April 2012 in 2010s

MONDAY, APRIL 30, 2012
Right now I feel like my body has been used as somebody’s punching bag. My diaphragm muscles are sore as hell from all the sneezing I did thanks to my last allergy attack. I gotta wonder how they can get so sore with the hundreds of ab crunches I do nearly every day! I also feel like a giant water balloon being a week away from my period.

Because it only cost a few bucks, Tom grabbed a new float for the cooler and is replacing the old one. So maybe the thing will stop leaking in the mornings like it has been. But this way he can let Jesse know when he pays the rent that he replaced it, along with the valve in back, and hopefully that’ll keep him from coming down here.

We went a record 4 weekends in a row with no barking, in case I haven’t already said so.

We were discussing the pros and cons of owning versus renting. I do miss being our own boss of the place and us being the ones to have the say in what happens when (unless it’s an emergency) and not having to ask permission like children to do this or to do that. I definitely miss that much. Tom loves to tinker with things and to build things too, so he kind of misses doing more of that.

But what we don’t miss is having to pay for whatever breaks. Especially if it costs more than just a few dollars like a hot water tank does.

I was surprised to see so many 3-bed, 2-bath houses in decent enough condition selling for just 85K with monthly payments between $450 - $650. But the problem is the down payment. One wanted 16K and that may take us another year or two of staying here to come up with, assuming he didn’t get laid off and nothing else came up to throw a curveball at us which, in the end, could end up causing us to stay here longer quite unnecessarily. We could end up wishing we’d gotten the hell out when we first had the chance and just rented a place in an adult community.

That’s another thing; these houses we looked at online are in the mainstream. It’s weird, but true that rentals in adult communities are cheaper while the houses sell for more there.

Tom just said that statement was wrong and that we couldn’t literally end up staying for nothing. If we stayed longer (though right now I highly doubt we will), we’d only have even more money to move with, and anything that could come up unexpectedly here vs. an adult community rental would be easier on us here because it’s cheaper here. Our rent is $825 and all we have to pay for is propane (about $800 a year). A rental in an adult community would probably be another $100 in rent, plus a couple hundred for electricity.

It’s something we’re going to have to investigate further and ask ourselves if being put out another year or two is worth the lower payments in the end and having a place that we’re the boss of.

I’d be worried as hell about the neighbors, though, if we were back in an anything-goes neighborhood. I’ve had too many bad neighbors for too many years not to know that God above would be sure to pick out the absolute worst neighbors possible for us. I would normally choose financial savings over noise, but if that noise is anything like it was in Phoenix, I would rather pay more for some peace. But we couldn’t possibly know how bad it may be till we got there, and it’s harder to sell and move from a house than from a rental. In an adult community, I may get barking dogs and I may have to listen to car door slamming from their daily company and I may have to listen to car stereos, but there’s the potential for twice as much trouble in the mainstream. Do I really want college kids to the left, welfare bums to the right and the Brady Bunch across the street while I listen to 6 barking dogs all within a 100-foot radius of our place? Having my peace disturbed so I can’t hear myself think when I’m awake is bad enough, but to be woken up constantly is really bad.

So even if someone handed us the money right now for a down payment, we couldn’t know what we were getting into for sure till we got there. The few times I did get the luxury of being able to say, “How nice it is to finally have a good, quiet neighbor,” they would up and move and in would come trouble. Yeah, I actually had a few quiet neighbors over the last 20 years. A black guy who lived below me in the 2nd Crystal Creek apartment, and a white guy below me in the 2nd Vista Ventana studio. But it was so hard to really enjoy the peace they gave me when everyone else around them was acting like a bunch of wild animals.

We wouldn’t want to sit back and just take it if we ever again had a neighbor who was a genuine, honest-to-God problem by most people’s standards, but what happens if we lodge a city complaint against someone who isn’t white and who has the wrong connections and no one who ever questions their credibility just like in Phoenix? Then whatever they decided to do to me on account of it would be considered “justifiable retaliation” and it would be my word against theirs simply because I’m white.

I wish that just like we have adult communities they would set up neighborhoods just for college kids and just for welfare folks. Having just a mainstream and an adult community isn’t enough. It’s too black and white. But unfortunately, the large Mormon families with their incredibly loud, always-home children, and the even louder college kids and those on welfare are allowed to go anywhere. Even if that means I’m the one that has to deal with them.

But I won’t completely scratch the idea of possibly owning sometime later on down the road in life. I just don’t want to make another dumb buy. We already did that twice. Yes, it was our fault that we lost the Maricopa place and the land in Oregon. In Maricopa, we bit off more than we could chew. In Oregon, we didn’t investigate the land thoroughly enough before purchasing the parcel we purchased. If we had we’d known the mountain it was on was volcanic and damn near impossible to dig septic tanks and other shit on being as rocky as it was. There were other unforeseen expenses that arose along the way, too.

So right now I’m leaning toward getting out of here this summer as planned and into a rental in an adult community. Now if they deny us for some reason, then that could change a lot of things. So could finding a place that wanted just 5K-10K down, though I would think it would have to be a total dump in that case.

SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 2012
I swear I am a jinx to every site I use! Thoughts just couldn’t get their shit together so I left it and returned to MyOpera. This will be my main blog, once again. I hate to redirect my followers for the millionth time, but I just couldn’t deal with the glitches anymore on Thoughts. MO has its share of glitches at times too, but I don’t remember it ever being as bad or as often as Thoughts. It’s been nearly two weeks now that Thoughts has been running as slow as the dial-up ages. No thanks!

This blog doesn’t have a geo tracker of any kind at the moment. I wish it did, but MO won’t allow for that, so unless they either change their policy or re-partner with another tracking service, I can only guess who’s coming around who’s not registered. It has an internal tracker, but that’s it. If people want to leave any comments but aren’t registered yet still want me to know who they are, they’ll have to write in their name.

This blog has a handy archive and a blog search feature that actually works. Just type in any name or keyword or whatever, and if it’s in my blogs, it should find it. I’m not going to bother with tagging entries for now.

Ask was slightly glitchy when Andy and I signed up a few days ago, but sure enough, it’s got more problems now that we’re there. It functions ok but the background pictures aren’t showing up.

I’ve still got a lot of work to do on my blog. I’ve had it for a couple of years now but have accumulated tons of files that need to be deleted since MO has limited space usage. I was at 11% and now I’m down to 7%. For some reason, MO stores every picture you post in a giant file directory and it remains there even if you delete the posts. Well, I’ve deleted nearly 1000 posts since I first signed up there! Unfortunately, I have to go through and delete them one by one because I can’t seem to wipe out the root directory altogether.;(

It won’t let me change to my new email address either. As I said, this site isn’t perfect, but it’s better than Thoughts.

Ok, back to tweaking settings and seeing if this post will successfully auto-send to Twitter and Facebook, where I’m sharing more with the public now that my stalker has backed off.

Today’s Christiane’s birthday.

Later…

Still can’t figure out who’s been referring to me as “pretty lady” on the Q&A site. There were no pictures of me there before I recently posted a link to one of my photo albums, so that makes me wonder if it’s someone I know. Why would a random person refer to someone they’ve never seen at least a picture of as “pretty lady?”

Anyway, I’m now down to filling up just 4% space on MO as I continue deleting old stuff from the root directory.

A part of me wishes I could go and interview 4 or 5 people in whatever neighborhood we end up in to get their opinion on the area, but then I’d be just as bad as others who make unsolicited house visits.

SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012
The movie I saw the other night had a rat in it. Its name was Romeo. I think I just may name my next rat that if it’s a male. It made me a bit sad because I miss my rat.

Meanwhile, I have a temporary pet, LOL. Yeah, the adventures of living in the woods of the country never cease to exist. This cute little froggy decided to visit me in my bathroom at 2am. Scared the shit out of me at first because when I realized something was sitting on top of the can of crotch deodorizer, I thought it was a bee until I threw my glasses on.

It seemed rather brave and calm so I shot some pictures of it, though most aren’t very good. Then I trapped it with a beer mug I won a while back and almost squashed the poor little guy to death while I was at it. I know I’m going to have to let him go soon, though. I put a little water in the cup for him but I don’t exactly have the type of food he’d be interested in eating.

I didn’t realize they were this small unless it’s a baby. It’s not much bigger than the pet frogs we bought in Arizona, though those were aquatic. It hasn’t ribbeted yet and these things sure can be loud. They’re about as loud as the dogs, but for some reason, the sound of them never bothered me.

Later…

We turned the frog loose at first light this morning, so he’s back in the woods with his buddies.

Tom tried out his new $25 weed whacker. It seems to work just fine. He did the area surrounding the trailer to help keep ants away. We figure we’re gonna need the thing no matter where we live. I’m pretty sure that if we’re lucky enough to get into that adult community ground maintenance isn’t one of the amenities. I just hope we get in! Yes, the barking will probably be just as bad, and yes, we’ll probably be back with the car stereos, but at least it will be in a real house that isn’t an antique and won’t include the welfare bums, college kids, and large Mormon families with a kid at every age between 1 and 15.

Other than grocery shopping and getting $35 for the many cans Tom brought to the recycling place, it’s been a relaxing day for us. I slept most of it, but all I’m doing is laundry today. I’m not working out or cleaning anything. I’m just doing my hobbies and putting back on the 3 pounds I lost during the week, as usual. But I’m content and enjoying myself. :)

Although I slept 9 hours I slept horribly because I kept waking up for no apparent reason at all. Maybe that’s why I needed to sleep 9 hours instead of the usual 7-8. The first time I woke up it took me a while to get back to sleep.

If the dogs remain as quiet as they did last night, then this will be a record-breaking 4 weekends in a row that I didn’t have to have the sound machines on for 6-8 hours to drown them out.

Tom’s lungs are better now that he’s relaxed. The worst-case scenario is he’ll get an over-the-counter inhaler if he has to. That’s all a doctor would tell him to do anyway, though it hasn’t been that big a deal as of yet. Besides, so many of these doctors don’t have a clue what the hell they’re talking about anyway. Seriously, we’ve done just as good if not a better job of figuring out any minor problems we’ve had and what to do about them just by online research that mostly consists of forum discussions where people share their experiences.

I laughed when I read this lady said her doctor doubted fish oil caused her to have heavier periods and before they were due. There’s no doubt in my mind that that’s what screwed up my own cycle, which has been fine since I stopped the fish oil, and that it’s also what made Tom’s gums bleed. We threw the rest of the bottle away.

I also laughed when another doctor tried to tell someone else certain cramps brought on by running were from PMS. Let me guess… the doctor was a male, right?

Unless we’re seriously sick or in big-time pain and can’t figure it out for ourselves, we won’t be bothering with doctors, insured or not. I know it could be dangerous, especially for a woman, not to have regular check-ups, but hey, a meteorite could also come crashing down on us right now, too. I’ll take my chances. :)

So how did we get so well stocked in the Kleenex department? We have enough Kleenex to wipe every snot in the country!

FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2012
Ask may be alive and kicking, but I’m really going to end up hating the hell out of Thoughts if they don’t get their shit together real damn soon. If it’s been so sluggish for this long, though, obviously they don’t mind or have any intentions of doing anything about the problem, so as soon as my tracking subscription expires, I will probably stick with MyOpera. Then again, I don’t know that I’m curious enough about my visitors to be that patient. I may leave Thoughts sooner. I’m getting really, really fed up. It’s impossible to enjoy the site at all!

If I stick with MO and turn it public again, I won’t want only cat pictures, so I would return to KB to create “cat copies” for Maliheh. The one I never seem to hear from anymore. I hope she’s just busy and that nothing’s wrong. If there is I hope she’ll tell me. Just because I may not be able to help doesn’t mean I’m not a good listener. :) It’s kind of obvious, though, that she planned this all along. I knew her promising to keep in touch was bullshit and that she would continue to go longer and longer between messages. Eventually, I won’t hear from her for a year. Then 2, then 3, then never.

Got a 5-minute engine-gunning spree from Jesse late yesterday afternoon and a few barks today. I really hope we get lucky enough to have 4 quiet weekend nights in a row! I’ll know how it’ll be tonight in 2-3 hours cuz he usually takes off between 7:30 - 8:30 if he’s gonna be gone all night.

I really hope some of the houses we looked at online aren’t just a dream! I’m really, really sick of this tiny old trailer no matter what you can or can’t hear in it. We totally deserve better than this!

Tom’s asthma has been bothering him due to how physical his job can be. It’s a different type of asthma than what I had. He never smoked and neither did his parents. So he doesn’t have the wheezing and tightness I’d get when I used to smoke and lived down in the desert. My lungs didn’t totally improve till I left Arizona. I swear I will never step foot in that state ever again even just to visit! But the only time I had any real problems since leaving it was when we moved into a duplex that had just laid down new carpet. It was a little scary the way I wheezed my ass off because I had long since abandoned any inhalers. Tom describes the feeling as being achy. Andy said sticking his face in a freezer would help, but he feels this pain all the time. He can’t stand with his face inside a freezer 24/7.

Later…

Thoughts has shown absolutely no desire whatsoever to fix the site issues it’s had for over a week now, and therefore I won’t be reading other people’s blogs and commenting on them. I’m sorry but all I can stand to do is just post my own entries and that’s it. I haven’t even changed backgrounds in a while. Just didn’t want my friends to think I was ignoring them because I’m not. I’m just so sick of this shit that I’m within inches of leaving that site altogether. This is why I left a couple of years ago – too much change, too many glitches. I have met a few nice people who are regular followers and so I will be sure to leave a link to wherever I go if I do end up leaving.

I’m amazed at just how much more active Ask is than Formspring was before a virus attacked it. Can’t have animated backgrounds there, but it’s cool to see all the questions and comments I get from both friends as well as anonymously. I still wonder who in the world my anonymous askers are. Alison said she never referred to me as “pretty lady” and I agree it doesn’t sound at all like anything she would say. It’s probably just some random guy. I don’t get the sense that I know the other anonymous people.

I’m glad Aly joined. I knew she would. Too bad Nane didn’t join. I knew she wouldn’t.

THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2012
Didn’t think I’d hear from Nane today but she was kind enough to say goodnight. I had to tease her a bit too, of course.

So Alison was one of my anonymous questioners, LOL. I was just thinking it was Eileen or Jessica but most likely Paul when she gave me obvious enough clues, then fessed up on Twitter. It was still loads of fun, though. But who are my other anonymous interviewers?

Although chilly and wet, life is going well. Tom may not have the greatest job and he may never be a permanent employee and we may never be insured but life is otherwise wonderful. We’re healthy, saving tons of money, and looking way forward to moving.

But I am a natural worrywart so don’t be fooled into thinking I’m down or stressing in any way when I express concerns at times about things falling apart. I worry about that no matter what’s going on in our lives cuz that’s just how I am. But it’s true, I worry he’ll be laid off (though that much seems unlikely) and that it’ll take forever to find another job and our savings will be drained in a few months because of it and we’ll be back in the poorhouse. Could something up there hate us that much to let that happen? You bet! But I’m going to hope to hell it doesn’t.

Other than when Jesse came ATVing down here yesterday it’s been dead quiet for 3 days now. No barks, vehicles, saws… nothing.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2012
Can’t sleep. Too much on my mind – the present, the future. The last thing I want is for Tom to be miserable in any way and so I worry the conditions at work will become just horrible for him. But at the same time, the thought of staying in this damn trailer another year or two to save enough money to get out of this damn state altogether makes my stomach turn. Most of our time in this state has sucked and I still regret coming here. Even so, we should just move as soon as we can and then if things don’t get better at work he can look for another job. He may still be older and white, but the economy is better now, so it shouldn’t take months for him to get something else if it got that bad.

I realize now more than ever that true security for us is just a dream whether we’re poor at the moment or we’re not. I want to just find the ideal rental and stay there for the rest of our lives! Or at least till he retires. Moving around was fun and adventurous for a while, but I’ve been moving every few months to every few years since I was 19 and I’m sick of it. It’s just that I had figured we’d stay in Cali at least till he retires and then head out of state when getting a job would no longer be an issue and we could get into a retirement community right away. Even if we had the 15K or so I’d feel comfortable moving with, it could take months for him to get a job in the new state and just about any decent adult community would probably want him to have a job for about a year before they rented to us. Then again we’ve gotten other rentals on jobs he’s had for just a few months, but a dumpy old rental in the mainstream of a small town is different than a decent rental in an adult community. They’re pickier.

I’ve known for about 5 years now that we’re not meant to have money. At my age, you have a good sense of what is and isn’t meant to be. Serious money isn’t one of them. So now that I know that just like God saw to it that Tom lost most of his pension, he’ll make sure my mother either drains her funds when her time comes on medical expenses or that my sister gets it all. More than likely, even if there’s no real cash on hand at the time, my sister will sell the condo, store and vehicles and keep the cash for herself. Sorry, but we’re all naturally selfish and I would do the same if I were the one in charge of things. But the point is that now that I know we’re not going to get anything inheritance-wise, that’s all the more reason we need to really watch our asses and not take any foolish risks. My mom’s not always going to be around to bail us out if we get in a jam again and I also don’t want to depend on anyone as a safety net. But who else would care enough to help us? Really, I wonder about this at times. If we were suddenly starving in the streets, whom do we know besides Tammy, Aly and Eileen that would give us a place to stay and food to eat till we got back on our feet again? It’s a scary question and I don’t know that I want to know the answer. On the other hand, I would still probably want to kill myself not just because of how miserable I’d be, but because I don’t like to put people out whether they want to help us or not. So I would off myself for their sake as well as mine. I just hope I’m never ever in that kind of a situation to actually learn who would do what for sure. We were scarily close enough last fall.

It may be foolish, as Andy, who I really REALLY wish would stop making me feel like he’s implying I’m a liar like he sometimes does by contradicting or arguing a fact that I’ll tell him about Tom or myself, said in regards to worrying about when we get old, but I can’t help it. I do worry that we’re gonna get fucked out of our retirement money. I do worry they’ll do away with Medicare. I do worry we’ll get to the point where we have no one to help us with the important things.

sighs There’s being smart and then there’s being miserable and sometimes being smart makes you miserable. Meaning that it would be smart to rent a cheap little apartment and stay there for the rest of our lives. But I would be totally miserable. Living attached to others simply isn’t for me. I wish to hell I could snap my fingers and make myself like the idea of an apartment. I’d move into one in a heartbeat if I could only make myself stand the noise! There we would never have to worry about taking care of the grounds and of course things would be fixed for us when they broke. But I wouldn’t get much sleep either or much peace when I was awake, so what would be the point?

Oh well. I am who I am. I also worry about Tom. I don’t want him to be miserable himself but I don’t want to stick around here longer than necessary or venture too far away too soon. I’d want to have way more money than we could need but that would mean sticking around here longer than necessary and I’m not sure a tropical climate would be right for us. I’m curious about it, yes, and I’d like to try it. I miss the beach and Florida’s beaches are much prettier than New England’s, IMO. But there are hurricane risks and immense humidity, and I’ve also heard that allergies are a real nightmare there. So I don’t know what to do or how much of a choice we’ll even have in the first place.

Later…

So I’ve had life’s usual doubts and worries on my mind. But as Tom pointed out, he could always get another job if things get that bad at his current job and it’s looking like that’s what he’ll end up doing because it’s looking more and more like they lied to him about being hired on. I think the poor guy’s destined to be forever a temp! When they told him he got the job he applied for we thought they’d make it official within a week or two, but here he is, still a temp, WTF??? sighs I’m just sick of losing and being lied to. This job looked so promising in so many ways. BUT…it is good pay, it’s better than nothing, and our savings is climbing fast. We should have way more than we need to move with. We were checking out rentals on Craigslist and he saw an ad for what seemed like a really good job, but he needs to update his résumé first. He said he’ll do that this weekend.

We saw an ad for a 1000-sq-ft, 2-bedroom, 2-bath house in a gated adult community with pools, tennis courts and other amenities for $950. That’s only $125 more than this tiny trailer that includes nothing but a noisy, pest of a landlord. The only thing I’ll miss here is not having anyone able to drive by or live so damn close to us. Tom thinks that an adult community may have as many loud car stereos as the mainstream because those entering these places these days were more from the time when they first hit the scene (I always did say each generation gets louder and less considerate), and therefore the rules there as far as noise goes may differ from the type of retirement community my mom’s in.

I see his point, but I sure hope not! Wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose of having an adult community in the first place? I guess to some people the idea is just to live with people their own age and not to seek out a quieter place. But even if there were just as many car stereos, I still find it awfully hard to believe they’d be allowed to leave their dogs outside round the clock like used old furniture. I would think they’d need to be brought indoors as household pets only. But we do live in an area where most people think it’s wrong to bring dogs indoors, so we’ll see. Worst case scenario I can at least have peace of mind in knowing that the Brady Bunch isn’t going to move in next to us, and neither will half a dozen college kids.

1000 square feet would be about as low as I’d like to go space-wise, and would actually be pretty ideal for us. It would give us enough space but not be too much to heat and cool.

We were reminiscing and laughing our asses off at some of the fun and funny experiences we’ve had in the various states we’ve lived in. It was a perfect reminder that life wasn’t all bad for us and I’m sure we’ll have more fun times in the future. I’m trying to get in the habit of thinking good thoughts after I worry about something negative. Every time I think of something that’s bad or an annoyance in our life or that we’re lacking, I try to think of things that make me laugh and smile.

Ask was loads of fun today, though I can’t figure out for the life of me who asked me some of the anonymous questions I was asked today. Every time I thought I had it figured out, I was back to guessing and wondering. I love these games, LOL. They’re fun and interesting and I love a good mystery, but I’m also curious. There are so many people it could be – Nane, Maliheh and any number of my Facebook friends. They’re the only ones that know about my account there.

The question about the ukulele made me think of Maliheh. The “What is up pretty lady?” made me think of Nane, but that would also be something that might come from Paul or Adonis. The questions about whether I like beer and ever tried yoga could be anyone. They last said they were hurt I hadn’t guessed who they were but never identified themselves. Other “suspects” include Alison, Lori, Cindy, Becky and Dorene. I tried to study writing styles, but they could change that to throw me off their scent. I asked Lori if it were her and she said she’d never heard of the site before. Oh well. Maybe I’ll find out tomorrow.

As for Medicare, Tom explained to me why there’s no need to worry about it running out (some new article he read) when we’re old enough for it, but I forgot what he said, LOL. Fewer people are having kids and the change in the population density is a big part of what’s messed it up. But it recently took in something like 9 billion more dollars than it put out, so that’s good.

At around 5pm this afternoon, just when I was thinking how utterly amazing it was that I hadn’t heard Jesse or his mutts in two days, he came buzzing down on the ATV. But not to bug us with anything; he just wanted to get something from his shit pile. It was so nice for a while there not hearing him. I hadn’t heard one single sound. Obviously, he and his mutts haven’t been around. If he were around I’d hear him. If he weren’t around but the dogs were, I’d hear them. But oh what peace of mind comes with knowing we shouldn’t be here much longer! I giggled to myself thinking how bummed out he’d be if he knew we were looking at rentals that very moment.

It rained on and off today, though it was nothing serious. Still, it was like waking up to a whole different season at 11am today. Where it had been warm and sunny, it was cool and cloudy. It’s supposed to be even cooler tomorrow, and after not needing any heat for days, we’re certainly going to need it tonight. Then the heat will return. :)

TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2012
Been up for hours yet still haven’t gotten an entry in yet. That’s because I was working out and then got into a discussion with Nane via email and then Andy and I goofed off at our newest playground.

Andy and I mostly use Ask to keep in touch and share graphics. We change background pictures constantly. We have a lot of private jokes and shit that most people wouldn’t get, LOL. I’m going to try talking Nane into joining. We’d both love it if she did and Andy promised to let her get used to him slowly even if she’s already used to my crazy weirdness. She already asked me a question and says she’ll check into it, so I’d say her interest is piqued at least a little. :)

We’re getting a little concerned about Tom’s job. Not that they’re going to lay him off or anything like that, but because they’ve been stringing him along about being hired on, and ever since they moved him to a different department, the job’s been a nightmare.

When they told him he got the job he applied for, we assumed he would be officially hired within a week or two of being notified. But here he is, still technically a temp, and being told by the supervisor that he’s “pushing” to get him hired on, WTF???

To make matters worse, there’s some kid in the department he’s in now that only shows up when he feels like it and so Tom has to do all his heavy lifting and is getting yelled at for this other cock’s work not being done at certain times. Finally, he went to the supervisor about it who “said” he’d do something about it, but we’ll see.

As I told Tom, the last thing I want is for him to be miserable in any way, so if we have to stay here a little longer to save up even more to move out of this damn state, we will. The easiest thing would be to hope things get better for him and they put their actions where their mouths are and hire him on, then move this summer closer to where he works. We’re never going to get a 401K going if all he can be for the rest of his life is a temp.

But where would we go if we left this state? Well, I don’t think I’d ever want to live in any kind of a desert ever again and have to deal with the incredibly dry skin and lips that go with years of living in such acrid conditions, though it’d be better than this place, I suppose. I still like the idea of going tropical, though neither of us would care for the humidity, Florida’s job market may be just as bad, and I will NOT move with just a few grand or less after the disaster we went through moving to Oregon and then here.

Anyway, Nane told me a secret that I promised never to reveal. I’m big on keeping promises too, so no matter how much she may piss me off in the future, my lips are sealed. She said that when she knew Irene in NY, she was never skinny but had a positive vibrancy about her and they were good friends. But now she looks like a beached whale. She made me promise not to tell her that because she doesn’t want to hurt her feelings. She said she doesn’t usually like to talk about others behind their backs but this was an exception. Anyway, she went down to Salzburg a few years ago to visit her. Irene picked her up at the train station looking a little dumpy, but she didn’t mind. Then they went back to her apartment and talked and then her BF came over, whom she thought was a real nerd. Then they decided to go out that night and Nane was shocked that Irene was willing to go out in the same spotted sweatshirt she’d worn all day. So they go to a few bars which they had to leave cuz the BF complained it was too smoky. Finally, they find an Irish pub they all liked and the BF announces that they’ll leave at 10:30. So not only was Nane a bit bummed out she couldn’t spend at least the first night alone with Irene catching up on old times but that they had to pack it in so early on a Saturday night.

She said Christiane is a very outgoing person with lots of charisma, and although she’s a few years older, she gets hit on all the time. They used to visit each other every few months but since they both got BFs, not as much. She says Leipzig is a “great place to party” unlike Munich, which is snobby. She said she only moved to Munich because her family had moved down there while she was in NY. I guess she’s originally from Frankfurt. It’s funny hearing one in their 50s talk of partying. There’s nothing wrong with it, but when I think of partygoers, I think of those in their 20s and 30s. Again, she would make such a horrible GF, LOL.

I won a bottle of nail polish on Facebook, but am not at all impressed with the color of it which reminds me of kidney beans. I’ll leave it here for Jesse. :)

MONDAY, APRIL 23, 2012
I see Thoughts is still running in slow motion. After a week of this shit, I guess it’s safe to assume it isn’t going to end anytime soon. It’s a shame some sites just can’t get their shit together while most other sites seem to have no problem keeping things running smoothly. Oh well. If I get that fed up with moving like a snail I can always stick to just MyOpera.

I was laughing when I saw that we were nearly 50° warmer than Nane at 6pm our time yesterday. I’m surprised I haven’t heard from Nane yet today, though not too surprised. She’s usually on more at night from home than in the daytime from work.

What does surprise me was that last weekend was the third weekend in a row that the dogs didn’t go ballistic for 8-10 hours at night. Jesse either stayed in or had someone there keeping them quiet.

Like I do every single weekend, I ate back on the weight I lost during the week. Obviously, my weight and appearance can’t matter that much to me since I keep doing this over and over, LOL. I think most of us become less picky about appearance with age.

Had a nice chat on FB with Adonis. He really is a cool guy.

Later…

I’m giving Thoughts exactly one week to get back up to full speed. If it’s not there come next Monday, I’ll just return to MyOpera. I’m actually updating that blog again; only it’s ‘friends only’ and I’m heading all the entries with cat pics for Maliheh who likes cats.

Working out has given me stamina but not energy lately. Meaning, I have the stamina to walk long distances if I suddenly had to but am lacking in energy on an overall basis. Maybe that’s because my weight’s up a bit. IDK, I just have one of those bodies that no matter how much you diet and exercise it, it never loses more than a few pounds. It gets strong and fit, but never thin. It annoys me, though, when I feel sluggish for seemingly no reason at all. I suppose caffeine would help, but too much caffeine makes my boobs sore, especially when I’m close to my period, and it also makes it harder for me to fall asleep. I usually have a hard enough time as it is in that department.

I also seem to be bored more often despite the fact that there’s plenty to do and I still keep busy. I did some paid surveys earlier but am caught up on the house cleaning and laundry for now. Wish I could motivate myself to work on my book a little more, but I’ve been lacking ambition in that area for a few months now. I think Renting Ginny was it for me but since no one wants to pay for their reading material these days (including me) I don’t currently have any plans to publish it. Now the only question is whether or not to pull my other two books off the market or just let them sit there.

As they say, we can waste our time looking for what isn’t meant to be or we can focus our energies on what is meant to be. If that’s taking care of the place, getting paid to do surveys, and enjoying a few hobbies, then I can’t complain too much. I suppose a lot of people would gladly swap shoes with me even if I’m not “allowed” to generate much money. But am I still allowed to win it? We’ll find out once we move!

The dogs were making up for lost barking time. The Jes pest left at around 11:00 and I thought that given the time of day and year, they’d shut up shortly after he left, but they didn’t. I know one thing for sure and that’s that the more I learn about Jesse, the more I dislike the guy. His almost losing the place goes beyond being rude and inconsiderate to us by allowing his dogs to carry on while he’s out and not calling before coming down. He literally and foolishly risked his well-being AND ours when he was behind when all he had to do was sell the damn Harley. That would’ve solved his problems right there, but no, the little boy just couldn’t part with his toy. And because of it, we could’ve been forced to end it the same as we almost had to on account of our lovely government. Only I’d have gone out less than peacefully if I knew for sure that he could’ve prevented it.

I’m just as sick of this place as I am of him. The lack of space, outlets, oldness, ugliness, etc. But can we really rent something newer and nicer? Or is that just a dream? The ads we saw suggest it isn’t, but if there are any hidden catches we probably won’t know about it till we actually start looking and that probably won’t be till late June to early July.

Sometimes I wonder why I have such conflicting emotions about myself and my life. Am I just some kind of nut or something, LOL, or does everyone have such back-and-forth views of themselves and their lives? I know I’m looking good for a woman my age yet I feel so fat and ugly at the same time. I know I’m not dumb yet I feel dumb at times. I feel both blessed and cursed. I am fit and healthy yet disfigured (my left ear) and not at all “normal” on account of my sleep disorder. I have ideas yet lack ambition. I have many things, both material and not, yet feel empty and like I’m lacking something I can’t even figure out.

I may not be rich and I may not live in the perfect place, but I have almost everything a person could ask for in life. I have someone that loves me unconditionally. I have good friends. I have good health. I have food to eat. I have a roof over my head. I am not blind, paralyzed, or anything like that despite the conditions and shortcomings I do have. I have things I enjoy doing. I am able to learn just about anything given the proper tools and desire. Yet sometimes I still feel like I’m missing out on something in life, and I don’t know if it’s just one thing or multiple things. If I knew what the hell it was in the first place, then perhaps I could count them. I still feel “different” and even “abnormal” in some ways that go beyond special, unique or eccentric.

Andy suggested I meet friends in my area. Great idea, but not that easy. I suppose it’s different for different people but I was never one that could just “make” certain things happen just because I may want them to. They either happen when they’re meant to happen if they’re meant to happen, or they don’t happen at all. I couldn’t make love come any sooner than it did. I didn’t make myself fall for Teddy Bear and Nane. I don’t make myself attracted to or not attracted to various kinds of looks, music, tastes and colors. And just like I could never control when and if love, lust and whatever would happen, I can’t just wake up one day and decide to make a damn good friend here in town. When I meet people (mostly online these days), they are where they happen to be and so far they haven’t come any closer than Nebraska. Most are between 3000-6000 miles.

I will admit I liked the idea of having foreign friends with me being into different languages and all that. Nane and I never would’ve met had I not been a member of Live Mocha. I will also admit that for years I was glad that none of my friends were local because I prefer to keep in touch with people online and didn’t want people coming to our door whenever they happen to feel like it. We get enough of that shit from our landlord. If it were an emergency, that’d be one thing, but I simply haven’t had any desire to meet people in person. The idea doesn’t scare me; it just doesn’t interest me. Because I don’t have an outside job, I only interact with people when I’m out doing errands or eating out somewhere anyway.

I’ve never in my life been a people person in general, and I’ve never liked the idea of potential trouble so close to home even though I know I could just not have anything to do with someone I may end up disliking. But sometimes I do think it would be nice to have a close friend nearby. One who wasn’t crazy or a pest of any kind and who only called when they wanted something. As a bonus, it would be a woman I was attracted to. But this is something that’s in fate’s hands. Intentionally trying to seek out a local friend won’t get me anywhere any more than trying to find love or just sex like I used to in the 90s got me anywhere. Hell, I can’t even find objects around here when I actually try to find them, LOL. I only come across them by accident when I’m looking for something else I can’t find. So there’s no way I’m going to actively try to seek out this lady friend who, even if she’s an ugly dog, isn’t crazy or pesky in any real way. Should we happen to accidentally meet like most of my other friends, fine. And in an adult community, we might do just that. You never know.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not that I’m missing anything at all. Maybe I just need to readjust and redefine some of what I’ve already got. I don’t know for sure. I have a lot of unanswered questions. Like why the hell a 120-calorie yogurt with a cup of coffee puts a pound on me? Seriously, I could literally maintain my weight on just coffee alone!

OMG, it’s already after 5pm! Where did all the time go? Tom should be home any sec now.

Later…

Andy left Thoughts due to the glitches. I don’t know if it’s caused by BOTS or incompetent Thought staff site workers. I just know it’s annoying as hell. But I put up with it because I like the site despite its sluggishness, met some nice people, and have already given the new link out to others. I’d hate to have to redirect them yet again, though more than likely I’d just bounce back to my old MyOpera blog and set that to public. MyOpera has the same security levels per post as Thoughts so I could still write about private things and keep them private if I wanted to.

I don’t think Thoughts really appealed all that much to Andy in the first place. That’s why he not only joined Ask but so did I. I had an account there way back when but then I deactivated it. I like it better than Formspring except for one small thing and that’s that it won’t let me use animated pictures for backgrounds.

I gave the link to Maliheh, Nane, Christiane, Adonis, and also posted it on my Facebook wall.

SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 2012
Well, this is gonna be sort of a nothing entry because there’s nothing really new to update on.

Let’s see…it almost hit 90° here yesterday. It will be in the 80s today, 70s the next two days, then the 60s and then the 50s as the rains make it back in to silence Jesse. Like I said, if it weren’t for propane costs I’d be fine with it raining every day that we’re still here. It’s the only thing that keeps him away and quiet. I’m still going to have to listen to that insanely loud truck soon enough, though, no matter what the weather.

Andy and I were wondering how he came up with the money to catch up on payments, and Tom reminded me that he was trying to get on disability due to his bad back. It’s a shame he can’t weed on account of his back but can still build engines and do other loud shit. But more than likely, he received a decent-sized check with back payments going back to when he applied. Still, it was a helluva stupid risk to take by not simply getting rid of the Harley. He risked his own well-being and ours unnecessarily cuz he just couldn’t part with his precious toy. Or any of his other vehicles.

Thoughts is finally running snappier and I hope it stays that way! It was so frustrating when it was running like a snail for the last several days. Reminded me of the old dial-up connection we had about 13 years ago.

I was pleasantly surprised with a message from Nane, letting me know she’s got the Internet hooked up again. She doesn’t usually contact me on weekends unless it’s Sunday night her time and Jim has left because he had the early shift the next day. She said they were on their way to see a movie and would probably talk to me tomorrow. Well, I’ll be asleep while she’s at work, but should catch her at home.

Nane didn’t shut down her LiveMocha account after all. She just had me blocked for a while after I pulled the “Turkish prank.”

I awoke from a nightmare at 3am last night. I was propped up in bed reading in what looked like a real house. It seemed nice enough, spacious enough, and like it may’ve been some sort of a ranch-style house. The bedroom I was reading in was in back of the house. I heard a door click shut somewhere within the house and called out to Tom. But Tom didn’t answer. So I got up and walked down a hallway and into the living room. The front door was to my right and the kitchen and other rooms were to my left. I heard and saw no one. Then I looked at the clock which said 2:30. Realizing that whoever was in the house couldn’t be Tom since he wouldn’t be off work that early, I woke up as I was debating whether or not to go in search of whoever was in the house or run outside since I had no way of knowing if they had a gun or anything like that.

It’s a beautiful sunny, warm day out there today. Other than hearing Jesse leave on the motorcycle once, it’s been very quiet. He was saying how much he too, hates the city and couldn’t stand it. Then he goes on to say how quiet it is here and all that, and I’m thinking to myself, well, of course it’s quiet to you. You’re the one making 99.9% of the racket around here, you can’t hear your own mutts bark when you’re gone, so of course it’s quite as far as you’re concerned.

SATURDAY, APRIL 21, 2012
Yesterday was a long, frustrating day, but things could be worse than having to be annoyed and inconvenienced. Tom was annoyed and inconvenienced by coworkers telling him to do things a certain way that was wrong, then turning around and asking why did he it wrong. Because they told him to – duh!

I was annoyed and inconvenienced by pesky Jesse who came down 4 times yesterday. The last time was at 4pm to see if the cooler was leaking. It hasn’t leaked since he adjusted things, but I’m not looking forward to next Tuesday. That’s when he’ll be waking me up when he comes down to spray weed killer at 9am. I may be up then, but I don’t think I will be. He said Monday he’s got to help a buddy so he won’t be able to do it then. It’s supposed to rain at the end of the week, so maybe he’ll put it off. He already did some spraying, but maybe the rain doesn’t affect that stuff.

Andy and I were both wondering what he did to catch up on his payments. What I wonder is why he didn’t just sell the damn Harley. He said something about taking out loans.

The only funny thing he said was that Maryann wrecked his truck. I wonder why he loaned it to her in the first place. I know she’s had a truck of her own, plus a car. Either way, it seems no one in that family can drive. First Jesse trashed his nicer, newer truck, and then she trashes his old dumpy truck. The motor he built for it was why I was hearing all that engine gunning that was so damn loud and obnoxiously annoying. He said the engine is in the shop being painted right now which explains why all I’ve heard lately is the ATV and motorcycle. Not sure why you’d want to paint an engine that’s just going to go inside a vehicle or how he got the money to build and paint it if he’s had it so rough financially, but I’ll just enjoy the peace until it’s back here and he’s coming and going 3-6 times a day in the damn thing.

Lately, I’ve been doing everything in calories instead of types of foods and time. Instead of concentrating on eating certain foods, though I do eat healthy most of the time, I just try to stick to 1300 calories a day. And instead of saying I’ll work out for a half-hour or an hour, I just try to burn 300 calories a day. It’s still a bit soon to say if it’s going to cause a significant drop in my weight over time, but one thing I do know for sure is that I could never gain this way!

Today I’m taking a break from both work and exercise. Other than just a few loads of laundry, I’m going to relax and pig out. Tom’s working half a day today so he’ll be bringing KFC on the way back.

Tom also had a bad experience with the fish oil. He doesn’t have a uterus, so obviously he couldn’t have early and fierce periods like I did, but it made his gums bleed. So the stuff was a definite waste of money and we trashed what was left.

Later on, he’s going to go up and check for any more hives in the cooler and really spray the hell out of it. Another yellow jacket made it in here yesterday that I almost stepped on. Usually, they’re in the windows, but not this one. I might also get one of those bright yellow jacket catchers you trap them in. We had one when we were in the woods of Oregon and they work well. Yellowjackets never climb downward for some reason so that’s why they’re easy to trap. They climb through the holes in the bottom of the tube.

FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2012
So, so glad my best bud Andy joined Thoughts! It may be a little weird for him at first and take him a while to get used to, but I think he’ll agree it’s better than Formspring. He left there due to a virus on the site. I left there months ago due to tons of glitches, too much change and just not finding it much fun anymore. Then when I went to reactivate my old account it wouldn’t let me. I was going to create a new one through Facebook, but I think I’ll pass.

Thoughts is glitchy too at times and has been frustratingly slow for a few days now, but you can do so much more here than on Formspring.

Later…

Seriously starting to wonder if Jesse’s going to drive me insane-asylum-crazy before we can move with all his damn repairs, racket and whatnot. I’m so sick of nothing but old places! He’s already been down 3 times today. Even though I was wide awake, it’s usually not much fun having to deal with pesky landlords and things that need to be fixed. But that’s just the thing. There is sooo much that needs to be done around here. I’m starting to worry he’s going to be down here almost every single day that we’re still here.

A part of me is glad he came down today because he found another hive in the cooler that he apparently missed. There have definitely been a lot of bees hanging around here lately.

First he comes down, checks the cooler and decides we need a new float cuz of the water overflowing and dripping. He’s afraid it will dry up his precious well. He sprayed the other hive and said he’d be back later or tomorrow because he was tired after spraying 15 gallons of Round-Up on various parts of the land. So was I. I had worked out for an hour, scrubbed the bathroom, and done a few loads of laundry. By then I just wanted to get off my feet and relax. I’m thinking of maybe doing my workouts closer to the end of my day rather than the beginning as they’re more tiring than I realize.

No sooner had I sat down did the bastard come back wanting to know why the cooler rattles. So I had to stand there playing the on/off game for him while he investigated. I told him the rattle didn’t bother us because it’s not that loud but he’s decided it needs new bushings, whatever the fuck that means.

So off he goes again and once again I go to relax. Sure enough, back down he buzzes as soon as my ass hits the chair. There’s a white pipe that was hooked to the ditch. Well, he said it wasn’t good anymore but could use the pipe for other things, so he tied one end of a rope to the pipe and the other to the hitch on the ATV and drove it up and away. The back of it got hung up on a branch, but I freed and straightened it out for him.

Coolers, weeds, floors, painting, valves, roofs - aaarrrggghhh! I am going to be seeing so much of this pest while we’re still here. :( The days of him being heard but not seen are over. God, I hope we really do get out of here this summer! And I hope that if it isn’t any quieter wherever we go it’s bigger and newer. I am just so sick of old places and all their problems. Okay, so the electrical has been good to us. The roof hasn’t leaked. The stove and refrigerator have held up nicely. But just about everything else in this place has had a problem. The heater, the cooler, faucets, pipes, pressure tanks, and soon the roof will become a problem if he doesn’t deal with it this year like he said he’s going to. He also needs to throw some plywood underneath the floor of the kitchen where the insulation has fallen out. Ugh, it never ends! I’m glad we don’t have to pay for all these damn repairs or take the time to fix them ourselves, but we still have to deal with it to a degree, and I just miss being in newer places anyway. They’re nicer looking, IMO, and I can’t wait to have more space and an extra bathroom again! Just having a place to hook up a full-size washer and dryer that’s always ready and available will be quite a luxury after living like bums for so damn long.

Another thing he told me when we got into a discussion about how rough things were a while back is that he almost lost this place and was 6 months behind on payments. Thank God I did NOT know that on top of fearing we ourselves wouldn’t make it!!! I wondered about this, but had I known for sure just how close to the edge he was swimming as well, it just may’ve been rather unbearable.

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012
This morning I was in excruciating pain. I jumped on the treadmill and started running at a comfortable 4-MPH pace. That speed is more like jogging than running and so it’s easier on the joints and easier to sustain. Once I’d been going steadily for 15 minutes, I was proud of my efforts and that my joints weren’t sore at all. Next thing I know I’ve got this sensation that feels like slight period cramps. I slowed to a 3-MPH walk, but the cramping worsened. Finally, I had to stop 100 calories short of my daily 300-burn goal. A few minutes later I was in utter agony as a result of not drinking enough water beforehand and the intestines trying to suck up water that wasn’t there. I thought I was over this kind of thing and that I drank enough before I hopped on, but apparently not. The pain seemed to last forever, though it couldn’t have been more than 15-20 minutes. Then it stopped as if by a magic switch.

I read up on the subject since the pain feels like intense period cramps like what I’d get in my teens and 20s, and most suggest it was due to not drinking sufficient fluids before and during the workout. When we sweat the body loses electrolytes, which are essential for proper organ function. Another one in the forum says: Ladies, you are not crazy and regardless of what the doctor says it’s not PMS. You are having uterine contractions. Yes, the same uterine contractions that you have during labor. This is brought on by a combination of electrolyte imbalance and strain/jarring on the uterus and the muscles around it.

This is why I’d only go to a doctor for an emergency, even if I know I should take preventative measures and go for regular check-ups because so many of them are quacks that don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Still, I should have drunk more water beforehand. From now on I’ll really guzzle up good before workouts even if it means having to pause the routine to piss some of it off.

Jesse came down shortly after I called up to him and removed the old pads and belt from the cooler to get it ready for the upcoming heat. He’s going to be back in an hour or so to vacuum out leaves and shit and to load it up with a new belt and pads.

Sure enough, he again mentioned having to do the roof this summer and I silently prayed he’d wait till we got out of here. I let him know it hadn’t been leaking at all.

He mentioned having his nephew do the weeding and explained to him that it wasn’t that Tom had forgotten, but has been working so much OT lately. It’s 50/50 as to whether or not he’ll work this Saturday, though. Something he both wants and doesn’t want to do. We love the money but need to start getting some things done around here in order to get ready to move. As it is we have a whole car full of bags of soda cans to bring to the recycling center. We’ve got so many damn cans that they’ll probably pay the Internet bill! But since Jesse has a bad back and can’t even do his own weeding, he said not to worry about it; we don’t have to do it. So that’s nice to know even if it means the nephew may come when I’m sleeping and wake me up.

Instead of just coming out and asking when and if he was ever going to shut the fuck up, I commented about hearing all kinds of “bumps, bangs, saws and loud vehicles” lately and asked if someone was building something in back. He did acknowledge the saw fanatics up at the summit who’d been working on something (though I haven’t heard them lately), then said he built a new motor for his truck and that would’ve made a lot of racket.

Like I said, this guy’s always got something going on. It’s just one project after another with him. :(

Last night at 3am Tom said a skunk came around and that the place wreaked horribly of it and he was surprised it didn’t wake me up. It probably would have had I slept with the window open, but last night I didn’t. He sucked some of the smell out with the stove fan.

After being outside where it stinks even more, I swear I smell like a skunk now.;( Thank God for incense! I guess Whiskey got sprayed cuz when they chased the ATV down here, the first thing Jesse did was warn me not to touch the dogs, especially Whiskey. I don’t usually mind lavishing them with attention when I see them, but half the time the damn mutts are filthy in some way or another.

Later…

Even though it’s just past the middle of my day I’m pretty beat already. After running and then dealing with that horrible pain on top of everything else I’ve been doing around here, I feel more like it’s the end of my day.

Jesse returned an hour later and put the new belt and pads on the cooler. Not at all surprisingly, a wasp hive was in the corner of it and so he sprayed it and then knocked it down on the ground near where I stood. It sort of felt like wet cardboard with holes punched into it when I stepped on it. With sneakers on, of course. Since the pads are made of aspen I just love the woodsy smell in here after getting new pads. Smells like I’m in the middle of a lumber factory. Sure makes a hell of a dusty mess, though, when you first turn the cooler on. All that dusting I did yesterday and this morning was a waste, particularly the areas in line with the cooler.

He’s going to be back later on to replace a valve, even though he’s primarily a morning person. He spends the afternoons drinking, so he told me. Yeah, but he’s still outside too often and making too much of a racket whenever it’s light out and not in the 90s or raining. He does make most of his ruckus in the mornings, though. He said he gets up at 5am – 6am. sighs I wish I could crash and get up at the same time every day. I’d probably sleep from 11pm – 7am so I could be available during the daytime for anything that may come up.

Other than setting up the thermostat, the damn cooler should be set for the year, but jeez. Valves, weeding, spraying, roofing, and God knows what else he’s going to do around here before we get out of here! This heap of shit needs a paint job like flowers need water. We agreed not to tell him we’ll probably move this summer so that if he has a close friend or family member who suddenly needs the place, we won’t be rushed out of here sooner than necessary. Again, we can’t bump up Tom’s DOB. If it weren’t for that, I’d tell him to hold off the roof if possible. I almost slipped when he asked if we had a vacation planned at any point (so he could do it then) and said, “No, but we’re about 100 days or less from getting the fuck out of here, so why don’t you just wait.”

He said that at night when Whiskey was tied up a skunk came up to him and sprayed him, LOL. Yeah, and the mutt made my clothes smell of skunks too, so I changed as soon as they left.

I hear him coming back in on the Harley right now. Now he’ll go pick up his kid, then I’ll see them soon enough, assuming he really is going to take care of the valve today, though it’s not critical.

Heard from my German hottie, but she still doesn’t have Internet service at home just yet. She had hoped to this week and that the renovating would be done, but she still checks in from work on most days and is still behaving too, LOL. I don’t know for how long, though.

She said a friend came over last night with big-time relationship problems and they ended up getting a little drunk. I could tell by her typing that she wasn’t quite with it. In love with her BF or not, I wonder just what they did last night, LOL, and if they “misbehaved” in any way. Hey, if the chick is bi like Nane (though Nane might not admit she’s bi as obvious as it is) and if they’re attracted to each other, well, they’re only human. I told her I’m not much of a drinker but I might be tempted to get slightly smashed myself if I spent the night with her. :)

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2012
Worked out for an hour this morning. Spent 15 minutes doing my arms and abs, then another 45 walking and running. I then showered and ate. Once I replenish my energy with a little relaxation time I’m going to do some dusting and vacuuming. No fun at all. But it’s got to be done.

As expected this week, Jesse spent a few hours yesterday bulldozing the drive. He didn’t come down here, though he’s going to have to come down sometime over the next few days. He’ll probably want to vacuum leaves and shit like that out of the cooler. It also needs a new belt.

Andy reminded me that revenge on Jesse isn’t worth it and how karma comes back to get us and all that, but as I assured him, I have no desire for any “revenge.” I just want to move, that’s all. I’m smart enough to know that pesky worms are better stepped over than stepped on, but a noisy landlord isn’t the only reason we’re moving. We’ve just totally outgrown this place and I’m sick to death of the lack of space and just one bathroom. I hate waking up having to pee to find him in the shower or something. I can’t wait to have more space, closets, counter space, and outlets!

I called Mom but she seemed in a hurry to rush me off, saying these calls were costing me money. I reminded her that I have free long distance but would be happy to let her go if she were busy. I just wanted to see how she was feeling and if she was curious to hear what I learned from the census thing. She said she was doing ok, trying to get some paperwork done, thanked me for calling, and that was it. She’s probably sick of everyone calling so often to check up on her so I won’t call her again till Mother’s Day next month.

If things are going as well as they have been with seemingly no end in sight anytime too soon, then why do I continue to have so many dreams of doom and gloom? Can’t I have fun dreams more often? Strange dreams? Wet dreams? Interesting dreams? Instead, I’m either held captive somewhere against my will (usually in jails or funny farms), stuck in hotels, or having dreams that seem to deal with loss and poverty.

In last night’s dream, we were so poor that we “lost” everything but the bed. People came and took everything else we owned like the people that go out and repossess cars. I know it makes no sense and is a silly dream, but the only good to having such dismal dreams like this is waking up to know it was just a dream. As in most dreams, the place we lived in didn’t look like this place. I tried to hide some things but they found and took them anyway. All that was left was the bed, plus these two twin beds that supposedly came with the place.

I told Tom about it when I got up and he said, “Everything’s fine. In fact, the only thing that’s not good right now is that I’m making so much money that I can’t be around for you.”

LOL, it’s true that he sure is out a lot since he’ll be working 6 days a week for a while. Some lady is out having surgery so that’s part of why. We love the money but it sucks that he has so little free time. As for me, I’m fine on my own. I’ve always preferred to spend most of my time alone anyway. That’s why I dread the idea of when he retires as much as I look forward to it, LOL.

A couple of nights ago I dreamt I was in some sort of strange jail or funny farm. Rows of maybe 3-5 beds that were these skinny little cots stretched down a long, wide corridor. I was at the end of one row by the open part of the corridor. I got up in the middle of the night because I had to pee. The corridor was dimly lit but I could see my way down to where it formed a T just fine. I stumbled toward the top of the T and took a right. As I approached the bathroom that had about half a dozen toilets in it I reached for the light switch. Though the light never came on, I could see 3 or 4 women cleaning the bathroom. Why they were cleaning in the dark, I don’t know. One of them said, “We should be done in about 6 minutes.”

My bladder wasn’t going to wait that long so I headed for the staff’s bathroom at the other end of the top of the T, hoping no one would see me as I slipped into the tiny room with the single toilet.

Later…

I was sitting here doing some self-reflecting and I realized that only a small part of me is the same person I was 25 years ago. I think a lot more of me has changed, though I’d like to think it’s for the better. I have become more open and tolerant to certain things, but there’s also an awful lot of shit I wouldn’t put up with these days like the old me would, particularly when it comes to what types of people I’d hang out with. On or offline, there’s no way I’d associate with losers like Fran and “Nervous” these days. Or bigots. Especially the kind that have the nerve to tell you you’re wrong for being who you are. I don’t care if someone disagrees with anything I say, think or do. Everybody has a right to hate, like and love whatever and whoever. But I have to wonder why I ever put up with so much shit from certain people in the past. Why did I bother with the types of people I wouldn’t even stop to so much as glance at in this day and age?

I was in my early 20s when I was living on Oswego Street in Springfield, MA. I was too nice, too forgiving, and too tolerant in a way that I was severely lacking in self-respect. There are things to tolerate and then there are times to put your foot down and wash your hands clean of certain individuals in the name of self-respect. Take a woman who tolerates abuse, for example. Is she just tolerant? Or does she have no self-respect for herself whatsoever? A lack of respect for one’s self is a trait I typically look down upon. I don’t like to see it in others and I don’t like to see it in myself. Other people have a right to be that way or to change it if they see fit, and no one can make them change but themselves. But I could change that in myself and I did, mostly through getting fed up with certain assholes after dealing with them one too many times. As I said before, we all have our limits.

I’d reached my limits with the likes of Cecelia when I was around 30. A little late, but hey, better later than never. It was back in those early 20s in the projects of Springfield that I met Cecelia. She was deaf. I fancied the idea of having a deaf friend so I could keep up with my sign language. I saw her a few times and we hung out together either at my place or going out for lunch or something like that. She seemed like an ok person. Pretty average, actually. Average looking, average personality… just average.

Then one day Cecelia and I were sitting at my kitchen table sipping coffee and chatting. The conversation eventually shifted to my sexual preference.

“But it’s wrong,” she signed.

I just looked at her dumbly, unsure of what to say and stunned by her sudden rudeness. Then she said she’d be out of my life if I ever touched her or anything.

Although it may be pointless, I could kick myself for smiling politely and assuring her I was not the least bit attracted to her but also that I would never force my way onto someone who wasn’t interested. These days I would have stood up, opened the door, and told her to get the fuck out. No defending myself, no trying to reason with her, just getting her the fuck out of my life would be all I would do.

Who the hell was she to tell me I was wrong anyway? I hate people like that! As soon as someone tells me my way of living, thinking and believing is “wrong,” I’m gone. Just gone! I don’t tell others how to live and I expect the same respect in return. I need to surround myself with people who accept me as I am and that’s what I’ve been doing for many years now whenever possible. As one of my favorite quotes goes: Those that matter, love you as you are. Those that don’t, don’t matter.

It’s so beautiful here this time of year. Everything’s so green. There are no palms, cacti, wisterias, cypress, cherry and other trees I like within view of this place, but it’s the prettiest time of year until the dry heat kicks in and bakes the underbrush wheat brown.

Maliheh checked in again by giving my blog a hit after I sent her the last round of posts. Too bad she won’t be able to do that in a couple of months. I just wish I knew why she hardly wants to talk to me.

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012
I should’ve known better than to open my mouth and tell someone that one of my good friends is the adoptive daughter of a famous puppeteer. Why? Well, they don’t believe it, of course. So what if I have absolutely NO reason whatsoever to lie about all these things I’m supposedly making up or not fessing up to? So what if I have absolutely nothing to gain from lying? Lying doesn’t make me any money, it doesn’t make me immune to illness, and it doesn’t guarantee I’ll never be in a bad accident, so what is it with these people??? Trust issues due to being lied to by others? Well, I’m sorry there are a lot of liars out there, but you know what? I’m getting sicker and sicker of trying to defend and convince others that I tell it like it is and so I give up. From now on I’m just going to let the truth be whatever people want and believe it to be and not what I say. If it gets that bad with certain people I can always ignore them. After all, no one wants to hang on or offline with anyone who doesn’t believe or trust them. When you can’t trust someone you make it hard for them to trust you.

Ok, so I can see where some people who don’t know me well may think I was joking since it’s a celebrity that’s involved and all that, but sometimes I find myself having to reassure people of the dumbest of things, particularly Andy. The most trivial things can be oh so damn hard for some people to simply take my word for like my favorite color, what mood I’m in, what my weather is like. I live here. Shouldn’t I know what my own weather is like? It’s my brain. Shouldn’t I know what it likes and feels?

Sometimes I wonder if people are just hoping to pick fights with whoever they can and that it’s not just about them being insecure or having trust issues. I guess I should just be more selective about who I share what with. I wouldn’t want someone to think I was ready to commit suicide simply because I said I was pissed that I got a paper cut or anything like that!

Later…

Nane just messaged me saying she still has no Internet at home yet but confirmed that she’s been doing OT for a colleague who’s on vacation. “It sucks because I don’t even have time for a lunch break,” she said. But she has time to view my blog? I didn’t tell her that, though, LOL.

MONDAY, APRIL 16, 2012
Christiane surprised me by commenting on several of my cover photos. I was a bit surprised because she’s usually more “polite” than friendly. At least that’s the way she’s been with me, especially since Nane and I got back together.

Most people want to surround themselves with people that make them happy. We are naturally selfish, though most of us may not want to admit it, and we don’t want to have to be responsible for or take care of others. Some of us will still do so depending on how much we may care about the particular person in need, but even so, most of us tend to avoid those who live in a dark cloud of depression. In doing so we help make them even more of what we want to run from and avoid – depressed, alone and miserable. But when people post suicide notes on their walls and then don’t kill themselves, most of us tend to reach our tolerance limit, as funny as this may sound. I’m not without compassion, and I’m not saying my friend should have killed herself after leaving the kind of note she left, I’m just saying there are other ways to reach out for help and attention without getting so many people worked up. I hope she has learned this by now.

Either way, I know all about problems and how life can be so damn frustrating and depressing. I’m tired of losing, and I’m wondering just how much more we’re going to have to lose before whatever’s up there quits picking on us. Really, how much more??? We have lost so, so much in the last 8-12 years.

Through communicating with Maria’s friends on her scary wall post, a very kind woman named Sherri added me. Ah, but there’s one small catch. This is the third person in less than two weeks to say they’ll buy my books that never did! Man, I’m sick of hearing that shit!

I’m really, really tempted to just unpublish the books and be done with the whole thing. I admit and accept I failed as an author. That’s all I can do. But I did try. It just wasn’t meant to be. Not sure what the hell is meant to be – maybe nothing – but there’s no sense in turning something fun into work if it wasn’t meant to be my job in the first place. Gotta just look on the bright side, I guess, and that’s that now the pressure is off to be as correct as possible when I write since it will be just for fun. Correctness is still more important than quantity, but I don’t have to be as picky anymore if I’m just going to share blogs and stories with friends.

So no one wants to buy my books for real anymore, I lost my dad, we lost our rat, we lost most of our pension and I probably won’t get much if anything at all inheritance-wise, but life is otherwise great. I have a lot to be grateful for and to look forward to despite being raked over a bed of hot coals by life and some of the people in it.

Later…

LOL, both Nane and Christiane viewed my blog earlier, only Christiane wouldn’t admit it. All she would say when I asked if any of the visitors were her (to see what she would say) was that she viewed my photos earlier. If I had known, though, I never would’ve posted the paragraph about being surprised that she commented on my photos. First time she ever visits and she had to see that – damn! It must not have bothered her, though, since she didn’t say anything. I rarely mention her anyway, since I don’t talk to her nearly as much as Nane, Irene and others.

Anyway, it took me a minute to realize Nane was one of the visitors. Once I zoomed in on the geo map I recognized the buildings and street names, so she visited from work and is doing OT since she peeked in at 7pm her time. That explains why I got no messages from her today.

Her view was only 20 minutes after Christiane’s view. I wonder if there’s a connection. Like if Christiane told Nane about it and Nane checked into it out of curiosity. Neither of them went very far. Just to the first page.

Andy’s getting on my nerves again but not just with the wanting to chat online. Once again he’s one step away from calling me a liar about various things I say and just seems argumentative today. If he’s got trust issues with me, why does he want to bother with me? Really, why bother with someone you just can’t believe? But it’s like doesn’t want to believe I’m not miserable. My life isn’t perfect, but right now I’m far from miserable. Annoyed at times by Jesse’s racket (just after 10am he started this God-awful loud hammering that was louder than any hammering I’d ever heard around here before, and coming and going in loud vehicles) but I’m anything but miserable. Maybe I just need to stop sharing with him parts of my journal that bitch about any noise from Jesse so I’m not “miserable” in his mind. And maybe I need to not share the extra snack I may’ve had so that I’m not “obsessed” with my weight. If I were that obsessed I wouldn’t be up to 143 pounds, would I?

SUNDAY, APRIL 15, 2012
The troll peeked in again yesterday, but she’s still keeping her visits short and sweet and hasn’t made any new posts on her new blog since Aly alerted me to it.

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

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

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

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

Later…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 2012
Love how I can queue entries up to be posted at a certain time. It’s actually 1am PT but I kind of like to post at “normal” hours every now and then, so I’ll have it launch at 9am ET.

Just did part 1 of 2 of today’s workout. I mixed 5-MPH sprints in with 3-MPH walks so I could do some reading. Because I mixed some walking in it took me longer to burn 150 calories (20 min.) and in a little while I’ll repeat the process till I have my daily goal of 300 calories burned.

Not much else to say at the moment. Oddly enough I don’t remember one single dream I had last night. This is probably a good thing in my case.

Later…

Maliheh did me a favor and hit my blog as I asked her to if everything was showing up ok on her end (mainly graphics) if she still didn’t want to chat. That’s really nice of her but what’s keeping her away so long, so often??? Is she playing with me? Could she have more feelings for me than I realize? Could she be uncomfortable with my liking her? Could she simply not be big on chatting? Something else? The only thing I’m pretty sure of where she’s concerned is that she’s not mad at me. If she were she’d say so.

Jesse’s wasting absolutely no time at all in being obnoxious since there’s been a break in the rain. It wasn’t even 9am on Saturday morning yet already he’d come and gone twice. I could even hear him slamming doors to his truck and what may’ve been the sound of him throwing something in back of it. Where the fuck has this jobless cock got to go this early on a cloudy, chilly Saturday morning??? Again, just knowing this one person close to 200’ away can be almost as annoying as a pack of freeloaders within arm’s reach is a little scary. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever have peaceful neighbors no matter where I live and, how many of them there are, and how far away they are.

At least the prick took his dogs with him, based on the fact that they haven’t started barking since he left for the first of what will probably be 6 times today. Unless someone’s there like maybe his son.

Do everyone’s neighbors do this? Do they all come and go so damn often and have company nearly every single day? I can only think of maybe two neighbors I’ve had in the last 20 years that didn’t come and go so much and have frequent company. This would be my only real concern in an adult community. We’d be back to having neighbors just a few yards away, and having car doors slamming so close to the house so often could get pretty damn annoying. But the only way we’ll know for sure what it’s like there is to actually live in one of these communities, preferably not on the edge where we’d be too close to the mainstream which would include barking dogs, screaming kids, loud car stereos and other chaos.

Despite the loss of downtime and other things, Tom’s glad to be working today because that just means more money for moving. I’d rather get out of here sooner as soon as we have enough saved, rather than stay here longer to save up more for the things we’ll want to get for the new place as well. However, we can’t adjust his DOB so even if we’ve got the money right now we can’t just up and go. So we’ll be here at least till July 1st, possibly August 1st, but no later than September 1st. Something definitely went wrong if we’re here into the fall.

I can’t wait to get into the new place, wherever it is, and get saving again and prioritizing lists of things we need/want! I’ve learned that having a savings, even if it’s just a grand or two is more important than how much money you make. If you make $20 an hour but have nothing in savings if your car completely craps out on you, you’re fucked. So the first thing I’ll want to do is boost the savings back up after the move before we start any shopping. Who knows, we may have a helluva head start when the time comes.

One of the first things we’ll want is a full-size washer and dryer. Oh, how I miss the days of just being able to walk up to a washer that’s always hooked up and ready to go! A portable is better than nothing, but I still miss it. And I’ve always preferred clothes dried in dryers as opposed to line-dried. Line-dried makes them too stiff.

We’ll also want to replace one of the computer desks and get a real couch instead of this beat-up futon. I miss having a “normal” setup and a more traditional-looking place. The TV can be mounted on the wall so there’s no need to get any kind of a stand or table for that, though I’ll want to get shelves for collectibles and stuff like that.

I can’t wait to take and share pictures of the new place, and yes, I may even throw in some of myself. I wanted to wait till I made more progress with working out and all that stuff, but I realize I’m never going to be happy with my appearance no matter what, and hey, 80% of us over 45 don’t exactly look all that great anyway.

It’s gonna be a helluva day the day we leave here, considering that it sure looked like we were going to be going out in body bags at one point when things were so bad for us and seemed so hopeless.

I still want to share what I can no longer share. I don’t eat burritos very often but I had one for variety today. I pulled it out of the toaster oven and sat down at the table with it. I picked off part of the crisp wrapping and thought to myself what a nice treat it would make for the rat, only to remember he was no longer here to share these things with me.

I looked out the window at his grave, made wet from all the fierce rain we recently had, and my eyes stung with tears. He should be in here with me and not in the ground. I still wonder if that dream of him crawling all over me was just a dream or if it was his way of visiting from the other side.

I like the ease of not having a pet. I don’t have to shoo them away from shit they shouldn’t be getting into or anything like that. But even more, I miss having a pet. I said I wanted to wait till after the move, though, to make it easier on us, but that only makes the move seem even further away. Especially when our bastard landlord is running and gunning engines for what seems like forever! I know it will need it, but he is going to drive me so crazy with that bulldozer soon enough when he goes to smooth the ruts out of the drive.

He’s also not going to be happy to lose such fine tenants, LOL.

FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2012
No wonder the troll hasn’t made any updates on her blog lately. She created a new account on Thoughts, claiming she forgot her old PW. Yeah, right. Like she doesn’t know to have it reset or sent to her or something? Regardless, I should’ve figured as much, but a week ago “Girl Power” (what a lame name) created yet another account which Alison alerted me to and I also blocked. She’s only got a couple of posts, one saying how much better off she is without certain people, the other with a “letter” to Alison. Same old shit. She’s probably deleted several other rants in the last week.

Andy drives me crazy at times, almost making me feel pressured to do Formspring and email with him when I’m not only not as into that sort of thing as he is (especially on a daily basis) but I have other things to do. The guy rarely sleeps and works, LOL! He only sleeps for 4 hours at a time on most nights, then he only works for a few hours at a time. Unless he’s hanging out with family he seems to spend almost all his free time online. If he could, he would do Formspring from the minute he woke up to the minute he went to sleep.

Woke up to a huge clap of thunder. The kind you don’t usually get here but that we would get plenty of down in Arizona during monsoon seasons. It poured like crazy yesterday. We even got some hail. Found a worm in the bathroom. It’s not uncommon to find them in here after getting a lot of rain. I’m surprised the frogs aren’t going crazy now.

It has been so, so peaceful as far as Jesse and the dogs go, but sadly that’s only due to a combination of the rain and my schedule. If it weren’t for propane costs I’d wish it would rain every day that we’re still here. When it rains when I sleep during the day I don’t have to worry about him waking me up. When it rains when I’m up during the day I don’t have to worry about him disturbing my peace. But in a few days, it’s back to sunny and 70s which means it’s back to vroom, vroom, vroom and arf, arf, arf. :(

The bleeding finally stopped at the end of my day yesterday and I dropped 4 pounds in just water alone. I’ve stopped the fish oil supplements as well. I hate to go back to having sore joints, especially the hips, but I don’t want killer periods that last forever either.

Andy said his family “still expects him to look as he did 35 years ago.” Geez, that’s not only as bad as having friends and family not take you for face value, take cheap shots at your medical conditions and defend your perps, but totally ridiculous, not to mention physically impossible! I’m not saying they’re bad people or anything like that, but no one stays the same forever and that’s kind of hypocritical of them anyway since they’re not exactly centerfolds themselves or the epitome of true fitness. Shame on those who pay more attention to one’s looks than the people they are! We’ve conquered most of the racism in this world. We’ve conquered a lot of sexism. We’ve conquered piss-poor attitudes about a lot of things. So then why are we still an appearance-obsessed society???

We all want to look our best and there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all. Hell, I work out and diet most of the time myself, but it’s because I want to. But when people focus on us for our looks and not the people we are, that’s really sad. People’s priorities really worry me at times. One’s appearance should be that individual’s concern only. If they’re overweight, well, it’s not your problem, is it? If it’s their life and their body, why do you care? So you can have a prettier being to look at? Geez, go look at a pretty picture online if beauty is that important to you! The only ones who should be making cracks about one’s appearance or medical problems are the individuals themselves. Same goes for various lifestyles, beliefs and things like that. As most people would agree, though, those who do these things are only unhappy with their own looks, lives and whatever.

If racism can become favoritism as it has in most cases, and if women can hold so many powerful positions in society these days (though I’m still waiting for the first female president), we should be able to stop having expectations of others that aren’t just unreasonable but downright insane!

Off to run a mile or two, shower, then get working on some things around here.

The closer we get to May, the easier I breathe. But I’m still keeping a low profile and wonder if there’s a warrant out on me. Sometimes I think I’ll check and see, then I stop myself and say, “No, don’t give in to their games in any way! Surround yourself with positive things and people, not those who only want to bring you down with their crazy laws.”

Later…

Poor Andy. He’s been puking and having the runs. I thought something was up since the Formspring addict couldn’t go over 12 hours away from that site if his life depended on it. I just thought he was either catching up on sleep or had more clients to tend to than usual.

I called Mom earlier to see how she was doing and to pass along the info I dug up on her family, but she had to let me go because the nurse that’s looking out for her was just arriving.

Speaking of health-related things, Tom doesn’t know yet how much they’ll charge every week for it, but he gave me an overview of the health, vision and dental insurance they offer. Copays are $25 in some cases and there’s a 1000-dollar deductible.

They had a health fair at work yesterday, which included some giveaways. It would’ve been neat to win the water pillow, which I would think would be heavy as hell but comfortable, though he did get a bagful of samples and other things. Eyeglass lens cleaner, sore muscle cream, yogurt bars, energy drinks and more. He said not to take anything till he researched it. Are you kidding? I wouldn’t take shit after bleeding like a faucet from those fish oil supplements!

I was talking with Nane about the strange spotting and bleeding I had and she wonders why she gets periods at 51. I wondered this myself once I went from 99% sure to 100% sure I wasn’t having kids. But unfortunately, a woman can’t just make an appointment and order up a hysterectomy like she can breast enhancements.

Not much else going on other than that Tom has to work tomorrow. His take-home pay for this week is going to be a little over $700. Sure beats $600 every other week from unemployment! It’s going to be close to a 4K month, though he doesn’t expect the OT to continue on much longer.

THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2012
Maliheh visited my blog again, but just like last time, there’s no navigation info on her. Not even the landing page. Also like last time, TIP didn’t land on her rooftop but somewhere else in her town.

The troll’s visits are picking up in regularity, but they’re still very short and sweet and she’s still not doing her own blogging. Today’s visit was something like 36 seconds.

When Tom was picking me up extra pads, he also swiped a thin foam mattress pad. Its size is full and just plain foam. None of that memory crap. It’s the ideal topper for air, water or coil mattresses.

Today’s the day we moved into this little trailer exactly 4 years ago. After an 8-month hotel stay it was great. We no longer had to deal with door slamming, TVs and music blaring, cars honking, and pleasant but annoying hotel staff. But I have since grown beyond sick of this place. I’ve had my fill of the lack of space, and the intermittent racket from my landlord’s many loud vehicles and dogs, and now it’s time to move on.

Saw a movie last night about the relationship between these two lesbians. It was a good movie but the lesbians themselves were so unrealistic. This is because they were both so damn feminine. They were actually bisexual, but still, most bisexuals and lesbians find fems as unattractive as most men find 250-pound women unattractive. I have about half a dozen or so friends, both cyber and not, that are either bi or lesbian. Only Marie and Nane find me physically attractive and I honestly don’t know that Nane considers me that attractive. Marie’s no real surprise, though, because she herself looks very lesbian and pretty much considers anything without a stick shift between the legs attractive, LOL. Besides, we don’t keep in touch. So out of the 5 or 6 bis/les ladies that I do keep in touch with and consider close friends, I’ve got one “half-assed” attraction. Like I said, fems just don’t fit into that world very well but the guys sure do love them. Put me in a room with one straight guy and a dozen lesbians and I’m sure the guy will be the only one to notice me unless any of the lesbians are so butchy that they too, look like guys.

Did some other research after remembering that my mom’s mom once said what her maiden name was. Both my grandmothers were born in the US, but I still have no clue as to what my dad’s grandparents’ first names are or what my mom’s dad’s parents’ names could’ve been. Especially if they were Austrian and Russian. But mom’s mom was definitely from MA and I did find a Sadie C born in 1880 who was married to William, and they seem the most likely. Wonder which one was the bitch that made my grandmother one as well. Either way, William was born in Russia, too. Since Tom’s obsessed with censuses and digging up other old info we’ll see if he can connect those names to Shirley G.

I just hope this heavy bleeding that’s beginning to concern me a bit isn’t a sign of anything serious. It could cause a significant delay in the move if anything serious is going on, not to mention the fact that I probably won’t be insured till close to the end of the year.

If any older women (older than 46) have any insight for me, do let me know. For years my periods were punctual and short-lived where I’d only bleed heavy (though not as heavy as in my teens and 20s) for a few hours. By day 3 it’d be gone. But this time around I started spotting at mid-cycle. It went on for a week before becoming a regular and heavy period. This was two days ago and I’m still bleeding heavily. Not hemorrhaging or anything like that, but it’s consistent enough. I have no other symptoms. No pain or anything like that. Hopefully, it’s just either part of menopause or whacky hormone fluctuations due to age. I’d LOVE to have a hysterectomy and be forever done with periods, but not while I’m uninsured!

Anyway, I’ve been writing an awful lot lately – maybe too much by some people’s standards, though I’m actually doing shorter posts more often instead of longer posts less often – but if writing is supposed to burn calories as I’ve heard, it’s forgotten mine. But one look at me and you can see I’m seriously fit despite how heavy I am. I’m small but heavy. Petite in height and inches but still have some fat and tons of muscle from the running and lifting. I’m about 140 pounds. I read that if you’re fat but fit you’ll live longer than if you were thin and out of shape. Well, I’m definitely a fit fatty! You can see most of the muscle mass in my shoulders, biceps, abs and calves. I have a HUGE muscle that slashes straight down the quads, but that one’s harder to see cuz I still have too much fatty tissue overlaying that area.

The propane guy noticed how I’ve been looking, LOL, saying he thought I was 40. And this is after I stopped dying my hair so I’d look older trying to get into a retirement community this summer. Tom looks his age, but I don’t quite look mine. I’m close in the face but have a very youthful-looking body. A shitty one compared to 20 years ago, but still quite youthful. Assault it enough with weights, running sprees and hunger and it tends to end up that way later on in life.

I do a good job of staying away from sugar, pasta and other starchy foods during the week and sticking to a high-protein diet which mostly consists of meat, fruits, veggies and a little dairy, but I need to do better on weekends. I also need to build more stamina. I know that may sound funny since most people in their 20s would probably struggle to keep up with me, but my goal is to sustain a 20-30 minute run between 4-5 MPH without having to break it up into sessions of twos or threes. I’m really close now, though! The fish oil has really helped my joints tremendously so that’s helped me not have to break things up as much. But if this damn bleeding keeps up I’ll have to stop the fish oil and see if the bleeding backs off. That’s the only change I’ve made recently.

Just did some research. Hmm… maybe it’s time to back off the fishies for sure. Bummer! I really liked having less joint pain. Better this, though, than anything serious when you’re uninsured. Yet the reading I did does suggest it could be the fish oil and I did start it right before the spotting began.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012
It kind of sucks to know that not only will the drama queen probably get most of whatever my folks leave behind, but because I won’t be the one going through their things, in the end, I’ll never get to see what interesting papers/pictures they may’ve had. As I get older, I become more fascinated with the past. I think it works that way for most of us. I mean it’s interesting but at the same time, I don’t give a shit who my great-great-great-great-grandmother was.

This period is heavier than usual. Tom said to expect my cycle to do weird things as I head toward menopause. I would’ve thought my periods would get lighter and less frequent, but he thinks it varies from person to person and that they’ll vary in consistency. Why can’t I just get insured and get a hysterectomy? That’d be so much easier!

Nane messaged me at work like I hoped she would. She’s still without Internet at home due to the renovation excursion. She’s only working half a day cuz her new bed is arriving today. It still amazes me how much time off they get from work in Europe! How do they live? She said to check out a picture on her wall and I did. It was the back of a guy (Askim?) painting her bedroom walls red, but I thought she said she wanted them cream-colored.

sighs Oh, to be able to run over for a visit! She’d be all for it too, though I know we’d end up fucking like rabbits no matter how much she may be devoted to Askim. Hey, I love the hell out of Tom, but I’m also only human and I have no qualms about admitting it. When two people who are attracted to each other are left alone in the same room…things happen.

I forgot to mention in one of my last posts that while I always figured my grandparents went through high school, both my mom’s parents were actually listed as completing just one year of high school. I guess it was common back then that as soon as you were old enough to work, you quit school and went to work.

Tom said there have been a couple of cats hanging around here lately, so no, I’m not imagining the meows I sometimes hear.

I ended up reading some fascinating material on the various theories out there on the afterlife and those who have had near-death experiences. Most of what I read made sense but didn’t, and what didn’t make sense also did make sense, if that – well - makes any sense. It was still a very interesting read.

Some say near-death experiences may just be the brain’s reaction to dying. It makes sense that it could cause such hallucinations like going through a tunnel with a bright light at the end of it and meeting friends and family. But it doesn’t explain how some people are able to recount exactly what happened to them during surgery.

It makes sense that people would come up with the same stories based on pure wishful thinking. Hey, everyone wants to think that their life goes on somehow after death and that they get to be reunited with loved ones. But if they’re just stories how come there are so many of them and the people telling them come from all different walks of life?

I still don’t know what to believe, but I realize that if psychic phenomena can exist that can’t really be explained by science (though they think they’ve located the region of the brain responsible for the 6th sense and psychic phenomena), I guess that means an afterlife is possible. Tom believes there’s one; he just doesn’t know what it is.

Having had surgery myself, though, and rendered completely unconscious with zero sense of awareness, it’s also safe to assume that there is a state of complete and total unawareness that also exists on some plane, somewhere, which could signify that without a sense of awareness, there is absolutely nothing and therefore no afterlife.

Those who disagree say that when the body dies it’s a lot like turning off a television. Like a brain shutting down, you can also shut down a television, but that doesn’t mean that the airwaves still don’t exist. Instead, they continue to live on even after the TV is turned off.

I also read up on theories of other dimensions. In many of my dreams, I have often felt like I actually visited some of the places I saw in the dreams. It was like I was there and not just dreaming of being there. Like I left my body and entered this other plane of existence. Are they really astral projections? I wonder about this at times and how I “find” my way back to my body in the end. What if one day I can’t find the way back? Better yet, why’d I ever have to be psychic in the first place??? I mean one who’s actually developed and kind of good at it. However, I doubt I could contact the dead if there really is an afterlife, though I’m not sure I’d want to. And ask them what, if they have free lobster there?

TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2012
I somehow managed to finish chapter 10 of my book and am the crampiest I’ve been since I started spotting a week ago, two weeks before I should. It’s almost up to a light flow and I wonder if I’m going to have a full-blown period soon. Tom thinks I might just end up having my period a week earlier, which he says goes with the spotting time. Yes, I do usually spot a bit before periods, but not a whole week!

I think that as good as the Mylar does at keeping body heat in this bed, I’m going to get the thinnest foam topper I can find at Walmart this weekend that’s made of just plain foam. It will not only work just as well but foam holds the sheets in place much better. Right now the sheets are slipping and bunching like crazy on the Mylar and it’s so “noisy” with the way it crinkles. Sort of like the wax paper we sit on when we go to take a seat on a doctor’s examination table.

Later…

The spotting turned into a full-fledged period and if this keeps happening every other week I’ll scream. I don’t see why it would, though. I think I’m just having a fluky month.

Tom’s become addicted to looking up old records from 1940 and even I have to admit it’s been an interesting learning experience. It’s one of those things you usually have to get older to appreciate.

I called mom to see how she’s doing. She’s getting along but still has 5 weeks left to go in the cast. That must really suck. If an arm cast was as shitty as it was for me, I can just imagine how having one on your foot would be. Ugh! Tammy’s still there, too. For a woman who is so controlling it must be both hard and strange for her to have to rely on someone else for help. At least she’s got someone to help her. Who the hell’s gonna help us when we get old???

Mom is usually pretty tight-lipped when it comes to trying to pump any information out of her, no matter how trivial it may be. But while she couldn’t remember her grandparents’ names, she did remember the street she lived on in 1940 and that was Alderman in Springfield.

It took Tom, who said he could sit and pour through old records for hours, about 20 minutes to go through the scans and find the proper street since they’re not very orderly, but sure enough, they were on Alderman St. in 1940. It wasn’t a house, though. Instead, it appeared to be an apartment building, based on all the other names listed at the same address. It doesn’t seem to exist nowadays when I looked at the area via satellite. Now there are just a couple of two-family houses, so it was probably a very old building that has since been torn down.

I don’t think my parents owned a place till I was born. Maybe the house Nana and Pa lived in next to us at that time in Longmeadow was also their first owned home, who knows? I just know that while I’ll never have the money they did, I didn’t have to spend any of my youth in an apartment.

The tenants were all white with one possible Hispanic or Italian tenant in the building. This doesn’t surprise me as the Puerto Rican boom didn’t really get underway till the 70s and 80s.

Pa worked at the exterminating company he would eventually own, making a grand a year and paying just $20 in rent. While that was still about 20% above normal wages for that time, he didn’t really start making a lot of money till probably around the 50s or 60s. Nana wasn’t working at the time which surprised me since they had a kid to care for and another one just a year or two away, but with that income and that rent, one could work for 3 easily enough. Pa worked full-time. Nana (I keep starting to call her Nane) had been a dance instructor and I guess like most women after they’ve had kids, her body went to hell and that was no longer an option for her.

Mom, whose name they spelled wrong, was 7 at the time the census interviewer interviewed Nana, but her bastard brother was yet to be born. Nana and Pa were both 30 and Pa was listed as an alien, LOL. Apparently, you didn’t have to apply for citizenship right away like you do now. It’s still both strange and fascinating to know my grandparents spoke German and Russian and I didn’t even know it, though Russian’s never been a language I’ve had any interest in learning. Then again, neither was German till Tom read that article and then I met Nane online (that time I meant to say Nane with an e at the end). I wonder what Nana would think if she knew one of her 5 grandkids would learn Spanish and other languages that did not include Hebrew or Yiddish? I suppose that’d be nothing as opposed to learning that one of them would be predominantly lesbian.;) looks towards the heavens Yes, Nana, that woman who helped inspire me to learn German is hot as hell!

Also, I was damn proud of myself for being able to understand most of the German lines in the movie I watched last night! Yeah, I’m such an “accomplished loser.” Can’t drive, can’t keep a schedule, but I can learn lots of languages and write lots of books, LOL.

I think Pa might’ve changed his last name upon entering the US to the very common and generic last name he had to escape the shit that went with having a Jewish last name like my very German/Hebrew maiden name. Hell, it’s amazing what I’ve learned since I apparently didn’t even know the guy’s first name. I’ve always known him as Jack, but he was listed as John. Tom said Jack was usually a nickname for John, but I’ve never heard that before. How do you get Jack from John???

Papa was like my dad, mellow and likable. Nana, on the other hand, was much like my mom. In other words, she was a domineering bitch. I had a few chubby spells as a kid and I remember her taunting me about it, saying that one day I wouldn’t be able to fit through the doorway. Funny thing too, since she was so big herself. I’ll never be a fraction of the size she was. I sure hope not anyway! Well, I certainly can never be tall, but she was kind of tallish like maybe my sister’s height at 5’ 7”, a few inches taller than my mom. She had to be at least 200 pounds. Unlike Pa, who had blue-gray eyes, she had brown eyes. I only knew her as a blond, though she was a natural brunette.

I wonder why they never retired to someplace like Florida like so many older folks seem to do. They certainly could’ve afforded it. Maybe they just didn’t want to leave the business (now in their son’s hands) and their friends and family. Despite how negative and mean Nana could be, I do sometimes miss her and my jovial grandfather. A part of me hopes there is such a thing as reuniting with loved ones in the afterlife, but I won’t count on it. I guess we won’t know for sure what happens until we die. Anyway, they both died in 1985 just 6 months apart at age 75.

How did they manage to have kids 8-9 years apart in a time when BC didn’t exist? Pa must’ve either refrained from letting the damn burst or pulled the plug just in time for the eruption if he didn’t. Probably did a little cycle counting too, as I’m pretty sure they at least knew back then which days were most dangerous to play around on.

I didn’t know my other grandmother as well, but I do know she quit narking on me real fast about smoking and things like that when she came to live with us after her second husband died in California and she got to learn what life with Dureen was all about.

Another peek from the troll today, but this time she wasn’t even in my blog for a minute. Still no posts from her and I still don’t get it. How can she suddenly have this amazing self-control? Some new medication for crazy people? Is her mother sitting there physically controlling her online actions? Something else?

MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2012
Tried to block the troll, who spent over an hour on my blog today but has yet to start blogging again herself, but it wouldn’t work. Maybe that’s a good thing, though, for to block her is to acknowledge her existence, and she’d only get a friend to help her override the block anyway.

Still, her views are picking up in frequency and I worry she’ll go from merely being a peeping Tom to a genuine nuisance again. If there is any good in my tracking subscription expiring in June and not being worth paying to renew, it’s that old adage about ignorance being bliss. In some ways, this is very true. :)

I wish Thoughts had the “whisper” feature MO has so I could make certain sentences or paragraphs private that I’d prefer to keep private so I didn’t have to make the entire entry private. I guess in this case I’ll just let it all be seen. Didn’t want her reading my thoughts on her (that’s a form of acknowledgment, isn’t it?) but I also don’t want to feel held back from speaking my mind in my own journal either. I suppose I could make this entry ‘friends only’. But yeah, Thoughts needs to come up with that, a handy archive, a working search feature, and a way to allow for anonymous comments so people who don’t want to sign up can still leave comments.

Anyway, I went ahead and blocked the troll’s accounts here, figuring it’s only a matter of time before the unwanted contact starts up again. All the sites I use that she knows about shouldn’t be Googlable with the way I have them set up, and she shouldn’t be able to contact me there either. The only place I could be contacted is on Twitter (which I’m considering deactivating since I so rarely use it) but I wouldn’t know it cuz I never remember to check for tweets from those I’m not following. You have to be a friend of a friend’s in order to message or friend me on Facebook, so that doesn’t leave much else. Hopefully, though, she has nothing to say to me anyway. And, until and if she returns to her old online behavior, kudos to her, Mrs. M, or whoever/whatever has had her so well-behaved lately. I’m impressed. Really I am. :) Let’s hope she keeps breaking records!

Later…

My friend Paul (who sometimes goes by Mitch) is so funny at times. I guess the poor guy got bit by a dog and hit his finger with a mallet all in the same day, along with other shit. He said he’d be E flat demented if he were a musical chord, LOL. Hey, I’m Z sharp-minded!

I thought that the spotting was going to stop yesterday but it’s still going on. It’s been a week now. Is it ever going to stop?

Nothing from Nane today. I guess she’s still busy with the paperwork and the bedroom renovation. I dreamt I told her of the old “No Postage Necessary” game Andy and I used to play. I told her for real in a message and ended up making it a dream premonition, LOL.

I’m getting tired of finding bees and wasps in a couple of the windows here. Tom sprayed but it didn’t seem to help. When I got up at 5pm it was to find a pile of ants on the kitchen table. Definitely going to have to get better spray, though we’re about to go from being in shorts with the fans on and the windows open, to being bundled up against the cold rain for the next few days. Therefore, the windows won’t be open.

Andy says I complain too much. Yeah, maybe so, but if it’s worth complaining about, so what if it’s a little or a lot? Like the fact that lately, I’m noticing tweets on my Twitter timeline from people I’m not even following. They’re mostly from verified accounts of some sort.

Later…

Where I should be working on stories no one seems to want to buy, reading, working out, or cleaning, it seems all I want to do is blog.

I have failed many things in life but am looking forward to what the future may hold. For what seemed like forever, there was no future that I could see. Things only seemed bleak and hopeless. I may continue to be denied many things I’d like to have in life, but I do enjoy what I am “allowed” to indulge in. Sometimes it’s those little things that matter more than the big things. Big things of a positive kind are always nice, but sometimes just knowing I have little things to look forward to makes me all the more glad we survived the storm. After the storm, you tend to appreciate the little things more and in some ways, they become big things. A kiss from my husband. The sound of the rain pitter-pattering on the roof. A message from my cyber GF. A compliment on my writing. Sunlight streaming through the window, casting intricate patterns on the carpet. A stick of bubble gum. A stick of patchouli incense. A hopeless wish that a rattlesnake would crawl up from underneath our old house in the desert and forever silence the landlord’s dogs up the hill, even if he would only go out and get two new dogs that very day.

Thought I heard a cat meowing close by when I was in the bathroom. There are cats that hang around here. We’ve seen them. I just don’t know if they’re stray cats or if they belong to someone.

I miss having a pet, though cats aren’t usually my first choice. Even if you get them declawed they still scratch you with their back claws and are even harder to keep out of things than rats. Rats can really get around, don’t get me wrong. Especially when they’re young and thin. They climb drapes and can be found everywhere and anywhere when you let them loose until you train them. But cats jump much higher than rats and are great at jumping on counters, tables and other furniture, knocking shit around and not giving a shit when you yell at them for it. But cats still aren’t all bad.

Although I hate barking, a dog still appeals to me for several reasons and I like the fact that they live a helluva lot longer than rats. I just don’t know if I’d want a small, medium or large dog. Since I would want it as a household pet, for the most part, I guess I’d go with a small one.

Many years ago back in Arizona, one of Tom’s family members got us a parakeet for Christmas. I thought it was really cool at first. The next day I stormed out of bed and told Tom that if they ever got us any such thing ever again he would learn what it was like to stand in the middle of a hailstorm of feathers. No offense to bird lovers out there! :)

I guess I’ll go try to resurrect “Bunny Nose.” I’ll have to read back on the last few chapters, though, since it’s been a while since I worked on that story.

SUNDAY, APRIL 8, 2012
I created my original Thoughts blog through Facebook. Then, as suggested to me by a friend, I created the hiddendimension account to try to thwart Molly. That’s how I came up with the username; I was trying to hide from this loon who has since quit pestering and slandering me and a few of my friends. I don’t know why she’s suddenly ceased this behavior. I’m only grateful for it for however long it lasts. Especially since I’m, well, not such a hidden dimension anymore, LOL. At least 3 people that I know of have found this blog on their own since, as I’ll readily admit, I’m not a very good liar. Therefore, I can’t hide very well. In order to hide, I’d have to literally change my style of writing, change names, change blog style formats, and change the topics I write about altogether. I would literally have to be a whole new person with a whole new life. I could not speak 5 languages or love rats for pets or be a married, childless, middle-aged woman in the woods who loves to build muscle and write.

Yet I am only good at being myself. So even though I did alter first names for a while, I’m a dead giveaway and a very unhidden dimension at best. Some people can do it, but I was never any good at spicing things up other than in stories any more than I was ever good at sugarcoating the bad things I feel or experience. I’m a tell-it-like-it-is kind of gal. When I was 10 years old, then I could tell you I was bionic and came from another planet with an absolutely wonderful and loving family. Hell, I could tell you about just any line of bullshit out there until I was grounded for it and maybe even slapped around a bit, too.

But I’m not 10 years old and I don’t speak just one language either. I really do have a driving phobia, but I can write stories and dress things up there really well. It’s automatic denial for most of those who don’t get something in particular, especially if it’s not very common, but I really do have a sleep disorder and I just adore rats. While I wish I could say that for me it isn’t that bad, my landlord really does get obnoxious as hell at times, and I really do love incense, perfume and anything else that smells good. I’m shitty with numbers but great with words. Really, I am.

I was surprised but pleased to see Maliheh on my tracking log today. I warned her too, that even though only I could see her, I would be able to track visitors with cookies till June 18th. So she is alive and she is getting my messages. She’s just chosen, for whatever reason, not to keep in touch very often.

“Hidden Dimension” is still appropriate for someone like me in a whole ‘nother way. Like whatever these places are that I visit in my dreams that often seem so damn real. Are my dreams just that vivid or am I really entering some other plane when I see, hear and learn things that are actually true or end up becoming a reality in the future? The prospect of sleep has become both scary and exciting. I enter this other dimension and I don’t know why or how. And where it is? Where? We’re all supposed to be able to access this dimension, this other plane of knowledge, insight and existence; I just seem to do a better job of tapping into it than most folks for some reason. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s the things most people aren’t good at that I’m good at and vice versa.

As I sit here missing my daddy and my ratty, I realize my body is no longer desert-ready. 82° used to be perfect for me and was what we usually kept our houses at back down in Arizona, but now 82° is a bit warm which is what it is in this room right now. Where I’ll never like the cold, even though I grew up in a cold climate, I’m definitely now more moderate-climate ready. If I were suddenly in the desert or Florida it would take me a year or so to re-adapt to the constant heat, but since the body does have memory, that’s all it would take. The first time around, when I first moved to Arizona, it took 5-6 years to get acclimated to the intense heat. I know I’ll never live in the desert again. I won’t even visit it. But I don’t know if I’ll always live in the area I’m in now. My dreams suggest I won’t, but right now life is going too well for us to disturb or alter it in any way other than where we live.

Off to enjoy the last of the weekend before my hubby crashes, then looking forward to hearing from Nane tomorrow. :)

SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2012
I guess I can start this entry in between my cheese-filled chicken rings and even though I’m tired from having my sleep split up again. How much longer is this shit going to go on?

Jesse stayed home last night and kept his mutts quiet, thus allowing me the right to enjoy a movie in peace. So I watched late into the night and then crashed between 3am - 4am. After waking up cold a few times, I finally dragged my ass out of bed at 8am and turned the heat up. Tom was at the store.

I don’t know why but these airbeds are like lying on a bed of ice, and apparently the pillow sham I had underneath the sheet wasn’t enough. It was still cold in the room, but lying back down on the bed was also still like lying on an ice rink. So I lay there pissed off and unable to go back to sleep till Tom got back an hour later. He brought in a couple of space blankets made of Mylar which is used in space to insulate spaceships and things like that. He’d gotten them up in Oregon in case he ever got stranded in the bitter cold, which is way worse than New England. The stuff looks like tin foil but feels like cellophane. It crinkles loudly when you first lay down and get settled in. But it does seem to help hold in body heat and block the coldness below. These airbeds are great for warmer climates and in June I’ll remove the space blanket.

I asked Andy if he ever noticed how cold they feel to lay on and he said no, but he was living in the desert at the time he had one. Not even an ice cube seems cold in the desert with the way it’s always so hot there! But for some reason, your body heat won’t warm the damn things and so that’s why I need something between the sheet and mattress with sufficient insulation for when it’s cooler. I do not want to go back to memory foam that messes up my back.

Around 11am, I was just drifting off again when I was aware of Jesse roaring out on the motorcycle since I didn’t have the sound machine turned up as loud as I usually do. Yes, this one person who lives close to 200’ away is that loud. He may as well be just a few yards like our Phoenix neighbors were.

Then it was on to strange dreams. I usually sleep with the stereo speakers blaring white noise created by an off-dialed radio station. In the dream, the speakers started talking. I rose from the bed, confused. Then I realized it was Andy leaving a voice message that was somehow playing through the speakers when it shouldn’t have (and never does in real life). He kept going on and on, though I don’t know what he was saying. I just wished he would shut the fuck up because I couldn’t figure out how to silence him and I wanted to get back to bed, as I’m sure he’ll get a kick out of reading, LOL.

Then my mother comes on in the worst voice I ever heard her speak in, saying to call her back cuz she didn’t feel so well. Naturally, this dream made me wonder if something new has gone wrong for her, though I doubt it since I never even had dreams warning me about Dad’s death. I would still think my mom has a few years left in her anyway because she doesn’t have the type of condition dad had that you can only do so much to control. What conditions she did have were taken care of. The cancerous lung was removed and so was the cancerous breast. But you can’t remove a bum ticker.

I’m too tired to write any more now, so I’ll call this an entry and go relax in bed now that the household cleaning is done for the day. Maybe next time around I’ll sleep straight through. Maybe.

Later…

I wonder if I will “see” the next place we’ll live at before we actually do see it. I saw bits and pieces of the last two places in dreams. I kept dreaming of the woods and saw myself looking out the window through binoculars in another dream, and then we ended up here. I saw chain-link fences and white picket fences, which ended up surrounding parts of the dump we rented in Oregon, though I misplaced the driveway. I “saw” it on the left side of the house but it was really on the right. And the house was pale yellow, not cream.

To my utter astonishment, there’s been no barking tonight or last night. Wow! Wonder what I did to deserve that much? Spot for 5 days instead of 3? I was looking up the possible causes of mid-cycle spotting and they say it usually lasts 12-72 hours. Then why am I leaning toward 120? Either way, I don’t know if Jesse stayed in all weekend or if someone else is there to keep the mutts in line, but I’m glad for the peace and quiet. It serves those of us with writer’s block quite nicely who want to waste time watching movies instead. Then again, even I deserve a good movie here and there, don’t I? Started reading another great book on my Kindle too, but it’s not very long.

Tom’s been complaining that I scream when I talk and maybe I’m losing more hearing and that’s why I’m doing that and blasting music. rolls eyes Yeah, right. That’s why I can practically hear Jesse pick his nose. God would never damage the hearing in my good ear, ever. How else could He sic one noisy neighbor after another on me if I couldn’t hear them? I’ve always blasted music. I’ve always talked kind of loud too, but I’m NOT SCREAMING! I think he just has sensitive ears. :)

Still, I don’t like the way he’s been snapping at me more lately, and well, just seemingly not happy with me anymore. I hope it’s all in my head. I know he’s got a lot going on, but that’s just life. I just feel so useless at times! If I could drive he wouldn’t have to take time out of his weekend to run errands like grocery shopping, picking up mail, bringing cans in to be recycled, etc. God, I feel so worthless, weak and abnormal at times!

I felt bad for him earlier. Not that I’m not happy for those who have good things, especially if they deserve them, but to learn we’re still “poor” even though we’re not is not only unfair and kind of sad, but it’s so us. Meaning, it’s so what God would see was the case for us. Anyway, I’ve been told either directly or through reading conversations on Facebook and other sites that some people I know or know of are making 50K and up. I feel happy for them but sad for Tom. Although it seemed kind of far out, I realized these people didn’t seem like the type to lie or exaggerate about that sort of thing and so I did a little research. For some reason, I thought the national median was 24K and I guess that was the case 20 years ago, LOL, but times have changed. Now it’s 45K - 65K. Don’t get me wrong, having the money to get by is the most important, #1 thing. But I still couldn’t help but feel bad for Tom, who’s worked longer and harder than most, and who’s smarter and more deserving than most. Yet he’ll probably never make it to 40K. Hell, the poor guy wouldn’t even hit 30K if it weren’t for OT. It’s not fair that he’s not even halfway to the national average and that we’re still the underdogs of sorts even when we’re not. I guess all I can do is just be glad for what we’ve got and that we’re not still on unemployment. Some income is better than none and none was exactly what we had for one terrifying week or so last fall.

Well, we might get shit for an inheritance and shit for pension payments that are due to kick in in a couple of months, but I sure am looking forward to returning to sweeping. But not till we move. UPS Stores don’t forward mail and I certainly don’t want anything good coming here. Just because I entered certain sweeps now doesn’t mean I’d know I was the winner or receive the prize before we got out of here. These things can take months. Nonetheless, when the time comes I look forward to at least trying to win, but times have changed there too, and I may be up against a quarter-million people just for a lousy T-shirt.

FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2012
I was so glad to hear from my Ohio buddy today. :) I was getting a little curious and even concerned as to what was up with her. But when oh when will I hear from my southeastern buddy???

Anyway, I don’t know what the hell’s going on with Maliheh, but Christine has been both sad and busy. Sad over losing her cat, but busy with life and getting a promotion. She’s almost at 60K a year! Damn, I can’t imagine Tom ever making even 40K, especially if I’m right about something being determined to hold us back financially. Even when we’re doing “well” there’s still not enough money for the things we’d like to have and do. We’d like to pay the fucking IRS off. We’d like to be able to get things we need/want at the new place as soon as we get moved. But it will probably take years to do all this. Better later than never, though.

I had to laugh at how Christine said that they’re 5 people crammed into a 1-bedroom apartment like Chinese immigrants. And I feel like I’m living like an 18-year-old! Then again, even most 18-year-olds and college kids live better than we do.

The weather’s been what it usually is – warm days, cold nights. I wish it would be more stable (preferably on the warm side) because it’s better for sleeping. Depending on my schedule, I hate going to sleep bundled up against the cold only to wake up sweating my ass off later on, but I know the bulk of it is cuz we live in a trailer with shit for insulation. The place cools down and heats up very easily.

Wow! I’ve already been up 3 hours yet I only had to hear from the Jes pest twice so far today. Even in the bathroom with the door shut and the shower spray pounding on my head I could hear that damn truck of his over 100’ away. He stopped driving the damn thing for a while. What made him decide to go back to it? Did he think he was being too quiet for me? Anyway, I’m sure I’ll hear him 4-6 more times before it gets dark. Plus, tonight, tomorrow night or both, I’ll be hit with 6-8 hours of barking. At least that’s easier to drown out than his thunderous trucks and motorcycles. I could feel the vibration of it under my ass as I sat on the floor with music blaring through headphones the other day.

Anyway, life’s pretty much a waiting game for us right now – hoping things continue to go well and hoping to move soon enough. Even if things could go well forever, I still don’t think I could ever forgive God, or whatever’s up there that had a hand in the catastrophes I’ve had to go through in life with or without my husband, because they were simply too huge and too numerous. Some bad things are to be expected in life and if there’s any good in them it makes us appreciate the good times even more. But when things get so damn extreme we often have nightmares to go with that gratitude. “Aw, come on,” some people may tell me, “forgive God. It’s over.”

But it’s not over. I’m the one who has to live with the nightmares and the horrible memories for the rest of my life, and I don’t mean just any childhood hell I went through. Last fall I felt like I was literally being dangled by an ankle from a steep cliff or a tall building by some sick fuck that said, “Maybe I’ll drop you and maybe I won’t.” Then after days of terrorizing me, he may not have decided to drop me, but he sure did turn me into one scarred-for-life angry bitch. So even if I could forgive, I could never forget. There are a lot of things I could forgive and forget but my childhood trauma, being legally railroaded, then pushed to the edge like we were last fall isn’t a good example of what’s easy for me to forgive and forget. BUT… you do learn to move on and cope with time after speaking your mind about these things and getting them off your chest. I’ve said my piece. I’ve moved on. But I will never forget. The fact that something up there toyed with our lives and our very survival last fall and that in itself is pretty damn scary. You fear that if it can happen once it can happen again, and that it opens the door for an endless supply of horrifying possibilities.

It really annoys the fuck outa me when people say they’ll buy my books but never do. I’ve totally given up as far as that goes. Totally.

But even more annoying is that I had more dreams that seemed a bit too jailish and courtish. It seemed to revolve around that anyway, and even though the black bitch’s name was never mentioned or anything pertaining to “the case,” my dream self seemed to automatically know she was involved. Who else would be? Who else have I gone to court for since the early 90s? The last one was for Andrea and Stacey and they didn’t win.

Anyway, in the dream, I was leaving what I guess was the police station after being fingerprinted. I glanced back at a blow-up shot they were studying on a monitor of these strange red lines in my eyes. I started to ask what the lines were when one of the pigs asked something like why they hadn’t seen me before, and was I just new there or what?

Then I was reading what was either a discovery report or what the DA planned to say about me in court. “And then Shadow Gardens was later discovered” was one line that made me think they had been keeping an eye on me all along after all, even though I have no such journal entry or book called Shadow Gardens or Shadow of Gardens or whatever the hell it was.

I just wish I could stop having these dreams! I hope they mean nothing more than to say that sadly, the pigs are still wasting time and resources looking at what I’m up to as opposed to going after murderers, rapists and true criminals who actually do things to harm others.

Later…

I totally skipped out on both dieting and exercising today and enjoyed a burger and fries from Carl’s Jr. So about 1000 calories in just one sitting!

Wild turkeys and deer have been roaming around the land. Of course the bees are continuing to break in too, so tomorrow Tom’s going to spray. The rains have since washed away any leftover residue from the last time he sprayed.

I hope Jesse doesn’t go out tonight. There’s a new movie I’d really like to see and I would rather watch it without all the barking in the background. If not I guess I’ll have to wait till tomorrow or Sunday. sighs But someday I’ll get to live where barking isn’t an issue, right?

THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2012
I tried to will myself to stay under 1200 calories yesterday but went a little over. Like most people, I have my strengths, weaknesses and limits. Well, I just don’t have the kind of will and discipline with dieting as I do with exercising, but my weight hasn’t fluctuated much.

Not sure why I still get sore muscles and joints at times, even with the fish oil supplements. Haven’t I been working out long enough for my muscles to be used to this shit? Then again they only get sore when I run at 5 MPH. I should keep it at 4 MPH, I suppose. Less impact that way. It’s just that that’s gotten a little too easy the more I’ve gotten into shape and I feel the need to challenge myself a bit. There’s no way I could sustain 5 MPH for very long, though. Not yet anyway.

It’s the afternoon so the landlord’s doing what he does best – annoying me with the loud vehicles. Thought I heard him talking when I stepped outside, though I couldn’t tell if it was to someone on the phone or in person. Probably in person since he seems to be like most people with the daily company. Again, I hope the next people are a real nightmare with company galore, late-night parties, etc. I hope they too, live outdoors so they can show him what it’s like to have to hear from others all the time. I hope they have a dog that wakes him up, and well, I could go on and on but I won’t. I’ll just say that we didn’t even hear a tiny fraction from Kim, the young lady who lived just an arm’s reach away from us up in Oregon, as opposed to this little bastard who’s over 100’ away.

For some reason, I’ve been waking up every day for a week now after just 4-5 hours of sleep. I didn’t think I’d be able to fall back asleep this morning, but I did after about an hour of just lying there. A disturbing dream woke me up this time but since no harm was done, I’d say it’s nothing to worry about.

While Tom waited in the car at an intersection, I was looking for the best spot on a nearby sidewalk of all places to place our dirty laundry till we were ready to wash it. Then I heard shouts and glanced over at Tom to find a cluster of bullies approaching the car. The leader, a tall, thin, wiry blond kid in his late teens or early 20s held a scythe in a menacing way as if he were about to smash in the driver’s window. I wanted to attack him, but didn’t think that was a good idea since he had 5 or 6 friends in tow. So, thinking quickly I called out to him pretending to be in pain. It worked, cuz they all looked my way. Clutching my stomach I moved closer to them and saw that the scythe had turned into just a regular household spatula. I said, “I think I may have a bout of appendicitis coming on. Let me see if I can get this guy to get me to the hospital.” I woke up making a run for the passenger door.

Later…

Damn! Amber was in again looking to see if I made my blog public. Well, just as soon as I get the rest of Maliheh’s cat drafts out of there, I’ll set it to public with one post giving my thoughts.com link.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2012
Most people who think of what could have been are often filled with regret. Not me. I’m nothing but grateful that what could have been the case a couple of days ago wasn’t the case at all. :)

My mother, on the other hand, is having a really shitty time of it. Not only is she understandably depressed since dad’s passing less than 6 weeks ago, but she fell and broke her ankle both inside and outside.

When I first called I asked if she got the message I left over the weekend, but she hadn’t gotten it. Then I told her about losing the rat and filled her in on Tom. When I asked how she’d been, that’s when she finally hinted something was wrong and called for Tammy to get on the phone. As soon as I realized she was there again, I thought uh-oh.

Despite the shitty circumstances, though, we had a nice talk. At one point I said I hoped she didn’t have to deal with the pervert, meaning my brother, then asked if Mom was still on the other phone. She said she didn’t think so, so we talked on for about 10 minutes and I got a kick out of how she said they’d tax you just to use the bathroom in Connecticut since that state’s taxes have gotten so outrageous.

Then out pops mom to say she was going to hang up now and let us keep chatting.

Oops.

So she heard me call her son a pervert and say that she really oughta get rid of the store and may not be able to live alone much longer. But as Tammy said, she won’t get rid of the store till she’s ready to because that’s basically all she has left. I can understand her wanting to have something.

I let them know I’d fly out if need be (even if I don’t want to see people I don’t want to see), though I realize there’s not much I could do. I don’t drive, I don’t know the area, and how much housekeeping could there be with a 79-year-old woman with a broken ankle?

Anyway, Dad would have been turning 81 tomorrow had he still been alive, so that’s got to be rough on her. And as always, I have mixed emotions about her. I feel bad for her. She’s only human and so am I. But at the same time, this is the woman who caused me, both directly and not, so much grief for me for so many years.

What were the parents of poor “Zelpha” thinking when they named their daughter Zelpha of all things prior to the 1940s? I like unique names, but not those that sound like another planet!

So I’m a quarter Russian and a quarter Austrian and I didn’t even know it. Yeah, it’s amazing what one can learn after so many years. Since they released the 1940s census records online (where Tom met Zelpha when he was checking Iowa’s records) I learned that both my grandfathers were born in other countries. My maternal grandfather was born in Russia and came to the US at age 4. My paternal grandfather was born in Austria and came over when he was 3. That explains my German maiden name, which is a combo (as many German words are) for “pale stone.” Wish I knew my great-grandparents’ names. I’d love to look them up as well and see where they’re from.

I was just about to say that it’s been a nice, quiet day (even though I didn’t get up till noon), but here we go with the gunning of that loud, obnoxious truck I’m so sick of listening to every day. And why so late in the day? It’s like something up there is making sure he puts his racket off till later due to my schedule. And the sucky thing about it staying lighter later is that this guy, who lives outdoors every minute that he can, can be outside fiddling with things and annoying me for longer than he could in December.

Our nice but incompetent propane guy came today and gave us what I hope is our last 100 gallons. We only put up with him cuz we like the savings we get with this guy versus other companies. I asked what happened to delay him and he said his eye doctor dilated his eyes yesterday with those drops that make your vision blurry. Well, that doesn’t explain where he was on Monday, but we’re glad he got out here, even if we probably would’ve been ok till next week. Meanwhile, I appreciated the compliments (even if I’d rather hear them from my special buddy) about my youthful and fit appearance. Yeah, I’m getting there and proud of it. :) It’s taken a lot of hunger and hard work. But I’m still a work in progress with a lot more work to do.

Oh no, not again! Just when I thought he’d shut up for the night, here goes that incredibly loud truck again. Landlord or not, I’m about ready to call up there and tell him enough’s enough already! We’re the ones paying, after all. This has gone on for nearly an hour now. I wish I was as noise-tolerant as Tom!

I had some spotting last night which I hope doesn’t become a regular thing. I ran and checked and saw that it was exactly two weeks after my period. I have heard that ovulation can cause spotting but it’s only happened to me once or twice before.

I’m surprised to say I’m surprised not to have heard from Nane yesterday, though she did “like” a wall post of mine. She’s still busy renovating her bedroom anyway and I’m sure work must be hectic for her.

The troll peeked in on me today. Made about 8 page views but still no entries of her own. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.

TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2012
I had a dream about Tink that seemed amazingly real. Enough to make me wonder if it was really just a dream. I mean I know it was just a dream. But was it a “regular” dream or was it Tink’s way of visiting me? In the dream, I never saw the rat’s belly to see if there was a bright white splotch on it like Tink had, but he was very dark brown. I don’t think we ever had a rat as dark as Tink was. I don’t know where I was in the dream but it seemed like I was lying down relaxing somewhere. The rat was curled up on my chest and it seemed that time had passed in the dream. Like over an hour. I was surprised the rat could go that long without having to run home for a drink, to pee, or a bite to eat. Next thing I knew the rat was running around playfully by my side and jumping up to nibble affectionately on my chin, something he used to do in real life. My dream self wondered if it was Tink come back to life and he scurried off as I was trying to guess what rat it could be – Tink, some other rat, or a future rat.

There probably isn’t an afterlife and it probably was just a dream, but when I woke up I remembered Andy saying that spirits couldn’t “do” anything for the first few days. Well, Tink’s been gone since Friday, and people like me are wide open to psychic forces and experiences. When you’re one of those who can tap into dimensions most people don’t seem to be able to tap into, even though we’re all supposed to have that ability, it makes you wonder at times.

The propane people were supposed to come yesterday but they never did. As far as I know, they never even called Tom’s cell to offer an excuse as to why. And so I’m hoping they’ll come today and also wondering how far is far enough? Really, how far do our neighbors have to be before they’re no longer an annoyance? I didn’t even make it to noon in peace today. By 9:30 Jesse started up with the racket – hammering, running power tools – and zooming in and out on the motorcycle.

I am sooo glad we’re getting out of here in a few months! Instead of getting used to his shit over time, I’m only getting more fed up. Maybe some would disagree with me, but I should NOT have to have sound machines on out in the country, and I should NOT have to know about it every time this little shit comes and goes! So again, how far is far enough? Or is there no such thing if you’re me? Well, if I’m so destined to have to hear it no matter where we go, I look forward to doing it in a house with adequate space instead of this little old dump with a landlord who’s living in the 1800s. He doesn’t do TV, he doesn’t do sports, he doesn’t do relationships, he doesn’t do computers; all he does is live outdoors and drive me crazy! Makes me wish it would rain again. But the weather’s going to be nice all week which means I’ll have to either throw on sound machines or listen to him hammering all fucking week. Like I said, after 20 years of this “noise curse” it’s obvious that my neighbors are going to be a nuisance whether they’re a few feet away or a few hundred feet away.

I should be sleeping through most of Jesse’s antics by now, but my schedule is actually backing up instead of rolling forward like usual. I’ve gone from getting up at 10:00 to 8:15 to 7:30 where I should’ve slept till 2pm today. I know myself, though, so tonight I’ll probably sleep 12 hours to play catch-up which means I’ll probably sleep till noon tomorrow. Of course I’ll have to sleep with the sound machine blaring really loud so the morning hammering session doesn’t wake me up. I’m amazed I was even awake enough to work out today, though I only ran 15 minutes and burned 150 calories. Did some lifting, too.

MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012
I gained back 3 of the 4 pounds I lost thanks to a bag of Jelly Belly’s on Saturday and a stint at KFC on Sunday, but it was worth it. I’ll only run it back off over the week anyway.

It’s going to be warm today so I turned the heat off and am going to get my running out of the way after I post this.

Anyway, some people have been curious, so to clarify the curiosity, I’m not an atheist. An Atheist are those who do not believe there is a God. I’m more agnostic because I just don’t know. I haven’t seen anything with my own two eyes to convince me there is a God, but I haven’t been convinced that there isn’t a God either. I simply do not know.

It was nice hearing from Nane this morning. She’s busy at work now as the first of the month is when they’re at their busiest, and is redecorating her bedroom. The way she talks of repainting and redoing the wallpaper and all that makes me think she owns and doesn’t rent. Still, it’s another reason to be glad we’re not neighbors as hot as she is, LOL. She says she probably won’t be online for a few days but will share a picture when it’s all done. She’s going from dark peach to light cream, I guess, to make the room seem larger. She’s also super happy for Tom and I.

I’ve never been a fan of dark colors in general. I like pastels or neons, but because I like to sleep in total darkness, a midnight blue or deep purple bedroom might be ideal.

Either way, the decorating has always been up to me. Tom has never worn the pants in that department, LOL, and as I love to remind him, he doesn’t even wear a shirt!

Still nothing from Maliheh and I don’t want to go asking and whining about why I haven’t heard from her in so long. If my suspicions are right about her, that’d be what she’d want.

Later…

Let’s see…Jesse drove me crazy earlier, the propane people will be here today, and it looks like I’m going to get through the first business day of April without any pig shit. New quarter, new worries. But like I said before, I will make them suffer more than they could ever make me suffer should they decide to fuck with me in person. Unfortunately, there are still 28 more days in the month. After all, they didn’t stick their nose in my Google info till the 18th of October, and they waited till the 9th of January to email me if it was really them. Don’t know the point in pulling a piggy impersonation, though, other than just to scare me till I called the pigs, as they hoped, only to be told they had no information for me. Real pigs or not, if I can get to May without hearing anything I’ll breathe a lot easier.

I swear I even had a dream last night where she was apologizing to me. LOL, nothing she’d dare do even with a gun held to her head or an offer of a million dollars.

Later…

You know how I have a million reasons to resent God and be pissed at Him? Well, I’m actually thanking the hell out of Him right now. It doesn’t undo the past, but you see, if he hadn’t gotten that job, TODAY would’ve been his last day! Yup, the would-be lay-off. Right now I’d be miserable and crying tears of frustration. Instead, I’m nearly in tears of gratitude. Had he been laid off we could’ve been stuck here indefinitely depending on how long it took him to find another job and what it paid. Others were laid off today. He could’ve been one of them, but something looked out for us for once, though Tom is a very good worker who proved himself worthy of being hired.

His new shift is going to be 10am - 6:30pm. He’s very happy with those hours. Less traffic but that still leaves mornings open, and for some things, evenings as well. Sometimes I wonder if it’s my dad looking out for us and not God. Why all of a sudden? Less than 6 weeks after my dad dies something suddenly seems to care about us. Whatever it is, I’m just glad he wasn’t one of the ones to be axed! I’d be all pissed, bummed out and stressed out as Tom scurried to apply for unemployment and food subsidies yet again. It would have ended up draining our savings to supplement what it didn’t cover, etc.

Can’t wait to find out if he gets a raise and what it may be. The supervisor put in for him to get a raise but because he has the same job title, he may not. I’m just glad he didn’t get laid off and that today wasn’t the shitty day it could’ve been!

I’m also glad he’s finally getting the recognition and the pay he deserves. A $600 biweekly unemployment check was not what he deserved for 28 months.

SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 2012
Tom and I are enjoying a relaxing Sunday. We went to KFC earlier. I ate every bite of my delicious chicken, biscuit, corn and cheesy mac. It was sad not to be able to share some with the rat. He loved the mac and the biscuits and nibbling on chicken bones.

The airbed is too cold and the memory foam is too hot. Right now I have the memory foam on top of the airbed during this cold spell. And yes, it’s messing with my back again. As soon as it warms back up and the rain stops we’ll switch back.

So all that vehicle work I had to listen to when we were burying our pet was to make the old truck as loud as it used to be so he could annoy me further by gunning the damn thing for 10-15 minutes every time he takes off? Wonder how long this is going to go on. I sooo hope and pray that if we get into an adult community we don’t have loud vehicles that people gun and run for-effing-ever right next door, cuz remember, we’ll be going back to having neighbors just an arm’s length away.

Been making an awful lot of errors and typos lately in my journal. Andy’s been kind enough to point them out to me, but I’m guessing it’s the Mac’s built-in reader which isn’t nearly as realistic-sounding as the one I’d been using in Windows. But they don’t have a Mac version. So for now I’ve slowed down the Mac reader and maybe then I’ll be able to catch these things.

Later…

I guess now’s a good time to write about the disturbing dreams I had last night even though my inner right wrist hurts. I’m guessing it’s a muscle strain from working out.

Seeing that it’s now April and a new quarter, I really hope the dreams didn’t mean anything. Especially since they were all “wrong.” It seemed like a public defender of sorts was telling me she felt confident she could get the case dismissed since there were more important things to tie up the courts for. My dream self seemed to understand it was a black bitch thing, though I was charged with threats and not spam. But then the “courthouse” suddenly had a buffet. Mom and Andy were there, and then it was going through my mind that I was being charged with threatening Maliheh and not the black bitch.

There was also something about me having to wear a shower cap to sleep for a few nights (in jail?), and rehearsing in my head what I would say to the judge in my defense.

But there isn’t going to be a defense, I reminded myself when I woke up because I did nothing wrong.

But what did they frame me for? Come on, Arizona’s laws may be crazy, but sending her blogs was simply not enough. What did they do?

sighs They just better hope I never find out.

I realized another thing that suggests the pig might not have been a pig, though with my shit luck, it probably was. I know Arizona and I know the black bitch. She would go running to the pigs over a few harmless emails, and the pigs would make a big stink over it. If she were white and there was no history between us, then probably not. BUT… it does seem odd that I was emailed. I mean, who the hell tells someone they’ve made a case against them in an email? Maybe it’s a common practice if they can’t get hold of the person’s address or phone number, though I still don’t see why they couldn’t. It’s not like we ever tried to hide or anything, and there are several ways I’d think they’d be able to find either of our addresses. If anything I would’ve thought our physical address would be easier to find because it’s connected to our IP. Our UPS Store box isn’t.

Either way, there’s just some business you simply don’t conduct by email. Like big win notifications. Any legitimate company is going to call or contact you by postal mail. Sometimes they’ll email you, but not without calling and sending overnight letters in addition.

sighs again Hopefully this is another thing I’ll never know for sure.

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Last updated August 14, 2024