I woke up wondering, what kind of noise will God bless me with today? Then when I went into the kitchen to get my coffee, I saw the dog sitting on its patio and it was only 11:30. However, it got up, took a dump, then went inside without a bark. Meanwhile, I’m sure that come late afternoon or early evening, I’ll have to hear from it. The question is will she ignore it, or will she do something about it? I guess it depends on whether or not she’s on the phone at the time, but if she doesn’t mind all that barking, then certainly she can’t mind a little bass from my stereo, cuz like it or not, that’s just what she’s going to get if I have to hear it later on.

Didn’t hear much from next door yesterday, but at 11 PM when I was in the bathroom, I could hear several voices, although not too loud. My first thought was, what are they doing out this late? But then I realized I was hearing them through their open window.

Unfortunately, tomorrow may be his last day of overtime. I didn’t expect it to last long anyway, but hopefully, hopefully, we’ll still be able to give notice come August. I am not looking forward to spending the rest of the summer here as it is, thanks to that damn dog. I know God will pick out the noisiest neighbors just for me once we get to a house, but at least they shouldn’t be able to get this close to us, let alone be attached. I tell you, if I ever want to feel that something up there loves me and listens to my prayers, all I have to do is just get down on my knees and pray for noisy neighbors and it’s an automatically done deal! It sure would be nice, though, if God could agree that enough is enough already, and just let us live in peace. We have enough other issues to stress over. We don’t need neighbor stress on top of it. We have our other lifelong curse to worry about – money. And of course there are my teeth, too. Just managing to survive and keep from getting fucked over by society and life itself is enough of a challenge. We don’t need the neighbor’s cars, dogs, kids, music, doors and other shit on top of it. But I know that unless we get lucky in some retirement community somewhere a million years from now, anyplace we go is going to have some sounds to listen to that are at least a little extreme. This means that if our neighbors throw a party, we’re invited, like it or not.

I wrote 56 pages on the land, nearly 40 in the motels, nearly 100 with Bev, and now 30 since Patty entered the picture.

Later…

As Tom was getting in, I saw Patty leave with Freckles, but sure enough, they weren’t gone long. The good news is that they didn’t set up house in back for a few hours. I saw the dog out twice but never heard it. Next door’s been quiet, too. Just the usual catcalls and that’s it. No serious door-slamming or anything. If it could be like this every day till we move, I couldn’t complain.

The most surprising thing to happen today was the letter I got from Mary. I really thought she’d decided to give me a taste of my own medicine, despite how often she’d insist that it was okay to get mad as long as you could forgive. She said she’d been in a funk and too anxious to write. I let her know that my letters only stopped because I wasn’t hearing from her. I still expect to do most of the writing and that’s fine. Especially since it’s more convenient for me to do so than it is for her. I asked her to try to write at least twice a month.

I’ve learned that I can take or leave people (except for Tom of course), though I must admit that the idea of her no longer reading my stories did make me a bit sad when I thought I’d never hear from her again. I asked if she wanted me to send her a copy of my last book, or wait and see if I can email it to her once she’s out. I told her she could open a free email account at her local library, but it’s going to cost her a dime a page to print. I guess she’s going to go to North Carolina and stay with her brother when she gets out, but she didn’t say when that will be. All she said was that Monster was sentenced in Arizona to 15 years and she doesn’t know what’s going on. But I thought the Arizona case had been done and over with a long time ago. I know this may sound selfish as hell, but a part of me wants her to do a decade in prison because I’m afraid she may be more of a pest on the outs. Oh well. I’ll just put my foot down if I have to. I’ve done it before and by now I think she’s catching on to the fact that I’m not a favor person.

She remembered Tom’s birthday which was nice, and I let her know our 11th anniversary just passed.

She said she hasn’t had Hope’s address for a while because all her letters were returned to her because she wasn’t family. I told her not to worry about it.

She asked if I’d heard from Marilyn, agreeing that she was cool and her laughter was nice, and so I let her know that unfortunately I never did.

I gave her my email address but said we ought to wait as far as giving her my cell phone number which she asked for. I explained to her that my phone was not activated. His is, but we need to save on our minutes. I told her that once she’s officially out of there she can contact me by postal mail or email and I’ll give her whatever number we have then. We might switch plans. There are other plans now that are cheaper. She doesn’t sound as if she’s getting out anytime soon, or else she’d have given me at least an approximate time frame, wouldn’t she?

I filled her in on all that’s been going on here between my tooth, the sweepstakes, the submitting of my manuscript, the overtime he’s getting, dying my hair, the neighbors, walking to the store, him riding his bike and saving on gas, us having more money and planning to rent a house for a year in September, then leaving the state after that, and that here it is barely more than a week from July and we’ve finally, finally, got a real summer! Hopefully, it’ll stick around for more than a few days, too.

What was funny was that she asked me what China’s population is since she’s already freed 251 million souls from purgatory. I don’t know how she’s come up with that figure, but she sure has been busy! Tom and I don’t believe in purgatory, but it’s okay that she does. It gives her something to do. I let her know that China currently has just over a billion people. It’s one populated country! Glad I don’t live there. There is no such thing as “rural living” there.

I told her that when we walked by one of the motels we stayed at the other day, I looked at it and said to Tom, “It’s hard to believe that the girl in there who cried for hours on end as she lay on those rock-hard beds, feeling hopeless, helpless, wanting so badly to die, feeling so much hatred and anger towards God, was me.”