Maricopa, AZ

Age 34

And now for my first entry of the new millennium and being in the house at last! I’m not gonna put my address at the head of each file since I plan to be here all my life, and if I’m not, I won’t be moving for many years to come!

Tom, the computer expert, was right. The Y2K fear was a joke. Everyone was worried their computers wouldn’t work at the turn of the century, but Tom said they’d be fine. Well, mine certainly is.

Until we ever get the hell in this house, I’m gonna go back and forth between typing up my current stuff here and in my notebook. I’ll use the notebook when I’m at the hotel.

Tom came home tired and achy from his cold and crashed. He had to work today for a few hours. He was sad cuz he accidentally hit and killed a coyote on the way to work. It came darting out in front of him on the highway as he was going to work and froze right in front of the car. He didn’t have time to avoid hitting it. It’s too bad, but these things happen.

I forgot to mention that my Peruvian Barbie came with a stand. As my shit doll luck would have it, though, it’s a little too tall, so her feet don’t touch the bass of the stand. It looked a little funny; like she was floating, so I put my princess Barbie on it and she looks great. That’s because her gown goes to her feet and you can’t see that her feet don’t touch the bass.

I put batteries in the old box Steve gave me in ‘89, in case I forgot to mention that too, and I use that while I’m in the trailer. When we go to the hotel, I take the portable CD player.

If there were any parties last night, I wouldn’t know. We had the generator running till after midnight. I do expect to hear music tonight, though, unless the generator’s running. This morning, just like on Christmas day, there was no gunfire. This doesn’t surprise us, although tomorrow will be totally obnoxious with that and they’ll wake me up for sure. Even with a foam earplug.

It’s become my New Year’s Eve tradition since quitting smoking to get a 4-pack of wine coolers. I pulled one out yesterday afternoon and jokingly said to Tom, “Can I go throw this in next door’s carport?” Ha, ha. Hee, hee!

It’s also somewhat of a tradition to get “visions” of some sort on New Year’s, but this year, all I really got were a series of disjointed, conflicting images (at least I didn’t sense/see anything worse than what we’re going through with trying to get in the house). Tom said that maybe that means I’ve now got freedom of choice in what I do. That’d be a first. Especially when it comes to non-material things. I don’t know, though. It’s awfully hard to believe that after all this time I’ve suddenly got free will when God won’t even let me live in my own home. Something doesn’t want me living in this new house!

I was right on most of my 1999 predictions, as usual, and also as usual, he was wrong on most of his. My predictions for 2000 are very simple - no changes, although we obviously won’t be living in a little old house in Phoenix with loud freeloaders a few feet away! The only significant change that could very well be is that he may leave the bank this year.

The guy that was with Dan came out to put the pump in yesterday. Tom went to bed long before he left, and I never spoke to him, but I know there’s a problem, even though Tom said it looks done. As soon as I saw him on the phone, shortly before he left, I knew they fucked something else up (while God sat up above and let it happen). Well, we’ll find that out this week.

The guy brought along his pregnant girlfriend, or wife, who helped him at times, and her 3-year-old son. It’s an understatement to say that kids are the equivalent of wild animals. I watched the thing run around in circles, screaming at the top of its lungs for 15 minutes. Is this all kids do? Run around and yell and scream? What does this do for them? Just what do they get out of it?

I couldn’t help but feel that there was a message being sent to me pertaining to this little boy’s presence, although I don’t know what. I mean, this is the very shit I moved away from! I move away from screaming kids, and what does God do? He brings them out here to me! It’s like I’ve been followed. God obviously hasn’t been trying to tell me all these years that he wants me to have one of these or else he’d have made sure I had one by now, so is it something else? I keep feeling like I’m missing something here. Like he’s been trying to tell me something for years. I know the boy’s presence meant something. I couldn’t work with kids, if that’s what he’s been trying to tell me he wants me to do, cuz even if I had easy access to transportation, I have no qualifications for that. Truthfully, I haven’t the desire to do so, either.

Tom says this is normal, and maybe it’s a new thing or a southwestern thing, but I think it’s so unprofessional to take friends and family to work. Those are supposed to be left at home. To me, it falls along the lines of mixing business with pleasure.

We saw next door taking things from the shacks, loading them into a pickup, then driving them up to the house. Tom thinks the county may have gotten on them about having such rundown, dangerous shacks and maybe ordered them to tear them down. And rebuild something for someone to live in, right? Or maybe for the boy over there to play in so he can be too close to us? Those shacks may be about 200’ away from us, but if a kid was playing over there, I could easily end up hearing it in my office. Those shacks are so ugly, that I wouldn’t miss them if they were torn down, but the question is - then what will they do? Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Perhaps they only moved stuff, not knowing if we’d be tempted to run over and steal it.

We watched the ball go down in Times Square, and for this year and this year alone, they used a ball they never used before and that they’ll never use again. It was a crystal ball made in England. The ball didn’t look much different than the usual ball. It was what they did afterward that was different. They had spectacular fireworks that seemed to go on forever! It was so exciting that a part of me wished I was there. Then they did a song specially created for this year, then the usual New Year tune they play. We also saw fireworks from all over the world. They had an awesome display of fireworks shot off the Eiffel Tower in France that was like - wow!

I decided that along with a letter to Paula, I’d send Dureen and Art a letter explaining the move, house, plans for the house, etc., and send it now, rather than wait and enclose it with all the pictures I’m gonna send them in a big envelope. I’ll still send the pictures, but that’ll be within a few months when the house is fully set up. For starters, I got the letter off to them in a regular envelope with a sheet containing a few shots of the house just after it arrived.