Just 4 more days till I’m humiliated beyond imagination. I’m surprised my heart isn’t pounding with dread, though I’m sure it will be once it gets close. I still don’t understand how he can agree that my being on probation is pointless, yet not cut my visits down. That’s rather hypocritical when you think about it. He’s such an all-or-nothing kind of guy, but so are most people, unfortunately. Everything has to be one way or another. There’s no happy medium. No grays between the whites and blacks.

At least the freeloaders tripled my music collection. Thanks to them and their hate and vengeance, I’m not stuck listening to the same old, same old music forever, though I’ll always love the music of the 70s and 80s.

The purple glass fish died. See, this is why we shouldn’t have wasted our time and money on fish. They die left and right. I’m going to let them die off and just keep frogs and betas. At least the beautiful angelfish are doing well. The algae eater has grown since we got it. It’s one of those that grows for as long as it lives.

In other animal news, the prairie dogs are back! That sure was fast. I was wondering if they’d come out as late as March like they did in ’00, or January like last year. I’m glad they’re back. The only thing I don’t like about them is their squeaking. It’s so loud that it’s woken me up a few times. Until I realized what it was, I thought it was the rat’s or mice’s wheels squeaking. The prairie dog I saw appeared to remember me and that there was food here because it gathered up what I put out rather quickly and didn’t run down into its hole when I opened the door.

Of course, we see rabbits hanging out all year long.

Just 12 views of our land album and over 1000 of one of the albums with me in it! Two more downloads this week too, which makes it a total of 18. I think they were from my Wildlife album.

We checked and found that the reason Chris hasn’t been sent yet was that they’re to be closed till the 6th, so it’ll probably be a week and a half before the doll gets here. They haven’t even taken the money yet.

The ear doctor’s secretaries have been giving me the runaround. I can’t get them to tell me a simple little thing – that they did get the referral that was posted on the 17th of last month so I can make an appointment. Instead, they’re costing us a fortune in long-distance calls and making empty promises of getting back to me. If they don’t want to see me for whatever reason, can’t they just say so? I wanted to just forget it and clean it myself with oil, but after Tom checked it out, he said it really looks like it needs to be done and says he’ll play phone with them and get the appointment made.

I miss the days when you could just call a doctor and make a damn appointment! Now you have to fight with a maze of answering machines only to usually end up nowhere. It seems only dentists have real people still answering their phones.

Instead of getting the bike, we might be getting something different which Tom saw on the HSC. They had 1,200 left and he ordered one online after verifying it was what they said it was. It’s just pedals instead of a bike, but there’s something about it that makes it quiet so we can hear the TV while we’re using it, and it only costs $70. He says they usually run for $140. We haven’t received a tracking link for it yet, so we don’t know for sure if we’re going to get it. At least they use UPS if we do.

Yesterday, after just two days of dieting, I was down 3 pounds, but today I woke up the same at 130. I still don’t think it’ll take me the 8-10 weeks I thought it’d take me. It should be more like 4 weeks at the earliest and 6 at the latest. It depends on how badly my weekly snacks set me back. This week I may get a bigger snack than originally planned because I’ve already lost a week’s worth of weight in just a few days. As long as I lose at least 3 pounds a week, I’ll be ok.

Tom went to the hardware store yesterday and got the strips of wood we’ll need for the doors, plus a plain white soft toilet seat for my bath.

Oh, and he also got a spray gun for the front hose so I can take the rat’s cage out and clean it. It’s just too big for the shower stalls.

Now for a quick Mary update before I go work out and do some cleaning. I put my foot down as far as the favors for others go unless it’s something as simple as email. Even she said she knew I’d want to kill her for this and to let her know if she was overwhelming me, but could I please print a copy of a certain set of poems some doctor wrote for her friend Brandi? I said I would, but no more favors of this kind after this. I don’t know these people. They’re her friends, not mine. Besides, I work for her.

She offered to send stamps which I thought was really nice. It’d help. Especially when I send all the stuff she wants sent to Florida, but why must it always be me? Can’t her aunt send some of this stuff? She mailed me some photos as well as some cards, and I told her to let me know how many pictures I can send at once when she gets to Florida. I don’t want to be getting a bunch of stuff returned to me.

I emailed a copy of her book to someone named Terri for her as she asked. I forget how she knows Terri. I think she’s a social worker of some kind.

She says Monster’s trial begins on the 6th, she has court on the 7th, will probably be at Estrella till around the 15th, and life with Virginia still sucks, but she’s surviving. I guess she just tries to ignore the cracks she makes.