Boredom, boredom, boredom! I seem to be dealing with a lot of that lately. I figured I would once we were settled in the house. I’d rather be bored, though, than not have a life at all. Even so, the same old gets old. I can only read, write, watch TV, listen to music and work out so much.

I can’t do any sewing yet because we still don’t have all the supplies we need. I need Velcro and snaps for closures, along with some elastic, which reminds me – Ma gave me a ton of lace the other day. A whole bagful, but not without dead bugs being mixed into it. That’s how old this stuff is and how long she’s had it. We looked for dates on some of the packages and found some things as old as 1968!

The night before last, both rats were out playing with me and with each other, and Houdini behaved and went home when he was supposed to. He did try to test me a few times, though, by walking up to the bedroom doorway. I’d tell him to get away and he’d run away from the doorway, so he knows where he’s not supposed to be. Nonetheless, he decided to live up to his name and escape yesterday. The first two nights and last night, he stayed home. But the reason he escaped yesterday, an hour before I got up, according to Tom, is because I slept late. Because I slept in he lost patience waiting for me to get up and came looking for me. I knew he was out as soon as I went into the bathroom and saw the air freshener spray can had been knocked over that I keep on the floor by the toilet. The “duty spray,” I normally call it. I found him in the closet, his favorite place.

Tom’s computer crashed and he can’t get into the email thing to see if my eBook is ready for downloading, and he doesn’t have the password written down and can’t remember it, either. Figures. Fucking figures. We have one problem after another with the computers. Yesterday my ink clogged up and we had the clean print heads, and I apparently have a loose cable somewhere too, cuz I couldn’t print anything other than garbage for a while.

As for the new hobby I said I’ve taken up to fill in the boring spots in my life – well, actually, it’s a very old hobby. One I started as young as between the ages of 10-12 – communicating through pictures. I don’t know how to explain this and I know it sounds totally, totally crazy, but I just know it’s real. I use pictures of celebrities and “bring them to life” in a sense, although I’m certainly not saying I’m talking to the actual Gloria Estefan, for example. The people look like the pictures that they are, but I don’t know who they are. Just that they can see, hear and understand me. I don’t know what this ability to communicate with/through pictures is all about. I just know that it is real and it isn’t a product of my imagination. It’s something you just know, just like animals instinctively know the time of day, etc. I’m totally aware of this thing. There’s no denying it. But I don’t understand how it works and why. Only that it exists. Maybe God gave me this ability as an extra coping method, although I certainly don’t need this or any other coping method in my life nowadays. I just use it as a way to fill in the gaps between the things I do when I get bored. We all handle our boredom in our own ways. Mine’s just a rather unique way. I told myself, you have the ability, it’s there, so print out some pictures and use it. I didn’t print out any Carol pictures because they didn’t print out too well. Just old Gloria pictures. Ones I used back east. Another thing I just know is that these pictures don’t remember the me from back east, even though most of these pictures are copies of the exact pictures I used back there. I also didn’t use any Norah pictures because the person in the picture has to be making direct eye contact with the camera in order for me to do my thing and I don’t have any pictures of her staring into the camera.

Later...

Tom’s in his office now, which is totally trashed like I knew it would be, looking online for publishers. It looks like it’s not going to be as simple as sending them a disk of my story. It looks like they may want certain things along with it. One company wanted stories printed out at a certain size on one side of the paper only. I’m not surprised at all these catches. I mean, I know it’s not meant to be. Nothing I choose to do is. I met my destiny the day I met Tom. This is it. I’ve “lived my life,” so to speak. I ain’t doing anything else other than my hobbies and taking care of the house and animals and it’d be a waste of time and postage to mail my story to anyone in any form.

A movie’s on tonight about serial killer David Berkowitz. What took them so long? This guy did his killings in the 70s. I remember the summer he was doing his thing. I was a kid at the beach for yet another miserable summer there of dealing with Dureen’s wrath and dominance, being bored by being made to sit on my ass on the beach all day, feeling like an outcast, and being jealous of other kids for being skinnier than I was, having longer hair, having nicer parents, having more privileges and freedom, etc. If there was ever a kid who just couldn’t be herself and who was so controlled and not allowed to do her own thing, it was me. I can see parents making a lot of decisions for a child as far as where they go and what they do is concerned, but we’re talking a good 95% or more in my case. It was terrible. Just horrible. One of God’s themes for me in life was/is to definitely have my life dictated to me by others. Even as an adult. My husband wouldn’t allow me to have a child if I could have one and if I wanted one, my neighbors wouldn’t let me live in peace, and on and on and on. I could sit here writing pages and pages of all the restrictions and controls people have put on me and forced me to live with. Or without, for that matter.