It looks like Gomez is on again.

Osborne worked earlier. The one who I’ve only known to do visitation. She said she hates it.

Is this girl always in such a sour mood? And where are our regular DOs? Where’s Vasquez, Chambers, Brea, etc.? And is Pérez ever going to get back in here before I leave?

People have shuffled around again. Jamie and Marla, the girl with the nice hair, moved in with Myra, while Laticia moved in where Jamie and Marla were, and the other Mexican girl came up to join Nancy and Tiffany. Mattie and Sarah are still together.

Took a nap that began on 1st shift and extended into 2nd, but without a clock, I couldn’t say how long I was out. Long enough to be up really late. Good, I couldn’t sleep earlier anyway with the way that thing next door’s got to yell and bang till 2 AM. A classic attention-getter just dying to be heard.

I can’t remember if it’s hot dog night or not, but not even they disgust me as much anymore since I’m leaving soon and since they give you a bunch of other crap to fill up on.

The showers have been so hot. You can barely stand them. I don’t understand why we can’t control our own water temperature!

As soon as Tate approached my door last night, I informed her I had 288 hours to go.

She laughed and said, “They warned me next door that you’d tell me how many days you had left. But I told them, no, I want to know hours.”

---

Dinner came early, just as the last of the sunlight faded. It was sausage patties. They were edible, but not my favorite.

Miss Creeps has really turned out to be Miss Nice. And so fast, too. It took most of the DOs a couple of months to warm up to me, and that includes Palma and Teddy Bear. I’ve never had a DO I just met go from appearing so cold and serious to being all smiles and considerate. During my nap, she obviously closed the door on the end here real quietly. I noticed this as I was waking up. After she saw I was up, she closed it like they usually do, although the door is one of those consistent things I can sleep through, unless it’s slammed unusually hard.

She had her eyes on the clipboard as she was walking down the tier before dinner. She began to walk past me, then backed up and said with a smile, “There you are.”

I said, “I was wondering why you walked past the door,” and she said, in a soft-spoken voice that clashed with her harsh looks, that she always thinks this is a water well door.

After dinner, I was lying down when she did a walk. She came in and told me I could put my tray outside the door so she wouldn’t have to wake me up if I fell asleep. That was nice of her, although I’m sure I’ll be up really late.

I don’t know what it is about that Teddy Bear. I guess it’s just her award-winning personality because she’s so ugly, yet so hot! I’ve never been attracted to someone like her before. I never would’ve believed it if someone told me I’d one day lust for a dyky, giant redhead. I also realized over the last few weeks that I’ve developed feelings for Teddy Bear that border on love. Tom said this would happen too, but I just laughed at him. He said years ago that although I’d still love him, I’d one day fall in love with some woman. Well, I guess I did, in a sense, but I’d still kill myself if anything happened to Tom. I couldn’t imagine life without him. Even so, it’s a nice feeling to know that if I were suddenly alone and homeless, Teddy Bear would be there for me. Somehow I just know she would be. Unlike with Palma, I could probably have a happy life with her, but no one could ever make me as happy as Tom has. I just can’t imagine another human being loving me that much and being that accepting, supportive, patient, tolerant, understanding, etc.

I still can’t believe she doesn’t mind me being so short! If so many other short women and women of average height could reject me for being short as they did, I’m surprised someone so tall would be OK with it.

Andy would be teasing the hell out of me about this if we were still friends. He’d say something like, “See? You didn’t have to spend all that time going to gay bars to find Miss Right. All you had to do was get set up and go to jail.”

Yeah, after finding Mr. Right, and I was never even looking for Mr. Right in the first place. You know what they say, though. It’s when we’re not looking that we meet people.