I awoke to a rather disturbing sight out front. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but we’ll see. Well, there’s an old trailer, similar to the one we stayed in, parked between the two shacks. Tom said that this changes his theory of what the guy was looking for now that he sees it there. He thinks he was looking for a way to hook electricity to it, but not to worry because they can’t. This is because we took their transformer when we moved in, and they wouldn’t install a new transformer for a trailer.

But what if they sold that corner of the land to someone who plans to haul in a manufactured house? That’s not even 200’ away from us! That would totally, totally suck. We’d hear their dogs barking without a problem, we’d hear their kids screaming without a problem, and we’d certainly hear their music if they were the type to play their music for others as well as for themselves, and if it could move in that close to us, fate would make damn sure they were definitely the type. This would be way too close for dogs, people and trash that people are too lazy to burn that they just let ride with the wind. Over here, that is.

This is what I mean when I say that I don’t have to go looking for trouble cuz trouble always finds me. It’s also what I mean when I said I feared that once the freeloaders were done turning my life inside out, God would send a new source of trouble to badger me with that he knows I’d have no control over. If there’s a house coming in there, God will definitely find the loudest family he can to put over there. If we’re going to have people that close to us, then shit, we may as well be on a 5-acre lot or sell half of our 10 acres, but then again, why double the trouble? Then Tom came out and suggested that maybe if we did sell it, we could sell it to someone we knew like Meagan and Stacey a few years from now. I don’t know if having it be someone we know would necessarily be any better. For one, we’d lose all say in what went on over there. Besides, I know how people are. You not only can’t tell others what to do, but you can’t even ask them politely. I learned that the hard way in Phoenix. The more you ask, the more they go the other way. That means we’d be forced to listen to the people, dogs and music they’d have going, and forget about trying to get them to call first before knocking on the door. I also think Meagan and Stacey are a little too young. At that age, gay or straight, you tend to want to party and be more sociable.

Mary would be a lousy candidate. She not only doesn’t drive, but she’s too much of a people person. She’d always have people visiting and I know all too good and well just what kinds of people she’d have out here. I wouldn’t want vindictive, violent drunks out here like Derek and her mother.

At least screaming kids wouldn’t be an issue with Meagan and Stacey like it would be with Mary, cuz I still think Mary’s going to pop one out after another once she gets out simply because that’s just what she does. So, unless God sees fit to destroy her uterus with cancer, tumors, cysts or whatever, she’ll just pick up from where she left off when she gets out and spit them out regularly with all kinds of losers and abusers. I have to see her get out and live differently in order to believe she’s capable of change. Well, I know she’s capable. Question is, does she want to change? Right now, if she can send all kinds of letters and money to the likes of José, then no, I’d say she isn’t in the mood to change just yet. Of course, there’s still always the chance she’ll be on intense probation forever which would curb her “manly activities.” Unless she wanted to get thrown back in jail, she simply could not associate with all kinds of criminals like she does.

Another reason I’m wary of having friends move onto our land is that if we get into a fight and that friendship ends, we’d be stuck having to live with each other, and anyone who knows me knows that while I’m hard to win over as a friend, I’m very easy to lose since I’m not the forgiving type. To me, to forgive means to kiss ass and to say, “It’s ok to go ahead and wrong me for I’ll only forgive you in the end, which basically means I’ll let you get away with it.” I learned that the best thing to do is to stay mad. It keeps you from getting fucked over again and again if you do. Who knows? Maybe in 10 years or so, Mary will decide to dump me. Meanwhile, if she’s not living here with us, she’ll never have to see me again.

Anyway, maybe the trailer’s just being stored there. After all, they have another one stored on the opposite corner. I find it hard to believe that it’s just someone visiting or storing their trailer there, but we’ll see. When it does get noisy around here, I’ll just have more fans and music going. It can never get as noisy as it was in Phoenix, and besides, I’m indoors so much of the time. If it is someone visiting, they’re going to have to either stay in the house or get a generator as it’s way too hot for anyone to live in it without electricity.

Still no signs of life at the rental. I think they’ve been coming in after dark. It’s the weekend so maybe there’s someone there now, though it’s too hot for them to be out and about. It’s obvious, though, that the trash wasn’t dumped by accident. They deliberately tossed it, or else it would’ve been picked up a long time ago. I wish there were littering/dumping laws out here, not that they’d do much good in this remote place. It’s harder to enforce such things when you live this far out. I doubt much more than 5 cars a day go down our street if even that.

The current of our hundreds of truck holdups is that we’re waiting on the pension money for the new windshield it needs. At least the unemployment check’s on its way.

Still no call from Mary. I’m surprised. I’d have thought she’d have gotten my letter saying to go ahead and call by now.

I decided not to rewrite the beginning of my Kate story simply because I know I could never get it published. Getting something published is so, so very hard and I’m not a known name writing about true crime. Tom said that even Mary might have a hard time getting her book published once the time comes as by then she’ll be old news, but she has a hell of a lot better chance than I ever would have. Let’s just say my Kate story is another one of those many things I did just to do it because I enjoy writing.

Tom said that when he reached into the small bath cabinet for the shower unclogger, there were good-sized daddy longlegs in it, so I’m reapplying the spell. I may never get it perfect in here, but if I can keep us from getting things in here on a daily basis and from needing to bomb, then that’d be way cool with me. I must apply the spell regularly, though.

I’m thinking of putting the Sydney doll back on my list, but not the Apache doll. We’ll see. Mary’s $100 would’ve been nice as I could’ve gotten Sydney and Dalene with it, but it’s like with fences – it ain’t happening, and if it does, it ain’t happening anytime soon.

Later…

Tom went to bed after spending his birthday relaxing.

We saw a coyote go by which is cool. The cottontails went running for cover, even though the coyote didn’t seem to notice them. Cottontails are very sensitive to nearby predators.

What’s cool is that I’m seeing roadrunners every day. For someone who doesn’t care for birds in general, I sure do think they’re quite awesome.

Later…

I got up at 5:00. I’ll be up till about 9:00 which means I’ve got about 11 hours left of starving to do. Argh! As I figured would be the case, I’m stuck. I really hope I don’t go hanging onto everything I eat as not shitting it out really defeats the purpose. It’ll mean all my hard work was for nothing, as is usually the case with me. It’s just got to work, though. If you don’t open your mouth and put food in it, how can you not lose weight? I just hope it doesn’t take a month for my system to adapt as I don’t want to have to do this diet for more than a month. I was hoping more like 2-3 weeks of this not eating every other day would be enough.

I woke up at 128 and I hope I’ll wake up tomorrow at 124 and not put back more than 2 pounds after I consume the 1400 or so calories I plan to have.

Still no call from Mary. I still can’t believe an inmate in another state whom I never even met tried to use me. It was one thing to get bombarded with requests while inside the jail in Phoenix, but to get begged for this and for that from across the country by a complete stranger? That is so fucked up! And I don’t care if Mary gets upset that I said no. I doubt she will as I’m sure she’ll understand where I’m coming from, but if not, so be it. I have nothing to lose if our friendship ends. If anything, she’s the one that will lose. She needs me a hell of a lot more than I could ever need her. At least one of us can say no! That’s something I don’t mind doing for her. The next time someone begs her to beg me for whatever, she can have me write back saying no, though I’d prefer it if she wouldn’t tell people what we’ve got. If they don’t know we have a scanner, then they can’t beg me to scan their pictures, though they’d just think of something else. Hell, they’d beg me for a plain piece of paper! That’s fine, though. Let them. I’ll just take that blank piece of paper and enclose it in a letter to Mary with a big old ‘fuck you’ all over it.

Still no signs of life at the rental. Tom said all he’s heard is barking. It could be that they’ve been spending a lot of their time someplace cooler, though someplace that’s not too far so someone can return to feed the horse and dogs unless they’re having someone else do it. Their porch light still comes on at night, but that could be on a timer.

Now we’re thoroughly confused as to what the scoop is with the Indian doll. They never actually took the money after all. Tom said they made like they were going to but never did. Maybe there was a problem that suddenly arose. Like maybe we weren’t high enough up on the waiting list or something, but I’m getting sick of waiting. I wish they’d quit PGing me and just send the fucking thing!

There wasn’t quite enough money this weekend to order the ornaments, so I’ll be doing that next weekend. That means I should receive them by the 10th.

Tom started recording videos into the computer just like he did with his old records. I want to digitize things like the circus and the home videos we made.