Got one number today and yesterday I don’t know what I got because I accidentally lost the numbers I picked. I’ve been doing a copy/paste job lately before closing the window that displays them.

Amazingly I haven’t heard any flying for a few days, but they did wake me up a few days ago. I pretty much wake up once or twice every time I sleep, be it for a reason or not. I just don’t seem to always sleep so well in this place.

Like Mary said, it’s a shame to lose the house, but we’re ready to go so we won’t be so tight. I’m also sick of all the damn dogs and the foul odors. I just hope the new people are as nose deaf to them as Tom is! It seems to be worse at certain times and I know it’s somehow connected to the heat pump. Either way, I’m just glad it’s not going to be my problem for much longer unless the same thing happens where we’re going.

I’m just tired of other people deciding our fate for us. Because that cock had to go and fuck Tom over at the bank, we’re forced to move now. Again, we’re ready to go, but we should’ve been allowed to go when we say so and not when someone else’s vindictiveness says so. This is one of the many reasons I disagree with Mary when she says we control our own fate. As I told her, sure we do if we’re dumb enough to stand in the middle of a freeway and get struck by a car in which case we have no one to blame but ourselves, but sometimes, like it or not, other people or God really do make up our minds for us. They really do. If someone gets and dies of cancer, is that them deciding their own fate? If someone gets murdered by some madman, did they reap what they sowed? Did a poor innocent victim like Gretchen ask for what she got? Absolutely not, in my opinion! So this is why I was shocked when Mary wrote in her book that we give what we get and reap what we sow and decide our own fates. To a degree, we do decide our own fates, but not entirely. Also, if we get what we give, then why did Justin return her love with slaps, kicks, punches and rapings? Well, I’m sorry, but I didn’t “ask for” the kind of parents I had or for what the freeloaders did to me and I don’t think Mary asked for what Justin did to her! That would just be totally unfair to say. She should’ve broken away from him sooner than she did just like I should’ve cut off my family sooner than I did what with the way they were such a negative influence on me, but to say we asked for what we got seems a bit ludicrous.

She also says we’re responsible for the things that happen to us and that to me is utterly ridiculous. Again, were Gretchen and all the other innocent children in the world who were murdered responsible for what happened to them?

The biggest thing I disagree with is how she said that the more we disconnect from God, the more we invite chaos and pain. Then why did she go through more chaos and pain than anyone else I know all the while being very connected to God, and how come my life improves the more I turn away from him? Especially since I feel I’m turning away from an enemy. My life may not be perfect and I know I can’t “hide” from God, but I still feel a lot happier and much more at peace by not going out of my way to acknowledge him. I have no faith or trust in him and could never forgive him for allowing me to experience just one of the horrendous experiences I’ve had, let alone all of them. I could never again pray to him and would be very nervous if someone else did on my behalf.

I love Mary dearly and would never try to change her way of thinking or condemn her for her beliefs in any way shape or form, but you just can’t group everyone together and apply the same rules to everyone. It just doesn’t work that way.

I don’t think there is a right or a wrong way to think, feel and believe as long as we’re not hurting others. I don’t think it’s wrong, for example, to be a racist any more than I think it’s wrong not to be one. I say to each their own. Non-racists can call racists “misguided,” but it’s just as easy for racists to say, “Hey, until you’ve been screwed over like crazy by a certain group, don’t judge me.” So this is why I believe in individuality as far as beliefs go. If someone hates my kind, and believe me, the world is filled with tons of Jew-haters and gay-haters – fine. I don’t care as long as they don’t go to harm me in any way or set out to try to change me.

Anyway, I did some drafts for Mary last night which was cool cuz it broke up the monotony of the same old, same old, and I didn’t feel like working on my own book at the time.

Her latest favor was to translate a letter she wrote for Maria, José’s mom, as well as teach her more Spanish, and at first I was like, shit, another favor? But then I realized it’d be good practice for me so I translated the letter, and pretty fast, too. Not bad at all for a girl who grew up in an all-white Jewish town.

As for teaching her more Spanish, I told her that’d be rather difficult to do by mail and to just use the basic vocabulary and pronunciation guide I typed up for her for now.

I guess the appetite suppressants work better than I gave them credit for. After all, I’m not hungry all the time and I haven’t been overeating. I can even skip days and still be ok.

The water pump people say they screwed up and are still planning to send the damn thing via UPS, but of course we couldn’t get a discount. And profit from someone else’s mistake? That’ll be the day!

Although Little Buddy didn’t win anything, they sent mail saying he is going to be in their coffee table book which is due to be out in June. I also permitted them to give others permission to license his picture if they want to, though, I can’t imagine anyone would. If they did, I’d get royalties.

Tom did our taxes online and was pleased to learn that we’ll be getting back almost $800 from the government and will only owe the state $9. We’re thinking of setting it aside to put money down on land somewhere while we’re selling the house so that we won’t have to be holed up in a hotel as long. We both agree that we’re tired of living in a wide-open oven and would prefer to go to a place with more mountains and trees, so it looks like the moving vibes I knew I couldn’t trust in the first place, may be wrong. We may end up in northern AZ, but I can’t yet say for sure. The only drawback to a place like that would be that we couldn’t have a phone because the cell phones wouldn’t work there and we’d be too far from any phone lines. This is a little unnerving in case of a medical emergency, but as Tom pointed out, you could have an emergency two blocks from a hospital and still not get there in time to be helped, so it doesn’t really matter. I already made up my mind a long time ago; when it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go, and if he goes first, I’m just gonna hop on into the enclosed garage I hope we’ll have, jump in the car, fire it up, and fall into an endless sleep that not even the sonic boomers can wake me from. Hey, it’d be better than hanging or shooting myself.

Anyway, we’ll probably purchase the land on eBay and get the realtor out here next month. I definitely don’t want to stay here and watch him work 2 jobs at 60 or more hours a week to barely make ends meet and to have no life while he’s at it. So I’m both sad and excited about us moving on. If you ask me, there are both pros and cons to leaving/staying in AZ. I’m all for leaving, I’m all for staying. As long as Tom and I are together, I don’t care where we live as long as it isn’t in the Arctic!

I can’t lie and say it wouldn’t make me happy to be further away from Phoenix which is where I assume Mary will live when she gets out.

Tom left a message on his mom’s machine asking if she needs her taxes done cuz that’ll get us a few extra bucks right there, even if it’s not much.

Now for the best news and that’s my supplies arrived! They might’ve come in yesterday, but he got to the PO too early. I’m not even going to tell Paula about this cuz then I’ll have to deal with the gimme, gimme, gimme shit and that gets old. There’s a time to do for others without expecting in return, then there’s a time to ask ourselves if we’re being taken advantage of.

Anyway, it was so cool to finally have the stuff, and sure enough, blank sticks look just like tan-colored sticks. They turned brown the instant we doused them with fragrance/cutter. We experimented by trying different ratio mixtures, like 1 eyedropper full of fragrance and 1 eyedropper full of cutter, then we’d do 2 fragrances/1 cutter, and 1 fragrance/2 cutters. We did this with the vanilla musk. With the White Shoulders, however, we simply dipped a bundle. Then, we did a really neat experiment and coated half of 5 different sticks with brown sugar and let them sit for a few hours. Then we doused the other half in butter rum. That ought to be so cool! I can see why they don’t sell mixed sticks, though, as it was quite a bit of work.

I lit a blank and it burned the way scented sticks do, only it smelled of smoke. So somebody can expect a prank blank real soon!

We really are slow at times, though. Here we were, trying to drain them in the pan we dipped them in, yet they’d continue to soak up what would drain to the bottom. So then Tom started to put together a rather intricate way to hang them, till I suggested we run a string along the little hooks under the cabinets and clip the bundles to that and then let them drip into the pan. After we went through all that was when we realized that all we needed to do was just stand them on the stick end that you handle them by. At least we figured that one out early on!

After several hours of air drying, we decided to try and light one to see what happened. It definitely wasn’t ready as it was burning too fast and too smoky.

We also agree it probably won’t be good to use anything alcohol based because that’d make it burn too fast too, but we’d still like to try to make our own scents out of some kind of plants.

I’m going to end up with about 50 favorites, but until we move and are doing better financially, we’re not going to get them all at once. At an average of $4 for a ¼ lb. bottle, they’d all cost $200. We also don’t want to start selling too many different ones until and if the people demand more and it looks like we’ll be more successful with it than anticipated. For now we’re going to start with 3 basic variety packs that I’ve tentatively decided shall consist of 4 or 5 sticks of 5 fragrances each. Variety pack #1 will be vanilla musk, fruit, butter rum, brown sugar and chocolate. Variety pack #2 will be jasmine, carnation, cedar, magnolia and gardenia. Variety pack #3 will be angel, hot love, black magic, Puddy Cat, and fast cash. We decided that 10 sticks for $1.50 is too high, so we’ll probably set the variety packs, which will include burners, at $5 each. Then, if they like a particular scent, they can get 10-packs for a buck. Technically, Tom did the math and found we could profit as low as 50¢.

The stuff comes in plastic bottles and we figure each one can do approximately 1000 or more sticks. Not bad for a few bucks. Fragrances can also be bought in ½ lb. and 1 lb. bottles as well.

I never would’ve believed it if someone had told me I’d get really into this stuff. Those who say life isn’t what we plan are right for the most part, and life really is one big accident. Especially since I stumbled upon their site quite by accident!

My weight has dropped again, though I still don’t expect it to drop significantly.