Ida says that now that she knows Myra, Mindy and Lisa are in here on child abuse/molestation charges, she wonders if her befriending them was the right thing to do. Well, I wouldn’t be buddies with them, and I refuse to ever cell with Myra, Mindy or Zapata. They’re too loud and volatile.

Ida and I talked more about the places she’s lived and the jobs she’s had. She and Ron had a house in Mesa for 22 years, but then she decided she wanted a change. She says we won’t be living where we’re living in 20-30 years because I’ll want a change, too. We’ll see. Life might kill me by then.

When I write to her Mesa PO, and when she writes to me, we agreed to use the name Sylvia.

Brea was on 1st shift and now white Johnson’s on. She came in to chat with us for a few minutes, too. I recited some of the German phrases I’ve learned because Mary said she knew some German, but I fucked up, thanks to Ida and her telling me words meant what they didn’t. Now she’s got me all confused.

If I were looking for a girlfriend, I’d want someone just like Johnson. Palma may be a looker, but Johnson’s a looker and she’s got personality. We have some things in common, but not too much. I know most people like duplicates, but not me. I think opposites balance each other out better, although you do want to have some things in common. When you put two aggressive bitches like Palma and I together they just clash. Lately, I’ve been thinking less of Palma and more of Johnson. I was spying on her earlier when she was in the tower. It’s a habit of hers to touch her upper lip with the tip of her tongue.

Hey Officer, I can think of more productive things for you to do with that tongue of yours, you know. Gosh, listen to me! I sound like such a pig.

Ida was telling me of her days of writing for the Mesa Tribune and says she’ll send me some articles. She started with features, some of which she hated, like when she did a story on depression glass which she thinks is cheap and gaudy looking.

She’s done real estate, too. She had a problem when the paper wouldn’t let her expose shady builders. That’s how it is with the media. They prefer printing lies over the truth. And just like the courts go easy on major crimes and hard on the petty bullshit, the paper focuses mostly on the petty bullshit, and you don’t hear much about the murderers.

Johnson just walked by. A little stiffly, too.

I’ll massage those aches and pains for you, Officer.

For a brief time, Ida was a food critic, and again the paper didn’t have guts enough to speak the truth and let her tell it like it really was when she went to a lousy restaurant. So, she went back to features.

Ida told me about these space pens she has. They sound really cool. Astronauts use them. You can write upside down with them and even under water.

Loud-mouth Maria’s out now on her cleaning frenzy, screaming in Spanish at the spitter. A new girl’s in with the spitter. To my surprise, Monkey Face didn’t stink the place up with bleach after I asked her not to. Ida and I thought she would anyway.

Johnson loved the jokes Tom sent me. I figured she would. So will Hann and definitely Palma. I’ll probably show them to several DOs and inmates. Ida’s going to slip a sheet of male-bashing jokes next door on our hour out tomorrow, so they can all wonder where the hell it came from. The reason Ida will probably be the one to slip it over there is that I think we’re first to go out tomorrow. Too early for me to bother getting up.

There she goes again. Tall, redheaded and gorgeous.

In Tom’s letter, he mostly talked about his planting ideas and said that perhaps pigs would be good animals to start with.

He also says he’s going to call next week about getting me transferred to a Pinal County PO but isn’t it a little soon for that?

Anyway, I asked Tom to send more doll pictures in his next letter. That way I’ll have a wider variety of dolls to show people (you can only send in 5 pictures at a time that can be no bigger than 3x5).

I think the vitamins do help to give me more energy. I asked Tom if he thought spending $5 a week on them was worth it, and he agreed it was.

Tom would’ve laughed if he heard Ida bragging about how good she is at buying cars. She said she’s talked dealers down from $34,000 to $26,000. Ida says she loves buying cars and totally gets off on it and surprising those dealers with “all this little old lady knows.”

Ida says Phoenix is no place to raise kids.

The world is no place to raise kids.

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It’s about 10:30 now and I’m listening to a 2-hour Gloria Estefan special. She had a small part in a movie that ought to be interesting to check out. She has a new Spanish album out now. I’ll bet Linda does, too. I’ll bet by now they both have English albums out as well.

The rude black nurse passed meds out a little while ago. Since when does she do 2nd shift? I’d rather the are-you-OK bitch work 2nd shift, although they’d just get some other rude asshole to bug us in the mornings. They do it a few times a week.

Ida was laughing when I told her my stage name was Mystery. “It’s so close to Misery,” she said.

Well, it was better than some of the names the other dancers had for me, like Bite Size.