The dimes have gone from an $8 bid to a $20 bid. Good. That way we make a little profit. See, Tom would be willing to hand them over for nothing so they wouldn’t sit in the closet and take up space like they have, but it’s nice to get a little something for them. We give and do enough for free or at a price of some kind.

He got another Slingo ticket I told him would lose that did lose.

How nice of Incense Galore. See, wholesale orders get charged a $5 service fee for not meeting the $50 minimum as well as shipping. They charged me the shipping fee, but not the $5 service fee, so that was nice. Hopefully, I’ll get the supplies next week, along with the coffee, seeing that they took the money for that, too.

Tom stopped in the little consignment shop here in town, but they were pretty much selling southwestern things. He said they had my big leaf plant which was over his head and that it was in a pot even smaller than mine, so I guess they don’t need much root space after all. What I wonder, though, is will bigger pots allow the plant to get bigger.

I’m so glad we’re not going to be the renter’s neighbors for too much longer, even if they’re sweethearts compared to what we were neighbored up with in Phoenix. They have at least 4 dogs running around loose and they’re making a mess of our place again. I hope they won’t hinder us from selling the house and that my vibes are right. Well, I don’t know about my vibes, but my guess is that they won’t be a problem. Especially when you consider the fact that there’s a 90% chance the buyers are going to be slobs themselves and have their own dogs roaming around the neighborhood.

I wonder if the renter’s dogs have ever killed next door’s chickens like those strays did that they thought were ours when we first moved in.

Tom dumped some stuff off at the recycling center and spoke with Gina. When she asked if I ever found a home-based job, he mentioned the incense and said she said she was really into the stuff. Also, the swap meet would probably be a good place to sell some like we were talking about. I don’t think I’d want to do swap meets regularly, though, and deal with all the people, the schedules and the heat we have most of the year here.

I’ve already begun designing the label. We decided to call it Desert Scents. I also decided that using clipart or illustrated designs of some kind would be better than actual graphics for the bag. Something catchy, but that wouldn’t use much ink. First I tried a rose, then decided a rose wouldn’t be all that appropriate for the desert, so then I tried their cactus. Because it was a rather boring-looking cactus, I then settled on red hot chili peppers. Once we get the website established we’ll add its address to the label.

Tom came up with a really cool idea to maybe grind some of the plants up out here and see if we can make incense from the more fragrant ones like the mesquites.

We discussed other possibilities as to how to sell the incense, like maybe at a dollar store, if they’d be willing to sell it for us, even though they’d want a percentage.

Tom’s really excited about it and he really seems to believe it’ll work out. I hope he’s right, cuz I still can’t imagine why God would suddenly allow me to do something I want to do for a change. I mean, I’m not too surprised he wouldn’t let me be a singer, but when you can’t do something as natural and ordinary as have a kid, it really shoots your hope and makes you think you wouldn’t be allowed to do anything no matter how ordinary or extraordinary it may be. Tom says it’s just a matter of us choosing the right thing. Perhaps he has a point. There’s no doubt that being a singer or a mother would’ve been the wrong thing for me. I truly believe I wouldn’t have been happy with either one. The singing would’ve entailed too much traveling and people that would’ve driven me crazy. As for the kid, as soon as the initial joy of holding that child for the first time wore off, I’d have been left with nothing but expenses up the ass, a never-ending symphony of noise, smelly diapers up to my neck, 40 more pounds that I couldn’t lose, and no time or freedom for myself. Like I always said – kids are sweet, but they’re just not for me. I don’t have the desire or patience it takes to deal with them, though this doesn’t mean I’d have abused them like my parents abused me. I don’t believe we always turn out to be like our parents. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. My sister was a carbon copy of my mother, unfortunately, but Larry was not.

Someone like Mary, on the other hand, is 100% mother material as long as she doesn’t expose them to the wrong cocks.

I think my psychic abilities may go back further than I ever realized because I always knew a kid wasn’t meant to be. Even when I was just a kid myself, I knew it wasn’t in my cards. I guess God knew I would be such a freedom freak and a freedom freak I am! Being locked up and stuck in various places and circumstances you don’t want to be in has a way of doing that to you. I have been controlled to the extreme from the day I was born. All kids get told what to do, but you see, there’s a difference between telling your kid, “You gotta wear clothes to school,” versus, “You gotta wear the green shirt and the brown pants to school.”

Not all things are understandable, though. It’s easy for me to see why I wasn’t meant to be a singer or a mother, but why was I meant to be with a man, for example, and not a woman unless I was willing to settle for second best or less? Not that I regret Tom, but why not a Kate Jackson or a Gloria Estefan or a Linda Ronstadt? Why not a Norah M or a Mary C or someone like Palma and Teddy Bear? Is lust, other than in my imagination, a sin for me?

Nonetheless, I do have children – my rats! Anything that’s dependent on an adult, to me, is like kids.

When I start with the why-would-God-let-me-succeed-now bit, I try to remind myself that some things have changed. I couldn’t put sick spells on people before, vibe/influence tickets, etc. Just maybe God will put his animosity aside and be like, yeah, yeah, do what you want. I don’t care.

I should be just a couple of weeks away from Haiku, assuming there aren’t many more hold-ups. Now she, along with the other dolls, makes great children. That’s because they never cost anymore after you’ve bought them and they stay where you put them.

Once again we may be put out by blacks. Their little holiday may delay the check a day or two.

I’m going to try like hell to stay on days, even if it means sleeping only 8 hours a night because they’re flying like crazy. They’re at it almost every day now! The only way they’d take a break would be if one of their planes went down, and believe me, if I could will one of them to drop from the sky, I would! Maybe I should try. I figure that the only way a psychic of my kind is going to get telekinetic would be to work on it, and what better place to start than with the United States Air Force? So fall from the sky they will as soon as I can hopefully get them to. The pilots jump from the plane with parachutes before the plane crashes. Or at least they try to. As it is, though, I don’t give a damn if someone gets killed. Tom will know about it if I succeed because he keeps tabs on the news. I highly doubt I could do it. I can’t even move an object like a barrette that’s sitting on the table.

I was right in suspecting that putting chicken wire around the palm to protect it from the rabbits would help it. It’s starting to grow back. Of course it’s growing back now that we’re moving! Either way, you really gotta either protect or get older plants in a place like this.

Later…

Tom and I were discussing more pricing and package ideas we may sell. Maybe we’ll get a roadside stand of our own, though I’d prefer to do business from home.

Anyway, when I checked the incense site to see if anything new was amiss, I found that they’re now having monthly giveaways. This month they’ll be giving someone a smoking bottle, then someone else an 11” coffin burner, and another person a 19” ash catcher. I’d really like that 19” ash catcher, so as a means of hopefully encouraging them to choose me for that, unless they have a random drawing, I told them I was considering trying their 19” sticks (this isn’t a lie, either) and asked how long they burn for, though I know it’s about 3 hours. I’m sure I’ll get some eventually either way, though an ash catcher would be more encouraging.

Tom liked my idea of creating a burner for cars, like maybe something you hang from the mirror, but that can’t fall out. It’d be really hard, though, to start a fire with an incense stick as opposed to a cigarette. Incense sticks usually go out when the head of it touches something. That’s why I wouldn’t bother with getting smoking bottles.

Tom read a cute little joke online that goes like this: Once upon a time, a little old lady went to see her doctor complaining about gas. She said, “Doctor, I can’t seem to stop passing gas. No matter what I do, I’m constantly passing gas. Why I must’ve done it 20 times since I’ve been in this room talking to you. It’s just that oddly enough, it doesn’t smell or make any noise when it happens.”

“Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “I’ve got just the right remedy for you.”

He wrote her a prescription and sent her home.

Not long afterward, she was back at the doctor’s office. “Doctor!” she exclaimed. “I still can’t seem to stop passing gas like crazy. The only difference is that while it still can’t be heard, it now smells horrible! Just horrible.”

“Good,” the doctor said. “Now that we’ve cleared up your sinuses, let’s work on your hearing.”