Just one more year with the freeloaders, just one more. At first I started to fall into my usual thought process, but what if they and or the state prolong things? What if they do something else?

But then I said, no, next year is going to be it no matter what cuz I’m going to make it be it, even if they don’t want it to be it. One year from today will be the day I take my life back and when no one but Jodi says what happens to her. It won’t mean that I’ll be able to decide I want a million dollars and make it suddenly appear. It won’t mean that I’ll be able to jump to the moon if I suddenly desire to. It simply means that no one will ever again tell me where to go, what to do or how to live as far as a reasonable, general, everyday kind of way goes. I can’t fight fate and I can’t stop God from stopping me from doing some of the things I’d like to do in life, but you know what I mean.

Meanwhile, I gotta wonder – what kind of bombshell will Scot drop on me this Friday? Will I have to hear about the classes? Or just reminded of how much time I have left? The Casa Grande stress still hasn’t returned, but I don’t yet know why. Maybe it’s simply because I know that as long as I’m not going to wash my hands clean of this bullshit and walk away, I’m going to have to face the humiliation.

I’m just so sick of getting shit on by people in general! One of these days I’m going to surprise them and fling the shit right back in their faces!

I should’ve known something was up when Paul kept referring to the journals as “letters.” When we were all calling them letters I automatically assumed we were doing so cuz that’s a generic, overall term for sent mail. I thought it went without saying that we were all talking about the journals and not this damn letter, even though we were referring to them as letters.

Speaking of letters, I got 2 letters from Mary yesterday and was heartbroken over Todd’s dumping on her. She apparently got a letter from Todd’s “girlfriend.” She sent the letter to Todd with nothing else and then took down his pictures. I was also pissed. You could say he’s another one I could add to my list that I wouldn’t mind having 5 minutes alone with.

Anyway, I am so, so sorry for her, and yes, I know the pain of a broken heart. Teddy Bear taught me all too well, I’m afraid, but I can just imagine that the pain I went through on account of being blown off by her was nothing compared to what she went through. Teddy Bear and I didn’t really have a chance to get much started, but she and Todd go way back, so I can see how hurt she must be. For whatever it’s worth, I told her, she’ll get used to it with age. Losing friends/lovers does get easier with time. I wish there was something I could say/do to ease her pain, but unfortunately, it’s just going to have to run its own course and work itself out in its own time, and it will. Time really does heal all wounds, and while she may never forget Todd anymore than I’ll ever forget Teddy Bear, it will get easier to deal with. Time’s her best friend right now. She’s also too young to be closing doors on the many different opportunities that may present themselves once she’s free. I also wouldn’t rule out the possibility of being with a woman someday, but if it’s not her cup of tea, it’s not her cup of tea. My point was – keep an open mind. I also told her that anytime she needs a shoulder to cry on, she’s very welcome to use mine. There’ll be times when I’ll be crying on her shoulder, too!

Damn that bastard for wasting 3 stamps of mine for those convent excerpts she wanted to send to him!

This is when I wonder how she can believe and trust in God. How could he let this happen to her on top of everything else she’s been through? And doesn’t she feel ignored when she prays? She’s into yoga now which seems to help a lot more than anything, from what she’s told me. I’m sure writing and listening to music helps, too.

When I first pulled out what she enclosed in her letter, I was like, why is she sending me, of all people, religious stuff? Well, it’s based on religion, but it’s not. It’s actually a book of inspirational poems and she dedicated a really nice friendship poem to me, telling me she loves me and appreciates what I do for her. Yeah, if there’s one person who would never take what I do for granted, it’s definitely her. I know she cares and is as grateful as I am to her for being my friend, my pen pal, and for doing me favors like investigating a certain someone we both know. In fact, I think I’m going to redo that certain someone’s letter and shorten it a bit, even if that certain someone will probably never get it.

I wonder if Pérez will ever return so she can find out for sure whether or not she got my regular mail.

In email news, she asked me to send a few pages to her friend Shirley, but I just attached the whole book file. I thought it crashed at one point and I ended up sending it twice.

She said she’s had a miserable time going to court and all for nothing. There’ll be nothing else going on till January, either. As I told her, I’ve heard that going to court is a miserable ordeal. And how asinine it is to be pulled 6-7 hours before court! I’m glad I never had to do that. I had enough shit to go through as it was.

The prairie dogs are completely gone now. I haven’t seen any. Haven’t heard any hunters on weekends, either. Just during the Labor Day weekend and the weekend after that. There were a few sonic booms yesterday.

I decided what weight I want to get down to next year which is 105. If I lost 10 pounds and got down to 115, it’d make a huge difference overall at my height, but it’d make even more of a difference in the face, neck and chest if I got to 105. It won’t be easy, but unless I change my mind and decide to stay as I am between now and after New Year’s, I’ll do it.

My hair is now to the crack of my ass. Maybe ¼ inch away still. It’s such a bitch. If it were thin and straight, that’d be one thing, but I get so sick of it that I think about cutting it to my shoulders. I know I will within the next few years for sure.

The day I sent out Paula’s letter, which was Monday, she left a message by phone saying she didn’t know what was going on, she wasn’t receiving email or regular mail from me. Also, to let her know if Justin’s doing anything wrong.

What he’s doing wrong is he’s not notifying her when I send an email. The kid’s a nut. I know he can’t help the people he was born from or his environment, but the kid’s a flat-out nut and a half, destined to spend his life in and out of jail. At first I wasn’t going to send any email about it, not sure if it was the right thing to do, but you know, I’m sick of doing right when all it does is get me nowhere. So I sent him a quick message letting him know that it’s a damn shame that he’s too lazy to let his mother know when she’s got mail.

Anyway, I’ll send her a regular letter every once in a while, but I really would’ve preferred to keep in touch by email to save a little money. If Paula could listen to one thing I tell her, then she might’ve remembered that I said I’d be sending email on the first of each month so she could look for it then.

Anyway, I started to write about this earlier but never did. Tom and I were talking about what we’d do if we suddenly had limited time. Well, I’ll tell you one thing for sure and that’s that if I suddenly knew I only had a year or two to live and that there was nothing I could do about it, I’d write the biggest “fuck you” letters the world’s ever seen to everyone responsible for landing me in jail and where I am today! Then the media could say I was prejudiced towards law enforcement people as well, not that that’d be a lie.

Some lady was giving away work shirts and a coupon for a different satellite provider that he wants to switch to. His plans for tuners, satellites, computers, etc., confuse the hell out of me. He says it’ll be easy to use, though, and a worthy investment.

The crazy rat really likes the fleece bed. She tore the seam that joins the outer, decorative material to the fleece and she burrows between the two.

I’m still far from updated. I haven’t even gotten to the printer and crabs yet. The printer’s great. I get a lot of paper jams where it doesn’t feed all the way through, but if it’ll do thousands of pages at a fraction of the cost, then great. I can’t believe how fast it is! The thing prints like 8 pages a minute, whereas the other one does one page in two minutes. You can kind of feel the print too, which is slightly raised, cuz it’s a powder that’s melted onto the paper and not ink that becomes one with the paper. So, I hope Mary doesn’t mind all-black text.

Yesterday morning we left at 8:00 and headed for PetSmart in Chandler. They had a good selection of crabs there. Like nearly a dozen. I picked out 3. One’s a jumbo, one’s average, and one’s small. I sent pictures to both Marys. I know Tom’s Mary won’t like them, but I don’t know about my Mary. She hates snakes, but she has no problem with rats, so it could go either way when it comes to them. I’ll just wait to hear from her about it. I’ll powder up a letter with the pics today. I better not get them back, either!

Jumbo’s the shyest. Hermy, the smallest one, is sort of shy. Crabby’s my favorite and the bravest, too. I feel sorry for her/him too, as it’s missing its large claw as well as a digit at the end of an outer leg. Must’ve been in a fight.

I have them in a little terrarium in the kitchen. (we have so much counter space in here that not even this tank leaves us short on space!) The tank’s a foot tall and almost two feet wide. It’s probably about a foot deep, too. In it, I have really nice colorful gravel that has even more colors than the fish have, but I think it was a waste, cuz I think they like the paper pellets better. They can burrow in it and dig through it easier. It’ll also absorb their pee. Another dumb buy was the two small plastic balls I got them. When I put them in them, they don’t seem to move much. I’d be better off letting them walk around loose just as long as I kept an eye on them. The last dumb buy I made was the spare shells. They’re way too big for them, and the more I think about it, the more I doubt they’ll ever change shells. These are Caribbean crabs and they change shells much less than Ecuadorian crabs.

The smart thing I bought and set up for them, besides food, of course, was a shallow plastic heavyweight bowl. If the bowl’s too deep, the crabs will drown. I also bought a sponge that you place in the middle of the bowl to provide a little bit of moisture. That way their gills won’t dry out. The reason they’re in the kitchen is that I’ll have to change the water bowl and dampen the sponge every day.

I took a strip of squared wire and placed that in there for them to climb on, as well as a wheel without its base. I made it stationary by covering the bottom of it with gravel. This way they can have things to climb on.

Tom made some measurements and determined that our fish tank is a 20-gallon and not a 15-gallon tank. We lost another fish, too. The green glass fish died.

For the fish, we got some fake neon plants for the babies to hide in and hopefully survive too, but now I’m not so sure we’re going to have any babies. Guppies have them every 3 weeks.

They had a huge selection of fish, but no glass fish. The neon tetras Tom was telling me about were just so-so. I like the bigger fish better, too.

Tom checked online and so far there’s been no problem with our order for Victoria and Karen. They had this really cool UPS tracking site that lets you track your packages. They processed the order at 5 PM on the 29th. They packaged it at 7:30. It left New York at 10:15, and by 2 AM they were in transit in Illinois. They say they’ll be here Monday the 4th.

Now, why can’t PG and Ashton be this fast? I’ll still be completely blown away if they really do get here that fast and without a problem. If it’s dolls, there’s always a problem unless they take forever anyway like Ashton does.

Speaking of Ashton, they must be psychic and knew I’d soon be ordering from them cuz I just got a catalog from them. I decided to dump Dalene and the PG fairies as soon as I saw this new Indian doll they have. She’s very beautiful and very realistic and she’s in a rather unique pose, too. She sort of leans against a carved rock base with one knee bent and the other straight for most of her weight to rest on. I just wish she wasn’t $130! She’s referred to as The Legend of the Apache Teardrop. Tom told me the story behind the legend. I think I’ll just call her Apache Woman. She’s 16” posed, so standing straight up, she’d probably be about 20”.

So, it looks like I’ll be getting the little ballerinas, Apache Woman, Mei Li and Felicity. If I don’t like the ballerinas, I’ll cancel the subscription and put Dalene back on the list. I’d still like to have the PG fairies eventually, though I don’t have to. They’re nice, but I can live without them. Besides, I’m sick of PG’s stupidity. I was supposed to get Tasha a month ago. A month ago! Why should it take a whole month to send a doll?

Guess you could say I’ve done enough writing, so I think I’ll go read now.

Later…

I wonder where Victoria and Karen are now. Well, I’ll find out when Tom gets up. He said he’d look before leaving for work.

Another year with the freeloaders and with being forced to bite my tongue, kiss ass, and basically be everything I’m not. I swear to God, though, after this next year, if I’ve got something to say I’ll say it, and no one, in any way shape or form will ever order me around again. I’m a little too old to be taking “orders” from anyone anyway, I would think. I’ll never again be anyone’s slave. No one will stop me from being myself and saying what I have to say within reasonable expectations. I’ve always been against ass-kissing. I’ve always felt it was degrading to the human spirit and it is. Oh, how bad I wanted to say, “I’m your client, you work for me, my $40 a month goes towards your pay, and therefore, I think I should be entitled to have some say in how often I see you.” Who knows, I still might speak my mind on the issue if he brings it up, but I’m sick of being made to feel like a child who has to seek the approval of an adult so she doesn’t get hit with any more abuse. Having to kiss ass like this really is a very degrading experience. I wouldn’t say just anything, anywhere, to just anyone anyway, but this is a little extreme. How is it that so many people have had such a hold on me throughout my life? It’s been nearly as bad as an adult as it was when I was a child for real! And how is it that I couldn’t put a hold on anyone myself if I tried? Putting a hold on someone isn’t want I want, though, I just want them to let go of me!

It still blows my mind, and it no doubt always will, how so little could turn into so much. How could this have gotten as far as it has and for so long?!?! All I wanted was for them to shut up. That’s all I wanted. Just for them to keep their music for their ears only. It’s like my whole life is either kissing ass or suffering the consequences for trying to do/achieve what’s right, and that’s a decision I’ll be faced with having to make as soon as this shit’s over. Do we let the next set of neighbors blast their music, hang out on our land or trash it? Or do we risk going to jail for complaining about it? There won’t be an in-between. There’ll be no “fighting back” and winning. At least they won’t be able to terrorize us from just 3’ away!

My life is just about in the hands of the freeloaders at the moment as it’s coming up on 10:00. That is if Scot comes. If he doesn’t show up today or tomorrow, that’ll be 12 glorious weeks without him here. It’d be a bummer if he did, not just for obvious reasons, but because that’d mean he’s still only skipping one month between drop-ins. His last visit was on August 8th.

You’d think it’d be so easy being on standard probation, just putting the $40 in the mail and showing up twice a month, but it’s not. It’s really not. I have the stress of home visits waking me up when I’m on nights, I always have to worry about some new demand or inconvenience coming up, and now I’ve got the threat of being degraded and humiliated over my head with a much longer drive. The freeloaders don’t just punish me, they punish him, too. He needs to sleep during the day, not be on the road for two hours.

Once again, I wasn’t kidding when I said I knew God would punish us for moving. He never approved of or wanted me to leave the city and that’s part of why I kept getting dragged back into it to the hotels and then jail. As much as I want to get out of here, I can’t help but wonder what the price for doing so would be. Nothing would happen if we moved to a city, but I’m not moving back to a city. Not on my own, not by force. I have come to completely despise cities! I’d rather the horseshit smell than to be back with all those freeloaders who would only live to make my life miserable.