Back up to 130 pounds, and no, I don’t think the water pills affected my metabolism after all. I think I’m just like all middle-aged people. Everything changes after 30. Even your skin! It dries the hell out and loses its firmness. Anyway, I want nothing more than to say fuck it, eat when I’m hungry and not worry about my weight, but if I do, then all my doll money will have to go to new clothes as I get bigger, so I have no choice but to lose a few pounds. I’m just so sick of being forced to diet and lose the same few pounds that keep coming back! Life’s a series of trade-offs, though. At least it has been for me. So I know that that means that if I were suddenly skinny and were to stay that way for a while, I’d be compensated with a whole new problem. I’d rather have weight problems than, say, freeloader problems.

Speaking of them, this new year that’s just a couple of months away will be the first year without the black bitch in it since 1996. Sad, huh? Yeah, I was being sarcastic. I just hope it stays this way and that they don’t start in with us and pop back into our lives ever again! It won’t work if they do. Meaning that whatever they have planned won’t work because I won’t be dumb enough to fall for any traps of theirs ever again. Never with them, never with me!

Anyway, I’m just a few days away from my would-be day of freedom had someone not finally done right by me and let me move on and get on with my life once and for all. And the last of these damn numbers scribbled all over the calendars! I had been doing a countdown.

I still wonder if the freeloaders ever knew I was cut off early. A part of me thinks not because they didn’t stir up a fuss about it. More of me, though, thinks they do know because of how closely they were kept informed of everything else. I’ll bet they were notified every time I sneezed between October of ‘00 and 6 months ago!

See, when I think back to God allowing the freeloaders to do what they did to me, I can’t help but believe I’m cursed. Then when I think of Tom and how far I’ve come in life, I can’t help but believe I’m blessed. I think it’s more than obvious that I’m both. I’m so blessed because I’m so cursed, and I’m so cursed because I’m so blessed. I would be, for example, just as scared as I would be happy to win a million dollars, for I know that if I did, he’d be right there to compensate me greatly. Probably get in an accident and end up paralyzed! Or get an eye disease and go blind so I couldn’t enjoy all the dolls I’d buy.

It’s hard to believe it, but today’s my 16th journal-writing anniversary. God, 16 years ago it was like I was a whole different person in a whole different place with a whole different life!

Though not without much empathy and understanding, I had to laugh when Mary wrote in her book about what it would say if when she was born God put a sign on her listing all the hardships she’d have to endure. Let’s see… if God slapped a sign on me the day I was born it’d say:

You’re going to be basically miserable till you get well into your 20s. First I’m going to assign you to the shittiest of parents you can have, or close enough to it, in a state with shitty weather. Then I’m going to give you equally shitty siblings and make sure you end up stuck in lots of places you don’t want to be in. You’ll struggle like hell financially as an adult and be attracted to people you can’t have. In fact, I’ll not only keep the really good-looking ones away from you, but I’ll curse you sexually and make sure there’s always some sort of problem in bed with one of you or that there’s no desire for intimacy at all. While I’m doing all this, I’ll make sure that anyone I send to fuck you over gets away with it and then some! You’ll not be allowed to make money for yourself, but don’t worry, you’ll be a damn good financial asset to others.

Later…

There. I jogged for 15 minutes, then did my tummy crunches. It makes me feel good to know I did it, even if I’ll always be heavy. Fat, chubby, thin, we should still keep in shape. Because of my height, or rather lack of it, it’s all the more important I keep my muscles and stamina built for the next ever-so-sorry person to threaten me or actually make a move to attack me. Where I lack in size, I make up for in strength and temper.

I’d starve myself if I thought it’d do any good, but as I learned, it won’t. Oh, I’ll lose a few pounds initially, but that’d be about it. I remember when the dentist and her assistant were talking about food and dieting and how the dentist commented that her assistant never ate. This assistant was pretty fat too, and I remember thinking, bullshit. If you didn’t eat you wouldn’t be so big, but as I learned, you really can starve and still hold your weight if you’re older.

Now here’s where I fail to understand people’s faith in God. Southern California is being hit with tons of fires and they showed crowds of spectators on TV, one which held a sign saying: May God be with Southern California.

Well, obviously he’s not, or else why would the fires have started in the first place? Because he cares so damn much? Please! He’s picking on these particular people in this particular area. Why, I do not know, but he’s supposed to have his reasons for everything.

The rabbits were picking on our poor lone little palm tree, too. When I went outside and looked down into the center of the tree, I could see lots of green and healthy-looking fronds, but the rabbits kept chewing them off, so Tom put chicken wire around them. Now maybe the damn thing can grow once and for all. It still looks pretty shabby and has been hanging onto life by a thin thread.

It was gorgeous today. It was actually cool in here at 5 AM. When I was out waiting for Tom to arrive home from work, Shiny was out. The poor guy looks so thin. I gave him a hotdog and he ate the whole thing. He’s come to be so trusting and affectionate. He even was almost brave enough to come inside the house, though with the weeds and dust all over him, I’m rather glad he didn’t. The 3 things I hate most about this land are the weeds, dust and ants!

Got some drafts from Mary today and a box full of that Smile’s coffee. They keep bullshitting us. The digital camera Tom wants was supposed to come with the second order, but then we found that we were supposed to send in a card for it. Tom decided he was just going to say he sent in the card and never got the camera and see what happens. Meanwhile, I’m stocked up on coffee for quite a while, though this stuff’s not that great.

Just finished Mary’s latest drafts and she is so, so right about so much of what she says and describes and she does it so very well, too! As a victim of abuse myself (though not by past lovers), I know what she means when she talks about believing the shit you hear. You can only tell a kid so many times how they should’ve never been born, won’t amount to shit, etc.

She’s also so right about fantasy versus reality and the control we have/don’t have over it. We have little control over real-life events. If God chose to strike my Tom dead be it by a drunk driver, a heart attack or whatever weapon of choice, there’d be nothing I could do about it but kill myself and hope to join him in spirit immediately, but in fantasy, you’re in 100% total control. I think that’s why so many of us fantasize so much and write our little poems and stories; because reality doesn’t always go the way we’d like it to. The bulk of my life has been wonderful since moving to Maricopa, minus the times the freeloaders were fucking with it, yet even so, I still love to fantasize. Narrow-minded people like Dureen and Art O. would say it’s unhealthy, but I think just the opposite. Besides, as long as one can distinguish fact from fiction, then where’s the harm, for example, in my fantasizing about being with Kate?

She’s also got a point when she talks about how people are quick to jump to save a lost or injured child, but to hell with getting involved in an adult’s troubles. Why, I wonder. Adults are people too, and when people do get involved, it’s usually in the wrong kind of way. Take that time I got into a fight with Ida, for instance. It was our battle, yet the whole damn pod just had to get involved and stick their noses in it. So, I know just where she’s coming from.

I just feel so bad for her having to live with people who are the exact equivalent of spoiled, selfish little children. They get up and they scream all day. And of course there is the lack of consideration and the begging. Had I been blind and stupid back in Estrella, I’d truly believe that I was the only one there who wasn’t just 15 years old.

I’ve got a question for her in my next letter. I’m glad we’re as different as we are alike. We’re alike enough to understand each other but different enough to learn from one another. Well, it deals with her being into astrology. I don’t know if I believe in it, though after my own personal experiences with the unexplained, I don’t laugh at it. In fact, and I mean no offense to her by saying this, I’d be quicker to laugh at someone for believing God is good than I would at someone for wearing a dime around their ankle thinking it’ll bring them good luck. Anyway, I have lived nearly 38 years and have noticed that the first few years of each decade seem to be worse for me than other parts of the decade. There’s no comparison between 1980-1982 as opposed to the rest of the decade and it was the same at the start of the 70s and 90s. It also seems the 2000s have started off pretty shitty with the exception of moving to Maricopa and into this house, but once I hit ’03, things began to greatly improve. Well, I was wondering if any of this means anything to her. As a Sagittarius, I wonder if she’s ever read anything about it. Having lived for nearly 4 decades, it seems a rather odd coincidence. Odd enough that I do not look forward to the years 2010-2012!