Andy’s here now. He got here just after midnight and checked out Stevie stuff on the computer till he went to bed, which was at 2:45. I don’t think he’ll be up as early as 8:30 like he said. He knows he’ll be up before me, though, and to be quiet.

For the last two nights, I went to bed at around 5 AM and woke up at 9 AM wheezing. Then I’d go back to bed till 2 PM. So, I’m hoping that I don’t have to go through this for the third time.

Andy brought me a couple more coffee coupons, which is always nice.

Not much else is going on here, but besides being bummed knowing I’ll get my period in about 9-10 days, and being nervous and excited about my parents visiting, I’m really having mixed emotions about his mother. At the same time, I love that woman dearly, she’s helped us out, we don’t want to turn our backs on her, she’s running Tom ragged. He spends half his time taking care of her and even Tom said he agreed she was silly to keep the house. I want to shake her and tell her, “Please keep this a secret, but give Tom some slack. You’re gonna kill him. He needs his sleep, we need more time together, we need to do work around our house, and if we stand the slightest chance of making a baby, we need him home and awake more often.” But I can’t do this. Not yet anyway.

Tom brought up a good idea, but if it’ll work is questionable. He said he’s gonna get an appointment book and schedule his jobs for her and us, to free up more time. He said he is going to have a talk with her and tell her that he’s gonna have to schedule the projects he does for her. I just hope that she’ll get the message and that Tom can stick to this plan and that it’ll work. Again, there’s nothing like having family to help you when you’re old, but I wish she’d meant it when she said she didn’t want to burden family members and I wish she’d get into an apt. That way she can call the landlord to fix her stuff. Not bother Tom. My biggest question is how long will this go on? Will she need Tom to take care of her for 5 more years? Or even 10 more years?

If God isn’t as cruel and as unfair as I thought he was, does plan to let us have a child, is he just waiting for his mother to die? And again, when she does go, will I be 40? How the hell’s Tom gonna juggle a family and his mother? If God does have a change of heart, she’s gonna have to understand that we can’t take her on, too, unless she moves in with us. Or she’ll have to get an apartment or hire a handyman if she stays at the house.

Like I said, we are a family of 3. Only difference is our child lives in its own house. I know this is so mean, spoiled and selfish of me, but sometimes I wish she’d get that disabled where she did have to dump the house and go to a home or something. But if that were to happen, God will just sic someone or something else on us to tie up half of his time and it won’t be our own kid. With a kid, he’d still work, of course, and I’d be home all the time, I’d hope, so it’d take up most of his time and all of mine, but that’s different and that’s OK. I just wish we could live more for us. Most things are what we can do for others. Well, I wish most things could be for us, for a change, then for others. I want us to live our lives and have our dreams, not cater to other people’s needs so much of the time. It’s not fair that we should be taking care of her half the time. We should be taking care of our child and each other full-time, then deal with her. With a child, Tom would get even less sleep and I wouldn’t get shit for sleep, but a child may be the only way to get her to back off and stop being so silly and come to her senses.

Later...

I don’t believe it! I mean, I absolutely don’t believe it! It all started when I was out de-dutying the patio. Tom came out and said he didn’t answer the phone, but there was a number on the caller ID box that had a 413 area code. I knew that was MA. Then he went and read me the rest of the number, but it didn’t recognize it. So, I thought it could be Minnie or that Paula got a phone and called. Then for one fleeting moment, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be funny if that letter really got to the right Shelly and it was her calling? So I ran in to listen to the message and it was her!!

So I called the number she left, and as much as I hate the phone nowadays, we talked for about an hour or more.

Unlike Paula, she’s really doing well for herself. She talks very well and is well off financially, with a husband and two sons. She lives in Florence, just outside of Northampton in a 3-bedroom, 2-story house. Her mom lives with them. She says she feels very content and pretty much has all she wants.

She said that a few days before getting my letter, which was forwarded to her new place (she just got married and is now Shelly N), she was telling someone how sick she is of just getting bills and that she needs a pen pal. Then she received my letter.

She said she thought it was a joke for a minute when she got my letter, cuz she thought I was dead. Those psychos, Dotty and Valerie, told her I’d hung myself when they surprisingly took me to Valleyhead. Yeah, that’s something they would do. They took me and only a very few of my belongings. They kept most of my belongings, including a guinea pig that I’d had there. I never knew what became of the pig, but it turns out that Shelly took it and had it for a couple of years. That was nice to hear that she did that.

We were both just so shocked to be talking to one another. I told her I had searched for her on and off for a good 10 years or so but didn’t know to look in the Northampton area. She and her family weren’t in Springfield for very long. I told her how I ended up finding her, which she was curious to know.

I didn’t know what I was in for. I mean, I didn’t know if she was gonna be ditzy, shy, quiet, not very nice or willing to talk to me, or what, but she was as psyched as I was to talk, as talkative as I am, and she’s really doing well for herself. She said she too, went through many tough times and was filled with rage and confusion for a while.

She said her kids helped her and that when she breastfed her first kid, it was the most calming thing for her and that she’d filled her missing link in life. Unlike most abused kids, she seems to be doing pretty well as a mother and not sorry she had kids. She has a 10-year-old boy and a 3-year-old boy and is trying for a girl. I then told her that that was my missing link and that my husband and I wanted a child. I told her we’d like to move and do things, but if having a kid meant giving that up, that’d be fine. I told her how Tom and I thought the responsibility may be good for me and that I have the romantic notion of having and sharing a child with the man I love so much, but that that’s not meant to be. She told me that she had a 36-year-old friend who only got a period once every 7 years, who was told by the doctors that she couldn’t have a kid, but then did have one. Yeah, but that’s a very extraordinary case, and when something extraordinary happens to me, it’s not usually in a good kind of way. So when she got into her complete, happy family, I was a bit envious. I have a happy family, but not a complete one, and I reminded myself of that period I’m going to get in about 9 days.

The most shocking thing of it all was how much more she remembered about the foster home than I did, and how well she remembered me. She remembered so much about me.

She remembered just what I looked like back then, the guitar playing, the singing, Charlie’s Angels pictures all over my walls and so much more. She remembered more than I could. She’s still 5’ 9”, but is about 180 pounds with brown hair and eyes. I thought she had dark blond hair and blue eyes, but not according to her.

She remembered me to be fragile, soft, shy, scared, depressed, yet very sweet and pretty. She said she loved my hair and used to brush and braid it a lot, which I sort of remember (it was dyed jet-black back then). She said she never forgot me and how she used to protect me. She said she couldn’t and didn’t try to look me up, though, cuz she couldn’t remember my last name and of course, those assholes told her I was dead.

She said that the only reason why she didn’t leave that place the day she arrived there was so she could look out for me, but as soon as she was told I was dead, she ran.

She said she told many people over the years about me and that one time, she was in some museum when she saw a picture of a female playing the guitar. She said it only showed the guitar and up to the chest of the woman, but that it reminded her of me, with the long hair, etc. She said my guitar playing and singing used to really calm her and soothe her nerves, but I don’t remember doing much singing or guitar playing there in that fucking place.

Both Valerie and Dotty bullied me, but Dotty was afraid of Shelly and Valerie wouldn’t mess with Shelly, cuz she respected Shelly for being as tough as she was.

So, before I get into our memories of this rotten place, this is what Shelly told me she’s been up to - she ran from that house. Then she was doing some work at the Air Force base in W. Springfield for a while, as an adult, and was here, there, and everywhere for a while. She wasn’t a slut or a hard-core druggie, but she drank and did weed and partied a lot. She wasn’t in Springfield for very long and she had spent time out in Boston. She also did topless dancing, too.

The first guy she was with was a great guy, she said, but he was a helicopter instructor and he died. She had her first kid with him.

Anyway, most of her family has always lived in the Northampton area and as I figured she would be, she’s very blunt and open-minded, too. She’s never really been with a woman, but I think she’s kind of experimented all the while having her heart set on a guy. She has gay friends and I told her my best friend was gay.

There weren’t too many things about her that I didn’t expect. Not too much was different about her and her life, either, except that she’s got kids. Everyone else has kids but me, so what else is new?

I told her how great Tom was and how he’s such an optimist, while I’m a pessimist. I told her that Tom believes something will work out, until and if he sees that it doesn’t and that I don’t believe something will work out, until and if I see that it does. She said she understands cuz she’s a pessimist too, and says we have to be after all the shit we’ve gone through. You live what you learn, she says, and said that yes, she’s a good mom, but has made mistakes and tries really hard not to be like her father was. I didn’t tell her I feared being like my mother was.

She says she now gets along with her dad well, loves him to death, but that he was a classic typical male. A violent drinker. Her mother was described as my dad usually is. Calm, quiet and passive.

So, her parents got divorced and she didn’t take well to her new stepmother, so she rebelled. That’s when she was put in the house and also, someone reported her father’s physical abuse. She’d skip school and says that due to that, she can’t write too well, but that she’d try and would send out pictures of her and her family. I told her that after I got that, I’d send some to her with a letter and she told me to write and call all I want. I told her to write and call all she wants, too.

I think I’m gonna take a break from writing about my talk with Shelly till later. I was gonna record a movie that’s about to come on, but I think I’ll just watch it live and deal with the fucking baby commercials.

That reminds me - Kim, who has it in her mind that she can only have a kid if she’s married, feels the same way I do. It also breaks her heart to see shitloads of pregnant teens all over the place. I told her that not only can I relate to that, but every other fucking commercial is about home pregnancy tests, messages about child abuse, and just always baby and kid-related. It’s a constant reminder that’s rubbed in my face, of how unfair and cruel God is, and about the child I can never have.

Then after she was mentioning her female problems, Kim said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if you were the one who could have kids and I couldn’t?” 

Well, I can’t and I don’t think she’ll be "allowed" to, either. She’s not a kid or unfit for that, but if one of us ever does conceive, it won’t be me.

Later...

I decided I’d tape the rest of the movie. That way I can zap through the commercials. There were only 3 baby commercials in the last 45 minutes, so that’s actually pretty low.

Before I get back into Shelly, I’m kind of crying right now. Yes, it’s all about how I’m going to get my period and how life isn’t fair and how I just want a baby. I just want a baby! But God won’t change his mind and his unfair ways. He doesn’t care about me or what Tom and I want. When I first felt like crying, I told myself that maybe a good cry would help. That way, I won’t cry so hard when my period comes, if I start letting it out little by little. By that time, the tears just came flowing, without caring if I was giving God the reaction he wants. Without caring if he was laughing down at me.

I’ve gone back to my old coffee. This is cuz my lungs weren’t doing too good without caffeine and also, cuz my tits are still sore, anyway. It’s really weird, but they are.

Gizzy’s using his new tubes occasionally so that new addition hasn’t gone to waste.

Now back to Shelly. She said something about setting up the kid’s computer and possibly getting AOL. We’ll see.

There were a few things about that house that I didn’t remember, but she did. She said that she wasn’t Dotty’s foster child. She was the reverend’s (I forgot he was a reverend) foster child. He was Dotty’s brother and he lived on the second floor of this 3-story house. I know all the houses in that area were old triple-decker houses and that there was a Spanish lady with a young boy and girl on the third floor. According to Shelly, though, she hung out downstairs while her brother (Dotty’s) was gone during the daytime, but that’s where we’d hide out and sleep and there was no third floor. She doesn’t remember the Spanish lady and her kids. She said in the early mornings, she and I would go to her room on the second floor. Did we? I thought Shelly slept out in the living room on the first floor, and Dotty and I were in the two bedrooms on that floor. Then, early in the mornings, we’d go up to the third floor and sleep in the Spanish lady’s bed till around noon. Right after she went to work and her kids went to school.

Meanwhile, Valerie, who was black, was at the house on and off. Dotty, who was part black, part Hispanic, was always there. Shelly mentioned something about a lot of people going in and out of there (maybe friends of Dotty’s?), but I don’t remember a lot of people. Shelly also said that right before I left, there was another girl there named Shawn, who wasn’t there very long. I don’t remember this, either.

She also remembered too, that there was hardly ever any food in that kitchen there and that she called her dad who brought us a couple of boxes of food. This I don’t remember, but she said we were really pigging out on this food (this was when I was 85 pounds).

I also don’t remember her throwing rice at Valerie (something I’d never dare do, cuz I’d get killed for it, but that’s something Shelly could get away with), then refusing to pick it up, then me sweeping it up. She said she felt bad for that; me sweeping up her mess, so she got me some candy for it, cuz she had some of her own money.

Speaking of money, with Anne and Harry, I got and spent my allowance, but Dotty never let me have my allowance.

Something I’d forgotten about till she mentioned it was how her father, or someone, brought her white rabbits. I don’t think they stayed there too long, though.

As I remember more about Shelly, like she said I probably would, I’ll write it in. For now, though, I’m gonna go listen to music.