I’m making us a roast right now. Something I haven’t done in a while. Meanwhile, today’s the first day we didn’t have to use the AC. It was rainy and cloudy. Tom said there was even some thunder, but it obviously wasn’t too loud, since nothing woke me up. I had a nightmare where a bunch of birds were pecking at the back of my neck which jarred me awake, but I fell right back to sleep.

I have a bad feeling that I’ll be celebrating this next birthday without my Little Buddy. He’s less and less active, eating less, moving slower, having to take breaks, etc. He sits for several minutes at a time and lets me pat him, which isn’t like him. He loves attention from me, yes, but he also loves to run around and explore and he hasn’t been doing much of that. He’s hardly at the door begging to be let out these days and he even feels old when I hold him. He’s lost some weight. My bouncy, agile, playful little puppy dog rat has turned into a sluggish little thing that does nothing but sleep most of the time. Tears sting my eyes just thinking about it. I thought Scuttles and Houdini hit me hard when they died, well, there’ll be no comparison!

I thought I was supposed to be receiving daily jokes from this site, but I haven’t gotten today’s joke from them, so I don’t know what the scoop is. That’s okay, though. I can go to them.

As I go through late ’96, I realize that the best part of reading back through the shit I went through with my family is knowing that it’s all over. Oh, how I wish I could read back on the freeloaders and be able to say, “At least it’s over!” Maybe someday. Maybe. They can’t victimize me forever. After all, we can move if that ends up being the only way to shake them off.

Last night I realized that the stress over pissing for someone stopped as quickly as it began which was as soon as Scot mentioned Casa Grande. Could it be because I won’t have to do so after all? Or is it simply because I’ve come to accept the inevitable? I doubt it’s cuz he’s gonna stay in Maricopa.

We ordered 2 of the 3 Playboy dolls. The one we didn’t order isn’t available yet. It’s to be manufactured at the end of this month, though. That’s the Dalene doll. Meanwhile, Victoria and Karen are on their way from New York via UPS, but I’m sure there’ll be some problem, as usual. They’re dolls, so there has to be.

Last night I got a wallpaper picture of the Cher doll and it’s really, really nice, though I’m not a Cher fan. I emailed it to Mary, asking her to be on the lookout for it in department stores so I could see if it ends up being marked down after the holidays. I told her it’d be in the Barbie section. I also asked that she look for Barbie as a brunette ballerina in white from Swan Lake. That one’s usually around $30, but I don’t know about Cher.

I heard from Mary today. She said her birthday (her third one in custody) was so awful that she wrote a clip on it. It’s a small draft, but I haven’t gone through it yet. I guess I’m included in it from what she said, and I told her I hoped she didn’t mind if I corrected the spelling of my name! She spells it with a y at the end like most people do.

Anyway, I remember how horrid my birthday was in there, expecting my first commissary order that I never got when I was moved from M to A.

She’s been rolling with laughter over the jokes.

She said Hope’s gone and has an appeal going in regard to her 40-year sentence, but she’ll never get a reduction. Not in this state. She should put her energy into adapting to prison life, not fighting hopeless battles. Better yet, she should try to escape. I think Mary should run too, once she’s free, but that’s mainly cuz she’s going to be looking at so many years of probation. Intense probation.

She said she was stuck with some girl who was trying to kick a speed addiction for a while. Sounds like creepy, gross, commissary-begging Charlotte! Now she’s in with that Virginia girl she mentioned getting in with after Hope left.

Damn, I wish I had had that much control over whom I celled with and for how long, but I did get them to let me spend a third or so of my sentence alone. That’s the beauty of having DOs you like that likes you back. You get stuff from them, and every little favor goes a long way in that dive.

She liked the lipstick kiss I enclosed for her. This time I put on my glittery Chapstick and gave her a glitter kiss. It’s light, but you can still see it. Yeah, we give each other kisses every now and then. Ooh! Aren’t we such naughty girls?

She’s had bettas before and said they look really cool under fluorescent light. I wonder what she’ll think of the crabs I intend to get. The money’s now there, so maybe we’ll hit the stores Monday morning.

She said her allergies are driving her nuts, but mine have been fine. I’ve only had the spray twice in well over a month now. Maybe I did cure myself with the power of wishful thinking. If I can go another few months, then yes I did, and that’d be a hell of a power to have! What a gift! If only I could “cure” my life of something else, too.

She sent another picture to scan/store/print, but as I reminded her, color ink is still pretty expensive, so I don’t want to print too many pictures, though I can store as many as she likes.

Speaking of pictures, I explained to her that I’ve been making our own calendars, using pictures like what I use to make her address labels with – animals, flowers, scenery, etc. I told her I’d hang onto them after we’re done with them and that I’d send them to her in prison if she’d like. I doubt they’ll have any rules about how many pictures an inmate can get and how big they can be as long as they’re not explicit, violent or gruesome. This way she can decorate with them and either ditch or give away the ones she doesn’t like. They’ll have monthly grids and some writing on the backs of them, but they won’t show through.

I don’t know what bothers me more, the twisted unfairness of this world, or the fact that not one single solitary person who’s fucked me over has ever paid for it, be it by the courts, by God, etc.

If you beat up a black person and call them a racial slur, they call it a hate crime. If you beat up a big person and call them a fatso, they call it what it is. All these “minorities” have to do is say you called them this or called them that, and they’re the ones who are automatically believed which changes everything.

Tom and I were talking about how they’d simply have dealt me a decade in prison if I had beat the sick bitch up in a fit of rage, despite how this state tends to go harder on the lesser, non-premeditated crimes.

Yeah, I wouldn’t doubt it. But the fellow black or the male or the non-Jewish person would’ve gotten the one-year probation I was supposed to get, and even that’s ridiculous for a letter. In other words, as long as Jodi’s involved, it doesn’t matter what the state, the colors, or the religion is as long as she suffers dearly. If she falls the hardest it all doesn’t matter. No details count. Makes me wonder this – if someone in Maricopa got down on their knees and begged God to let them rip off or assault someone and get away with it, would God answer by giving them directions to this house?

Another thing I wonder is – when I think of the system that fucked me over, the Nancys who threatened to “show” me how to shut up, the contractors that took us for thousands – well – what are all these people gonna do when little Jodi stops caring about consequences? I’ll snap the next time and I know it, and like I said before, I’ll owe myself that much. I won’t be able to restrain myself if I try cuz people just don’t realize the long-term accumulative effect this shit has had and is having on me. I say I’ll just sit back and take it so I won’t have to go to jail, but will it really be that easy when the time comes? And it will come. If God and the system won’t protect me, then who will? I guess I’ll have to be the one to do so, even if doing what’s right and taking a stand for myself means I have to suffer the consequences for it in the end. Like a soldier who died at war; at least they died trying to do what was right and by defending themselves.

If God didn’t put me here to realize most of my past/present/future dreams, then can I at least not be society’s whipping boy?