I got mail from both Mary and Bob. I knew Bob would write me back, too. I’m not going to write him as much as I used to or like I do with Mary, but I don’t mind sending letters once a month or so. He may be annoying at times the way he can talk like a typical male slut, but he’s never done a damn thing wrong to me. That much I can give him. If it hadn’t been for him, Deerfield might’ve killed me or driven me completely insane!

He sent Tammy’s letter, though the idiot fucked up and said so, rather than, “That really sucks about your neighbors,” like I asked him too, in case I read the letter to Tom. Tom was asleep when I got up to read the letter, though.

I still don’t have any bad vibes pertaining to Tammy, Teddy Bear or the freeloaders, though they could just be biding their time. Right now, though, I sense nothing. I’m not going to worry about them anyway.

Since Kim remarried and had a son, he’s only heard from her twice, the last time being 6 months ago.

He’ll be 68 this August but still hasn’t said when he’s getting out, where he’ll go, and what restrictions he’ll have to live with. He did say he contacted a total of 325 lawyers since being in there and all turned him down but one. That one, however, wants a million dollars, win or lose.

He says his sister and brother are fucking him over with his social security checks. I don’t know, I guess they’re keeping the money for themselves. What I wonder, though, is if he’s got no one, like he says he doesn’t, how does he get money without working? At least I don’t think he works.

He asked if I still sing and dance and if I’d send some pictures. He’s going to be getting a big envelope with a lot of goodies, actually. I’m sending pictures, jokes and my autobiography in which I changed a lot of names. Of course, he’ll know the bulk of my life story. It’s mostly the jail stuff he’ll want to read that he won’t know in such detail. He’ll get quite an eyeful pertaining to Teddy Bear!

He must think I’m a hypocrite lecturing him about his dirty mouth (the good old sexist in me wouldn’t care if he were a woman) after I’ve gone and sent him dozens of dirty jokes! I guess he can say what he wants, but hopefully use his best judgment. I’m not the welfare bums. I’m not gonna get all hot and bothered by words. If I don’t like anything I read, I can do the mature, adult thing and not read it. Besides, I don’t want to sound like Dureen with all her dos and don’ts, and of course, I don’t care about swearing.

He asked about Tom and told him to tell him how lucky he is to have me and that he hopes to see me before he dies.

He says he and Tina only exchanged one letter which I was surprised to learn. I thought they had become regular pen pals for a while there.

He has a gay, deaf celly he gets along with which he’s grateful for after having “9 of the worst,” as he puts it. He still sounds really miserable and lonely which is why I decided to keep in touch every now and then. No one writes him and he says he can barely breathe without guards ready to throw him in isolation. Of course, if I had to be locked up, isolation would be my blessing with the way I prefer solitude. I am not a people person, that’s for sure!

To cover the highlights of Mary’s letter – she’s happy I’m off probation, and being the compassionate person that she is, she got a little misty-eyed when reading my letter to Teddy Bear, but the piece of mind I’ve been dying to share with her for ages has been sent.

“See, Jodi, God answered your prayers,” she said in regard to the probation termination.

Yeah, AFTER 6 months in jail, thousands of dollars, 100 hours of community service, a zillion reports and then some. And all the while his precious little welfare bums get to get away with perjury and all their other evil deeds.

The letter she sent was number 6, but I don’t remember ever getting a number 5. I’m seriously thinking I’m not getting all her letters, though she’s gotten all of mine so far. Still nothing about poems and affirmations, so as I told her, I’ll assume she did get them.

She said Jose’s letters look great and that she feels bad that she can’t send me $50 (I thought she was going to have her aunt do that). I told her not to worry, and that a book or two of stamps was sufficient enough. After all, she’s my friend and I wanted to help her. She says she’ll take me to buy tons of dolls and even a kiln with money she makes from her book which is really sweet, but again I assured her that while I know she may want to do a little something for my typing which is fine, she doesn’t have to go all out like that. Besides, I really think I’m going to have that kiln way before the book’s published. See, I decided that one could do one of two things; they can either want something bad enough to do it, or they can not really want it all that bad and make excuses. Well, the truck and fences are still our top priorities which we’re well on our way to getting taken care of. After these things are done, then our other tasks shouldn’t be as big. We’ll do things like panel over the ugly sheds, fix the master bathroom shower and wallpaper that room, redo the fucked up living room mural, and add porches and decks. These are things we can do at a more leisurely pace. However, the sooner we get the truck licensed, the sooner we’ll have something to haul the fences which I’ve been wanting ever since we came here. It’s going to be way nice having something to haul large items in.

We decided our best bet would be to build a little kiln shed outdoors. Kilns can go in houses, and there’d probably be no problem, but we’d feel much better with something that gets to be over 2000° outside the house and not inside it.

This month we’ll be getting my cell phone and ditching the regular phone. The reason we each want to have our own phone is so that I could contact him, if the need ever be, with my own phone if he were out doing errands or whatever. When I asked if he got an unlisted number on his, he said you couldn’t get cell numbers anyway, and explained to me how it works. It’s nothing like a regular phone. They assign you a number and activate it when you buy the phone, but you don’t get bills or anything. You buy time in minutes. We wanted to go this route because we use our phone so little. It’s cheaper to pay for what we use than to pay for all kinds of stuff we don’t use. We’ll have Caller ID and voice messaging, though. I don’t care anymore for things like call-waiting and 3-way. It only costs a nickel to send text messages, too. You just go online, type in the number you want to send the message to, type in your message (you do have a word limit), then send it. It’s way cool.

Anyway, the prairie dogs run right up to the steps as soon as I go out to feed them. Even the bunnies don’t take off running when I go out there, though they’re not nearly as brave as the prairie dogs.

I don’t usually see myself from the waist down, but when I had the closet door open prior to bombing, I saw myself from head to toe in the full-length mirror that’s inside the door. My calves look great from all the jogging! Totally defined. Especially from the side, but from the front you can see how bow-legged I am. My thighs remain my worst physical feature being fat and poorly shaped and what with the skin folds I have around the knees (same with the elbows) from many extreme weight fluctuations.