Mary’s endless requests are getting to me. She’s sending me poems to type up, astrological charts, letters to this fictitious soul mate she doesn’t even know she’s going to meet, and it’s getting a little old. It’s like she wants me to type up her whole life! I had to scan and print a drawing for her, too.

I thought we were supposed to be working on a story. Not typing letters to Michelle, emailing people, scanning/printing pictures, typing poems and charts. I don’t mind the email, but as I told Mary, ease up on the usage of color ink. It’s very expensive and not reliable. The whole purpose of the laser printer was to save money, but now she wants purple fancy print on pink paper, etc. She’s just getting too carried away, though I know she appreciates what I do for her. I think it’d be best if we stayed focused on what we initially started out to do. And God forbid I should one day have a life, one owned and operated by me, I’m not going to have all this extra time. I’m not going to be busy non-stop, but if I ever do get my way for once and for all and get into dollmaking, I’m not going to want to take time out to type poems to imaginary lovers.

I don’t condemn Mary for being young, naïve and overly optimistic in a way that I don’t think is very realistic, but I think she’s going overboard a bit. I just wish she’d have more of an open mind and be more open to other possibilities in life, about God, etc. One of the biggest life lessons I learned since being on my own is that life isn’t what we plan it. Your average person does not plan most of their lives, so when she goes talking about becoming a writer and meeting this soul mate, I see a lot of my old self in her, and I know there’s a 90% chance she’s going to end up surprised, then heartbroken, till she gets used to and accepts reality. As negative as she may think this sounds, sure she’s a great writer and sure she deserves love, but chances are she’ll either not find this or not find it in the way that she envisioned (like how I found my dream woman in the end but didn’t envision her being a redhead and my being married at the time). Why? Simply because that’s just life. Instead, just like with me and the dollmaking I never even gave a thought to, she may end up wanting to do something she never thought she’d be interested in doing, though she can still write for fun. I never stopped singing just because God wouldn’t allow me to sing professionally. And if God prevents her from doing something she may dream of doing today, she may end up grateful that he did stop her in the future (I know my life would’ve been hell if I’d gotten my way with the singing and the kid and that I wouldn’t have been happy). I don’t think she realizes that dreams change and fluctuate over the years. I dreamt of Miss Right and while I may not have quite gotten Miss Right, I sure did get Mr. Right. This is what I mean when I say that life isn’t what we plan/hope for it to be. Another thing I learned is that unplanned things aren’t always necessarily bad things. In fact, I’d say most of the things I got in life that I didn’t plan on getting were good things.

Perhaps some people in this world really can simply ask God for anything they want and get it, but I know this has been far from true for me. I know we all have a right to our own beliefs and I’d never set out to change another’s beliefs, but I think they should periodically look at other possibilities concerning God. I just think a lot of people put too much stock and faith in Him when it’s themselves that should be credited for their own achievements, and themselves they should be relying on for support and survival. Them and their loved ones. I mean, if God truly doesn’t give us any more than we can handle, then what about that case I just saw on TV where an uncle killed his two nieces in Alaska? Wouldn’t it be fair to say that God gave those little girls a little more than they could handle or else they’d be alive? Again, everybody’s different, but if I were suspended in mid-air by a thin dangling rope, it’s rescue workers I’d be begging to help save me, not God. And if I want something like for the freeloaders to be out of our lives, my only hope is time, not God. For God would just laugh at me and say, “I wouldn’t have pitted them against you in the first place if I didn’t want you to suffer on account of them, now would I?”

No, He would not. Besides, many people tried praying for me while still in jail. Obviously, something wasn’t listening. So this is one of the millions of reasons I laugh when I hear that thing about how you can just ask and ye shall receive.

On the other hand, I do fully agree with those who believe things do happen for a reason. It’s just that we don’t always know what those reasons are. Just why did I go to jail? Was it a curse? A learning experience God felt I needed for some reason? To have my heart broken like I did by Teddy Bear? To help Mary? All of the above?

Another thing I keep trying to stress to Mary is that I need her help with the punctuation. I have to keep slowing down, backing up, and wracking my brain trying to figure out where the ends of sentences are. The girl just won’t use periods. I don’t know why either, so I asked that she use slashes for periods, which she seems to be okay with doing, cuz she sometimes uses them in scattered places. I never was quite sure what the slashes were supposed to mean, but all she uses is that and commas. This way it’ll take the guesswork out of it and make it go faster.

If she wants a shot at being a writer, she should get in the habit of using proper punctuation anyway. She can’t just write a story without periods. I mean, no publisher’s even going to look at it if there’s no real punctuation no matter how good the story is. That means periods, that means commas, that means quotes in the right places, etc. So, without trying to sound like a nag who’s trying to change her, I’m trying to encourage her to work on this for both our sakes. It’s going to help me do my end of the job when typing up drafts, and it’s going to help give her a better chance at success. From all the research I did, it is so, so incredibly hard to get things published, so she’s going to need all the help she can get, and the best place to start is with that. She should take it one step at a time. First begin with punctuation, then with capitalizing things that should be capitalized. Things will be a lot easier for her, though, once she has access to a computer. We usually type differently than we write. It’s easy to take a lot of shortcuts when we write, but when we type, especially when we get fast at it, we tend to be more proper about it. I think it also depends on what we’re typing and to whom. I use the word “cuz” in my letters/journals, but if I were writing a book I’d use “because.”

Anyway, I’m not like Tom’s sister who doesn’t accept others simply because their belief system/attitude may be different than mine, and I’d never suggest Mary be all negative or anything, just maybe understand that there are other possibilities in this world. Maybe she will become a writer. Or maybe she’ll be a first-grade teacher in an elementary school. Could even be a nurse in a hospital. Maybe she will find Mr. Right. Or maybe she’ll find Miss Right or Mr. Sort of Right.

My birthday was a rather relaxing one. I slept through most of it as I knew I would and the freeloaders didn’t insult me any more than they already have with Scot stopping by.

Tom sent me a birthday postcard from Webshots with pretty pink flowers.

He offered to take me to Denny’s early in the morning after work, but we were both rather tired. Instead, we’ll go to Casa Grande on Friday, grab something from there, then get more frogs and angelfish. I doubt they’ll have glass fish. Those seem to be pretty hard to come by.

Unless I’ve tapped into some kind of extraordinary power I never knew I had, Little Buddy wasn’t dying after all which would mean his troubles were due to the rain. He’s still old and feeble, but not like he was nearly a week ago. Although he tries to be playful, he can’t run like he used to, nor can he jump up on the couch.

PG’s still ignoring Tom. Guess they ran out of stories to tell him. He’s going to call them today. As I told him, he needs to put his foot down with them and say, “Look, you’ve had over two months to mail us the doll. This is getting ridiculous! Just send us the doll or refund our money.”

Instead, he’s just too nice to them and they’re taking advantage of it. I’ll take a stab at them myself when this fails to produce either the doll or the money, but one way or another, I am going to rip them off and I don’t care if I have to pay for it for half a decade!

Supposedly, we’re going to be getting a lot of money over the next 6 months between stocks, tax refunds, bonuses, etc., and supposedly we’ve got a lot of plans for it, but like I was saying, life isn’t usually what we plan it, so all we can do is hope for the best. I still have vibes for the truck for this month, so there’s that, then there’s the fences and kiln. He’s decided to rent an auger for doing the fences with, and for just $10, we’re ordering pedals from a catalog we got. We’re still going to get a bike of some kind too, though.

I’m hoping that by May at the latest, we’ll have the truck running, the fences up, and a career in dollmaking well underway. I still don’t know if I’ll ever sell any, but if I can at least make a lot of these dolls I love and have been wanting for a third of the cost – great. We decided to start from scratch and go with getting molds rather than SFGW. That way I can make as many copies of a doll as I want, and if I fuck up, I’ll be able to start over.