Only I could gain a pound on a diet but then again I didn’t exactly “diet” yesterday. I had a little more than usual plus a candy bar. Also, I crashed early and got up earlier than yesterday. Nothing I didn’t expect to happen, though. I knew my body would go into reset mode no matter what I did. Besides, if this was that easy, everyone would be doing it. It takes a lot of hunger and deprivation to lose weight which is why most people don’t. But I’m going to continue eating three full meals a day because it agrees with my tummy and keeps me from getting carried away. Been having a bit more processed stuff than I should too, so I’ll have to cut that back a bit. Really don’t want to have more than one processed meal a day.

Tom checked out the site with the funny name and took a look at the code behind it. It isn’t that they have an actual copy of my book but it’s used as bait along with many other things. It’s a phishing site. All they want is credit card info. They promise full access to various things if you pay a fee.

On Scribd, he found where I could file a copyright infringement complaint, so I did. I doubt it’s anyone I know and may not even be a person at all. I once had this book on Smashwords and there might have been a screw-up between the different sites. Because the cover is the original cover and the bio is old, whatever it is happened nearly a decade ago. I don’t know many people with the sophistication to pull something like this off other than Aly and I can’t believe she would do this to anyone no matter how pissed she may be at them. It just doesn’t seem her style. The termites, yes, if they had brains enough to pull it off which they don’t.

I’ve learned my lesson as far as publishing anything goes. If I could have made at least 10 bucks a day, it would have been worth whatever shit came of it but it’s not all bad because this way I can have fun writing just for me and not have to worry about using real names and changing this and changing that.

The other day, as I was lying in bed waiting for sleep, Shadow popped into mind again and I was racked with a sense of guilt and sadness over having to dump him as I did 28 years ago. I asked myself why the hell Andy and I weren’t smart enough to think of a shelter but then no-kill shelters didn’t exactly exist back then. But then maybe it would have been better to be put to sleep if he was only destined to get hit by a car or something like that. Technically, this would probably be a better way for any animal or human to go as opposed to dying of natural causes but we could never and would never bring the pigs to a kill shelter.

I’ve always wondered what became of him. I read that cats lose heat through their paws and can handle heat better than cold as long as they have shade, food and water. He could have gotten the shade somewhere but where would he have gotten food and water? He would have had to drink out of people’s pools and while they were plentiful, so were big dogs that were always left outside.

But still, I wonder. Did Animal Control pick him up and kill him? Did he get hit by a car? Did he get fed by various people every now and then? Or did someone adopt him? I really hope to hell the last possibility happened! I was reading back in my 1992 journal, and I forgot that we didn’t just drop him off in Paradise Valley but also threw his carrier over the wall of someone’s backyard that we thought may have been Stevie Nicks’ at the time. Don’t know if it really was or not, though.

Even though I was young, dumb, broke, naive and threatened with eviction if I didn’t get rid of Shadow and was just doing what I needed to survive, I felt heartbroken and I could definitely throttle Stacey. I know she was sticking to the rules she had to abide by but still, rules can be bent. You don’t have to break them but you could bend them and she definitely could have worked with me somehow to get into a “pet” apartment and pay the deposit. I also wish I’d been smart enough back then to think of contacting her boss.

Tom says there was nothing I could do about it, I can’t undo the past, so I shouldn’t beat myself up for it and that more than likely he was adopted. If not, people do feed strays. We’ve done it ourselves.

But I also realized that had I been able to keep him, he likely would have lived past 1997 when I quit smoking and I would be left to wonder why I never got better since I didn’t know that cats made me wheeze and congested until we got Simone.

I have hoped that there really is no such thing as an afterlife because a before life is enough. For a minute, though, I almost wished there was so I could tell him how sorry I am for being such a shit of a cat mommy as I was during his first two years of life. Yes, he could be plenty obnoxious at times but he was otherwise quite affectionate and lovable, and yet I treated him like shit at times and then dumped him like he was trash.

I hope to hell that when he was dying which was probably somewhere between 2005-2010 that the giant orange tabby I adored was put to sleep and didn’t die outdoors alone.

Speaking of that bitch Stacey, another story idea came to mind. Tom and I move but we return to Arizona of all places. And of all the millions of people living in Phoenix, we happen to end up next to Stacey and her husband. I spot her one day and recognize her so Tom and I agree I would go by a different first name and say I was from Ohio.

I get a piece of her mail one day and am curious to see if she recognizes me when I go to return it. She does but of course I always deny my true identity. Then I can play these little games with her until one day she actually invites me over for coffee and I pass out only to wake up realizing she drugged me and has locked me in a room. I’m held captive there while she tries to force the truth out of me. Eventually, Tom will come to my rescue!

So between the story I’ve been working on, this idea, and the revenge on the termite idea, I guess I’m not completely retired as a writer after all. For a while there I thought I would never come up with anything worth putting into print ever again.

Oh yes, the lady of suspense is going to have all kinds of unfiltered and uncensored fun using real names. I just hope we don’t get “karma’d” for our evil thoughts, haha.

Strange how I once couldn’t help but have a slight crush on Stacey even though she was a blue-eyed blond. Something about her voice, physique and mannerisms reminded me of Kate Jackson. I once told her that too, LOL. I’d be a total liar if I said she didn’t age well but I hate her fucking guts.

I usually write one story at a time and will write a chapter and then edit it, but I think I’ll just work on the stories and then edit them when I hit writer’s block which I still think will be most of the time.

“Did something happen to the saw dude or did someone complain about him?” I asked Tom and he thinks neither and that he simply finished his home renovation project.

Well, I hope so because I’m definitely enjoying not hearing that fucking saw! In a lawless land, I would have gone over there, yanked it out of his hand, and chased him around the park with it.

“What happened to the loud car kid?” I also asked him and he thinks the kid outgrew that phase of his life.

That young and that fast? I don’t know about that one. I think he’s either dead, in jail, or more than likely moved out of the area.

Aly says Molly totally believes in her mind that she and I never had a problem. Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. The mentally ill are often delusional. Also, I remember how she used to act like she and Kathy were best buddies having only last spoken recently when in fact it had been months or maybe even years.