Yesterday Tom had a fever but is doing better. As long as he doesn’t overdo it, he’ll be fine till he gets his next cold in September.

A few days ago, Andy left us a message saying we could have his security door (I don’t know why), but he said it’s in his carport and we can just go get it, or else he’ll have his landlord haul it away. I’ve been wanting one of those, so we’re gonna measure our door frame, then go measure his door, cuz if it doesn’t fit, there’s no sense in us hauling it over here. We’d have to get someone with a truck to haul it over here if it’ll fit. I hope we end up getting it, cuz our front screen door is an old beat-up piece of crap that’s torn badly.

My lighter with the pretty picture of a cactus died, but I managed to peel it off so I could tape it in the inner cover of my journal for decoration. I also taped in cute pictures of a dog and a cat. The HS sent me an appointment book.

After having my little computer world the same setup for so long, I finally made some changes to it. I made copies of my games and put them on my desktop. I picked out pretty icons to go with them and it looks nice and colorful. I thought it’d really obscure my wallpaper pictures, but it doesn’t. You can still tell what pictures are behind all the icons, which are evenly spaced both horizontally and vertically across the screen.

Right now I’ve got some old tapes playing of some old funny fights with Fran and Nervous. Boy, did they love to fight like kids for so long! I played some for Tom earlier, too.

They’re still behaving next door and if things stay peaceful for another week or two, then I’d say it’s safe to assume that things will be OK and that yes, they got the dog in regard to me.

Tom said that yesterday he thought he heard some car doors, although he heard no voices or music. Yeah, he probably did. There’ll be more company with him there.

I should’ve screamed at them a long time ago. Sometimes, asking a person something nicely just doesn’t cut it and you’ve really got to let them have it, in order for it to sink in, even if that means using your fists.

I know these kinds of people, though, and I know they got this dog that I finally got a glimpse of, on account of me. It’s a bigger dog than I thought it was. Its bark sounds like that of a small puppy, but this is a medium-sized dog. Maybe a beagle of some sort, but still, imagine getting a dog just cuz you think it’ll piss off your neighbor? They might as well just stick it in our yard, cuz they don’t even give a shit about this dog. No one in Arizona does. All they do is leave them outside 24/7. Yesterday, I was out in the afternoon when it was well over 100º and I heard a few barks a couple of times. That is so cruel!

Anyway, what I meant by saying I know these kinds of people is that people like this don’t stop doing something that pisses off people without going and doing something else. There’s a reason why the music suddenly stopped and why the dog came at the same time and right after I went off on them, too. They had to have said to themselves, “OK, we’ll shut up with the music, but if she thinks we won’t replace it with something else, she’s wrong.” I know they had to figure that a dog would get on my nerves, cuz I remember asking Mike if he had a dog and was telling him about the two dogs next to him. At that time, he was mentioning getting an expensive dog that couldn’t bark and that’d certainly not be going outside. Well, this is no expensive dog, it does bark (even if it’s a joke compared to the two dogs), and it is certainly outside all day and all night. As long as those two dogs exist here, no dog can bother me like those dogs do. Those two dogs bark constantly, but this one doesn’t (I’m sure that must disappoint them, too).

Still, these people are doubly cruel. Cruel to leave it stored outside all the time like an old piece of furniture, but even more cruel to get a dog, not cuz you want a pet to love and to care for, but to use it against a neighbor. Still, this is a fine swap over the music. I wonder, though, when they see that I don’t bitch about their dog, which I’m sure they’re anxiously awaiting so they can have a damn good laugh, will that mean they’ll return to sticking the music on me? Well, if they do, I’ll put a stop to it. Trust me on that one.

Once again, though, what with the weekend now here, I’m nervous, but not as nervous as I was last weekend. Each weekend that passes without any outbursts, I’ll relax about them more and more. It’s been great not to know they exist except for their car doors, also in regard to me, I’m sure. In the past, they’d never go in and out of their car. A couple of nights ago (and I know it was his car and that they had no company, cuz I can just tell), they played musical doors and slammed their car doors about 4 times. I’m sure that this weekend I’ll hear 20 door slams, too, but again, I’ll take that or anything over the music. If that stereo wasn’t so bassy, that’d be different. Then I could deal with it a whole lot easier.