I’ve been keeping busy these last few days. Mostly with working on dolls. You know, I really could be happy making and selling dolls if only it wasn’t such a complex, complicated thing. Maybe I should look into it again. I mean, I know it’s a lot of work that’s messy and smelly, but I think it’d be fun once I got the hang of it, then I could pretty much get any of the $200-$300 dolls I wanted for $30-$40. Maybe stuffing the dolls isn’t such a big deal if you have the right body. I know Jade’s body wasn’t for the 32” doll that she is. I think it’s at least a 34”, maybe more.

I guess the normal procedure is to pour the molds, sand the seams, which would be messy and dusty, then soft-fire it. Then you paint it and fire it again, turning it into bisque. There may be a second painting and a third firing. I think there is. Then comes the assembly. From what I saw on that video, setting the eyes is no fun. You have to drip candle wax on the fronts of the eyes to keep the epoxy from squeezing through. Still, other people do it all the time, so I think I could. I’m gonna check further into it sometime.

Whether or not God would allow me to do this, is questionable, of course. It’s something I want to do and that could generate money. Just like I asked myself, if God wouldn’t allow me a woman like Teddy Bear in the past, why would he now? I’m asking myself, if God wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do with my life in the past, why would he now? Especially something that could make money?

In other doll news, I finally got Chris yesterday. I took off her boring dress and put her in a spare one I had. This isn’t the second doll, though. This is the first one. The fucking idiots simply had her sitting on their shelf. They claimed they tried to deliver it earlier when they really didn’t. At first I thought I was going to end up with two Chris dolls just like I ended up with two Giselle dolls, but we’re pretty sure the doll company told them to put a trace on the first one before they sent a second one, so I doubt I’ll end up with two.

At first, I didn’t think her face was as nice as it looked in her picture and that she was just a so-so doll, but her battery-operated fiber-optic wings are really cool. They look so pretty and colorful. Especially at night. She doesn’t have any legs. Her body’s set into a plastic cone that holds the wiring. This is why it’s important to put her in a dress long enough to cover it.

For the longest time I wished I could get some of the nicer dresses off the tacky, phony-looking musical dolls I’ll probably never get again. The dresses are sewn to the bodies. Well, last night I detached two dresses using a razor and even cut out the music boxes. I don’t know what I’ll do with the music boxes, but you never know. So, those two, out of the 5 musicals I’ve got, were pretty much demolished by the time I finished with them, but first, I tore one’s wig off. Then I tore off the Lollipop doll’s wig, which I was never too impressed with. When I put the other wig on it, it looked much better. But then I had another musical doll whose dress I didn’t care for, but whose wig I liked even more with its duel-braided pigtails. So I ripped that one off and that’s the one on Lollipop’s head right now.

So, of the 3 musicals I have left, I only have one displayed. I don’t care for the others' dresses, but I may keep their wigs.

Tom trimmed my hair a few nights ago and didn’t do a great job. Still, it needed a trim. I decided to trim 3”, rather than take it to the shoulders, though I still plan to do so one of these days.

We’re going to bomb this Saturday cuz we’ve been getting these terrifying, strange creatures in here lately. We’re not sure what they are, but they’re big. Too big. If there’s anything I miss about the northeast, it’s its lack of big bugs. Anyway, it was about an inch long. I thought it was a spider at first. It appeared to have 8 legs. But its body was oblong and the back and front sets of legs were much longer than the two middle ones. So I wondered if it was some kind of ant, cricket or grasshopper. After seeing a picture I took of one after I killed it, Tom wondered if they were baby tarantulas, but I doubt it. The shape’s not right, they’re too fast, and they have no fur. I know they’re not scorpions. I just want them gone! I’ve been seeing an average of one a day.

We do have a rather neat visitor, though it’s not in the house. I saw my first Gila monster yesterday. That sure is one huge lizard, that’s for sure. I only saw it from a distance and for a minute or so before it walked off into the wash. They don’t move very fast nor travel far, so I may see it sunning itself in the late afternoon. I’m keeping a lookout for it. They’re poisonous and it’s illegal to kill or own one as a pet cuz they’re an endangered species.

I still can’t believe I’m going to be starting off my next condensed autobiography about a Teddy Bear who never came. It still shocks me to this day. I can’t believe this woman who seemed so real could leave me hanging without a word. I’d have been shocked if she’d contacted me somehow saying we couldn’t get together, but for her to not even call me up and say thanks for breeding the mice, but no thanks, really surprises me. The anger and the hurt have died down a bit, but I don’t think I’ll ever get over the shock. Not even the book got her curious enough to see me.

I’ve been thinking of decrypting at least some of my journals. Primarily the older ones. If I do, it’d be under the same concept as when you ask someone a question. When you ask someone a question, you should be prepared for the fact that you may not like the answer. Well, if anyone’s lucky enough to manage to swipe these journals without me beating the snot out of them first, they’ll have to deal with the consequences of the fact that they may read things they might not necessarily like. It’s just like with mail. When we open our mail, we may not like what we find. Some of us choose to be adults over it and just ignore it, others prefer to run to the pigs like spoiled children running to tattle on other children.

Later…

Tom got up an hour ago and took off for work. He agrees we ought to look more into this doll-making adventure once again, even if it means, ironically, taking classes (I’m sure Scot would get a kick out of that!). It’d depend on how much money we’d have to spend and how far we’d have to travel, but we understand that getting started with most anything takes money. In order to avoid the dustiness of the filing, I may skip getting molds and get soft-fired greenware. That’d mean I’d be painting and assembling.

The dream catcher I have hanging under the skylight only has blue and white beads. On the web itself, there’s only one blue bead, one white bead, and a feathered arrow. Well, I added 6 different colored glow-in-the-dark beads to the web. It looks cool in the daylight and I’m sure it’ll look cool at night. I also put 6 beads in Twinkle’s hair, who’s in the bedroom.

Did I mention how smart Little Buddy is? He not only managed to pull Tom’s box of mints out of his pocket, but he figured out how to open the box, too! Then he chased me around the room when I took them away from him. He had some ice cream today. We were sitting on the floor, and after he finished his ice cream which I placed on a little saucer, he jumped up on my lap and began eating out of my bowl.

I hope I get a night off from these creatures from hell that have been invading this house!

Later…

I decided now would be a good time to do next year’s calendars for the living room and my office, cuz you know how printers are - sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. So I thought I’d take advantage of the fact that it’s working now and get it done. It was fun and gave me something different to do other than the usual. Some of the pictures came out gorgeous - clear and sharp.

The more I think about this doll thing, the more skeptical I am. I definitely do want to do it. It’s totally calling to me. It’s just that I know better. God’s gonna be like, “No, you do what others want you to do and you take classes for the state.”

My whole life has been what I have to do for others! I have no problem with that as long as it’s for people I care about and people I want to do for, and as long as I can get to do for me every now and then, too. And I don’t mean going out and buying a dress or a doll or whatever. I mean something bigger than that that will really have a positive effect on my life. I’m not saying I never got to do something I wanted to do. After all, I married Tom. It’s just that I don’t have a very good track record for being allowed to make my own decisions and do what I want with my life, particularly when it comes to money-making ventures. I tell myself, it’s only dolls, so why would God stand in the way?

Because he can and because he would and because it’s something I want to do. It all comes back to what I want and what could make money. I want to be just as financially independent as Tom, even though neither of us is “financially independent” cuz we’re a team. Guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to make money like he does. It doesn’t have to be much, either. A lousy $100 a month would do. And one thing we certainly wouldn’t have to invest in is some good solid tables to work on.

Perhaps, if I bought enough supplies, I could even do this on the boat, if we do live on one someday, then deliver them for sale when we dock for supplies. After all, one can only clean and write for so long. A little more in my life that does not involve catering to my own perpetrators couldn’t hurt.

Now, can I figure out a way to break curses and fight fate? How do I alter this lifelong pattern?