2/01/01

I was getting by financially for a while sneaking into the house while Phebe was at work scrounging for stray coins and refundable bottles and the like, but then she saw fit to have all the locks changed and a security system installed. Probably cost a fortune. Never could find where she hid the check book. Couldn’t find any credit cards either. She uses that ATM card to get money out of the machine most of the time. Never did take the time to teach me how to use it, so that ATM card wouldn’t be of any use to me even if I found it. Now I gotta go to Middletown on the tractor every so often as the weather allows with a load of scrap metal to get cash money. I load up as much scrap as I can in the manure spreader, which is my most road-worthy wagon at this point. I used to synchronize the scrap runs when I could to swing by the government center in Goshen on reporting day to save on gas, but I was told by a sheriff‘s deputy that my “mode of transport poses a health and safety hazard. . . and takes up too many parking spaces to boot.” I told him “the supermarket doesn’t seem to have any problem with me parking there--I can’t see why here should be any different.” He wasn’t too pleased with that comment, said, “you report here for probation, right?

I’ve been heating the trailer with a wood stove. Lately I’ve been cooking on it too since the electric stove in the kitchen stopped working. I had no idea last summer I would be in this predicament living in the trailer in Winter. I would have a good supply of seasoned wood stacked up otherwise. It’s been tough going out in the woods with tractor every day, dragging home whatever severed limb I can find in the snow. Right now as I sit and write this I have wet clothing hanging from clotheslines strung all throughout the trailer. Just had my second meal of oatmeal for the day. The dog hates the shit. No wonder it keeps running off. At least we’re in February now. Not that it’s any less fucking cold.