Deanna will be leaving soon. She swapped beds with Julia, which means Julia’s now next door. Poor Maria! Stuck with Julia again!

Lumia’s on now. I rarely see her or LaBorde or Lamm. Lamm was on last night and LaBorde was on yesterday’s 1st shift.

They took both Maria and Mindy to court last night. Most of the pod went to rec today because they had it later. I didn’t go because I slept till 12:30. Anyway, Ida said that Myra and Zapata got into a screaming match at rec yesterday. Mary told Ida to tell me she was an island (meaning, once you swim away from her, she’s hard to get back to, which is fucking Pancake Face Smith’s fault).

Somebody’s got to change these fucked up laws. How could anything someone writes be called a felony simply because it went through the mail? And what about the fact that the sick bitch had a choice? She could’ve thrown the shit out. Nobody forced her to read it. I was simply exercising my constitutional right to freedom of speech by sending those journal excerpts containing their activities, and how they can call that “stalking” beats the shit out of me. That is not stalking. Stalking is when you follow and call someone continually and leave notes directly on their doors. There’s nothing to say that they didn’t falsify evidence or add to it, though. In fact, I know someone had to because of that excerpt The Public Defender read to Tom that Tom told me about. The one saying I had a gun and was contemplating going out and shooting the kids for being rowdy and out of control. I’d never say that, number one. Number two, we never had a gun to shoot anybody with in the first place, and lastly, it wasn’t the kid’s fault. They were only doing what the sick adults coaxed them to do.

We all bear the title of ‘victim,’ in this case. The sick bitch, her pig friend, the public defender, the judge and myself. The only difference is that they have the letters ‘izer’ at the ends of their titles.

Ida was telling me that when she was mad at me, she wrote a list of my negative traits. I may be a bitch at times, but boy was she wrong when she listed me as ungrateful. She couldn’t be more wrong on that one. I’m just the opposite. I’ve been fucked over so badly so many times by so many people that that’s why I’m all the more grateful when someone does me good.

Ida says there’s a new girl in the lower big cell.

According to Ida, Mary’s to be extradited to Florida to do 10 years there. I was shocked to hear this. She never mentioned it to me.

Ida’s really been around, from what she tells me. She said she’s been to the bottom of the world and next she wants to go to the top of the world, as well as into outer space.

On her cruise to Antarctica, she met Sir Edmond Hillary, the first guy to climb Mt. Everest in Nepal. When Ida was telling him how she wanted to go to the North Pole, he said he’d already done that with Neil Armstrong, Ida’s idol. Ida admires Armstrong because he never cashed in on his experience of being the first man on the moon. Ida says Hillary got her a signed photograph of Armstrong.

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Lopez is on now. She’s cool, but I could never picture myself with anyone like her. She’s smaller than me and too boyish-looking. Especially with her hair really short. I hate short hair. I couldn’t stand being with anyone who wasn’t taller than me and who was under 30, anyway.

Ida says she also likes Pierce Bronson, who faithfully stuck by his wife as she died of cancer. One day he was at the Fiesta mall in Dillard’s when Ida spotted him. He was doing some promo thing. Ida approached him and asked if he were Pierce. When he said he was, Ida commended him for sticking by his wife and got a signed photograph of him, too.

It’d be nice to see her traveling pictures someday. Especially the Concord ones. They sound really neat. Ida said that on the Concord, the windows are even smaller than on a regular plane. This is because of the pressure. From the Concord, you can see the earth’s curvature. The captain took a picture for her out the front windows and a picture of her standing in front of the window. She said it looks just like she was in outer space. That must be way cool.

She was telling me she was bummed out when she first learned her second kid was also going to be a boy. She wanted a daughter because you bond differently with them, she said. The boys bonded with Ron and she wanted a girl to bond with her.

She said she also wanted a daughter to leave her collectibles to. She’s got figurines, crystals and things like that. She said she’s hesitant to pass them on to her daughters-in-law because they wouldn’t appreciate the stuff and would probably sell it. So, seeing how much it meant to Ida, I let her know that if she wanted me to, I’d keep her stuff for her after she died and never sell it even if I didn’t like some of it or got sick of it. I’d set up an ‘Ida Display Case’ just for her. She’s only 60, though, so she’s got another 20 years or so to think about it.

She’s going through her bag of papers. She hasn’t found my little notes yet. I tore up pieces of letters, since they’re at home on my hard drive, and stuck them in the bag she keeps on the desk. She’ll know what there are, though, when she sees them. I’ve shown her my letters.

I miss singing regularly so much! But I want to do it in the comfort of my own home without an audience. Don’t know why I once wanted to be a singer on stage! I like privacy when doing my hobbies. I mean, if the family had a huge Christmas party or something like that, and had a live band, and asked me to sing a song or two, I would.

I hope it’s almost dinnertime. I am so hungry! I’m so sick of being so hungry a lot. Part of it is because I rarely eat breakfast or lunch. We haven’t had cereal for breakfast in days. Just those phony eggs and disgusting sausages and potatoes. The lunch meat’s been nothing but ham, so all I eat is the snacks. Even the juice is gross. It’s either that green or orange stuff. The dinner juice has been better, though. It’s been grape lately.

I want to go home so bad! I’m so homesick, bored and even a bit depressed right now. All I do is write, listen to tunes, and count the days. It’s one big waiting game. The stressful part is dodging being thrown into a big cell or being thrown with a psycho celly.

I want to hug and kiss my husband, play with Houdini, etc.!

I want my life back!

Ida says she was talking to some Indians on the bus to court about the money they get from casinos. I wish I were an Indian! A Pima Indian said she gets $1500 a month, a Navajo Indian said she gets $2000 a month, and an Apache said he gets $4000 a month and all for being an Indians!

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I asked Maria how she likes it next door. She said it was OK. Yeah, I’d think so after all the laughing I’ve heard from her from over there.

Now Maria’s stinking the place up with bleach, cleaning the tables downstairs. She says she’s going to try to get into Alpha after the 15th. Please do, girl! That’d make one less person I don’t want to cell with for me to have to worry about getting stuck with. This compulsive cleaning Maria’s into is so not like Mexicans. Most of them live in nothing but pure filth. Why is she doing this shit now, anyway? This was supposed to be done on our hour out.

Ida said I’d be compatible with Sheila, who’s down in the big cell. She’s quiet and easy-going. Ida said she’d scare easily, though, if I yelled at her, so I’d have to be nice and not let my temper scare her. I don’t have much of a temper anymore, but not everyone would agree with that, I guess. It’s just that when you’ve been through what I’ve been through and are my size, you have to be pessimistic and on the defensive.

First I’d have to find out if she can be on the top tier (she has a bad leg) and if any of the DOs would be willing to move her up here if she agreed to it.

I appreciate Ida trying to keep the rude black nurse from banging on the door early in the morning, but it doesn’t do much good. This is because I can hear her screaming long before she reaches our door.

Dinner sucked, as usual. We got these super spicy weenies. I forced myself to eat some of it because I was starving, but my mouth burned like hell. Even my lips tingled. Ida was kind enough to give me some peanuts and split a Snickers bar with me. I’ll buy her another candy bar on Monday. Also, because I have no willpower, I’m going to get a couple of bags of peanuts that I’m going to have her hold for me for weenie nights.

Lopez is actually a pretty cool DO. She stopped and chatted with us for about 15 minutes. I never really got to know Lopez because I rarely see her. She’s usually escorting or in the dorms. According to her, Palma’s in B tower tonight. I asked if she’d see her later tonight, and she said yes. Then I asked if she’d tell her I said hi, and she said yes to that, too.

She said Palma’s been floating around a lot lately, and she feels that they should have the same DOs working the same areas so that they can get to know the inmates. I thought they didn’t want to get to know them.

True to what I thought was the case, Lopez said they don’t know where they’re going to work till they come into work, although their schedules are made up a week in advance and they can call in for it.

Lopez said B Tower’s for max, escape risks, closed custody and people who refuse to work. So, if I had refused to work, and if Rule hadn’t told me about Ad-Seg and what to say to get into it, I’d be doing my time in B tower. Tent DOs don’t work inside because the tents are considered to be a separate facility.