10-18-02 @ 3:49 am EDT

I hate Third Watch. The characters are all very abrasive and unlikable, and their names are awful...Yokas? Sully? Bosco? *blech* Yet I sometimes end up listening to it as I'm on the computer or taking a nap.

The episode on right now is the one where Yokas tells her husband she's pregnant again and she nearly goes to get the baby aborted, because she can't afford to have another one. The power is shut off at their house and she flips out when her husband snaps, "Don't yell at me. I'm not the one who forgot to pay the bill." Aside from that...I think her husband took it rather well, considering. Yokas retorts, "FORGOT to pay the bill? I didn't pay the bill because we DON'T HAVE THE MONEY!"

I'm hating the show even more right now because it's striking too close to home. I have BEEN there, waking up with the power shut off, the cable shut off, the car insurance revoked, the phone company calling, the Internet shut off, another yellow or pink warning notice on the door, another warning message on the answering machine, etc. And Dad is still of the mind that Ma just FORGETS to pay the bills, when the truth is we just can't afford to. Ford Credit is the one that's been calling all week, and Dad hasn't blown up yet (I don't understand why not! He hasn't even called Ma names in front of me yet...please cross your fingers), but he's getting close. I begged Ma to just CALL them and tell them the money is on the way, but she won't. She says she paid part today and the other part to be paid tomorrow...but THEY don't know that! Why can't she just call them? She said I should erase the message from the machine before Dad gets home...yeah right! They called yesterday around ten AM so I erased that...but then they called AGAIN around eight PM while Dad and I were sitting on the couch! She even suggested I DISCONNECT THE PHONE LINE after logging off...I told her that's rather hard to do unnoticed when Dad is sitting right there a few feet away from me!

Why can't she just call them?

She said a few weeks back she would pay for my upgrade when she gets paid on the 17th, but I'm afraid to ask her about that now. We can hardly afford it. Maybe I'll bring it up and give her the half of the payment that I have. I still feel awful. Because I know that once Ford is taken care of, there'll just be another one lined up right behind them. And here I'm seemingly more worried about a dumb website where all of two or three people care about my writing anyway.

In the TV show, Yokas declares she cannot live this way anymore. We, we don't really have a choice.

I so hope that things look up later on. Just for a while. I've gotten all too used to just getting settled down, and then having another disappointment dropped in my lap. I am literally always on edge now. Never hope for the best, but always expect the worst, because chances are IT is what will be coming.

I discovered another website I relied upon is shutting down (it's like the fourth or fifth of that kind that I've been a member of, a question-and-answer site, that's shut down! Damn it!), and that was depressing since it was the last somewhat-useful one I knew of. I'm getting so tired of this. Shutting down to focus more on our business enterprises? Yeah, right, you're just out of money to support your userbase and so you're screwing them over. Liars.

Lately I've been thinking about trips to state parks. I've seen pictures of Hiawatha National Forest, and it looks so beautiful. It's somewhere in Michigan, I'm guessing in the UP. Ma said it's not expensive to visit national and state parks. The drive would be very long, but I would really like to see some more of my home state. Winter is coming on so it's unlikely I can do it this year, but maybe next year. I'll have to look up information to see what places there are in Michigan to see. It's about time I saw more than just Mackinac Island.

I just heard on the show that Yokas miscarried. Not the best solution to the problem, but at least it was a solution...if this were real life, she probably would have had to have the baby, and yet another bill to take care of. Perhaps I should listen to entire episodes before starting journal entries?