So Mommy Dearest has been dead for a year now. Not long enough. Just not long enough. As I told my sister, who also struggles with horrible memories, since God didn’t give a damn about how she treated us when she was alive, hopefully He very much gives a damn right now if there is such a thing as life after death. raises imaginary wine glass Here’s to hoping the Hündin is stuck on a plane full of tarantulas!

I had a dream I was wandering through our backyard at the house I grew up in. I slowly climbed up the steep, but brief hill into the wooded area with a small clearing in which my old swing set sat. I walked beyond the swings and to the fence in back. It used to be a seemingly endless stretch of nothing but woods, and as a child, I did not dare climb over that fence, lest any monsters pop out from behind the trees and eat me alive. But in the dream, I was an adult and I knew it was safe to cross the fence. I proceeded to climb over it, but then the woods gave way to long freshly paved streets in which houses with no walls adorned the sides. I could see kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms as I walked down the wide road, but there were no walls and no people in sight. Everything was open and modern, yet barren and lonely.

Last night I looked at my old house and the house next to it where my maternal grandparents lived on Google Maps. The once well-manicured lawns and well-kept roads have changed quite a bit. The roads are now all beat up and the neighborhood as a whole looks rather ordinary with a few newer mansions that are a bit nicer. Gone are the vast expanses of woods in back in which new homes now sit. You couldn’t see any houses in back in the ’70s, but now you can see rooftops peeking through the trees. My parents and grandparents definitely wouldn’t have liked that at all. Gone are the lush hedges that once divided the properties and added some privacy. Now they’re nothing but scattered, dead-looking clumps of bushes. If my grandparents were still alive, would they still be there? I wonder.

My other dream was about Tom and I outside our place, only it didn’t quite look like this place. On the side of the house toward the roof was a giant spider. Tom was prepping this thing you hook to a hose that shoots a mix of poison and water, and I cried out, “Hurry up! The thing is starting to move upwards. Hurry!”

Later…

Although TIP missed them, I’ve got visitors, according to GA, from San Angelo and Junction, Texas. Molly-related? Either way, why aren’t they showing up on TIP? San Angelo once showed up on TIP, and I thought it could be Molly-connected, even though it’s closer to where Kathy is.

Love my new rat figurines, which would’ve been perfect if one’s paw hadn’t fallen off along the way. It’s barely noticeable, though, and not worth returning.

The mornings have been chilly and the AC didn’t even run at all yesterday. Today it will, though, cuz it’s to be 85°. I was thinking I might open windows and air the place out on Thursday because it’s supposed to be windy that day.

While I slept on Sunday, Tom said it poured like crazy for a few minutes, then drizzled the rest of the day. Really wish it would stop raining only at night or on Sundays, leaving the week wide open to the annoying landscapers. Wish the house across the side street would hurry up and sell too, so there won’t be as much traffic coming to see the place.

Early yesterday morning we went to Walgreens and got some fun stuff. Those little things we women love – perfume, nail polish, lip gloss and Calgon’s English Garden bath beads. I don’t take baths very often, but when I do it will be nice to have soft, silky, fragrant water. It was either that or bubble bath. I also got a lovely blue beaded bracelet, and I think that was it.

Tom said there’s no use making all this money if we’re not going to spend some of it, and it was good to get out anyway. He got a few things, too.

All my cleaning, working out and writing-related stuff is done for the day, along with my French lesson, so I think I’ll spend the rest of my day, which began last evening, with videos and reading.