It’s cloudy and damp out (we won’t need the AC today) and Mary’s driving me nuts again with the favors. Three of them this time. She wants me to email her book to a friend, then type her a few letters, and send her a picture of a keyboard so she can “practice” typing. I told her no to the favors-for-friends routine, like I have a million times before, with the exception of an occasional letter to Maria. Also, she’s better off waiting till she can practice typing on a real keyboard. Lastly, why can’t she just wait until her story’s completed before giving out copies?

As for my own book. It’s going through both its silent and electronic proofreading, and then it’ll be done. I’ll be sending Mary a copy of course, and hopefully she won’t take a year to let me know she got it.

I totally empathized with her when she said she was tired of people hurting her. I told her, I hate to break it to you, but the less you have to do with people, the better off you’ll be. It may sound depressing to someone who’s a people person, but the more you isolate yourself and don’t depend on others, the safer you’ll be.

We’re not even going to set our future house on a slab of concrete (if we don’t go with a cellar). That’s something we couldn’t do ourselves, and once again, that’s how you get fucked over; by having others do things for you. If you want the job done right, you have to do it yourself.

I decided to compromise with her and tell her that if she sends me her friend’s email address, I’ll email the book, but she has to be responsible for carting off her own letters to her own friends.

Still don’t know what’s going on, though I wish to hell I did! I’m sick of this waiting game. I want to know something and get a move on it instead of sitting around waiting for things to happen.

Tom got a kid’s jewelry-making kit for practice. He wants to learn to make jewelry to eventually sell.

He also got and installed a new alternator, though we won’t be going to the swap meet tomorrow. Too rainy.