I decided that although the temperature was comparable to back east, I didn’t want to sit and sweat my ass off, so I kicked the AC back on.

So we’ve made it 5 whole weeks without having to play form on the home front. In order to beat the 6-week, 3-day record, he’d have to not come before the 23rd, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he came sooner. After all, I’m a big-time letter-writer!

Tom noticed a message on the Maricopa’s PO’s bulletin about the place in town that makes and sells dolls. They say they sell dolls as well as doll parts. Wow! A place in town to get parts? That’s too good to be true! The question is, though - would they have all the parts I’d need and want? We’ll have to stop in sometime.

A big orange and white cat comes onto the land at times. Cats are okay. I don’t mind them. They don’t bark. Also, all the loose dogs around here are the size of ponies!

Now for my annoying news – I am totally fed up with playing mailroom games. Mary got a mail rejection slip cuz of a “large picture.” But I didn’t send any large pictures! They’re just playing with me, I guess, so this is why I decided that from now on, no more pictures other than what I use for address labels. If Mary wants to send me pictures to send back, that’s fine. I’ll just have to hope I don’t send them at the exact same time someone else sends her pictures. Unfortunately, I sent her pictures back before receiving her letter asking me to hold onto them since someone else was sending pictures. So, I’ll either get them returned and will hang onto them, or she can send them back to me, to her aunt, to whoever. Meanwhile, stamps are too expensive these days to play these games, and even if they weren’t, it gets old.

Hope’s now looking at 24 years, she overheard her tell a DO. Guess that means she’ll be out in 3, but she’ll never get off probation, that’s for sure. She picked the wrong state in which to play punching bag with her kid.

You know, it just occurred to me – I wonder if they consider the tulip on the blank stationery I send Mary a large picture? I’ll hold off on sending her any extras till I get this thing returned to me. If this is true, what took so long? They got a new DO or something? Well, I never heard of this Barfuss character that signed the slip (she sent me a copy), so it may be new.

Anyway, Mary surprised me with a couple of things. Now she’s really into sports like football and baseball. As I told her, sports always bored the hell out of me unless it was gymnastics or figure skating, but if she likes it – great! I told her Tom loves sports.

Then, she asked me what I would do if Tom and I got it on and I found I was pregnant in a couple of months (she doesn’t realize this guy doesn’t squirt). She asked me if I’d be happy and told me I’d make a damn good mother and was thinking she should pray for me to get pregnant (that’s been done before to no avail, of course).

I told her that as a pro-lifer she may not like my answer, but that first of all, both he and I have problems that may or may not be fixable, and no I wouldn’t be happy. I would’ve been elated between 1994-1998, but as I told her, the desire gradually faded. Although I know we’ll never have sex again and that I could never be in such a predicament if we did, whether or not he came, I would abort for 3 basic reasons. It simply isn’t on my wish list anymore, it’s too expensive, and the world’s just too crazy and dangerous. I have to worry about Tom as it is and wonder if he’ll get in a car wreck, have a heart attack, get shot by some trigger-happy psycho, etc. Nonetheless, I told her fate was fate which prayer couldn’t change anyway and thanked her for believing in me.

I can’t believe we’re coming up on being here half as long as we were in the Phoenix house. Half as long already! It feels like barely a quarter of the time, but remember, thanks to the freeloaders, it hasn’t been as long for me as it has for him.