I only lost a pound, but that’s because I ended up having about 1000 calories yesterday. At least today I got unstuck.

Tom said he saw a headline where they ruled it illegal to ban gays from marrying in Canada. It’s about fucking time someone did! Now when’s it going to be illegal here? And when will we have a woman president?

We’re not getting the new camera since they had to go and fuck up on us, as most people love to do. Now the idiots are saying they can’t ship to PO boxes. Then why’d they ship the fucked up pedals there? As I pointed out to Tom, the home shopping channel sucks. They had to know those pedals were junk to have lowered the price as low as they did. They took weeks to send dolls to Phoenix that they said would take 10 days or less, they sent us shit pedals, so why would we want what’d no doubt be a shit camera anyway?

I noticed the trailer was gone at some point during the late afternoon. What it was there for and if it’s going to return, still beats me. Tom went out and checked and didn’t see it on any other part of their land, nor any stakes or nearly cleared areas suggesting a house is on its way. It’d be just my shit luck for them to know someone just dying to move out here and escape the city and they tell them, “Okay, come out to our land. We’ll clear you a spot.” That’s gotten to be a popular trend around here these days too; land splitting. I don’t know why, though, since you’ll lose money in the future. If the value of this place really does skyrocket in a decade or so, then splitting it now means losing a lot of money later on. Friends or not, valuable or not, I still don’t want a house 200’ from me. Not without some seriously dense vegetation between us or if we were about to move. There’s a 99% chance they’d have a dog that they threw outdoors 24/7 like yesterday’s trash and I’d be the one that would have to listen to it.

Speaking of dogs, though we won’t have to listen to it so much since we’ll give it attention and lots of love, we’re planning on getting ours in October. We want a puppy, so we don’t want to get it when it’s really hot. Of course, most of our plans don’t work out, so we’ll see. We’ll probably fence off the utility area so we don’t drive the wildlife out, and of course, Tom will install a doggie door.

The wildlife was rocking at dusk. There were 7 bunnies partying, a few prairie dogs, and my beloved roadrunner. There’s just something so special about that roadrunner as I don’t care for birds in general. Of course, a few quails and other birds came to join the party at some point too, helping themselves to water and some of the bread and seeds I threw out.

As far as the inside animals go, another betta died. Now there’s just one left and that’s the royal blue one. There are about 8 guppies left, and of course, the two angelfish. They love to beg for food whenever I go near them.

Sadly, all the mail-order plants are now dead. Tom’s going to stop in a nursery and personally ask them what’s best suitable to plant for our needs as far as price, privacy and speed of growth go. Also, it has to be something the wildlife won’t destroy and that can stand up to the severe winds out here. The monsoons may revive some things, but it’s doubtful. At least the two bougies and all but two of the olies are still alive, and the two olies may not be totally dead. They may make a comeback, too. They’re just taking forever to grow! So are the palms. One palm got a new shoot, but never grew in height as is the case with one of the houseplants. The other palm appears to have sprung up an inch or two.

I split the spider-like plants up the other day. Since these plants don’t seem like they’re going to get that big, I took the smaller one and put it in a plastic bowl that I cut drainage holes in and placed on a plate. The big one might be full-grown, which is only a couple of feet. The biggest plant we got has grown the most. It’s nearly 6’ tall now. It’s my favorite. I like big things as long as I’m not one of them.

Here I was all concerned that Mary would not only end up getting her heart broken by José, and that it wouldn’t look good for her case with her associating with him, but then I realized something. Well, if I’m right about her liking violence, whether she knows it or not, she’s not going to be interested in him once she’s released. That’s because it’d be awfully hard for him to beat on her from prison.

I awoke around 3:00 to find mail from Mary waiting for me, but I had to have my coffee before I was ready to read her latest requests. The only favor this time was for more lyrics. No prob. However, this is the second time she said she enclosed a book of stamps that was not present. Either she forgot to slip them in or someone at the jail swiped them.

Also, they’re continuing to stamp the backs of some of Jose’s letters which means they may not get to him. I wonder when she’s going to get on his mailing list. I asked her, but she’s not always good at answering all my questions. I guess the noise distracts her. She still won’t even tell me what his case is all about. I know she’s not going to at this point. She probably figures I won’t like what I hear. I did learn that the two met in the Fort Myers jail in 2000 which I thought was odd. How can they meet in a place that isn’t coed?

She still says she’s going to send me stamps, but I told her not to worry as long as she’s footing the postage on Jose’s mail. Sending money is, as always, strictly up to her, but as I told her, don’t plan to get it to me through someone some inmate knows or else I’ll never see it. As it is, she said two $50 money orders were sent to me that I never got and don’t think I ever will. I still think they’re taking advantage of her and ripping her off. If the first one was supposed to have been mailed on the 23rd like she said and today’s the 30th, then where is it?

I could only read a couple of her letters to Jose as one of the envelopes was sealed up really well and I didn’t want to risk damaging it by opening it.

She also sent me one of his letters to read to send back to her. He has nice handwriting for a guy, and he writes and spells well. Whether or not he’s really a true prince who’s innocent, I don’t know. Don’t know enough about him to even guess. I just don’t think it should be her responsibility to either support or send books to him any more than it should be with Clarence, but it’s her money. Speaking of Clarence, he sounds like a real shit if he can’t do a simple little thing like send a picture of Gretchy to her that he has. That’s another thing she’s obviously not going to get. At least she set Clarence straight and gave him a piece of her mind. Honesty is the best policy when it comes to those who are more serious than we are about a relationship of whatever kind.

I was confused about something I read in her letter to Jose and one from her aunt. In one of the letters to Jose, she said something about him returning a voucher with both boxes checked. What does that mean? And also, her aunt asked if she got her belongings from Phoenix. What belongings?

I was also confused and surprised when she referred to Hope and Virginia as her friends in a letter to José. I thought she and Hope, as well as she and Virginia, parted as enemies.

She hasn’t said anything more about her hernia and if it’s healing on its own or will require surgery.

She doesn’t have a clue as to when she’s getting out. She said she could either go down for 10 years or get out come sentencing, which I guess will be a couple of years or so from now. Although my vibes still say fall of ’05, it has faded a bit. This doesn’t mean I think she’ll go on to do a decade in prison either. I just don’t know. The not knowing must be so hard! I mean, sure it was hard as hell doing the time I did in jail, but at least I knew when I’d be getting out!

It just dawned on me that she may not have gotten the letter telling her to call me till right about now. I just received a response to letter 31 and the go-ahead-and-call thing was in letter 32. Her responses usually take a week or more after I send stuff to her since it takes about 4 days to get to her and then 4 days to get her response back, depending on how quickly she responds.

Again, feel free to use any blank backs of stuff I’ve written for stationery, I told her, for if I had a problem with anyone seeing what I wrote, then I sure as hell wouldn’t have sent it into jail of all places!

She said Blue Moon is dark blue and Tulip is a pinkish purple, though it’ll still be a while before I dye my hair which is now just about to the middle of my ass. It grows like a weed! Hair this thick and heavy usually does, and the longer it gets the faster it seems to grow.

My story’s now nearing its end. Tom agrees it’s getting better the further along it goes. I think it’s the best story I’ve written yet. I want to write another one when this one’s done, but I haven’t a clue as to what to write about!