liked and some I didn’t. I’ll start with the things I didn’t like and save the good things for last. My biggest concern is being pestered with various activities and being inconvenienced more than I’d like, but I doubt it could be any worse than it has been here, and there it will at least be worth it and we’ll be in a place that’s ours. They have water issues where they have to turn the water off to the park for a couple of hours on occasion. I guess that due to the park being old they’ve had to make some repairs.

It may have already been done but if not I’ll have to deal with someone going underneath the house and installing a water meter in the crawl space, then placing a box outside the place. I won’t have to go to the door, though, or let anyone in. As Tom reminded me, we won’t be renting anymore. They don’t do inspections and we’re not obligated to let anyone inside if we don’t want to.

What really sucked to hear about is the July 4th parade they have. They’ll be marching through the park that day and I really hope I’m on days that day! I should be. I also hope they don’t have many events that spill outside the clubhouse and into the entire park like that. Joy said they go “all-out” and even get kids and grandkids into the July 4th parade. Ugh. :( I wasn’t at all thrilled to hear this. Isn’t loud music and kids what we want to avoid and the whole reason for going to a retirement community?

Another thing I didn’t like is that they deliver a newsletter to the door on the first of every month, though Tom says they probably wouldn’t knock, and if they did we could ask them not to.

Lastly, and what I’d say is my biggest concern, is the space rent. It’s high even though it’s one of the lowest in the park, and will increase every year. We signed a 5-year lease instead of a 1-year lease since that’d keep it from increasing as much. Tom said that after doing the math we shouldn’t even hit a thousand a month for over a decade. Still, $747, plus trash, water, sewer, cable and electricity means we really gotta keep our savings up and hope he never gets laid off until and if he ever changes jobs. He might too, cuz he thinks he can get an even better-paying job without all the OT and with even better benefits. Well, like I said, I just hope nothing up there decides to “punish” us for finally getting ahead and getting the things we deserve in life after so many years of struggling and having to do without things, cuz we couldn’t afford this place on less than $10 an hour. Then again, we survived this place at $825. It’s just that there were no mortgage payments or utility bills to pay other than propane and our cheap, shitty DSL. If the space rent isn’t paid by 5pm on the 5th, you get a $25 late fee and another one if it’s not paid by the 15th. We’re looking at a minimum of 3K when he retires and he knows money better than I do. So if he says we can handle it, then I’m not too worried. The mortgage should be paid off in a couple of years.

There’s a $50 fee for those who stay with you for 30 days (thought it was a few days). After that, they have to apply to live there or vacate.

This entry’s getting so long and I’m never going to get everything written that I want to write about if I keep goofing off, so I’ll just wrap this one up and continue on later with the park’s pros, and there are many!

Later…

Ok, back to the pros and cons of the park. Well, I don’t want to mention too many in public, but I will say that Tom and I were laughing over the thought of people who know we live there thinking we were snobs cuz it’s a luxury park. Like people from my hometown of Longmeadow, MA were considered snobs whether they were or they weren’t. LOL, it’s definitely the Paradise Valley, AZ of parks. Well, maybe runner-up, but close enough.

The meeting with Joy took an hour. I was telling her how excited I was to enjoy so many things I had to do without for so long.

“Oh yeah,” she said with a knowing smile, “you never really miss something until you’ve had to do without it. Do I ever know that.”

Do you know what it’s like to believe you’re going to die? I thought. This event in our lives is made more special by the fact that this dream was never supposed to become a reality. We were supposed to die instead. But then a miracle saved us and we could eventually think of all the things that were well overdue for us. Well, on June 28th we’re coming to collect!

Talk about being forever burdened with shitty memories, though. I had described the mutt barking out of the window next to the last place we saw as a real “punch in the stomach.” But that day Tom confirmed one of my latest dreams (or nightmares to be more precise) had become a reality, it was beyond physical. It was a death sentence that was worse than having a million knives twisting and turning in your gut. Those things we read in books about our hearts jumping into our throats or sinking to the pit of our stomachs – well, I sure learned that day that these are very real feelings indeed, and I will have to live with the horrible memory of the stress, fear, depression and anger I suffered thanks to a bunch of greedy bankers, a corrupt government, and a God that didn’t give a damn.

So while I’ll always appreciate our blessings, the PTSD will always be a little cloud hanging overhead and I will always remember the utter horror of trying to imagine us sealing ourselves in the bedroom, lighting charcoal and dying in each other’s arms while not at all being able to imagine dying of starvation on the streets. We just had no idea at the time that Tammy would’ve helped us, even if it meant we’d have had to abandon everything and fly to her place, and well… tears are starting to trickle down my cheeks. Sorry. Then again, no, I’m not sorry. Like Jenny said, I do my best. :)

But not all memories of my 5 years in this dumpy little trailer nestled in the woods with the pesky landlord are negative. Look at all I’ve learned. Look at the wonderful people I’ve met… Nane, Aly, Mitch, Adonis… and the people I’ve reunited with… Tammy, Andy, Eileen, Rosa and so many more.

My language count has doubled and I’ve published books and shared my journal (some of it anyway) for all the world to see. Yeah, I’ve picked up a few trolls along the way, but many people have left very positive, interesting, encouraging and enlightening feedback.

I still can’t keep a schedule and I never conquered my driving phobia and have seen my share of death, one of which greatly saddened me (my foster mother’s), but I never had to go through any of it alone. I always had the love of my husband by my side, the husband who would’ve refused to let me die alone, even though he probably could survive the streets, unlike me, for at least a while.

I’ll never forget the day I sat in this chair I’m sitting in right now, after we were miraculously saved, realizing that that would probably have been the day when Jesse would have discovered our bodies.

I got a bit off-topic and rambled again, LOL, so I’ll finish (hopefully) in my next entry.

Later…

Ok, now I’ll finish up with today’s meeting once and for all. You can learn a lot in an hour and end up with so much to write about, though many details will not be made public despite how secure the park is.

While we were signing the lease and making it real, Tom wasn’t sure what DOB to put on the escrow papers on the 28th when he goes to sign them since he won’t be 55 anymore at that time, haha. Either way, signing those papers will REALLY be what makes it official.

“You guys just barely made it, age-wise. Seems like you had a plan,” Joy said.

Oh, we had a plan, all right. We started talking about adult communities back in Phoenix. What with the chaos the welfare bums and a few others in the neighborhood put us through, I wished to hell we could be in one. But we were only 27 and 35 when we met.

I also laughed when I took note of how dusty Joy’s office was. She could use Andy to clean for her. Hell, I’m so sick of cleaning that I’d have him come clean our house every 10 days or so if I could when both our schedules permitted it, give him $50 - $75 bucks or so, and let him eat or drink anything he wanted while he was tending to all 1550 square feet of the place. But cleaning the place will be well worth it and it’s good physical activity.

I’m so glad we gave this park a chance! I was so tempted to just blow it off. I really didn’t think we’d get in no matter how much money we made. I remember how excited Tom was about it when he first saw it and told me about it, and I was like, “A luxury park? Are you kidding?” He was like, why not at least try? “It’s a freaking luxury park,” I insisted. “Since when do we get to go first class? Really, all spacious modern doublewides and tons of extra goodies? Us? No freaking way! Your average house there sells for $65,000.”

Another con was the resident directory listing everyone’s name, address and phone number, but she said that was strictly optional and that we don’t have to be listed. Good, because I’d rather not give our number out to just anyone, and as Joy said, there’s no guarantee the info would stay in the park.

There were a surprising number of singles in the directory and a Marion on our street, LOL. Several German names, too. I can’t remember them now, but I smiled at some funny ones Andy and I would’ve loved to have called back in our days of mischief. Gene and Audrey S are the ones in our house now and my best guess is that Robert and Virginia S will be our neighbors. They need to hire me to edit their newsletter, though, if they think they can tell us not to take our smoke detectors for “granite.”

Another pro is that the lease can be broken with a 60-day notice and intent to sell. So we’re not locked in or anything like that which is great even though I think I’ll love it there. I sure hope so! I still worry about vehicle noise waking me up when I’m on nights, but we’ll see.

The park has way more amenities than I realized. I knew there was a clubhouse and that they had various groups that got together – computer groups, choir, and things like that. But when we were given a tour of the clubhouse (I’d hate to live directly across from it and deal with all that traffic), we were like, wow! There’s a big main room, which can be rented for special events. This is where bingo is held every Thursday night, which I was delighted to hear they have. They had bingo nights where my parents once lived and I hoped this place would, too. “Of course they would,” Tom said, “Old people love bingo.” LOL, I sure felt like we were young and even good-looking compared to most of the golden oldies we saw. Anyway, they had a big bingo board where they light up the numbers. You play for cash prizes, but I don’t know how much it costs to play.

There’s so much to do there! Their fitness room was state-of-the-art! Treadmills, elliptical machines, bikes, and even a modern Bowflex gym (we had one in Maricopa). I’m definitely getting this weight off no matter what and I intend to drop a good 6-8 dress sizes even if it takes me a year to do it. To each their own with their weight and bodies, but unless it turns out that I do have some medical problem or have to take any medication that causes weight gain, I have no excuse and no one to blame but myself for my own lack of physical activity and overeating. No, I don’t eat like a pig, but it doesn’t take much to put on extra pounds at this height and age. I’m not looking forward to the constant hunger, but the diet part is just as important, if not more than the exercise part, particularly for women. We gain and retain fat more easily than men. I still have a lot of muscle which is part natural for me, part working out for many years on a mostly consistent basis that had an accumulative effect, but I just may go all out and get really ripped!

They also have water aerobics, which may be fun, too. At first I thought of selling our treadmill, but I can’t go there to work out at 3am if I wanted to, so their gym will be just to add variety to my workout when I’m up and about when they’re open. This way I don’t have to just use a treadmill. I can choose to ride the bike one day and then use the elliptical the next day if I want to, and then there’s swimming when weather permits. The pool is solar-heated. Joy took us to see the pool where about 6 women and men over 65 were having a blast. I love how visiting kids are only allowed there in the mornings. This way we can go there in the afternoon when it’s warmer and know we can swim without some brat screaming in our ears.

Other fun goodies at the clubhouse are Bridge and card games. These things don’t interest me, but they have a book and video library and puzzles you can borrow. I only read ebooks, but now that we’ll actually have a table big enough for puzzles, we can borrow some of theirs or get our own and then donate them when we’re done. The pool, fitness room and bingo will be my main things. I’m not interested in the bocce court or the potlucks or anything like that. You have to bring a dish that serves 8-10 too, and I’m no cook. I laughed when I remembered Andy and I bringing empty plates to the apartment complex we lived at in Arizona 20 years ago for some slop they were serving. We thought “bring a dish” meant to bring an empty dish to pile the shit on, not bring your own slop to share with others while you ate their slop. LMAO!