As usual, I can’t get on the net. It’s been nothing but hit or miss, usually miss. As I keep telling Tom, this new setup’s terrible. Just terrible. The net’s fucked up half the time and the TV is still complicated. It used to be we just brought up the guide and clicked on what we wanted to record, but now, I couldn’t even begin to figure it out. He does it. And of course, he’s still saying he’s going to come up with software to make it all better. Also, those video captures I was supposed to be able to make never happened either.

We did manage to get on the web long enough last night to order Esme. She’ll be shipped on Monday and should arrive Wednesday or Thursday.

They took the plant money on the 17th, so hopefully those will get here this week. Then all we have to do is hope they’re all alive upon arrival and that they survive when we plant them.

Although Tom is going to be looking for jobs in Casa Grande so he doesn’t have to drive all the way to Tempe, he wants to stay at the bank at least till January so we can get the final bundle of stock which will be about a grand.

The prairie dogs have been munching on the tomato plant leaves. I told him it was a waste of time and money getting fruit or vegetable plants. The rabbits and rodents will devour them in no time.

I hope that once the new driveway’s in, he’ll stop kissing the neighbor’s ass. He cuts the headlights as the car swerves around facing their house right before he stops the car, and I’m like, “But they couldn’t even see the light with all that brush they got in the way. Besides, you don’t owe them the courtesy. You don’t have to be mean to them, but you don’t have to be nice, either.”

And it still bothers me how he’s dealt with a certain other set of neighbors from the past, too. There have been so many times he’s played their shit down or acted as if I shouldn’t be bitching about something they’ve done, etc. Yet this black bitch was never once questioned. Not by her family, not by her friends, not by the courts, not by the media who no doubt never twisted a word she said. Never once did anyone ever ask, “Are you sure you didn’t do anything to provoke any problems?” Never once did anyone ever tell her, “You may not have deserved the journals, but if you’d just shut up and lived like normal, decent civilized people, you’d never have had a problem.” Never once did anyone ever ask her, “If you didn’t like the mail she sent, why didn’t you just dump it and move on?”

How do I know this? I just do.

Anyway, it’s a good thing we are just friends, as I never realized, though it’s all well worth it, just how much of his time the home improvements would eat up. His mother ran him ragged in the city and out here it’s the car and home improvements. Aside from why it wasn’t in my cards, no wonder it wasn’t in his to have a child. He’d never have the time for it. In fact, I’m seriously considering forgetting about the kiln. Not just because I can’t imagine God allowing me to work for myself for once and do something I want to do, but because I don’t see how he’d have the time to work on it with me. As soon as he sat down to work on it with me, the car would break. I think it’d be a whole lot easier, given the very full plate that we have, to just drop it and save the money to buy 4 or 5 of the nicest dolls. I think I could get them within 2-3 years.

My next purchase goals are the last 3 mugs I designed with several rat and mouse pictures. I’ll need to save $47. I owe $10 on Esme’s shipping, then I’ll need $37 for the mugs.

Tom trimmed 2” of hair last night. It was an inch below the crack of my ass and now it’s an inch above it.

Later…

Oh, no I’m not getting the mugs next. Not with the absolutely stunning new Indian doll Ashton now has. It’s breathtakingly beautiful! She’s called Spirit of the Snowy Owl. She’s 18” tall and holds an owl on one outstretched arm. Even her sleeveless Indian dress is gorgeous and the realistic detail of the sculpture itself is fabulous. Naturally, she isn’t cheap. She’s $130, but I think that by June I’ll have her.

I emailed Mary’s book to Chuck, but I had to do it in 5 different emails and mail about 50 pages at a time because the thing wouldn’t let me send so many pages at once.

In regards to Mary’s line: a man who hits you and claims he loves you is a full-blown devious liar – well if I could add to that I’d add that anyone who hits you and claims they love you is a full-blown devious liar. Even parents. My mother hit me as a child and then told me she loved me and I believed it. As an adult, however, I believe that the only one who believed she loved me was my mother herself. This advice shouldn’t solely apply to men. It should apply to everyone. Nobody who hits you loves you no matter if they’re family, friends, lovers, strangers, etc. I think that if one is going to have enough self-respect to steer clear away from violent lovers, one should do the same with violent friends and family. After all, self-respect is self-respect and to what do we owe the honor of allowing those to slap us around or abuse us verbally/emotionally just because we share their blood or just because they’re a friend or someone we don’t sleep with? My mother supposedly feels guilty just like hers does over the way she treated her kids, but you know what? It’s too late. Know what else? They never change. They may recognize they fucked up, but they never ever change. They’ll appear changed for a while, but I can assure you, it’s always temporary.

Speaking of change, most of us in general change throughout the years. However, never have I met people who’ve changed so little over the years as did the folks and siblings. They’re virtually the same with everything they do. The way they think, the way they talk, their beliefs, etc. Almost nothing had changed from when I was a child till I walked out of their lives for good 6 years ago.

It’s 82° in the house now so I turned the cold water temperature back on. Once it hits 85°, we’ll need to AC it.