I’ve been so busy that I haven’t written. Here’s a quick update as to what’s been going on.

His ma’s computer’s broken, so he brought it home to work on and Mary made me another CD.

Tom built a bigger cage for the pigs. Of course, I still don’t know how many I’ll be keeping. It’s a little hard to tell yet, but Tom said that if we’ve got two girls and two boys, he wants to make another cage like the one he made last night. Since they don’t sell bases, he went out and bought the biggest Tupperware container he could find. The extra bars wouldn’t fit into it, even though we bent them a bit. So instead, he cut the wire we were going to use to make mice cages to fit into the base. Because it’s barely a foot tall, we use the lid as a roof. This acts as sort of a burrow for them, yet when I take the lid off it’s a more open cage that lets you see the pigs better. I don’t want them to be able to burrow down too well because then they may end up being too timid when exposed. Anyway, the cage sits on the rats’ cage stand by where the rats are.

The reason I decided not to use the wire for the mice is that the mice really make a mess! They piss and shit all over the wires and it’d be a bitch to clean.

Still haven’t received my dental trays in the mail. Hopefully, I will today or else I’ll have to call them.

I’ve been scanning in my hand-written journals, but only the pages that stand out in some kind of special way. I’m capturing the different handwritings, different ink colors, different page designs, etc. After I scan all the pages I want to scan (some I only scan one or even no pages from) I gut them by tearing out all its pages for Tom to torch. I’m keeping the covers, though. This way I won’t have anything tangible. All my writing will not only be in electronic format, it’ll be decrypted, so that if it ever is stolen, it’ll be nothing but gibberish to whoever stole it. Fortunately, I have a great memory, so if everything were stolen right now and never recovered, I could rewrite my life’s story in a consolidated form. Something I’m going to do anyway.

Today’s brought me my permanent retainers and 3 little piglets!

I forced myself to stay up 18 hours yesterday, till 5:30 PM. Then just 6 hours later, I woke up at 10:00. I was so pissed and so sure I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep (my appointment wasn’t till 1:00). I did, though, and didn’t get up till 7:00. Shortly afterward I discovered the babies. I predicted there’d be 3 of them too, just by how big she was. Two of them are all black, and one has one white foot and one that’s got a band of brown and a band of white. It’s really cool-looking.

Our plan is to see if we can find another base just like the rats have and use the other set of bars to make a second big wire cage for them. I don’t know if I’ll keep all of them. I offered one to Mary, who just lost her dwarf hamster. I emailed her some pictures I took.

The dentist was compliment city, saying I looked pretty today, and why didn’t she notice my long curly eyelashes before? I told her I probably didn’t have them darkened in with mascara before. “No braids today?” she said, then she told me she began scratching her scalp rigorously and taking multi-vitamins like I suggested for speeding up the hair growth, and she said that already her hair feels “fuller.” I had to laugh at that one. Then she noticed my unusual eye color, saying they looked blue one minute and green the next.

Anyway, they put the retainers in and I’m already used to them. They never made me talk funny like the others did. It’ll be great not having to take these out and clean them. Regular retainers are a bitch. I love not having them stuck to the roof of my mouth and how they don’t show. No one would know I was wearing them.

They only go across the I-teeth. That’s all you need, I guess. The molars tend to stay put, but incisors shift easily.

Although she gave me the fluoride and whitening gels to take home, I didn’t get my trays today. That’s cuz the idiots broke them in transit, so they had to take a new set of impressions. She said she’ll get them in the mail to me tomorrow.

In other good news, we got a new burner, and in about a month when we get the satellite, I should be cranking out CDs! Who’d have ever thought years ago that you could just forget about going to record stores and just download whatever song you wanted online for free and make your own CDs?!

According to Tom, the people at Dan’s place are acting as I predicted, blasting music through open windows to let us know “they have arrived.” They exist. At least it was oldies. This was while I was asleep. He said it was loud enough to tell what song it was when the AC wasn’t running, but when it was, he couldn’t hear it. I’m sure I could’ve heard it well enough in the house had I been up. I expect they’ll probably do this most weekends till it gets really hot again. Our weather’s beginning to cool down, but it still gets pretty hot in the daytime.

Tom installed a cool word game on my computer. It’s kind of like Yahtzee. I beat him all the time, too.

I decided I’m finally ready, for once and for all, to shed this extra bulk. I’m 120 pounds. I’d like to be 100 pounds, but I’ll settle for 105 pounds. This is what I’ve decided to do about it this time around. I’m going to have a 1000-calorie diet until I hit 115, where it starts getting really hard. Then I’m going to cut it down to 800 calories till I hit 110, then I’m going to starve off another 5-10 pounds. If the 800-calorie thing works well enough, then maybe I won’t have to, but we’ll see once I hit 110. In order to maintain this, I’m going to have 1400 calories a day. At least I think I can maintain it at that. I may have to drop one or two hundred calories, though. Meanwhile, while I’m losing the weight, I’m going to jog for 20 minutes after each thing I eat and rotate every other day between upper and lower body workouts. Once in the maintain status, I’ll jog once a day for 20 minutes but will keep up with the upper/lower body workout rotations. Except for a chocolate malt after next Monday’s appointment, I won’t allow myself weekly treats till the weight’s off, but even then, I think I might go more with biweekly treats. Once my dentist and therapy appointments are done, I should only have to go out twice a month (going out tempts me to stop for treats) to report to Scot. That’s when I’ll get myself candy or ice cream.

Later...

I didn’t get any mail from Mary today. I wonder if she’s having another case of writer’s block.

Tom stopped at Mary’s, and just like she said she would, she had a music CD for me. A data one, though, not audio.

I’m down to 119 pounds and starving. I am soooo hungry!

I saw a movie based on a true story that made me hate pigs, lawyers, judges and everyone in the “system” even more. And I thought I couldn’t possibly hate them anymore than I already do! This case of people that got fucked over makes mine seem like a joke in comparison. This woman wanted custody of her two granddaughters. In order to get her way, she accused her granddaughter’s parents, as well as a couple they were best friends with, of child molestation. As are the ways of the system nowadays, the kids were immediately taken away and the two couples were thrown in jail. The kids were threatened and bribed into saying that the parents did these things when in fact they did not. The parents ended up in prison for a decade while the kids played musical foster homes. The kids were already grown by the time the adults were set free.

The public defender and the black pig have to have kids. God gives kids to people like that like he inflicts AIDS, pain and suffering upon gays. Wouldn’t it be nice to accuse them of child abuse or molestation and ruin their lives for a good decade or so?

But they all protect their own. It’s nearly impossible to bring down anyone within the system. They’d just laugh at the allegation and say, “You’re a cop or a lawyer. You’re incorruptible and invincible.”

Maybe I should’ve become a cop or gotten a job somewhere within the courts, so I could be protected by freeloaders like what we lived with for 3 years in Phoenix and nearly 2 in Maricopa, and from pigs like Mr. Biased, who were biased all right. Biased against whites.

If I suddenly wanted a kid all over again and could conceive at the snap of my fingers, I’d never bring a kid into this fucked up world. A classmate of the kid could tell its mother to accuse me of molesting the kid out of spite and I could lose the kid forever. It takes so little to lose so much and to have your whole life turned upside down, while it can take years and years to build a life in the first place.

Frosty’s turned out to be the coolest mouse. He’s the first mouse to ever take food right out of my hand.

There are 19 babies and more on the way. So far, most of the babies are white. A few have markings and a few are dark brown.

Tom said not to get my hopes up (I never do) but Monday he’s going to call about a computer programming job where you work from home, but I don’t see it. I don’t vibe it, I mean. Perhaps this is a good thing because I might feel smothered if he’s at home all the time. Then again, I could never feel as smothered as I did in jail!

Today I’m 118 pounds.

I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to keep up this letter writing to Paula. I never hear from her. I’ve only heard from her once since I got out of jail, and that’s not fair. I’m spending a fortune on stamps for someone who could be dead or in jail herself, for all I know.

It’s Monday, Bear. You in M? I miss you! I love you! I lust you! I want you!

Meanwhile, my dentist appointment went quicker than I thought it would and I’m stuck with these damn retainers for another week. That’s cuz they do it differently now. All they did today was make impressions to which they’re going to mold the wires. Next Monday they’ll put the wires on and have my trays ready for me so I can do my fluoride and bleach treatments. See? I pitch one appointment only to make another! Anyway, she says I need to do the fluoride treatment for 15 minutes every night forever, and the bleaching treatment for an hour for 2-3 weeks, then if I want to touch them up periodically, I can.

I’m going to flip my schedule around and hope the freeloaders don’t wake me up by having Scot come out here. I think this week or next he will, though, but if I’m too tired to get out of bed, then tough shit!

I’ve been bouncing the mice around like Palma bounced me around. I put 4 of the 7 males in with the pig, then I decided to put them all in the wire cage while I was up to watch to see if any of the more scrawny ones squeezed their way out. So far no one has.

Mary called to find out about the appointment and to let me know she was burning more songs for me (in data format). I let her know she didn’t have to do that because I wouldn’t mind doing it or waiting till we get the satellite and burner to do so (we should have it in about a month), but she said she didn’t mind and that she wanted some of the songs for herself, too.

I’m current as far as typing Mary G’s stuff, but tomorrow, after he goes to the PO, I’m sure I’ll have a new batch of drafts. Hopefully her reaction and input on my Teddy Bear romance, too. I can’t wait to hear what she thinks.

We caught the mouse and freed it. I caught it, actually, and he freed it when he went out to do the grocery shopping.

I decided to do something different with the other mice. I took the wire cage, and this time, I put mice I knew were too big to escape through its bars. The three brown men, as I call them, are occupying that cage now. Then, I took the smallest plastic cage and put two gray and white mice in it and put it on the den table. In my office, in a medium-sized plastic cage, I have a white mouse and a dark brown one. I just wish they didn’t stink so bad!

Another thing Scot asked me as he was going through my little list of “special conditions” was if my payments were up to date, meaning, as he put it, the $40 processing fee. Now just what the hell do they need to “process” every single fucking month that could possibly cost them that much? It’s total extortion money. That’s all it is.

The rat is on the loose again, but he has yet to visit me in here. I think he’s down at the other end of the house.

As sick and as unfair as all this was/is, I’d be one bored puppy if it weren’t for those freeloaders. All I’d have to do is condense my journals and scan the signs in. But on top of that, I have a story to write/edit, a friend like Mary and her story to write/edit, and a Teddy Bear to look forward to.

I’m not sure yet if I’ll proofread Teddy Bear’s copy after I proofread/edit it to be the way I want it to be for me or wait till I see her. There’s still always that chance, as slim as it may be, that I never see her again. I’d hate to go through all the work for nothing. I’m not even going to bother getting other DO’s letters done up beforehand. I’ll wait till she verifies that Palma, for example, is still even working there before I type them up. If I don’t hear from her, then I’ll go ahead and launch letters to Palma, Pérez and Espi. On the other hand, although it wouldn’t matter with the letters, if I have Teddy Bear’s copy of the jail saga done around the time we meet, she won’t have to wait as long for it if I decide to give it to her sooner than planned, depending on how we get on together, what happens, and how eager she is to read it.

The question is – what crisis is God going to sic on me after this one fades away and my current list of projects starts to dwindle? Why must the shit hit the fan in order for me to have more adventures/experiences/tasks?

God, this GP stinks! Even so, I had to go get her. She’s been wailing for attention all night, so I locked the rat down and brought her out. She’s sitting on my lap now. Something rats, who are very animated and hyper, would never do.

After I’ve slept I gotta get down into the vent, pull up my disks and make a backup. I decided that the 1st and 15th of every month are when I’ll do this.

Tom said there was a bomb threat downtown and that a lot of people there were evacuated. Damn! When does it ever end? Not even all flights have taken off again yet.

Another Apple Cheeks day, although this time I went to him. Since he came to the house so early in the month, I wouldn’t be surprised if he came again at the end of the month. Next week or the week after.

He made the comment about all the special conditions being done except for seeing Helen. “It’s hard to believe,” I said.

“I told you it wouldn’t be so bad,” he said.

No, he didn’t. At least he never said any such thing that I can remember of. Anyway, I guess that looking back, I’d say it wasn’t so bad. At first, though, I felt a bit overwhelmed. When you suddenly have 3 appointments a week and hundreds of bottles sitting in front of you after sitting in a jail cell for so long, it’s a shock to the system.

But in the end, I didn’t mind doing the bottles. Now all I have to do is pay a ludicrous $40 a month, report twice a month, piss about 6 more times for these people, and have Scot invade my home and maybe my sleep too, once or twice a month. I should have about 50 more times I have to report to him and about 24 more times that he’ll report to me. I doubt I’ll ever have to report less than twice a month. Not in this harsh, strict state. I think, though, he won’t bother coming to the house as much in the very end. In other words, I doubt he’ll come to the house in October of ’03, but you never know. I didn’t think they’d throw someone in jail for half a year for something they wrote, so anything’s possible.

Teddy Bear, that is Teddy Bear the GP, is feeling more and more comfortable with me, wanting to come out more often. She’s going to drop them babes any sec! By the end of the month at the latest. She not only goes off when I open the refrigerator but sometimes just walking into the room is enough to set her off. She goes off every time I open the rat’s door, too.

Tom used chicken wire to block his office door the way he blocked my office door and the bedroom door while I was away so that Little Buddy could run around a little longer and a little more freely. However, he got to be quite a handful, so I locked him down. He mainly concentrated on my office. Especially cuz it’s new territory to explore and cuz I was hanging out in there. Although it’s a rat’s instinct not to chew wires cuz they can sense the danger involved, there are still too many wires for comfort in here, and he’s a little too infatuated with the idea of chewing on Giselle’s stockings. I could move her, though.

Now that I did it, I’m proud of myself and I feel better, but I had to really talk myself into doing that workout. I was like – why bother? It doesn’t change my appearance. Working out is for those who are either immensely overweight and out of shape, or who are young, thin and not eating much. That way you could really see the muscle you built up, rather than just feel it.

I look forward to condensing my journals into an after-the-fact book, but I haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to do multiple little books or one big book. I may break it down by subjects. I could have the Estrella saga, the freeloader saga (although that’s kind of tied into the Estrella saga), the Springfield saga, the childhood saga, etc. I just wish the Teddy Bear saga would play out a little more. I’m just so curious to see where it goes, although I think I have a damn good idea as to where it’s headed. Either that or I have a damn good case of wishful thinking! But the Teddy Bear saga’s on pause right now, just like my home life was while I was in jail.

Another mouse has been spotted in the house and heard in the vents. Tom saw it before he went to work this morning shortly after I crashed. At 8:30 this morning I awoke to a sound that I immediately thought was a mouse in the vent due to the sound of tin foil crinkling. So, once again I have the trap set up. I haven’t heard or trapped it yet, which leads me to believe it may’ve gotten out of the house and out of the vents altogether.

Later…

I can’t stop shitting! That’s 5 times I’ve shit today. 5 fucking times! I’ve never shit this much in one day without something being seriously wrong with my stomach, and it’s usually all runny when I do. I used to be stuck all the time, but now I’m a regular little shitaholic!

Now for one of the freakiest events ever. This one’s just as freaky as the resurrected cockroach that I knew was dead when it came out of a community service bottle I had just picked up.

I decided to get rid of a rather dull mouse by flushing it down the toilet. I saw it go down the toilet. I know it went down the toilet. I flushed it a couple more times afterward, too. There’s no way it could’ve survived. I flushed one down a few weeks ago, and believe me, it didn’t come back. When I first approached the toilet a few hours later to do what I hoped was my final dump, I know the toilet was empty and that I’d have noticed if it weren’t. Anyway, I had been sitting on the toilet for a few minutes when I heard a plop. I was like – what the hell? Ain’t no shit falling from me yet! I stood up and sure enough, there was the mouse struggling to jump out. At that point, I decided it just wasn’t its time to go and I returned it to its home with its roommates.

I miss my Teddy Bear sooooo much! How I wish I could know what the future really holds for us and I just wish she wasn’t so far into the future still! So many things could happen. She could find a girl she falls madly in love with and be living with her come next May. She could decide I’m too far away to bother with. Maybe I’ll see her occasionally. Or maybe we’ll get together every week or so and make wild, passionate love like I’ve never experienced before. Nah, there’d be some kind of problem with the sex. There always is. The only difference would be that I’d be attracted to this one like no others in the past. It’s not that Tom, Brenda, Kacey, or Ann Marie were ugly. There was just no sexual spark in the way that there is with Teddy Bear. You know when you’re attracted to someone just like you know when you’re in love with someone. Although Palma diverted my attention away from Teddy Bear for a while during the first couple of months I was in jail, I was always turned on by her and I knew it right away. I wonder if I’d be so self-conscious in bed with her, due to my lust for her, that I felt like a fumbling fool, not knowing what to do, unsure of myself, etc.

The only thing I’m sure of is that I’ll no doubt be more into her than she’ll be into me and that she won’t be urging me to leave Tom to go live with her. Again, I have no desire to leave Tom, but it’s really quite frustrating to have finally met a woman I’m attracted to that I really like and that likes me back, after getting married. Why couldn’t we have met before I got married? On the other hand, as easy as it is for me to say I’d be happy with her, would I really be? Would she accept me the way Tom has? Or would she push me to work and keep a schedule? I don’t know. I just can’t see her going for that breadwinner/homemaker thing.

I asked myself a question, just to be honest with myself, pertaining to whether or not I’d leave Tom for her, and this time I got a different answer than “no way.” This time the answer was “I don’t know” when I asked myself if I’d leave him for her if I could have everything I’ve got with Tom with her, who I’m more attracted to, plus a decent sex life, plus the ability to sleep together.

Hmm…

Well, I certainly can’t see it, but I know I have to keep in mind that anything’s possible in this world. Anything. I have to remember all the things that I thought were 100% impossible that were possible and remember that nothing’s guaranteed in life. I just hope and pray that given that one in a million chance I did leave Tom for her or for any other woman that it’d work out forever. I’d be really fucked with nothing and nobody if I were to leave Tom for someone that ended up leaving me. Then what would I do? Where would I go? We’d have to be even more compatible than Tom and I are overall, and that’s real damn compatible, and she’d have to be real damn convincing in order to get me to give up Tom and the security I’ve got now.

I don’t know. I just don’t know. Even though there is a sexual attraction beyond anyone I’ve ever been intimate with before, and even if we could hit it off even better than Tom and I ever did, could I do that to Tom? Could I just throw him away? That’d be awfully hard to imagine. I’d always be wondering whatever became of him and his life. I’d miss the guy something terrible, too! I don’t know if I’d feel all that guilty, though, simply because we can’t help what we feel. In other words, it’d be silly for me to waste my time feeling guilty over my attraction to her when I just can’t help it any more than I can help liking the color pink, chocolate, music, etc.

A part of me wishes she was just another celebrity that I had a crush on. That way I could get all kinds of pictures of her off the net, and I’d never have to be torn between her and Tom in any way because a relationship would be out of the question in the first place.

Later…

Apple Cheeks stopped by about 15 minutes ago. This was his quickest visit. He stood in the dining area the whole time too, while I was filling out the form. He said he got the form from Gina saying that I’d completed my community service and asked if Helen was the last of the “special conditions.”

He didn’t leave right away, either. He sat in his car for a few minutes after he left the house. I assume he was doing paperwork cuz from my viewpoint out the windows, he wasn’t lurking around the property.

Yesterday was one of the most shocking, most horrific, most oh-my-God days in history. Never have I witnessed terrorism so intense as what I saw on TV yesterday. Tom’s never seen anything like it in his lifetime, either. He called me from work about it.

The World Trade Center (both twin towers) in New York City exists no more. They’re just gone. Demolished. History. Nothing but huge piles of rubble, debris and ash. It makes me wonder when terrorists will rain down bombs and bullets over every inch of American soil that it has to hit us directly, too. So many people were killed that I’d be surprised if I didn’t know of any of them, and as always, it’s those fucking Arabs that are responsible. Always the Middle East, always. They have nothing better to do than to pick on America and Israel. Some Palestinian group is responsible. First I heard it had to do with their sick and twisted religion, then I heard it had to do with unwanted American military troops over there.

And also as always, people will be foolish enough to turn to God, our very enemy. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll stay out of God’s house and he can stay out of mine. Better yet, he can let me stay in mine.

Anyway, here’s what happened. It was a series of events that began at 8:45 Eastern time that didn’t end till about an hour later. The terrorists, at least some of them, killed themselves at the same time they killed about 10,000 others. See? People really will spite themselves to spite others. The freeloaders gave up a free house just to get at me. I was that worth it to them.

About 3-5 terrorists hijacked 4 different planes. At 8:45, one plane plowed through the south tower of the World Trade Center. About 18 minutes later, another one careened through the north tower. The footage of the towers imploding and collapsing into themselves was mind-boggling. And seeing the many miles of smoke and soot from an aerial view was incredible, too.

About an hour after all this started, a plane plowed into the Pentagon in Washington DC, and this plane managed to get into class B airspace, which is supposedly pretty restricted. A plane went down in Pennsylvania and then there was a car bomb that went off in New York. Federal monuments and museums were shut down. They grounded all flights in every single airport throughout the country. They told every pilot that was in US airspace to land immediately or else they’d be shot down. All international flights were diverted to Canada. They even closed a branch of the bank (not where Tom works) that’s near Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. They called for a “delta” state of security, the highest level of security there is. The United Nations in New York and all tunnels and bridges were closed and the people of lower Manhattan were urged to head north. The Whitehouse was evacuated and the president was whisked out of Sarasota Florida and secretly flown to Shreveport Louisiana.

The guy they think is responsible trains pilots for suicide missions and shit like that. Tom’s not sure if it’s connected to him because he was in his own country waging another battle at the time. But he made threats on video just a few months ago. And no one did shit about it. This country was too busy throwing people like me in jail and protecting its welfare bums. These fucking Arabs are worse than some others. Others fuck over a few people here and a few people there throughout their lives, and yes, they’re vengeful, vindictive, vicious, hateful little scumbags that use the past and their color as a crutch and excuse to use and abuse others, but they’re girl scouts compared to Arabs. Arabs are a million times deadlier, and they kill by the hundreds and thousands. See, one doesn’t need to be taught racism to become a racist. No one told me as I was growing up to hate Arabs or others. They made me hate them all by themselves.

Tom’s not so sure the death toll’s as high as they say since a woman managed to get out of one of the towers from the 92nd floor. Well, the media does love to exaggerate. Whatever the death toll is, though, enough innocent people got killed for no reason at all. The only ones I have no pity for are the 200 or so pigs that got killed. With a number that high, there had to be plenty of power-hungry, corrupt, lying manipulating assholes that society can do without.

What we both don’t get is how people can hijack planes with nothing but knives. They had no guns. How could 3-5 people overpower nearly 100, and on some flights, nearly 200 people, with just knives??? And how did they get through the locked cockpit door? Were the pilots in on this, too? How did they hijack these planes in the first place what with how tight security is? How can people hijack 4 planes and simply knock down the Twin Towers as if they were a bunch of Legos? I just can’t believe that a group this large pulled this off without someone ratting them out and throwing off their plan! A lot of the people killed on the planes were from MA. God, imagine taking off from Boston, heading towards L.A., only to end up plowing through the trade center!

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.

I’ve had chronic knee pain that began shortly after I got home and I’m wondering just how long this is going to go on. I’m really beginning to wonder if it’s ever going to go away. It seems like just when it eases up on me a bit, it gets worse. I’ve tried ibuprofen, I’ve tried Tylenol; nothing works. Another question is, how could this have started as suddenly as it did and in both knees? Tom says it could be a type of arthritis. God, I hope not! If I’ve got that starting this bad this young, I hate to think of how I’ll be 20 years from now! Is it going to get to the point where I can’t even rock out? Can’t work my lower body when working out? It’s gotten to the point where they’re aching even when I’m sitting or lying down. Will this ever go away? Like I said, my life’s nothing but one problem after another.

They put the house together today. I don’t like how I can see the front and side of it, instead of the back and side of it. I feel like I have even less privacy. Especially since most people out west tend to hang out in front of their houses, rather than in back, but it’s OK. As soon as the oleanders are planted next year, they’ll grow fast and put a wall between us. If they’re going to blast music out open windows, though, it won’t matter which direction they’re facing.

The plan is to cash some stocks in January and use that money for an exterior fence. Then will plant stuff like oleanders which grow tall and fast about 30’ from the perimeter.

Today’s piss test was a breeze. That’s cuz he didn’t have anyone to watch me do it. He simply had me stand up to see if I was concealing anything, then I went into a bathroom by myself. Then when I was done, he did an instant test. It was really neat. Neither of us knew these things existed. They just started doing it to save money. He puts a few drops of urine on this thing that tests for cocaine, meth, pot, and a few other things. I assume it tests for alcohol, too. If there’s a line next to each one, it means you’re clean. If it looks questionable, he sends it to the lab to be fully tested. It could be a certain medication that trips the thing up.

My guess is that the next test will be after the New Year.

I’ve got 2 mice that are definitely pregnant, and one that might be, along with a most certainly pregnant GP.

I tried a really cool experiment yesterday with my 8 male mice. I put them in the tub and turned an upside-down bowl over the drain so they wouldn’t chew around it. In the tub, I put 2 wheels, plus the log they hide in. Then I ran a tube up to a small cage that sat on the wide ledge in the corner. That’s where their food and water were. I figured it’d make cleaning easier since all I’d have to do was just rinse the tub and wash the base of the small cage, but it stunk like hell in there. I figured I already had one room that reeked and that I didn’t need another.

The Biting Bitch, as we call the mouse that bit both of us, bit me again yesterday. Right on the forearm. I don’t know what it is with some of these rather violent mice! Guess I need to handle some of them more often when they’re babies.

Got a letter from my doctor letting me know everything was normal. Yeah, I’m just naturally fat with no metabolism and cursed with ridged nails.

Tom and I were discussing the fucked up laws again. He had a point when he mentioned convicted murderers that end up paroled, while conspirators like Charles Manson, who didn’t actually kill anyone, sit in jail forever. He’s been eligible for 20 years for parole but is denied cuz of his crazy behavior and wild beliefs. I think he should be either killed or put away for good in a funny farm. Crazies don’t belong in jail.

I don’t believe this, but Tom says Connecticut would’ve extradited me and charged me with the threatening letter/phone calls I sent Bill (and I admit to doing it, too) if it weren’t for my already being charged in this state for that. If that’s true, then God didn’t punish me by siccing the freeloaders on me; he saved my ass! If I had to be in jail, I’d certainly prefer to be in this state where Tom could visit than on the other side of the country. However, I don’t think that’s why I wasn’t charged. I think I wasn’t charged because I’m 3000 miles away, and because once again, Arizona’s one of the strictest states there is. Connecticut doesn’t jail people for words on paper and answering machines. If that were the case, I’d have been jailed for that back east a long time ago, numerous times. So, unless the laws have drastically changed and are the same as they are here, I was never at risk of charges/extradition in Connecticut. Besides, why would Connecticut not charge me simply because Arizona did? I asked Tom, and he said because that’s how it works. He says mass murderers never pay for all the people they kill. They just take one case that they know will stick and fry them on that.

That’s not the way I always understood it to work. I thought they paid for those they could prove were connected to that person. Anyway, if Tom’s right, and if the freeloaders really did save me from being dragged back east, then more power to them. They owed me that much for all the shit they’ve caused me.

No one worked on the house yesterday or the day before. It doesn’t look like they’re going to work on it today, either.

Teddy Bear’s pregnant. We’ve had her for 43 days, which means the babies could be as far as 20 days away, depending on how soon she got pregnant before we bought her. One of my mice might be too, but I can’t say for sure on that one. Anyway, Tom and I are both psyched at the idea of having baby GPs!

I received 3 envelopes from Mary yesterday. One containing a letter, and two containing her story. It looks like she jumped to ‘92 when she was 15. That’s the year I came to Arizona. I was 26.

In the letter she confirmed my suspicions, telling me that although she’s never been with a woman, she’s had her fantasies and finds the female body to be beautiful. She’s happy with Todd, even though she says she hates guys in general. When she asked why I wanted to know, I told her I was just a very curious person. The kind some mistake for being nosy.

She was really dying for me to tell her who my woman is, so I told her it was a tall redhead. That should definitely tell her. Besides, I mentioned her knowing Spanish and German and how even she told me she’d swap German phrases with her. I know she’ll know who it is. Her reaction will be interesting to see.

I totally dread tomorrow. All I can do is hope I adapt to pissing in front of staring eyes, just like I adapted to peeing in jail with people in the same room. I do appreciate the warning, though.

I’m glad the community service is over, the mental health screening that they were supposed to do in jail is over and the counseling is almost over, but you know what? That’s still not good enough. We still have to dole out a much-needed $40 a month because of these freeloaders. I still have to report to Scot twice a month because of these freeloaders. I’m probably looking at at least 6 more piss tests, too. I appreciate the fact that he’s only coming to the house once a month instead of twice a month, but again, I don’t like it. He’s an unwanted visitor and it bugs me. It really bugs me. I don’t like how he walks throughout the house like he did the last time as if he owns it. I don’t like having to open my door to someone I didn’t invite. I don’t like my space being invaded! I hate having no freedom within my own home, having to watch every little thing I do in here so that it doesn’t come off as questionable. Yes, it’s better than jail, and yes, I’d rather pee once every few months under staring eyes, than have to go 90% of the time with someone else in the room and not have any privacy for shitting, but still – I’m forced to do things I don’t want to do and shouldn’t have to do because of the freeloaders who harassed me for years and who put stress on me day after day, month after month, year after year. The stress was often worse than the actual shit they’d dish out at me. When they weren’t doing something, just the stress of knowing it was just a matter of time before they would, was nearly unbearable. It really played on my stomach, my mind, my sleep – my life! And now I gotta pay for it with this shit?! Thanks, God. Thanks a million.

Yes, I see jail as an adventure, both good and bad, that was quite a learning experience, but it still never should’ve happened. If I was so meant to meet Mary and Teddy Bear, couldn’t God have found some other way for us to meet? Did he really need to go to such extremes?

Right month, wrong year. The house I predicted arriving in back in September is here. Tom says he doesn’t think it’s positioned yet, and I hope he’s right, cuz I don’t like how it’s facing right at us. Although I still don’t have a bad vibe, I reminded Tom that we’re out of here if it’s subsidized freeloaders. Because they’re not just a few feet away, voices and barking wouldn’t be a problem, but musically speaking, they could be a huge problem as loud as today’s stereos are and with how many miles their sounds carry. Especially if they’re home all day with nothing better to do but sell or manufacture drugs. I’ll be damned if I’ll waste my time calling George only to get little, no, or part-time results just to end up in jail for complaining cuz they happened to have a piggy friend or cuz I’m white or both.

So that’s two new houses this year alone, and we know George is going to put one more in back of the 3 rentals that are side by side. I never thought I’d wish for this place to build up so we could rake in a profit, sell the land/house for a huge amount of money, then sail to sea. Somehow, though, I can’t see God allowing us to do that. The more I try to isolate myself, the more he seems determined to reach his mighty hand into my house, yank me out of it, and throw me in where all the people are! If I go left, God pushes me right. If I go up, God pushes me down – ugh!

Again, I don’t have a bad vibe, but my hearing has got to have improved for a reason. Not only are certain volumes now too loud for me to stand, unlike before, but according to my last hearing test, my hearing has improved. It’s improved! Hearing isn’t supposed to improve with age, and besides, someone who’s blasted their ears with loud music for 20 years should have a major hearing loss, but that’s not so in my case. Now, this may sound extremely paranoid, but isn’t it quite a coincidence that my hearing improves once I’m further away from people? What better way for God to have someone hear people who are further away from them than to improve their hearing?

Well, no matter what we get in there, all we can do is just live with it. I mean, we’ve got to hear them and the people at Dan’s place sooner or later simply because this is Arizona, and as soon as it cools down, I expect there’ll be something in the way of noise.

I know it can’t be my Teddy Bear coming to live in that house now that I know just how far from the jail we are.

It’s still so cool how they could haul in a house on the property adjacent to ours without our knowing about it till we accidentally happened to spot it like we did this morning when we went outside (Tom’s burning trash right now out there). There’d be no missing a show like that in Phoenix even with loud music playing on our stereo!

After being here this long, I must say that the people next to us can’t be freeloaders. I initially thought they were cuz they were darker and cuz no matter where I go, I always get stuck with the blacks or Mexicans next to me. I think they’re Italian, though, because they’re just too quiet and there’s not enough of them. Mexicans breed like rabbits.

Yesterday we went and dropped off bottles and did what should be our final bottle pick-up. Gina wasn’t there. She hasn’t been there due to a sick relative. Anyway, now that I know which bottles are bad, for the most part, I weeded those out of the boxes as best I could.

They sent us another great deal where you get 50% off any one item in the adult catalog, plus a free vibrator and video. I don’t care for the video, but I’ll take the two vibrators, which will only come to around $16 total with shipping and handling. They break easily, so it’s always good to have a few. Plus, I don’t like the two I got the last time. The first time I had one of the ones I’ve got, I loved it, but now it’s not too easy to get off by. The big, bulky ones just don’t cut it for me as well as those with small points do. I prefer something the same size as the tip of a tongue. It also makes it more realistic when imagining Teddy Bear going down on me till she does it for real!

Since Teddy Bear and I developed our mutual thing for each other, I haven’t had one fantasy concerning Palma.

I’m going to finish Mary’s first round of drafts. Although different than mine, I like her writing style. She’s taking bits and pieces of her life. She’ll take a clip from 81, then another from 82. A day in her life here and a day in her life there of a specific event.

Little could she know in ‘81 in New York, and little could I know in ‘81 in Massachusetts (and 5 months of that year in Vermont) that fate would have us cross paths 20 years later in an Arizona jail!

Later…

I questioned Tom about it, who saw them up close and personal, and asked if he was sure they were Mexicans next door, and they are. Mexicans next to me in Phoenix and next to me here? Yeah, I believe it. Had I known, though, up front, I’d never have bought this land. At least they’re not your typical Mexicans entirely. They live like filthy Mexicans with trash all over their land, but they work and they’re not loud.

Tom says the people at Dan’s are more likely to have people with loud car stereos visiting cuz of the way he sees them outside a lot and hears them talking loudly. Yeah, I’ve already established the fact that I’ll hear them this winter, but mostly by the household stereo blasting out their windows. The more outdoorsy people are, the more there’s a potential for noise.

Tom says that January would be a good time for the exterior fencing cuz he can cash in some stocks at that time. Also, he had the great idea of planting oleanders around the back and south side perimeters (where the Mexicans are) of the land cuz they grow fast and can act like a wall, giving us a little more privacy. It wouldn’t block much sound out, but it’d block out houses, enabling me to still see the big mountains in back, giving it a more isolated look and feel. Out of all the mountains we can see from the house, the closest ones are in back and the furthest are in front.

Tomorrow’s Labor Day, so I expect to hear some music then. We might be at Mary’s swimming and burning CDs, though, throughout some of it.

They worked on prepping the house Sunday but took yesterday off. They turned the house so that just like the others, its side faces us. The house is about 30 years old and identical to the others. I wish more new houses would come in! Not old pieces of crap that people rent. Right now I don’t have a bad vibe.

It was quiet yesterday, though we were gone from 11 AM-7 PM. We went swimming, had pizza and ice cream, and made a couple of CDs. We burned two audio ones for me and one data CD for him of all the songs we wanted from what was in their directory at the time. We also want the stuff I get on CD on the computer in digital format to hopefully replace a CD changer.

I left my list at their house so they can grab some more songs when they get the opportunity. They already had a few of the ones I wanted. I have to reburn a song that got cut off less than a minute into it. There are a few that skip at the beginning, but nothing major.

We’re hoping to get a new burner (and hope to not jinx it), then get a satellite connection so we can accumulate and burn songs ourselves. Right now, songs that take a minute to download on Mary’s computer take about an hour or more for us to download here.

We got a little help financially, for once, even if it wasn’t much. We got two bingo tickets. I’m almost always right when I say we’ll either win or lose, but when we win, I don’t know by how much. It’s usually 1-3 bucks. Well, my ticket won $3 and his won an astonishing $25!

I expect I’ll probably have mail from Mary today.

Later…

No mail from Mary today because Tom didn’t stop at the PO today. He’ll stop tomorrow.

I forgot to mention earlier that the freeloaders gave me back my tub. Yes, I did the last of the bottles today.

September has officially begun the hunting season. I hear shots being fired as I write this. Shoot the freeloaders, will you?!

Mary’s finally begun her book! I was beginning to wonder if she’d ever get started on it. I was surprised that she sent 13 sheets of paper at once, though. Didn’t she know there’d be postage due on that? We owed 23¢, not that she isn’t worth the extra cost. Even so, so it doesn’t get to be a hassle for Tom (because he has to wait in line in order to pay and then get the mail), I advised her not to mail more than 10 sheets at once.

Her writing’s getting easier to read, even though she still doesn’t use caps, paragraphs or periods. I can figure out where those are appropriate. That’s part of my job.

I guess from what she tells me, she’ll be sending clips from various parts of her life, jumping around from time to time. I won’t worry, though, about the story’s layout till she’s given me everything she wants to include in the book.

She sent a 6-page letter and 19 pages of memories from when she was 4 years old in 1981 in New York. I can’t believe she can remember such detail at just 4 years old! I’ve only read/typed up the first couple of pages, though, so I can’t get into what it was about yet.

She asked me to change people’s names, but as I explained to her – what if I renamed one of her exes the same name as another ex? So I told her I’d keep a list of all the names as I came across them, making footnotes. Then, if she has a problem with any of the names along the way, she can tell me and I’ll change them again.

I’ll send her about 20 sheets at a time in small manila envelopes, as I type them up, the same way I’m going to send my book to her once she’s out of there.

She says she’ll look at it like her job. She’ll work on the book during the day, then write me, her boyfriend Todd, and her auntie at night.

In her letter she said, “I know your woman is Palma.” So the next clue I gave her was that she’s tall, at least 5” taller than Palma. If she still doesn’t get it, I’ll tell her that omitting Palma and Gibb, she’s already mentioned her name. If she still doesn’t get it, then I’ll tell her something that’ll be a dead giveaway, without it standing out on paper like a sore thumb. And she knows this about Teddy Bear, too. I’ll tell her that she speaks Spanish and German. The reason I know Mary knows this is because Mary knows a little German herself and she told me they’d exchange phrases here and there.

She says she’s getting along really well with her 3 cellies, Teresa did get page 2’d over a letter she wrote, Misha went home after going to GP, white Johnson’s still on 2nd shift, and Laticia’s a snitch, period.

She says she thinks she’ll be free in 04 or 05, but isn’t sure where she’ll be going from there. She’s sure, though, that she’ll be coming to see me. She even mentioned my visiting New York with her. No thanks, I told her!

She said there’s no Ad-Seg in Florida (this surprised me), but that she won’t need it there anyway.

Lastly, she was born on 10/15/77.

This morning I’m going to go with Tom to drop off and then pick up the final batch of bottles. Then - one less thing I gotta do for the freeloaders! We’re also going to pick up some maze and bingo tickets which I vibe a win. As Tom will admit, I have pretty good accuracy with vibing when we’ll win and when we won’t.

I tried this special shampoo that’s supposed to take the frizz out of coarse curly hair, but as I figured, it didn’t help. We just can’t change what we’re cursed with!