Boy, this rat is full of surprises! Ratsy, I mean. Yesterday he was panting and seemed to be so weak like Scuttles did before he died. He looks like he lost some weight, too. However, when I got up at 4:30, he was upstairs! How’d this weak old thing manage to climb up to that tube?!

The phone company never did need to come out to the house to fix the phone. It’s working again. At least, for now it is.

Good news about Mary: it looks like the cancer is contained to her throat, so all they’re going to need to do (hopefully!) is just radiation therapy. Also, Dave’s mom will be in around October 16th, so that’s when Ma will stay here unless she changes her mind. She’ll be here a week or two, I guess.

It’s just about October 1st, my weight deadline. Since it’s been over 2 months since there have been any significant changes in my weight, and since I’m still yo-yo-ing between 112-116, I’m going to have to write off losing any more weight as the impossible dream it is, like it or not, and just hang onto what I’ve got.

Speaking of dreams, why do Doe and Art have to casually butt into my dreams so often? Ugh! I get so sick of them popping into my dreams whenever the fuck they feel like it. They intrude upon my dreams as if nothing ever happened. We all live together in most of the dreams. Last night I was washing our laundry like I would as a teenager. We had those crappy stackables like we had in Phoenix. They nearly overflowed, and the dryer only ran if I held the button down. When they came in from being out somewhere, I mentioned my frustrations about it to Art. Doe seemed to be in her own little world. I said I was sick of having to depend on something that didn’t work half the time and would do laundry by hand. Art said he could fix it and I was like, fine, but put up a clothesline so I can hang dry clothes when the dryer conks out.

Once the sun comes up I turn the AC off and turn the fan on continuous run, then I opened most of the windows to let the fresh air in. Once the sun really starts rising, I shut the east side windows. I have the retreat, bedroom and kitchen windows open now, and it is beautiful! It’s dead quiet too, the way a remote country area should be. It’s been quiet and it’s hard to believe that for a while there, I was hearing music nearly every day. I couldn’t get any peace in Phoenix with the windows shut, so it’s nice to be able to open them and not have those fucking freeloaders screaming, bouncing balls, and blaring music right outside the windows. I can’t fully feel the wonders of not having those sick fucks just a few feet away, though, cuz they are still a part of my life. It sort of dampens the mood, knowing that although I can’t see or hear them this doesn’t mean I’m free of them. I’ll never be free of them. I remember how shocked and disbelieving I was when the blacks moved. Meaning, I just didn’t feel like it was over. Well, obviously it was far from over.

I don’t usually watch talk shows these days, but I was doing things to keep myself awake to push my schedule around faster, and what I saw on Oprah was really scary. It’s sooo damn easy to get the most innocent people convicted of all kinds of things. All you have to do is swear they did whatever. This segment was on capital punishment and innocent people who spent years on death row before they finally were set free. I’m still for capital punishment, though. Better to fry 9 guilty people and 1 innocent person than to let just 1 guilty person go free. What’s scary is how many incompetent lawyers there are out there, how you can get convicted with no physical evidence tying you to the crime, and worst of all, just by someone’s word for it, and it’s usually not the word of a reliable witness, either. I’d be going down for these blacks even if my prints hadn’t been on the mail, and even if I’d had someone else make the call from a pay phone or something. All the bitch has to do is say I did it. What do I do when they fuck with someone that reacts differently than I did? What do I do when someone kills one of them and they point the finger at me? Even if I had an airtight alibi, which would be hard to do when you’re home all the time, the cops would still insist I had something to do with it and so would they. Well, I just hope that when they push the wrong person too far and when that person snaps and harms them, they know who it is and that they finger that person and that person only. I also hope I’ll be somewhere like Helen’s or the dentist’s so I’ll have an alibi when it happens. Assholes like them may live long, healthy lives, but at the same time, they’re living on the edge. Especially the blacks.