Tom left for work an hour ago.

I spent most of the weekend backing up my picture files. I converted my BMP pictures to JPGs before saving them on floppies and was able to get between 15-27 pictures per disk. It took about 20 disks. Even though Tom does regular backups on CDs, I felt it wouldn’t hurt to have another backup set that I did on floppies. I was mainly after the harder-to-replace pictures, like the ones taken with the digital camera. If I lost copies of the photos I scanned, I could just rescan them. I also backed up most of the wallpaper pictures I got online.

I showed Tom that bridge I saw out front and he told me it’s a cotton gin. Makes sense. There’s nothing but farms out towards the front of us, and the more I looked at it, the more it did look like a gin.

At 2:00 this afternoon, Scuttles decided it was midnight. He must have because he was really having a ball. He not only wanted to be affectionate and get attention from me, but he also wanted to run around the house, too. He loves to nestle in my hair and make it a real “rat’s nest.” I started straightening it naturally, the way I did in the 80s before there were straightening irons, so it was easier to brush the knots out. I straighten it by putting elastics down the length of it, every inch or so apart. Because it’s so damn thick, it takes forever to dry.

Paula called yesterday. We talked about the house, the weather, and that guy she’s seeing. She asked more questions about us and the house this time around. She says that for $70 a month, she’s renting a computer she doesn’t know how to hook up to the Internet or its printer. That’s Paula for you. Oh, and now she claims she mailed those pictures out Friday, so her story’s changed again.

Tom’s still playing games. Yesterday he conveniently had body aches and thought he was getting the flu. He said he wondered if the nasty fumes from the shit he used to clean paint spatter off the speakers in the den did it, but I think it was an excuse to get out of sex.

Today he couldn’t stay hard, and while I was doing him by hand, he suddenly heard fictitious car doors close by and had to get up and check it out. Meanwhile, I heard nothing like that, and again I pointed out to him that he should come clean with me and quit making lame excuses to get out of sex. I can’t stop him from playing games, but I can help him with his fears. If he’s so sure I can conceive and doesn’t want that to happen, he should just tell me so we could discuss some sort of birth control method. But no, he says, that isn’t it. Maybe he’s a nut who’s become like me, he says. Sensitive to sounds. Then he gets back into bed saying, I’m still here, aren’t I? And then he tells me that he’s trying. But I don’t want him to “try.” No one should have to “try” to get into sex. If it doesn’t come naturally to him, then maybe he shouldn’t be having sex, especially with me. Then I asked him if he was sick of me and felt he needed a fling or something, but he swears he isn’t sick of me and doesn’t want a fling. He once told me he and his ex had a threesome once with a woman and that screwed things up, I guess. Anyway, he says he’s never had the problem of not being able to stay hard before. Part of it’s God, who just has to interfere with my sex life no matter what. As I reminded Tom, I’ve been sexually cursed since day one and if I got a new man or woman every year, each one would have some kind of problem or weird quirk. He says he thinks his problem is over money, then went on to explain, although it makes no sense to me, that it stresses him out more to be barely making it, rather than behind. Well, I still think all this is about his enjoying playing sex games with me and his fear of me conceiving. He still swears he isn’t afraid of that, but I don’t know. I suggested, just in case he is being sincere and he does truly have these problems that are out of his control, to just wait till we’re back on track financially. Then, if he’s still having trouble getting hard, he can decide if he wants to go to a doctor (although I think he should’ve gone to one six years ago). I highly suggested he tell the whole story if he does go to a doctor. Not just the trouble with staying hard, but the lack of cumming, too. Let an expert give their opinion. He agreed he’d think about a doctor and tell them everything if he went to one, but I know Tom S. The man would never in a million years breathe a word about his hardness trouble or lack of cumming to a doctor or anyone, and you want to know why? Because I still think it’s his own will that’s doing it, both consciously and subconsciously. He’s had “problems” in bed ever since we met, so why would he wait this long to do something about it if he didn’t want things the way they were?

I wondered for a moment if this weren’t meant to be to get him to go to a doctor, for once and for all. Yes, if he’s sincere, maybe having two problems will give him the gusto to go to a doctor.

Nah. He’ll never go to a doctor about it. Not if his life depended on it.

I can’t help but feel conflicting emotions about it. On the one hand, I’m pissed that because of him I can never see if I can get pregnant naturally if I decide I want that in a few years, and on the other hand, I don’t want that, and God would never allow it to happen, naturally or not. I’m still glad we never had a kid in the past. I’m sorry I went through all the emotional shit over it that I went through. It was miserably horrible. I’m sorry for every rotten thing he and I have ever been through, but I’m not sorry things turned out to be the way they did so I could live life and do the things we’ve done in life. With a kid, I’m almost positive we’d never have been able to get out of Phoenix. At least not till it was older. I also wouldn’t have been able to do, learn, grow, mature, and experience the things I have in life.

We talked about the possibility of moving to a retirement community like Sun City or Sun Lakes when he gets to be at least 55, and I may like that for various reasons. For one, as much as I love this big house in this remote area, it’s a little too far out for old people who need to go to the doctor more often. If we were in one of these places, we could get to doctors more easily and not have to wait an hour for an ambulance, should we need one.

Also, they have rules about barking dogs, but there are not that many in these places. Just like most houses in the city do have dogs, most old people don’t have dogs. Those that do tend to have little dogs like poodles. Not two big vicious collies.

They probably don’t allow people to have pools, but that’s OK cuz they have country clubs you can walk to, and I wouldn’t be afraid of being attacked by a big dog walking the streets there.

I’d want a smaller house when I got older and had a harder time getting around and doing housecleaning, and in a place like that, you’d never have to worry about subsidized freeloaders moving in next door. Oh, I’m sure it’d be just my shit luck to move in next to the old lady whose grandkids came over practically every day and screamed outside, but at least I could do something about that, and since the mother would live there, I wouldn’t have to worry so much about her taking my noise complaint all wrong and making sure the kids got even noisier.

Anyway, I hope to be here for a long time. At least 10-15 years. I hope we’re happy here as long as we’re here, but like I said, that’s not very realistic. It’s bound to get noisy sooner or later.