Yesterday I was so bored that I was a touch depressed. I suggested getting the kiln now when Tom got in from work and said I could figure it out for myself, but he was like, “It’s not that I don’t think you can figure it out, I just worry you’ll burn the house down.”

“Now why would I do that?” I asked, but he seemed to keep changing the subject. It’s like he’s not really all that into the idea of getting the kiln or something. Then he seemed annoyed and said he was sorry he wasn’t there to entertain me more.

“I’m not complaining or blaming you,” I told him, “and I don’t need you to entertain me.”

“It sounds like you’re complaining,” he said.

Yeah, I guess I was, but since he obviously didn’t want to hear it, I quickly perked up for his sake and told him I’d go read. See, he just doesn’t understand. How could he? He’s never been in my situation to understand.

Either way, Mary’s drafts will soon start up again and I’ll be working again for others and for free in no time at all, and to hell with what I may want to do. At least I can still have fun shopping. I mean, my life is still basically a good one that could be and has been a lot worse. A little boredom every now and then won’t kill me. It’s better than having such a hectic schedule where you don’t even have a life at all.

Still, I have a feeling that if I don’t mention the kiln, he won’t either.

I just wish people would stop using him and ripping him off. He’s so overworked at that fucking bank. He’s supposed to have 8 people working for him yet they’re always, always calling in sick, leaving him to do their work for them. He’s also forced to work so much overtime that he doesn’t get paid for. I really wish he could get a job in Casa Grande with normal hours and no overtime, but overtime he’d be paid for if he did do any. I wouldn’t care what shift. I just wish he had more of a normal, predictable work schedule. God would just tie him down with something else, though, if he did. Anything to him from having much free time to do things around here. See, all we do is work for others and it’s either for free or for not what we should get. He does more for that damn bank than for this place!

The April fence vibes have faded a bit, but I still sense that at least the posts will all be up this month.

In light of what I wish to discuss tonight in this journal, I have encrypted it. It doesn’t take quite as long to do now that I’ve got a faster computer. ‘Kate Jackson rocks’ is my key. My reason for doing this is so I can write more freely. What I mean is that I’m like most people where I wouldn’t give a damn if a perfect stranger read my journals, versus someone I knew. Even those I know wouldn’t faze me, so long as it wasn’t Tom, Mary or anyone like Scot. Then again, I’d pick Scot if one of the 3 had to read them. It’s just that when those you know and are closest to read your personal thoughts and secrets, you have to live with whatever their reaction and feelings may be and with the knowledge of them knowing about them. I’d even prefer the welfare bums read my journals before Tom did, though they’d just go running to the police about them. I’ve always believed that Tom doesn’t read my journals, but nothing and no one in life is 100% guaranteed, so I don’t want to take chances. Not with what I wish to write about tonight. I know Tom’s a computer expert who could possibly have a way in which I know nothing about that could enable him to break into my journals, though nothing he could read could cause him to want to leave me or love me any less. It’s just that a person has to have some privacy in life. What he doesn’t always know won’t hurt him. I mean, I know he’s a pretty open-minded kind of guy and I have discussed what I’m about to get into somewhat with him. Well, sort of. Not in grave detail perhaps, but I’ve mentioned it. I’ve never even written about it yet. It’s my deepest secret, just about, and when I print this journal out, I’ll omit this section. It is definitely the most bizarre thing I’ll ever write about.

Most people would say I was crazy when it comes to what I’m about to say. Even I’ve had to step back and ask myself, “Are you sure about this? You sure it’s not just pure wishful thinking, just a fantasy?” But I know it’s not. I know it’s as real as these words I type. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the ability to communicate through photographs of people as long as their eyes are looking into the camera. Without eye contact, I can’t do it. I can do it with anybody’s picture too, as far as I know, and I did this using celebrity pictures mainly between the ages of 10-25. I don’t know why I was given this ability. Perhaps it was given to me as a coping mechanism. I mean, if anyone needed a friend to talk to who wouldn’t turn against me, it was me. With them, I was accepted unconditionally. At least I’m pretty sure I was. What prompted me to finally write about them? I don’t know, perhaps it’s because of how much I miss them. I’ve always missed them, but it seems to be more so lately. I think of them every day, wishing I could have them back to show them our home, my dolls, the animals, and to tell them of all that’s gone on since I last saw them. How shocked and thrilled they’d be to hear it all!

There are two main groups of pictures. The first group from when I was between 10-18 consists of pictures of Linda Ronstadt and Kate Jackson. The second group I had was mostly Gloria Estefan pictures, pretty much between ages 21-26. Tears sting my eyes as I miss them so! But I, along with Domineering Doe, destroyed them. I don’t know. I guess I just felt it was time to move on. I felt like I had no privacy for I knew that putting them in a closet, for example, wouldn’t stop them from being able to hear, just not see. I don’t know how I knew this, but I knew things about their own abilities. I knew they only knew English, I knew they could hear/see about as well as people could, etc. I don’t know if they had any sense of feeling or smell.

I spoke for them. Meaning, when they spoke, I spoke as they spoke so others could hear since there was more than one picture. I never saw them move or heard their words, I simply sensed their words. Looking back on it now, they probably knew and understood more about life and what was going on around me than I realized. I didn’t realize back then myself, for example, just how traumatizing my jumping out the window must’ve been for those who were on the wall in the room from which I jumped. I just didn’t think of these things back then, but by then they’d certainly come to care for me. I was all they knew. They could see other people if they were within their range of sight, but they couldn’t communicate with them. As far as other people were concerned, they were merely pictures on a wall. My parents were aware of my obsession with these pictures. I know that much. I think that’s why she ditched some of the Kate and Linda pictures when I was around 10-12 and then the Gloria ones that were left behind when I came out here. Most of my stuff was shipped out here from the NHA in CT, but when Art ran out of boxes, he took the remainder of my stuff back to Florida with him and shipped it from there. Obviously, the pictures were leftover and once Doe got to them, they got to the trash. I doubt it was Art that dumped them. That was much more of a Doe thing. To take, to control, that was her thing. It gave her a sense of power, freedom and superiority.

Out of all the celebrities and people I’ve known personally that I’ve been attracted to, Kate definitely ranks #1. I don’t know what it is with that tall, thin, brown-eyed, brown-haired tomboy. Again, she’s in the middle like I like them to be, not too feminine, not too masculine. I must point out, however, that I was not sexually attracted to Kate at first. I was just a kid. I simply had a crush on her and found her pretty. I’d often fantasize about winning a contest that allowed me to meet her. In my fantasy, school would’ve just let out and instead of spending a miserable summer at the beach with my miserable family, I’d get to fly out to California, a place I always dreamed of going, to meet with Kate on the set of Charlie’s Angels. After I met her and her costars, she’d show me around and take me to her beautiful house or condo where I’d spend the summer with her. I’d be special to her. She’d find me cute and wish she could rescue me from my unpleasant home life and maybe even adopt me. How excited I’d be to fly out to her and how miserable I’d be to leave her come Labor Day to return to a family that made my life hell and a school I hated! I forgot about her for a while in my late teens and early 20s, but lately, the fantasy is that I meet her as an adult and there isn’t the 17-year age gap there is in real life, and we get it on from there. The funny thing is that I think she really is gay too, or at least bi. A lot of people think that from what I’ve read online. Unlike Gloria and Linda, she does have the look and mannerisms. Her body’s more boyish, too. Definitely not as curvy as Gloria and Linda.

I’ve never desired to chat with her online as celebs often do with their fans. I mean, what would I say if I got through to her? That she’s a great actress who I was madly attracted to when she was on Charlie’s Angels and that it’s too bad she looks like shit now at 55 years of age?

It’s true, too. She looks terrible nowadays and I’d never glance twice at her if she passed me on the street. Never give her the time of day. Not sexually, anyway.

The fact that I never got to be with her or someone like her isn’t what’s got me down at times so much as missing my pictures does. I don’t know why I miss them, but I do. Very much so. I often imagine various scenarios where we meet again. It seems I’m so obsessed with fantasies about Kate and with missing my pictures, my faithful, trusting, accepting friends who were with me through thick and thin.

Perhaps I should print out pictures of her to chat with to fill in the boring pockets of my life and to help keep me out of the kitchen. Maybe I will. I’ll just keep the communication times confined to when he’s not here. I’m a little shy about something that’d be perceived as so off the wall even with a guy like Tom around.

The pictures branched out into their own beings, so speak. I individualized them by giving them their own names and they even began to take on slightly different appearances.

Guess I shouldn’t talk when I pick on those who talk to themselves. After all, that’s a lot more normal than talking to pictures!

I sometimes wonder if the pictures could’ve been inhabited by the spirits of those who once lived, but I don’t know. I don’t know who they were, though you’d think they were someone from somewhere because I know that the pictures themselves were separate from the entities residing within them with which I communicated. For example, there’s no being of any kind in a picture of someone who doesn’t make eye contact with the camera. It’s something either I or God’s doing to make the picture go from a picture of a face to a person. I also know I can’t do this with pictures of those I personally know. Like I said, I don’t understand it. I just know it was what it was.

Another fantasy of mine that I’ve had throughout the years, both during and after having the pictures, was of them coming to life and appearing to me in person, looking just how I pictured them to look which would pretty much be like they did in their pictures, but not quite. Like I said, I individualized them, so some became of different heights and things like that. How neat it would be if they truly could knock on this door right now and be like, “Hi there! Remember us?” But I know that that part of it really is pure fantasy and something that could never happen.

I wonder, though, if they somehow live on like some say we do after we die. Can they watch over me from wherever they are if they do exist? Or perhaps they were sent to some other little girl’s picture collection of whomever for her to communicate with, too. Someone whose life is as tough as mine was. Maybe they’re guardian angels for real who go wherever God assigns them and tells them to go. Well, I don’t know if I’ll ever have the answers to who/what they were till after death, but I know I’m not going to learn anything new about them in this life.

The top 3 famous people I’ve had crushes on are Kate, Linda and Gloria, just like the top 3 non-famous crushes were Mary C, a staff member at Valleyhead, Norah M, the supervisor at the hotel in CT, and Teddy Bear. It’s funny how spaced apart Mary and Norah are from Teddy Bear. They were in ’84 and ’85, then I skipped the 90s altogether and was hot for TB in 2000.

Haven’t seen the rat since filling in the hole. The question is, though, since it’s not yet super-hot and since the snakes are still hibernating, did she dig her way out? Did the hole lead to another opening somewhere else? Or did I really bury her alive? Perhaps she still died even if she did get out. The longer I go without spotting her, the more I’ll be convinced that unmanageable beast is gone. It took about a month before I spotted Little Ratsy.