Although life is good overall, I’m sad. Sad because I miss my Teddy Bear. Still miss her even though I’ve been gone for over 4 months. At least the bright spot of it is that for every month I miss her, I’m one month closer to seeing her again. I can’t wait! God, I really fell for that woman. I’m in love and lust. It’s getting hard to believe it all happened. I have to remind myself that no, it wasn’t a dream. That yes, there really was a tall redheaded DO that I liked and that liked me back.

As for whether or not she’ll contact me before Christmas rather than wait the whole year, I don’t know. I’m completely vibeless at this point. I just know we’re in each other’s futures at some point. I’ll wait as long as I have to. She’s worth it.

Mary’s a reminder of the reality that existed from last October to April. Yes, I heard from her today. She says she doesn’t do drugs. She only did them once when she was 15 (I’m about to type that part up), but she does smoke cigarettes. She assured me she wouldn’t smoke around me, though. She says she rarely drinks but maybe champagne every now and then with her boyfriend. I kind of figured as much.

She says that although she wouldn’t mind going to Florida, she may do her time here because her 7-year-old son Murphy is in this state. I didn’t know she had a choice. Anyway, she also says her aunt’s in this state, but Todd’s not. She says Todd agreed to go wherever she goes.

She also sent me more story drafts. Her writing’s good, but erratic and not very detailed. I’m literally turning letters into a story. Meaning that she uses no caps, no punctuation, no paragraphs, no nothing.

Tom showed me how to make up address labels since my printer doesn’t want to do envelopes.

Tom also set up a computer in my office to play MP3s on my stereo, but I don’t know if I’m going to like this setup. For one, I hate having to keep turning the monitor off at night so I’m not rocking to the light glaring in my eyes, and it’s not as convenient for quickly fast-forwarding over sections of songs. I think I still might stick to burning CDs and getting a CD changer.

For the first time, we saw someone riding a bike down our street. A kid with a dog following him. I guess that’s a good sign. What’ll really determine whether or not we can sell this place for a hefty profit is the land in front diagonally of us. That’s not part of this subdivision. So if they were to put lots of houses there, that’d help us tremendously. It seems too good to be true, though, and something God wouldn’t allow us to do – make lots of money and live on a boat. On the other hand, I don’t see why we couldn’t do that when he retires if we can’t do it sooner. The question is, though – will we feel comfortable making our home in the middle of the ocean when we get older? Or would we prefer to have our feet on solid ground in some kind of retirement community?

Here’s the latest mouse arrangement, and believe me, it’s going to stay this way! Just when I thought I was a good breeder after all, after seeing that two of the ones I wanted pregnant did get pregnant, I noticed a big fuck-up I made. I noticed a couple of them, actually. I was casually looking into the ladies’ cages when I saw the pair of balls. So I plucked the pair of balls out and put it with the gentlemen. Then I noticed that one of the guys was getting fat. Particularly in the hips. So, when I picked her up and saw that she was quite pregnant, I said that’s it! You’re all living together. That way, it won’t only make my life easier, but then we can be surprised by what they create. As I told Tom, I think that once the count gets too high, I should pluck out the dull ones and that we should just kill them, rather than do anything complicated and time-consuming. People do kill animals all the time for various reasons. However, if we could sell them, that’d be great. That’s not very realistic, though. It’s obvious that while I may want to soar ahead and get with the times, God doesn’t want that for me. He’s determined to keep me a homemaker and nothing more.

I have a lot of projects going such as proofreading my story and typing Mary’s story. I still haven’t started proofing Teddy Bear’s copy, doing a condensed after-the-fact journal of my life, or scanning in signs. Mary’s story will probably take years, but proofing my story for me and for Teddy Bear won’t. Neither will sign scanning. So, when these are done is when I’ll probably tackle my autobiography. Actually, I may wait till this Teddy Bear thing plays out some more, so I can add that to it.

I asked Tom his opinion about what the future holds with Teddy Bear. He said he doesn’t think she’ll call without hearing from me first because, to her, I could’ve been just saying we’d get together. Now that I’m out of jail, she might think I might feel differently, but of course, I don’t. I miss her so bad and can’t wait to see her! The more time passes and the more I think about it, I think he could be right. I think she may wait to hear from me to see if I’m for real and still interested. The question is – will she still be interested? Or was she just talking? Will she have a girlfriend? Will friends or relatives try to talk her out of seeing me because I’m married and was an inmate? And just how far away does she live? She could live 20 minutes north of Phoenix in which case she’d be an hour and a half away.

You never know, though. She could still surprise me by calling me at the end of the year. I’ll just have to keep in mind that just because she may not do certain things, doesn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t care or have feelings for me. For example, just because I won’t leave Tom, doesn’t mean I don’t love her and wish I could be with her. Just because I won’t move back to the city to be closer to her, doesn’t mean I don’t care about her and want to see her more often.