As I figured, I have to really hang onto the memory of last Monday’s sex, cuz it’s not gonna be like that again for a while. Who knows how many weeks it’ll be before he gets off like that again?

Anyway, I just found out through AOL it’s gonna snow over the weekend in MA. Yes! That’s so cool. Especially since it doesn’t usually snow till around Christmas.

Next door hasn’t been heard of other than two times they left softly in the morning and that Saturday afternoon they came in loud. This 3-day weekend, though - good God! I am not looking forward to it at all. They are gonna party for sure. It’ll start around 2:00 in the afternoon, with my luck, and go till 10:00 at night.

Piggy’s been whining more and more and the funny thing about it is that it’s my fault. I didn’t stop to think about this, but Tom says he’s taking after me. I whine sometimes if I have a headache or just to make noise as a release and he’s been mocking me.

Kim read me a hilarious letter she’s gonna send Bob that’ll really upset him and believe me, we feel no guilt. Not with all the shit he’s caused with his big mouth. Kim got a letter from him saying he didn’t say anything, but he knew it was her that had that letter sent to him. The one I wrote a while back claiming to be an inmate that was gonna do him sexually. He also says he knows the frantic message that I supposedly left on Kim’s machine was a joke. So, she’s written back denying it and saying how pissed she was at him for accusing her of this bullshit and that if she hears anything more about his sexual fantasies for her, she’ll never write him again. We can’t wait to hear his response to this. I guess Kim’s still gonna dump him, but I’ll be gone for sure after the last of the journal sheets are sent. I’ve got 13 more envelopes to send. She did mention to him the fact that she’s thinking of moving to Florida, so she’s got that seed planted in him. She and John may really move to New York. Bob hates Florida like I hate New England cuz that’s where his first wife was murdered. So, as far as I know, Kim’s still gonna move there eventually and get murdered there. After she dumps him and has his mail returned to him, I’ll send him a letter a few months later telling him I found out she was killed. She also rubbed it into his face how she’s madly in love with Doug. All this will really give him more than enough to think about, but this guy will never change. You’d think that at his age, he’d be less childish and more mature, but nope.

Anyway, I knew the day would come when Lisa would reach out to me as far as the shit Tammy puts her through goes. She always took to me very well and seems to really respect me and look up to me.

I called there looking for Tammy, but Lisa answered and she asked if I could keep a secret. I told her, yes, and on the brink of tears, she told me bits and pieces of the shit she’s going through with Tammy. I couldn’t make out too much of what she had to say cuz she had to keep her voice down so Becky wouldn’t hear and cuz her mom was on her way back soon.

She says Tammy’s putting her through hard labor where she has to do all kinds of chores and doesn’t have enough time to sleep and do her homework, so she’s doing poorly in school and her mom’s gonna take away her chorus and band. She also went into how Tammy cuts her down and anything she tells her guidance counselor about the situation, he just goes and tells Tammy what she said. She says talking to Tammy does no good and I suggested she try talking to a teacher she trusts or to look in the phonebook for numbers of a teen hotline or something like that. That’s all I can really do, besides listen to her and boost her spirits up. I burst into tears myself after I hung up with her as I know exactly what she’s going through. I know how Tammy is and she’s a carbon copy of my mother. It breaks my heart to have to see her have to walk in the same shoes I once walked through. Tammy, being so much older than me, was left in charge of me a lot and was a lot like Mom. She was more like a mother than a sister bossing me around the way she did. I remember her extremely domineering ways and how she’d be so negative and cut me down.

So many times as a child I’d look into people’s eyes and want to cry out for their help. When I did, it did me no good. I wish to God I could help her, but there’s nothing I can do, other than what I said I can do. I can’t remove her from the house. I can’t change Tammy. My heart really goes out to her. And to Becky and Sarah, too. I worry for Lisa if she stays there and I worry for her if she doesn’t. If she stays, she’s a victim of Tammy, if she leaves, she could go through the same shit I did. Her being removed by the state could be simply swapping one form of misery and abuse for another. If only Lisa could know just how much I really, really do understand her. I’ll write to her more often and call her when I can. It’s just that I don’t know when I can get her when her parents aren’t there. I told her to call me anytime she needs to.

I also told Tammy by email that if she wants to send Lisa out to us next summer, we’d love to have her. We’d take them all, but Becky and Sarah are a bit too young for that. I doubt she’ll go for it, but I wish she would.

I figured this day would come. I had a feeling that when Lisa was around the age she is that she’d bring this matter up to me, seeing how much she trusts me. She swore me to secrecy and believe me, she can trust me. If I ever have to choose between Tammy or Lisa, it’s surely gonna be Lisa, but I hope this doesn’t have to happen. I hope, like Tom says, that my positivity toward her will help her deal with Tammy’s negativity. Growing up, I had no one to boost me up after my mother cut me down, so maybe this will help Lisa from losing all her self-esteem.

I wish she could live with us till she was of age, but that’s just a fantasy. I told Tammy that Tom and I would take the kids if God forbid something happened to her and Bill just to give her extra peace of mind.

I know Lisa’s not perfect and she’s done stuff just like all kids do. She’s told me. But I still think that kids act differently around different adults. I don’t know for sure, but I’ve got a hell of a feeling that she wouldn’t act up as much if she were with me. I wouldn’t be like Tammy is and I think that she’d respect me more.

Lisa and I have a lot of similarities. I was right about the feeling I had when she was a baby that she’d be into music and was right about feeling that she’d turn to me to confide in around her early to middle teens, so I doubt I’m wrong about my next feeling. She’s just like me in the way that she hates the northeast and wants to be in the southwest. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if in the next few years or so I found her on my doorstep. I believe she’ll come out here to live permanently.

If only Lisa could know just how much I understand her and am here for her. I’ll try to get a hold of her when she’s alone and let her know this and do my best to cheer her up and make her laugh. I’ll suggest she drop hints in a casual way about coming here next summer beginning in April.

I can’t start writing to her and calling her too much, cuz then Tammy will get suspicious and it wouldn’t be fair to the other girls, but I’ll try to write more and talk to her more. Also, I’ll let her know that if she calls and no one answers by the fourth ring to just hang up so it won’t appear on the bill.

The reason why I don’t think Tammy would send her here if she could afford to is cuz as far as Tammy’s concerned, I’m not kid material. I don’t think she trusts me. I also don’t really know anything about kids.

Maybe I’ve been wrong for being angry at God (I guess I’ll still use that name/term) and perhaps I shouldn’t be so angry at him for not allowing me a child. After all, I am one of the kinds of people that I wish God wouldn’t give kids to. This whole thing just reinforces my belief that if you were abused, you abuse your kids. Even Tammy herself has admitted she’s fucked up, isn’t the perfect mother, and needs to change things, but it’s easier said than done. It’s the difference between saying you need to quit smoking and doing it for a lot of people. I’m sure she swore she’d be a good mother and not put them through what our ma put us through, yet look at her. It’s scary. It really is. Well, I need not worry about being another statistic whether I want a child or not. God’s sealed my fate on that issue and it’s never gonna change. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if I had another screwy period this month cuz he got off close enough to my being mid-cycle.