Took some gorgeous sunrise pictures the other day. The sun was so reddish that it looked more like a sunset. It’s so cool how you can actually see the sun rising up over the horizon, unlike back east. It’s just not flat enough back east.

Anyway, I have a zillion things to catch up on. First of all, we got the big-screen TV, and I ordered a mural!! I never would’ve gotten the mural if Tom hadn’t accidentally gotten credit from Lowe’s Hardware. Let me go in order of events…

First of all, we’re both doubting Dan’s here. When Tom was coming home one day he saw the people a couple of properties ahead of Dan’s, that you can’t see from this house cuz of too much vegetation in the way (you could easily see 4 or 5 properties in Phoenix!), pull out in front of him, then turn into Dan’s. Well, as I’ve been saying, it’s been awfully quiet over there, not to mention the gate being open funny and the strange lighting patterns. Dan never leaves outside lights on overnight. He also guns his engines much more often, for more than a minute at a time, and he blasts music, too.

On the other hand, the people could’ve been going just to visit. Remember, these properties are huge. No one walks from property to property here. Even next door drove over here when they came to ask us about those stray dogs. I also thought I saw him in his standard white T and cap, but couldn’t swear to it cuz the person was so far away; around 500’ away.

Saturday morning we headed for Lowe’s first and got held up by creepers both ways. I just don’t get why the fuck everyone’s so afraid to drive the speed limit out here. We just can’t go anywhere without some creep holding us up! Anyway, I was really surprised Lowe’s had murals. I didn’t think they would. They didn’t have the water lamp.

Tom picked up some hooks for his pegboard, a blank faceplate for where the satellite connection used to be, and I picked out a decorative faceplate for the kitchen light switch. It’s a soft pastel-colored tulip design with pink, blue and yellow. After Tom dragged me around the store for what seemed like an eternity, we finally found the wallpaper section. The one I picked out is what I figured I pick – something tropical. A palm-treed beach scene. The only negative is that it’s close to 6’ wide and not 8’, so once it’s centered on the wall it’s going on, there’ll be a foot-and-a-half gap on either side. It’s 6’4” wide and 8’ tall. I’m going to have it come down from the ceiling. There’ll probably be about 2’ of space under it. We didn’t want it delivered to the house since people have such a hard time finding the place, so we’ll pick it up at Lowe’s in a couple of weeks. We got an awesome deal on the thing, too. I expected it’d cost around $80, but instead it was on sale for $45. Tom applied for a credit card with them, expecting to get rejected and expecting to get a watch they offer for applying, but to his surprise, he got accepted.

Later...

Although I still have a lot to write about, I took a break so I could get my workout out of the way, and watch a movie on the big TV. I also saw part of an old rerun of Little House on the Prairie, and was like – wow!

After we left Lowe’s, we went to Mary and Dave’s. We weren’t there long. We said hello to Mom, grabbed a soda to share, a cookie for me, and then loaded up the TV and file cabinet. Once we got home, Tom pulled the stairs away so that Dave could back the truck right up to the door. That made bringing in the TV much easier.

I wasn’t happy to find that while we were out, Jehovah’s Witnesses had stopped by. You mean to tell me that out here, where people live on 10-acre ranches, religious fanatics badger people? Great. All the more reason to appreciate the exterior fence with the no-trespassing signs it’ll have once we get them up in God knows how many years. I want it to be a real bitch for anyone to come to the door. I want them to have to get out of their car and then to have to climb over a barbed-wire fence if they want to come to these doors that bad.

Anyway, Mary and Dave didn’t stay long. I showed them my office since Tom and I swapped desks, gave them cans of soda for the road, then off they went.

So, we’ve gone from a 19” TV to a 25” TV and now to a 46” TV! I can’t believe someone just gave us this TV, and that Lowe’s had murals! We are going to be so compensated for this! I tremble just thinking about it! No one gives us something for nothing in God’s eyes, not that we’ve never given them anything or that Tom hasn’t done anything for them. Still, what’s acceptable for others isn’t always acceptable for us. Meaning that it may be OK in God’s eyes for some people to do 50% for someone who’s done them 100%, but we’re expected to do 150% for those who do us 100%.

The TV screen doesn’t feel like glass like regular TVs do, cuz it’s literally a TV screen. It’s a type of vinyl material with tiny grooves that the picture projects onto. If you get too far toward the sides of it, the picture gets darker and harder to see.

Anyway, it’s awesome, and so is its sound. It sounds almost as good as the speakers that we always had hooked to our other TVs, so when I want to play the 70s and 80s music stations, I get great sound. This is the kind of TV apartment tenants would love to have to sic on other tenants. Especially in a culture that believes music is something to be shared. People in houses would love it, too. Primarily where the houses were just a few feet apart. You can really open the windows and let the sound out!

It was so nice to finally go out together someplace other than to courts, dentists, therapists and shit like that. It was so nice to go out simply to have fun and get something fun for us.

So, going from room to room, I still have the blue card table and the walker stored in the retreat, along with a big stuffed animal, and a couple of other little odds and ends. All I have on those walls are a couple of small cactus pictures I printed/framed. The small shelves that were in my office holding my box, one of the stereo speakers, and a doll or two, are now in the bedroom by his side of the bed. It’s got dolls and books on it for the most part. As for wall changes in there, I took down the Indian picture that was by my side of the bed and centered it over my desk in the office. It looks great there. Its brown frame goes well with the brown desk. I only have 5 things in the bedroom, and boy does it look great in there. I have the pastel ballerina picture on his side of the bed over the shelves and another cute pastel picture of a little girl and boy on a beach on my side of the bed. They go well together. Over the bed is a long picture of cute puppies and flowers. Towards the front of the room, closer to the dresser than the bed, I have a brown shelf on the wall outside the closet, and a fancy mask opposite that by the bathroom door.

In the living room, just inside the front door to the right, is that large picture of a field of purple flowers with mountains in the background. To the left of the door and to the left of the windows, is that picture I printed out of bunnies. This is also where we put the 25” TV (I guess the 19” will go in his office). To the right of the windows is a contemporary drawing of a woman’s face, then I put my 3 black plastic musical notes on the wall behind the mice, each one higher than the other, following the rising slant of the ceiling. The mural is going to go straight across from the front door where the rats are, and to go with it, I put a long tropical picture on the wall to the right of it. The musical notes used to be to the right of the back door, but now there’s a mirror there. I took down the piano picture that was to the left of this door and put up a tiger picture (the piano picture not only broke out of its frame, but it isn’t even wrapped in plastic like my other frameless pictures are). The tigers had been in the den where the big TV is now. Because it’s nearly as tall as I am, I don’t have anything in the center there behind it, but to the left of the TV, to balance off with our wedding picture to the right, I put a cactus picture up. The loveseat is now where the entertainment center used to be, and this is where that long tropical picture was. I put my pink floral tree next to the loveseat, and my blue-feathered dream catcher above the loveseat. The couch, chair and tables have remained where they were. Nothing to change in the guest room either, but my office is where the entertainment center now is. It looks better than I thought it would, and black goes better with the brown than the whitewash. We basically have brown in the guest room, brown and black in my office, black with gold accents in the den and dining area, whitewash in the kitchen, baths and bedroom, and nothing in particular in the retreat, living room and his office. Well, perhaps you could say the living room’s brown and black. The mice’s tables and the TV stand are brown, and the Bowflex is black. So are the bars of the rat’s cage.

Some rooms have taken on themes. Dolls are the definite theme of my office and the bedroom, and flowers are the main theme in the kitchen and den. The rest of the rooms have a mix of things. As I teasingly told Tom, the theme in his office is junk! Although, he’s been surprisingly low on the clutter in there lately.

Later...

I took a piece of material that I don’t plan to use and put it in the corner behind the rat’s cage. Houdini loves to play in the pile of material, and he loves to play with me too, when I shake it around. I slip my hand under it and wiggle the material around and he dives into it like a puppy. He dives under its folds and I poke at him and he tries to get me through the material. It’s so cute. It’s so cool having animals that play with you besides with each other and by themselves. Just like yesterday when he was waiting for me at the side of the cage when I got up. However, unlike yesterday, he came out on his own to play shortly after I got up. He doesn’t usually come out on weekends when Tom’s home all the time. I have to sort of coax him out when he’s home and not in bed.

I decided to make my wake-up time 7:00 for a while. That way I’ll be more available to play freeloader and deal with courts and probation officers when I’m forced to.

Yesterday morning we bombed. We weren’t going to bomb for another month but we found a good deal on bombs at Lowe’s so we decided to go ahead and do it. With this one, we only needed to be out for two hours. We went to Circle K. As always, cleaning up afterward was a bitch. I had to square away the animals, run many loads through the dishwasher, then do the laundry and wipe down countertops.

We ended up screwing yesterday for the first time in what? A month? I asked him why now, and he said it had to do with Mary. Because he’s in a situation he’s never been in before, he had to sit and sort through his thoughts/feelings in his mind and ask himself what his responsibilities should be. I think his just being there for them and doing what he can possibly do to help is taking enough responsibility. Meanwhile, Mary and Dave aren’t his “responsibility,” so to speak. Nonetheless, this is all well and good, and I understand how depressed and worried he is over Mary, but there’s always something eating at him, preventing us from getting together, making sure we have little bursts of sex, and confusing the hell out of me. Just when I think we’re settling into a platonic relationship, he decides he misses me, as he put it. Again, I understand this thing with Mary, but I also feel that he’s using life’s BS, whether it’s a new problem or not, as an excuse. It’s a tool he uses to avoid regular sex. But I don’t want regular sex. We don’t have to screw every week, but when more than two weeks go by, I don’t know what to think.

Anyway, this discussion led to our 7-year argument over a kid. He still swears that he’s not controlling me from having a kid. No, that’s God’s department. But a guy who refuses to let his cum enter a woman is just as controlling. A guy who refuses to let his cum enter a woman is afraid of her conceiving and is making sure that that doesn’t happen, whether she wants a kid or not. I could’ve kicked myself for letting the argument start, though. What did I think it was going to change? He’ll never give me normal, satisfying, fulfilling sex, sterile or not. He’s been the way he is for 7 years, and he’ll be the way he is for another 7, and another 7, and another 7…

Sex still hurts. I’m 100% sure this pain is a permanent thing that’ll never go away. Why has God always been so damn determined to curse me sexually? First I’m humiliated with freaky sex, and now it has to hurt, too?!

Tom’s been asking himself questions like, what if Mary’s treatment turns out to be a big deal and her cancer keeps reoccurring? What if she dies? I asked him, wouldn’t his Mom come to live with us if she died? He said not if I didn’t think I could handle it. I asked him if he thought I could handle it and he said yes. Because his actions have made me believe he doesn’t think I could handle a kid, and because God’s actions and plans for me certainly made me believe I couldn’t handle the responsibility of taking care of anyone, young or old, I lost faith in myself. So, later on I asked myself to set aside what God’s obvious opinion is of my abilities and what Tom says he thinks, and ask myself – do I think I can handle caring for his mother?

Yes. But only because I can now keep a schedule. If I still couldn’t keep a schedule, I’d have to say no.

Mary’s attitude about what’s going on with her never ceases to amaze me. She’s taking it so well! I can’t observe her 24/7, but she sure seems to be handling it a lot better than I ever could. I’d be pissed and scared, running around muttering – why me, why me? Maybe that’s why I haven’t had any health problems lately; because God only gives us what we can handle. Well, some of us, anyway. On the other hand, I could barely handle that vicious cycle of asthma attacks. I even contemplated suicide cuz it was so bad. When you can’t breathe, you tend to feel and think that way. I wonder how many times my health will compensate for itself. Meaning, this being healthy like I have been is no doubt compensation for the shitty health I was in from the late 80s to the early 90s, but will I get hit with problems later on down the road for this time of healthfulness?