I got my coffee in the mail, but still no grape oil. I’m really getting worried here, too. Especially since Bob’s been ignoring my email asking about it. Are they too, going to end up shitting on me and losing my business? If this is the way they’re going to treat their customers, they’re going to end up out of business in no time! Of course there’s always the possibility that someone died. People always die when I order something from someone they knew.

Once again, Netflip has me pretty pissed off. They sent another check saying that the first one had to be canceled because it had the wrong date. So now poor Tom has to go all the way to Casa Grande to make sure there’s enough money in the bank to cover things. If people we don’t even know could stop putting us out like they do, it’d really make our lives a lot easier. I’m really sick to death of having to either correct or be put out by other people’s mistakes and stupidity! It’s become the story of our lives. It’s scary how people we don’t even know or barely know, can have such a hold on us and such a huge influence on our lives. How is it that a stranger’s death in Chicago can affect when I get a package in the mail while another stranger can don a black robe and send me to hell for 2.5 years? As a child, those closest to me were my worst enemies, but now it’s the other way around – if I don’t know you, I gotta watch out for you! People I don’t even know in the Air Force wake me up more than my own husband ever has, and now this perfect stranger in God knows what state is going to cause Tom to make a drive he was hoping to put off till the end of the month because they couldn’t get their damn dates straight. Uuuggghhh!

Tom may very well be out $50 thanks to some stranger wherever the store is that he tried to get coin holders from that now claim they have no record of his order, and this is exactly why I’ll never buy things through the mail again. I really hope we can find a competent doll store near enough to wherever we move to.

If there’s any good news, it’s that we ended up making about $80 last night from eBay sales, including the lot of puzzles. Most of our things end up going to the east, but my puzzles are going down to Benson, close to the Mexico border. Only two things didn’t sell, and someone asked to buy one of them after it ended, claiming they spotted it just as it was ending.

I’m reading a book about 3 white youths who only did a few years in a reformatory after killing 3 Indians. That’s pretty fucked up. But so is executing a white person for merely passing a dirty look to blacks or Mexicans.

In and out and in and out goes the renters. Anyway, I got a nice letter from Mary. Amazingly there were no favors asked in this one. She guessed the scent I told her to guess I was burning that began with a C to be Christmas, but I told her it was cedar.

She said Maria, who lives alone, offered her a place in her 3-bedroom home once she gets out. She said she didn’t know if returning to Arizona would be the best thing for her anyway. I told her I could understand that and that I didn’t think she should anyway. I know she’d miss Murphy, but I think she’d be better off away from people like Derek, her mother, aunt and uncle. Like she said, she can always visit.

Once she gets out, it’ll be so much more fun and so much easier to keep in touch by email versus regular mail!

Sometimes I am slow, really slow. It’s like, dah! I didn’t have to sit and type her letters to her friend Shirley, I could’ve just scanned them in and sent them as a JPG file. So I told her to send me her email address and I’ll scan any letters she has as well as her book as long as she’s sure she doesn’t want to wait till it’s done.

I agree that she’s way smart for her age what with all she’s gone through. Maybe a little too trusting still, but definitely way smarter than the incompetent jerks we deal with on a day-to-day basis! I never felt the age difference, to tell you the truth, when we were cellies. Perhaps this is because she’s ahead of her years and I’m so young at heart, not that she isn’t as well. Now with Miss Indifferent, on the other hand, I felt almost like the child she said she felt like she was with. To her, I was just a kid. Something like a rebellious teenager.

She said I’m her best friend and that she’d stalk me if I ignored her. Then she said she was only kidding, though was kinda serious because that would hurt her. I assured her I don’t plan on giving her the silent treatment. It’s amazing just how far we’ve come, even if she drives me nuts with the favors at times. I hope we’ll always be best buddies!

Paula, on the other hand, won’t hear from me as long as I don’t hear from her. She’s done nothing but pester me and take advantage of me. Plus, she only writes when she wants something. She could’ve at least sent a quick note saying “I got the incense, thanks,” but I didn’t even get a simple little thing like that and I had asked her to let me know if she got it, too. You can’t ask people for shit in this world!

When she said she agreed I was lucky to have escaped the pain of childbirth, I told her I don’t know what I feel more – grateful that I never had the kid I once wanted, or pissed that I spent so many years all depressed and miserable about not being able to conceive back when I wanted to. Not being able to do something as natural and as normal as that can really make a person feel singled out, picked on and punished!

That’s good that her aunt is sending her money again, though I still think she should ditch her along with the rest of her pathetic family once she’s out. I’ve learned that if you dump an asshole, they can never hurt you again. The only ones I tried to disentangle myself from that wouldn’t let me go and who continued to screw me with the distance were the freeloaders. I still wonder if a pig’s going to come knocking on this door at any moment on account of some new bullshit they’ve stirred up, or if they’re going to come firing at the house for getting off probation early. They’re that sick. I’ll feel a lot better once we’ve moved on. I know they could find us there too like they found us here. It’s just that I think they’d be a lot less likely to stalk us in another state and after they already won and got what they wanted, even if 2½ could never be enough for them. Nothing could ever be enough for them.

Tom says the same thing Mary says – that I don’t look fat. He wouldn’t necessarily describe me as skinny (like Kate who’s too skinny), but he doesn’t think I’m fat. And she’s right, we are our worst critics. You never know, though. I just may end up as big as Roseanne Barr someday.

She asked if I thought she was ugly and said that she wishes she was pretty like everyone else. If anyone ever thought she was ugly, then they’d seriously need to see a shrink, an optometrist or maybe both. She isn’t ugly, though she’s not my type attraction-wise. And ironing her hair, which she says she wants to do to her hair which is all frizz, would be the biggest mistake. I used to straighten my hair nearly every day for years and I fried it. I had frizz to my ass. Heat is the worst thing one can do to it. The only reason her hair is frizzy right now is because of the junk detergent she no doubt uses for shampoo and all that’s going on in her life. Once she gets out of there and onto a better life and is able to use better shampoos and conditioners, her hair will improve, but she needs to avoid the heat and chemicals. Also, don’t brush it unless she absolutely has to in order to get knots out. The old hundred-strokes-a-day being good for the hair saying is utter BS. Brushing hair puts stress on it, damaging it in time. Once I learned this, I went from having a mane of frizz to having a mane of silk. Also, “everybody else” isn’t pretty, and trust me, I’m a picky one when it comes to looks, I told her. Meaning, I’d never not be someone’s friend because they were fat, plain-looking, pimply-faced, etc., but I’m picky as far as what I personally perceive as being pretty. There are a lot of ugly and plain-looking people out there as far as I’m concerned. I’m just not easily impressed.

The officers peeled off a sticker of the American flag with a sparkly background that I had stuck on one of her envelopes. I should’ve known better than to send stickers, and she has 4 more on their way with Humane Society animal stickers on their backs (the ones carting my story). I hope they don’t return them, but knowing them, they’d want to know if there were drugs hidden under them, so they could have an excuse to get someone, though I’m sure they’ll just peel the stickers off and give them to her. I wonder if they peel off the address labels, too.

As for God loving me like she insists he does, sometimes it’s easy to feel that he does and other times it’s easy to feel that he doesn’t. If I take individual events in my life such as my time at Valleyhead, it’s easy to believe he hates my guts. If I take Tom and her, people who love and accept me as I am, it’s easy to believe he loves me. When I look at my life as a whole from the beginning to now, it’s easy to believe that he started off hating me, but got to like me more with time. I doubt we’ll ever know why things are the way they are. If we ever do find the answers, it may not be in this life. All I know is that after having a lousy childhood and having most of my 20s suck as well, I never take good times or good people for granted!

I assured Mary again that I wouldn’t abuse my powers, though if there’s one spell I have to get working on it’s the spider spell, because I saw one in my office last night.

Los conejos were out begging so I gave them some lettuce. When I said to Tom how I’d miss them, he reminded me that all woods have them. Not nearly as much back east as here, I said, and he laughed and said that my feeding them no doubt makes them a bit more visible which is true. There are so many of them for the same reason there are so many prairie dogs. They’re going to miss me for sure! The buyers are going to be in for one rude surprise too, when they go outside to face a couple of hungry rattlers that come around for all the yummy p-dogs.