NOT MUCH TIME LEFT...(10 DAYS LEFT)

Status: PACKING, PACKING, AND PLAYING PAX IMPERIA WHILE I DO IT.

I did get in some writing on The Vampiress Hunter though. 18 new pages of titilating stuff for future readers to pore over.

Watching: Nothing. TV's screwing up again--so it's going to be D-U-M-P-E-D.

Listening to: Lots and lots of taped music while we pack.

Reading: Kushiel's Scion. Page 716.

TOPIC: CHAOS REIGNS

I can't stay on for very long these days. Even after we had lost the internet for a few days this past week, I spent some needed time writing.

Just to *write*.

I just don't know when I will get back to it.

Presently, I spent yesterday helping my wife pack her stuff up and mine. We got most everything broken down and boxed. But we only have ten days left before we have to leave here.

It'll take us five to get everything ready. Three to move things into a new storage unit--if my aunt comes through for us. I just found out that my grandmother--on my father's side--passed away this past January.

I only met her once--when she and my aunt came up to give me my father's things--pictures, photos, his service records from his tours in Vietnam so many years ago. (He died in 2004 of throat cancer.)

But my aunt won't say how my grandmother died. She said it was quick and sudden--that's all she knows.

I worked a little bit more on The Vampiress Hunter.

Added a few new chapters.

But on the 25th, I'm going to be posting one last entry here. It's going to be for my new mailing addy.

Anyone is welcome to snail-mail me. Just to drop me a note, say hi, or whatever. I'm way past the stress threshhold nowadays.

I just want to get the fuck out of here as fast as possible. We're both strained and exhausted from having to deal with an uncaring management and a complete tool to boot.

I just want out so we can start over again. It may be several years before we can do anything with our housing situation. Things up here aren't good at all.

I have my inlaws stressed out, my mother wants me to still sell everything I've owned and collected these past 34 years and move back to Vermont.

She won't even say why.

All she keeps giving me is the run around--but I don't need (or want) to be pawned off yet again and be dumped in an unhappy living situation because my family finally got what they wanted.

I'm not doing it!!!

I'm an adult now...I can't make my own fucking decisions!

On another front, April may finally be pregnant. I know I've had false alarms in the past, but this seems different somehow.

It'll be just really bad timing if it is. Good news for us--as we've been trying for 7 years--but the fact that we will be homeless in less than 2 weeks time...?

Isn't going to help matters much.

I'm still in appeals with Social Insecurity. They claimed that I am now cured because of my past job history and the fact that I can write a book.

I am sooo seriously considering suing these assholes for just being stupid...

But now I have to find a way to save up the $1000-$2000 needed for pro-bono work. Because--as I keep finding out--no one will take the case unless it's a money-related money matter or a backpay issue.

Hopefully, in 5 months time, I'll have the money saved up and a lawyer to represent me on my disability problems--not because I can do this and that.

Having Factor Five Leiden has complicated things a great deal more than I thought.

Sky

PRICE GOUGING OF THE WORST KIND

Status: Got a few rolls of packaging tape--from the $25 my inlaws gave my wife for her birthday.

It's good enough to get things going again--for just a little while.

But we have so much to do between now and the first of September. (Which is now 9 days away. Then it's 4 weeks to zero hour.)

I also wrote a few pages on The Vampiress Hunter. But don't expect me to applaud myself. I'm still not in full 'writing mode' yet.

There's still too much going on for me to remain completely focused on my book projects.

Watching: Oddly enough, the TV functions normally--after plugging it in for a test, Thursday. I think the convertor gave it a coronary and it "flipped out".

Five months off and it works now.

It's just too bad we may not be around much longer to enjoy it.

Listening to: Taped music. "A Daisy Chain For Satan."--By My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult.

Reading: Kushiel's Scion. Page 555.

TOPIC: HARD TIMES A'COMIN'.

My wife got $25 for her birthday today. And since we were (still are) in desperate need of some packaging tape and cat food, we decided to get both--since the cats were running low and we had zero tape.

When we shopped at Wal-Mart, we were...to put it bluntly stunned by what we saw.

One roll of packing tape--the clear stuff: $4.44 each.

2 rolls together? $4.44 each.

The 4-paks? $8.49.

One bag of catfood? Up a dollar from last month to $10.98.

It took us 20 minutes to decide what we needed. Forget me transplanting more from my garden this month with new potting soil to mix with the old--I made the ultimate sacrifice and spent what little money I had left on making sure we had enough packaging tape to last us for at last 5 more days--enough to pack more stuff into the boxes I got a few days ago.

So we got 2 rolls of the packaging tape for $4.44, the bag of catfood, and I went and got 2 smaller packing rolls for $4.26.

But I couldn't believe this! I could understand buying stuff in bulk or two-for-onsies and all that sorts of thing...but when they start charging the same price for a single as they do a double--that's where I start to look at myself, look at the world I live in and think: We are so fucked.

Pardon my language, but this kind of price-gouging just hurts people like myself.

I sat at the Subway express counter and thought to myself: "This has got to end. We're just getting priced out of everything--not just my comics, or my occasional book, or a candy bar--but everything."

Rent, utilities, public transportation, basic essentials...

I don't honestly know how much longer I'm going to be able to continue absorbing everything. I'm barely hanging on as it is.

And next year, they are forecasting food prices are going up another 5% to 6% in 2009.

How the hell am I supposed to keep up with kind of inflation? All it's doing is hurting me.

I try to do what I can to make every dollar I have count. But it doesn't seem to go as far as I would've liked. Have a little extra lying around. A tiny reserve cushion.

But it's not there.

All I can think of is how my mom did it with raising the three of us by herself so many years ago, and I just can't see how I can apply the same principle to a world that's 24 years out of place and 53 times more expensive; with so little money.

What do I do? What do I spend it on? What's more important?

Despite my best efforts, I'm rapidly losing this fight. I just don't know where to turn to next for help.

I...I just don't know anymore. The government just doesn't seem to give a shit about people in my situation...the middle-class is pretty much history--and everybody I know here in cyberspace and the real world is hurting.

My father-in-law lost his job yesterday and it's thrown my inlaws into a state of near-panic--since his income was paying most of the bills all these years--since I got married to April.

And now...even she's contemplating divorce because she doesn't want to live in a tent or out on the streets.

When I got home today, I put my foot down. I said: "We've been through a lot together these last 6.5 years and the last thing I need is you to tell me we should get divorced because we are in a serious fix right now. We aren't separating and that's that. We'll get through this somehow. We always do." I went into the bedroom and wanted to see if Jaws III recorded while we were gone. (A bad recording--but okay to watch.)

I'm just tired of that. Ever since I can remember, I've always been shut out of everything. The moment a crisis pops up with my family, my well-being and wefare is sacrificed automatically for their personal comfort.

I'm left flailing out of control.

My mother takes in my two brothers and I get left to fend for myself. This happened many times over the past 13 years--before they all left me for Vermont. But this kind of abuse scarred me deeply.

Sure, I was an adult back then, but I was not in a stable living situation either.

A few of my friends were sympathetic to my brothers' problems and causes; offering to help, but when it came to me?

"Tough luck. You can do without."

I told April when we were going to Wal-Mart today: "What did I do to deserve this kind of treatment? Did I piss off everyone the day I was born disabled and seen as a burden for the rest of this country in general? Why is that people have to treat me like this?"

I went on saying, "Julie (a crazed friend of my wife's) wants you to live with her--but not in a tent--but sees no problem with me living out on the streets or by myself--with no one to be with."

I said: "I can't have that. Not when my health is going down hill mighty fast and I might up dead by accident or something equally worse. And how would you know what happened to me if you weren't there? That's why I don't like Julie. She's too obsessed, uncaring, and selfish. She wants what we have, or don't want--and would rather have you all to herself than have me around either her, you, or Joseph. (Her boyfriend.)"

I finished by saying: "We are soulmates. Husband and wife. Bound by a mutual contract that pretty much illustrates what we are going through now: 'For better or for worse'. There is no bailing out when the going gets tough. No chickening out when faced with a cold reality. We have to do this together. Not apart."

I'll be damned if I'm going to let this happen to me. We went through hell together before getting married--both of us nearly dead for real.

I'm not to let something as being homeless be a cause to separate the two of us by proxy--because she's scared and I'm having issues of my own. Y'know?

This is the way the world is: No one cares, no one gives a shit. It's everybody for themselves when it comes to crunch time.

But I've sacrificed way too much to simply lose out on what little I have to me and the woman that I loved and married.

I'm not going to accept that!

Sky

OH YEAH...THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN!

Status: In the middle of a housing crisis and not able to write on anything.

Doing: Taking a break from all this running around.

Watching: The $155 HD TV that I just bought in January (and died in April) is going to the trash heap. So don't bother even asking. I'm still pissed off about that! :0(

Listening to: Taped music.

Reading: Kushiel's Scion. Page 504.

TOPIC: PACKING'S A PAIN IN THE BUTT

Nevermind the fact that I wish I was a hamster, or some other avian-born creature right now.

But I feel like an overburdened mule with so much crap to pack up and move.

Tomorrow, we have to go back to Lynnwood and turn in our applications along with the first $70 of our credit check fees and then wait to see what happens afterwards.

Then we have to go back to housing and give them the notice that our management conveniently neglected to give to Section 8 on Monday.

My question is: Do I hold onto the $87 needed for the other 4 credit checks (these are for low-income housing--but still expensive nonetheless), or I do I just go about my normal business and pay my bills and my next editing fee installment?

Well...I have to pay Linda more for The Starchild. Even if I don't get it published, I'm still going to get it edited and ready for the time when I can get it ready.

Of course, I'll be like 46-years-old when this book comes out.

If I sound cynical--it's because this is just what happens when the rug gets pulled out from underneath me unexpectedly.

It turns out that the management did not want to negotiate for a lower rent price by a measley $20. They were asking for $970 and the housing people wanted $950. But like I said before? This place isn't worth even half that amount. I'd say...roughly...$600 minimum for this 2-bedroom unit.

I've seen better units and believe me...they are worth the $900. But they also have other amenities and other stuff.

This complex doesn't even have a pool. Not even a weight-room.

So how can they justify such a dramatic rent increase in the past several years?

Simple:

They simply chalk it up to market prices and set things accordingly.

But this complex isn't worth that much money. They tried selling this enterprise for $7.2 million a few years ago. Some poor schmuck must've bought it--because we have new management; for the umpteenth time in the past 8 years.

But instead of improving the surrounding areas and giving each unit a major face lift (instead of a simple paint over and some cheap-looking countertops to cover up the neglect that this place had to endure for years on end...?) and some real-time amenities, they just continued the same lack of good maintenance and low-bidding to the cheapest contractor or other business outlets which my wife and I have seen come and go since 2000. (How do you explain the reason behind us waiting 3 years for new window screens?)

If I had the fucking money and I could do whatever the fuck I wanted...?

I WOULD'VE RAZED THIS PLACE TO THE GROUND--BULLDOZED EVERYTHING--AND STARTED THE HELL OVER!!!

If I'm going to be charging people $900+ a month, I'm going to give them their money's worth and then some!

This cheap-assed crap of an apartment complex is only supposed to be a Wal-Mart speciality! What the hell are they doing competing with a corporation that likes to pay their workers substandard wages and secretly employs illegal immigrants from Mexico?

THAT'S PLAGIARISM! LOL

Sky