I’d say there are definitely no kids of walking age next door and that there are 4 adults at the very least, possibly one infant. Yesterday and today would be perfect for sending your toddlers outside on their swings yet no one’s touched them. I guess Tom was right when he said he thought they were set up for when the baby gets older and for visiting kids. Let’s just hope the animals don’t visit too often, although most of the year they’re not going to want to be out swinging if they do. I doubt they’ll even drive through there when it snows, though I haven’t seen anyone do that yet today.

When we walked by yesterday on our way to the pizza place, we saw a van and a car with two women on the deck. Someone was in the van, too. Coming back the van was gone and the one that appears to have had a baby recently that we’ve seen a few times was sitting on the front porch swing talking on a cell phone. Again, I’m so glad the porch, deck and drive aren’t just a few feet away! I think the house across the street may actually be closer to theirs than this house.

It’s so cool today that I can’t believe it’s virtually August! I’m going to need to pull out my comforter tonight for sure and maybe even run the portable heaters early in the morning. I’m surprised how quiet it’s been for being so much cooler. I only heard the dog go off a couple of times, and a few rounds of car doors from Kim. It’s a little early for our street attention-getters, but we’ll hear them.

The fruit diet is leaving me hungry, but boy is it making me beyond regular!

Got a letter from Mary. It was a 6-page letter. In the first 2 pages, she talked of being moved again. This time it was to a huge dorm which she described in detail. The rest was all a bunch of religious mumbo-jumbo, and you know me, I don’t try to change them, I just try to ignore them. So as mean as it may sound to some folks, I’m not even going to answer. And I don’t care if she doesn’t read my future stories.

I am starting this entry during what’s been an amazingly quiet morning. It’s only to be in the mid-70s today, so I’m surprised the dog isn’t going off like crazy. Today will also be a good test for next door. There’s been 3 cars and 1 truck living over there. The truck comes and goes often enough at the side here, and they now leave the gate open all the time. I don’t like it, but at least no music or door slamming is accompanying it since they get in and out of the thing up by the house. There’s got to be at least 4 adults living there, but I’m still unsure as to how many kids are over there, excluding infants. I still say you wouldn’t set up swings only for kids who come to visit or for a baby to use when it’s old enough, but if there are kids over there, why don’t we hear from them more often? Tom insists they go somewhere every day, and we did see the truck leave pulling one of their boats at 6:30 this morning. I guess for now I’ll leave my computers in the living room until and if that yard really does become a virtual circus. Having to move would be a real hassle for us, and again, we were supposed to be forever free of having to have our house set up revolve around neighbors years ago.

It was only 71º in here when we got up at 6:00 so I’m hoping we won’t need the AC today. It’s 45º outside right now, so perhaps that’s why the dog’s quiet. It’s 50s-70s temps that really sets it off.

I sent a letter to Mary saying that I won big and we’re moving, so don’t send any more mail here until I contact her with a new address, but of course the truth is that I’m done with her, and I should’ve stayed that way the first time I was done with her. I should know better than to go back as I did, but anyway, I thought it’d be easier on her if I did it this way rather than just ignore her from here on out. It’s not that I hate her or want to upset her in any way, but this way she’ll just think I’m too busy to write. If all goes well, there should be more than a grain of truth to this anyway! Yes, the horseracing thing is still showing great promise. Tom says that if it could win 1 of every 3 races, that’d be plenty sufficient to quit working for others and to get most of what we want in life. It won 5 of 12 races yesterday, but he didn’t bet big money on them. He’s not comfortable risking big bucks till he fine-tunes the brains he’s training for certain tracks around the country. I still don’t think we’ll ever live on a boat, but I’ve got the perfect floor plan in mind for a 2-story house with a cellar! How great it would be if we could still build our own house after all or at least design it!

I also told Mary that my letters to her were being returned to me for no apparent reason. With the screwy mail system there, she’ll believe it. This way, as time goes by, she’ll think my letters were returned rather than that she was dumped.

Something about “June 4th” and “Rosa Linda” came to me yesterday. We looked up towns by that name in California, but could only find a town in central California called just Linda. June 4th would be a wonderful time to move because we could get out of here before the bugs got really active, but that seems a bit soon unless some assholes move in to run us out.

We bombed yesterday while we rode our bikes to Denny’s and then to do the grocery shopping. At Denny’s, I muttered “That figures,” when they said they were out of T-bones so the waitress gave me a 10% discount to have sirloin with my eggs and hash browns instead. Sometimes complaining really does pay.

At the store, I got a nice pink body pillow pillowcase and two cheap pillows to stuff inside it. This way the outside is washable and I can just get new pillows to stuff it with when it goes flat.

When we came home and I did my sweeping, I won a box of candy in an instant game.

Boy, I’ve really been writing less since I started sweeping!

I’ve thought of a new diet idea as a last-ditch effort to maintain my weight if not lose it. If this doesn’t work, then I’ll just have to accept gaining a pound a week if I don’t want to be hungry most of the time. The plan is to start a fruit diet beginning on Sunday. The reason I thought having mostly fruit would do it is that it’s the next best thing with any real substance to it that isn’t as loaded in calories as most meats, pasta and starchy foods are. If I were to have mostly vegetables or hardly eat at all, then I couldn’t do it. I also like most fruits, so that helps.

PCH is pushing stuff on me now. Supposedly I ordered this new air freshener where you stick wooden reeds in a bottle of oil that’s supposed to last for months. It’s not very strong, although Tom thinks it is, but I like it nonetheless. It’s in the bathroom. It smells like it may be vanilla which is a mild scent. Tom suggested he pay for it because it may prompt them to send other smelly offers. I agree but will enclose a note telling them to verify all “orders” with me first. It’s better than the magazines that get pushed on me.

The shoes turned out to be a bust because that extra half-inch really did make a difference after all. It pushed the mannequin forward, and I swear her right foot is bigger than the other cuz it wouldn’t set down all the way into the shoe. It’s the other way around with the other mannequin. Her left foot’s bigger. At least they were free and will be easy enough to sell on eBay.

Last night we had what was the biggest storm we’ve seen so far in Oregon. It even knocked the power out at 8:00. Stormy environments seem to bring out the best of my psychicness, and I told Tom the power would be back on between 9:05 and 9:10. It was back at 9:09.

Kim knocked at one point to ask if our power was out, too. I didn’t see her cuz Tom answered the door while I was in the bedroom in just my undies. He said she was dressed in a winter coat with a hood over her head. Now that’s a bit extreme!

Tom’s still plugging away at the betting program which he says is going well. I’m just glad I’m not sexually needy! I’d never get any from him. As I told him, rich, poor or somewhere in between, I will not deal with another summer of these fucking spiders, so we’re out of here by next June. I can’t imagine where we’d go if we don’t have enough money yet to get out of the state, but it won’t be a 60-year-old sagging house on a canal that’s barely bigger than a closet. These aren’t just spiders, they’re big spiders! One fell off the ceiling and bounced off of my back. It totally creeped me out. I almost wish it was cold during the night when they’re more active. It’s been in the 90s, so that doesn’t help.

We took the bus to get that Bluefly shopping spree affidavit notarized at UPS late yesterday morning. I had been up for nearly 18 hours. As we walked from the stop and past next door, we could see a couple sitting on the front porch and hear the voices of young animals. They seem to be out front a lot as opposed to on the deck, and again I’m just so glad they’re not so close. We saw that black dog (at least I think it was that dog) peering around the back corner of the house. Tom thinks it was only visiting and that the older kids don’t live there, but the dog seems to be visiting a lot lately. Yesterday was hot, so they were quiet, but the day before was cooler because it was cloudy. Just the weather the animals were waiting for in order to use the swings, but the kids that were using it were around 3 and 5, not 8 and 10. Tom said this makes sense since the swings look more for toddlers. I just wish the damn thing could’ve been set up on the other side of the house instead! It’s going to be a circus in another month or so and it’s not going to be the least bit easy to get any work done with them screaming, let alone any barking from over there or across the canal. Because of this, I’ve decided to move my computers into the bedroom, though I do still intend to get the de-barker, probably sometime in September. Oh, to be able to live in a house where I don’t have to set up according to neighbors! Will this day ever really come again and for more than just a few years? They’re not as homebodied as I thought, though, for Tom has told me that there have been a few occasions when he’s walked by and seen no cars there when there’s usually 3-5 at a time. The only thing that’s got me really worried is the possibility that these people bought the place and aren’t just renters. As Tom pointed out, they’ve been putting an awful lot of work into something that’s supposedly just a rental, and it may explain why there’s been no music. If this is the case and they do own the thing, then the place will be jumping with dogs in no time.

Again I sent OLS a message wanting to know why some of my messages get deleted, and again I’ve been ignored. If we really do get rich I’m not going to bother with them. I thought that the way they singled me out by threatening to ban me if I submitted any more sweeps was very rude. And it’s also rude to ignore my messages. Especially as a paying customer. I pay for customer service! Yet service I’m not getting.

There’s this new mannequin site based down in California. I’m having trouble getting my emails to them, though I was able to get a hold of the site’s host. They have these new “sexy mannequins,” and boy are they ever gorgeous! Way nicer than mine and I’ve got nice mannequins. They’re lingerie models, apparently. This one particular one, Cheri, who’s in a dance pose, is my favorite. The host says he thinks they’re $400 which surprised me. I thought they’d be $800 or more. If that’s the case maybe I’ll drop the mannequins I was going to get from either the chick that sold me Denise or NYC where I got Ashley, and just get this one. She’ll be my last big item in Oregon. The rest will be small stuff like Barbies and Tonners. Then I’ll just hope to one day get Kaori, my favorite silicone doll!

Right now I am not a happy camper. Not as opposed to yesterday. I a won $100 shopping spree at a place called Bluefly that sells designer clothes. The catch is that I have to get the affidavit notarized that we printed out. One in which we couldn’t adjust the margins, so it’s split into 3 pages. We walked in the cloudless 92º heat (we’re on for 101º on Saturday) all for nothing. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy for me, but that’s ok because their clothes aren’t that exciting. Unlike most folks, I never felt the need for fancy clothes, cars, jewelry or furs. To me, there’s nothing wrong with getting clothes from department stores. They have nice things, sometimes even nicer.

The bank we inquired at only notarizes for customers with accounts, and this check cashing place wouldn’t do it, so we have to go out Saturday morning and hope to get it done someplace when we go out to do the grocery shopping as either just he or both of us do at that time. I’m not going to sweat it if I miss the 10-day deadline because this is ridiculous. I can see if it was for a grand or more, but we’re only talking $100. Couldn’t they simply have sent me a promotional code to redeem like they did when I won the $100 Visa card from AOL?

I made an SOS order, so I have that to look forward to, but what I don’t look forward to is my office becoming a virtual circus. Just when I thought that maybe, just maybe, next door wouldn’t become a problem, after all, they go and plop a swing set down in the middle of the yard, so now it’s either listen to them scream for hours on end when it cools down, or move my office out of their playground and into the bedroom. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I won’t have any choice if I want to get any work done. My ear can’t take the headphones for hours at a time. I knew it was only a matter of months before they became a problem. Obviously, those older kids did move in there because you wouldn’t plop the thing down in the middle of your yard a whole 4 or 5 years in advance if it were for a baby, and make it harder for you to mow. The playhouse and mini basketball hoop were just a warning. This is common practice in rental houses; to have more and more people move in after a few months or so. I’m hoping they won’t be out there when it’s cold, but I’m sure they’ll make an exception just for me. In a sense, this is worse than Phoenix. At least in Phoenix the center of the neighboring yards were in back and away a bit. But this is centered directly in front of our side windows. Right smack in front of them with the swings being just 10’-15’ away.

Tom is still very hopeful that the handicapping program will get us out of here and into a quiet place we won’t get run out of, but it flunked out entirely on tracks it’s not trained to work at yesterday. There was a close call, though. The horse it picked to win would’ve won if another horse hadn’t blocked it in in the end. If we can’t get into a retirement community soon or are rich enough to live on a boat, then the only escape from being in the heart of the chaos would be to have some acreage again. I don’t want to go back to fighting with wells, but if this works we’ll have the money to fix them and to plant trees and shrubs that’ll block out distant sounds and give us more privacy, though in California I don’t suppose it’d be as open as Arizona was. I would also hope the land won’t be haunted and that things could grow better in that kind of climate. I would prefer to get into a more ritzy area than an anything-goes kind of area to reduce the potential for trouble and noise, though people are still going to leave their dogs outside 24/7, and as far as disciplining their kids – forget it. There’s simply no such thing anymore. This little brat at the bank was jumping up and down on the couch in the waiting area and running all over the place screaming.

I finally got a message regarding one of my Webshots photos. It was of my Denise mannequin. They have a store, so I guess store people check to see what people are doing with their mannequins by typing in mannequin-related keywords. They wrote: I love her outfit!

About 10 minutes ago I was sitting here trying to get more work done when I heard screaming. I looked out front to see a couple of kids visiting the house directly across from us. Some guy was spraying them with a hose. All the while I could hear barking that I thought were their dogs, but when I turned on my sound machine and could still hear barking, I looked out the side window and saw the black dog at the gate next door barking its ass off. Just then the dog ran towards the house and everyone in front disappeared. I’ll have to have Tom keep a closer eye out to be sure this dog doesn’t live there now and that he doesn’t see it tied to the deck or something whenever he goes by. I would think we’d hear from it more often if it did live there, but even so, if it gets to be a regular thing, we should call First Choice and ask if they know that the thing has been living there or at least hanging out there regularly. Anyway, the whole show only lasted a couple of minutes and wouldn’t have woken me up with the bedroom being on the other side of the house, but now I have to find my place again and figure out where the hell I left off. I wish we were wedged in back like Kim is! She’s blocked from everything but the canal dog and the back of next door’s yard. It’s now after 9:00 now so hopefully, things will settle down and I can enjoy the peacefulness of the nighttime with nothing but whatever nocturnal nightmares that may decide to drop in on me. Are we ever going to live where there aren’t so many damn distractions?!?! Well, unless we’re being viciously teased, the betting program is still looking promising. Tom’s still training it and says it’s something that may need to be an ongoing thing. He said Friday is when we’ll get an even better idea of how well it works because there are several races being run at the track he’s got it trained to focus on right now that’s down in southern Cal. Even so, he said don’t get too enthusiastic yet, pointing out that just because it got the first one right doesn’t mean it won’t get the next 20 wrong.

Oh, Jesus! Now we’ve got someone blaring a car stereo somewhere. I still can’t believe that with gas prices being as insane as they are someone could feel the need for attention so much that they’d pay an arm and a leg to get it! Although Tom said it doesn’t cost much, it’s all electrical. Still, who’d have ever believed 20 years ago that there’d one day be car stereos that sound like traveling live concerts?! And of course, the canal dog goes off in the middle of the night at times since it’s too hot in the daytime to bother doing so. With my shit luck, the debarker won’t work that far. I don’t know how many feet it’s effective up to or even if it’s really all that effective to begin with.

Either something’s out to really tease the hell out of us, or we truly are on our way to having some serious money, though how much is yet to be known. Tom did one test by having his new program pick the horses of a particular race down in L.A. Well, it ranked all the horses perfectly! There’s still more work to be done with it, but hopefully in a week or two, we’ll really get an idea of just what kind of profit we’re looking at. Will we make enough for a trailer in California and be stuck in the mainstream for another 5-10 years till we can get into a retirement community? Or will we make so much money that our options will be limitless? I would still love to live on a boat most of the time if not all. I’d also rather live in mainstream California, than mainstream Oregon. I just hope this thing really works well. If it does, we’ll be making hundreds of dollars a day!

For now, I made us $150! Yes, I got 6 $25 e-prize checks from instant wins that we’re going to split. The question is where to cash them. If Safeway won’t do it, then a check-cashing place will. I just wonder how much of them they’ll take.

Not a sound from next door today. Last night I could hear them gabbing on their front porch at 1:00 when I shut off all the fans to go to bed. Only with no background noise could they faintly be heard, so that’s okay. I’m just so glad – and Tom agrees – that their porch, driveway and deck where they have their grill isn’t just a few feet away from us! They’d be your typical loud, rude, always-home neighbors we always get if that were the case. Tom said he saw 5 cars there, suggesting they may be having out-of-town visitors. He thinks the parents of one of the kids who’s having a baby gave them the playhouse and other shit. I hope that’s the case and that the older animals didn’t move in there, because we’ll be long gone before any infants can use the thing.

What a waste of life to have kids so young! I truly believe having kids so young almost always dampens your maturity, opportunities, experiences and intellectual growth. Look at all Mary’s learned since she lost her kids and she’s learned it in jail of all places! Speaking of which, I haven’t heard from her and that’s ok with me. She may be intelligent and compassionate, but she’s just too damn sensitive and well, we’re just so different. Everything with her is God this, God that. She just doesn’t get that no God who truly cared and loved her would allow her child to be killed.

Tom said that he read that Linda Ronstadt’s on tour and will be in Oregon at some point. I can’t believe this fat, old, ugly thing is touring at 58 years of age (today’s her birthday), but she never was a songwriter, so she wouldn’t have the kind of income someone like Kate Jackson would have, since singers don’t get royalties whenever their songs are played like Kate does whenever they run shows/movies she was in.

Well, the peace could very well be coming to an end around here as far as next door goes. Yeah, I figured it wouldn’t last forever and it’d be just about right on time, too. I don’t know what it is with most people, but they move in quietly for the first few months, then bam – I’m here! I hope I’m stressing over nothing, but I was distracted by the sound of this large aqua pickup driving in through the gate and into the yard for the third day in a row. At first I was like, this is just great! I mean, the whole point of being able to enjoy their driveway being on the other side of the house is so I don’t have to hear their vehicles. Hearing hers next door can be enough at times. But then I realized that they were hauling stuff in. My first concern was that more people were moving in, and that still could be the case, but Tom thinks they may just be storing stuff. He says he’s seen rowboats, an ATV and other stuff lately. What was most disturbing was the playhouse they put right along the fence just outside my office window. The boats are towards the back corner of the yard, but why does everything have to go alongside our place? This playhouse is so damn close to the window that if the fence wasn’t there and you could drive a car up to it, you could barely squeeze it in between it and my office window.

The black dog I caught a quick glimpse of, and these two older animals, a boy of about 8 and a girl of about 10, seem to be connected to this pickup which doesn’t live there, as far as we know, and hopefully they haven’t moved in. However, Tom says he’s pretty sure there’s a baby living there, and lately I’ve been seeing this chick who looks like she’s had a kid. I also saw a very pregnant teenager too, so I’m now almost positive that these aren’t college students. Not if they’ve had or are having babies, and not with the way they’re home so often. It’s those who can afford to stay home that tend to be the ones having kids as opposed to those with careers, and they obviously have some money what with some of the stuff we’ve seen. The playhouse alone must’ve cost hundreds.

Tom said a guy at work looked at the house when it was for rent and they have a cellar you can drive right into, so I guess most of the stuff had been put down there. I just hope they don’t run us out of here. Hey, I hate this old, sagging tiny place, but I’d like to move when we’re ready to, and not when someone else says so by driving us crazy.

Tom will get a better look and see if he can get an idea of what’s going on when he goes grocery shopping tomorrow. He says that although it makes no sense, it’s common practice for folks around here who are moving from one house to another to get an apartment, put their stuff in storage or wherever they can, and then move into the new house. No matter what’s going on, I’ve had too many years of problem neighbors. The barking and banging of car doors and bass are enough to have to deal with like we have for the last 10 months and I’d like to keep it that way till we can get to an even quieter place, so long as God will let us.

In better news, both the Brunette Brilliance Barbie and my incense came today. We wonder why they call her Brunette Brilliance when she’s not even a brunette. She’s got black hair. She’s got these little wispy spikes for bangs that look way cool and they did her nails, too.

The incense smells great and he really went all out throwing in extras. He had to sub with other scents on some of them because he accidentally sent me an old list. He even threw in some 19” sticks which I’ve always wanted to try. I didn’t realize they were so thick. It’s like burning 3 sticks at once. It irritated our eyes, so Paula will get stuck with them at the end of the year with whatever else I don’t like. There are about a dozen of the 80-something scents I ordered that I don’t care for, and the 19” sticks were too lemony. I was wondering why the box was so long. They sure burn a hell of a long time.

He also threw in a roll-on bottle of designer perfume oil.

I read an article that said that insufficient sleep may cause hormonal shifts that boost both hunger and appetite. Well, I’ve been sleeping ok and have quit worrying about it, and although I am less hungry since I quit stressing over it, it won’t magically enable me to comfortably and subconsciously eat 800-1200 cals a day so I could either lose or maintain my weight. If someone had told me years ago that I’d one day reach a point where it was either starve most of the time or get fat, I’d never have believed it. I guess it’s just my time to join most of my fellow middle-agers in being 40-50 pounds overweight. All I know is that I’m tired of stressing over it and struggling to get weight off that just won’t come off unless I nearly starve myself. I go completely out of my mind trying to cut my calories down so low day after day. I need to let my body be itself, so to speak, and let it do whatever it feels it needs to do, and if that’s slapping on another 20-30 pounds, then so be it. I know I’ll look horrible and that it’ll be hard to get around and do things like bend over to trim my toenails, but I’m sick of having it be such an issue in my life! I’m just going to try to stay in shape as long as I can, though I assume I’ll one day get too big to jog and leave it at that. When I can no longer do anything bouncy like that, I’ll do more walking.

We’ve been having power outages that sometimes knock us offline, but Tom showed me what to do whenever that happens.

We got a catalog with this device that stops dogs from barking much in the way Tom wants to build something that’d interfere and even damage these fucking stereos no one’s going to do shit about. You can bet that I’ll be ordering the debarker in the fall when it starts cooling down! I haven’t heard from the one on the corner at all, but late at night or early in the morning when it’s cooler, I occasionally hear the canal dog. Just not nearly as much as I will when we start having highs in the 50s and 60s.

It would still be nice to have a “stereo killer” even if we could be granted the blessing to live where they don’t just because it’d be fun to destroy them whenever we came into the city for groceries and things like that. I could be sitting there fucking up any that passed us by while Tom drove. Hey, if the name of the game in this country is ‘control’ then I’ll gladly do some controlling of my own for once if it’s for a worthy cause!

My latest wins consist of a DVD, a coupon for a free candy bar, a $5 Home Depot gift card, an autographed book cover by Anne Christopher, whoever she is, and best of all, a $25 Target gift card in which I ordered Ashley a pair of black strappy sandals with closed toes to hide her not-so-perfect toes. They have a 3½” heel instead of 3”, but Tom and I agree that a half-inch won’t make a difference. I hope not, but if worse comes to worst, Denise can wear them since her feet don’t have to be precisely positioned being a sitting mannequin.

I haven’t been too eager to bring this up because we’ve been teased enough times in our lives with potential money-making opportunities, and haven’t wanted to get my hopes up. It’s looking promising so far, though we don’t know to what degree. It’s this program he’s writing to train his computer to pick winning racehorses in a much more complex and accurate way than any software out there to date can do. He’s not sure yet just how profitable it’ll be but says he should know within a week or two. Well, although I’m not clearly seeing any future U-Haul out front come to take us away, I do vibe that next winter will not only be our last here (God, I hope so!) but that he won’t be working till he’s 65. At least not outside of the house he won’t be. Right now my feeling is that we’ll leave this house and go somewhere in California in 13-14 months. I don’t know if we could get into a retirement community at that time, but that seems like that’d be our best bet when we can since rural has got too many hassles associated with it, a boat would keep us from being able to go online, and there’s no beach we could live on in peace that wasn’t in a cold climate. I still don’t know what that green house meant that I saw in my visions around the New Year, so maybe it was nothing.

I’m pissed! I can’t get online and I have to go to work. I’m like, oh, don’t start with the net games! Not now. This happened to Tom for an hour the other day. Yeah, well, we don’t pay Charter for an hour off here and an hour off there, so this better not turn into any big deal or become a regular occurrence!

Out of curiosity, just to see if I’d get a response, I emailed Incense Galore and asked why Bob was in jail. Jeff replied saying that on July 7th, Bob was sentenced to 5 years, plus lifetime supervision. There were 3 charges he accepted and 1 he denied which is still pending. There never was a trial, though he really would rather not go over the details of the case with me, he said. It was good to hear from me, he added, and he hoped I was well. Meanwhile, he and Bob’s wife were now the owners and adjusting to their new jobs.

The lifetime supervision makes me think he molested his daughter. Especially since he once said, “She and I are kind of close,” when I went to make one of my many inquiries as to why my order was taking so damn long. However, the 5-year sentence seems awfully light for such a charge, even for a state other than Arizona or Texas. I also know that 5 years really means about 2 with good behavior, assuming the pending charge doesn’t add time to his sentence. We tried to find info on the case, but couldn’t find anything. And why would we when it’s not a Jewish female with blacks involved?

Well, if I’m not going to be allowed to work anytime soon, I guess I’ll go work on my story.

Now the Stick Man says some of the scents I picked were “fire sale” items and not samplers. Fine, I told him. Substitute them with whatever. I guess he tried to call yesterday morning before we chatted live. It’s when we have to play message like this so many times that I know I shouldn’t bother doing business with the person again. He’s like Bendejo – nice, but stupid. Just your typical brainless cock. If we’ve got to talk about it instead of me simply receiving the stuff, then I don’t want to bother.

Meanwhile, the Brunette Brilliance Barbie I never thought I’d have is on its way to me! I never thought I’d have it because she’s regularly $225, but I’m getting her for $85.

I have yet another reason to hate Oregon. Oregon and Oregon only has stopped selling Claritin D over the counter. This was the one that suppressed my appetite. They stopped because it supposedly has ingredients in it used to make crystal meth. So I got the regular Claritin and sure enough, it doesn’t snuff my appetite out at all. I guess something up there is telling me to either get myself to puke, or just gain the rest of my middle-age weight. If I can’t ever bring myself to puke, I’ll be in the 150s or 160s by the end of the year.

My ear still has its bad days, though it’s still been better since summer set in. They probably didn’t know the cold weather would affect it when they operated on it, any more than they knew in Boston the trouble I’d have in Phoenix, but this is why I won’t be having any more surgery ever again if I can help it; because I’m the one that ultimately has to pay for what they don’t know.

There was an article about today’s “modern, childless women who are obsessively career-focused,” and how skipping out on having kids makes you more greedy and selfish. This is true, too. It does. But I say my selfishness and greediness are ok because, for one, I never put money/toys before Tom, Tinkerbell or any necessities. Secondly, I lived my life for others/fate for so damn long that I feel it’s my turn to live for me. Being poor or locked up will do that to you. I think it’s just a matter of each individual’s priorities. Had kids been both our ambition in life, and I was fertile enough to have them, then that’s where I’d have focused my energies. Meanwhile, I say if it makes you happy and it’s not hurting anyone, keep on plugging away!

Well, I haven’t mastered the art of puking yet, though I haven’t been working on it. I’ve been giving myself a break, even if it means gaining the 3 pounds I lost back in 5 minutes, though at this time of month, some of it is water. I hope to be a “responsible puker” if I can ever bring myself to do it, though if it becomes a problem, it’s a problem I wouldn’t mind having, as opposed to the one where I’ve got this ravenous appetite and have to struggle to maintain a weight that’s too much for me to begin with.

The Stick Man says he emailed me with the 32 scents that are missing, but I never got them. We live-chatted today and he’s going to send out what he’s got on Monday or Tuesday, then in 3-5 weeks when he gets the missing ones in, he’ll send those, too.

Not surprisingly, I haven’t heard from the Stick Man like he said I would today, “hopefully.” Oh well. As long as he doesn’t go fucking up the order like crazy, it’ll be okay.

The bracelet came today and it’s dull. It consists of dangling beads in frosted white and snot green.

I’m going to quit dieting and return to the Claritin. Tom said it wouldn’t really impact the savings. He would probably be right about my being able to lose more than a few pounds if I could eat 800 cals a day, but I simply don’t have that kind of willpower or desire to lose weight. The Claritin, meanwhile, won’t give me that will, but it’ll keep me from getting carried away. After starting off with a few fairly easy days, it’s gotten harder and harder for me each day.

Last night I kept waking up cold but was too tired to get up and throw the wolf blanket over my two cover sheets. I haven’t had to run the AC all day, either. It’s hard to believe it’s to be in the mid-80s today. It’s only 77º in here and was all the way down to 69º early this morning.

I created a profile at OLS. I had thought they deliberately left my birthday off their calendar for some reason, but it’s actually creating a profile that automatically puts it on.

I didn’t lose another pound today. I’m still 123. This is where I always get stuck. I almost got myself to puke earlier. Man, was I close! How I wish I could do it! The more pissed I get each time I fail, the closer I hope I’ll be to succeeding. Tom says it’d cost more money if I did that, but I don’t think so. For one, I wouldn’t need to puke up everything I ate. I need to go to 800 cals, not 0. I’m still at 1000-1200. Also, I could eat more yet still cheap if I could get myself to puke some of it up. There are cheap, but high-cal ravioli and things like that which are more filling. With those, I’d be eating more for the same price. If I could puke some of what I ate up, I could have the best of both worlds where I could eat until I was satisfied, yet lose the calories. I may not be able to enjoy feeling full for 2-3 hours, but at least I could feel that way for a little while before I puked. I wouldn’t do it every day for the rest of my life either. I thought of going back on the Claritin to help with the hunger, but that’d only steal from the money savings, so I’d be better off getting myself to puke. I think I can do it if I work on it and get determined enough. I’m not going to magically “get used to” 800 cals, so I’ll have to do something. Of course, on the other hand, I still don’t know what losing weight would accomplish. It wouldn’t make us rich, bring back our old libidos, get us out of this state, get us into a nice, quiet house that’s no older than 20-30 years, etc.

I changed my mind again and decided I will go ahead with the legislator letter in the fall once it’s been over a year since they summoned Tom (or tried to). I realized that it wouldn’t be so easy to alter what I send without being able to prove that it was altered. I almost wish they would! That’d get us rich in time for damn sure. You can’t edit email. Not unless you copy/paste it in a whole new email which I could say, “Hey, check the ISP on that and you’ll see it didn’t come from my computer!” They also couldn’t add to the letter if I sent it by regular mail cuz you can prove if something was printed with different printers. They’d have to use a whole new sheet of paper and without my fingerprints on it, what case would they have? Just one with their worst nightmare – me!

It turns out, so Tom learned yesterday, that it was Eddie who knocked on the door last Sunday. Amazingly, he didn’t want anything, but just to see if we’d like him to bring us back to his place for a barbecue. He and his wife and her kid have a 2-bed duplex with a small yard. That was very nice of him, but I hope he doesn’t make a habit of showing up unannounced, even though he didn’t wake me up. Tom told him I was sleeping and that he was under his headphones watching TV.

Today he’s going to be helping Justin, the guy that gave us the dressers. He has a computer problem, I guess. Tom doesn’t know how big a job it’s going to be.

We took a walk down to this new store that sells incense. They’ve got a good selection now. I got 25 sticks, but of course I’ll burn them up long before I get my order from the Incense Rack. The Stick Man got the money order yesterday, so that was good, but I have a feeling he’ll be out of stock on a lot of things and take forever to fill the order. He says there are two orders ahead of mine that are also big, and that they fill them one at a time to avoid making mistakes. It’s good to know that they try to be careful, but I don’t know if I’ll order from them again. If not, there’s always SOS. They haven’t let me down yet, though I’ll be bummed if they decide to give up on Silk Splash. Anyway, if I do order from the Incense Rack again, it’ll definitely be by email!

I may back out of sending the legislator’s letter about the stereos. I hate to seem like the ultimate chicken shit, and this may be being as ridiculously paranoid as Tom gets, but what’s to say they wouldn’t alter the letter and add threats just to have an excuse to fuck with us, not that I’d sit back and let them win like I so stupidly did in Arizona. I still blame myself just as much as I do the sickos, pigs, public defender, and judge for the shit I went through in Maricopa. I mean, I still can’t believe I so stupidly jumped to their every beck and court call and went running to court and right into their trap. Then I continued to allow myself to be abused after jail like a stupid idiot. That to me is no better than a woman who stays with an abusive man rather than fights back or runs. I literally walked right up to them and said, “I’m all yours to use and abuse at will.” The bigger fool is the one who acknowledges the other fool.

Anyway, one person bitching isn’t going to change things. Most folks dig noise anyway, and I’m almost positive I would never hear back from them other than maybe to acknowledge that they got the letter. Still, it’s not worth the risk, however small it may be.

Since Sunday, I’ve dropped from an average of 1200 cals to 1000 or less and have lost a pound a day since. I’m now at 123 pounds. I thought I’d get used to it after a few days, but I’m still famished most of the time. I try to keep in mind that a small bite here and there won’t do me any good since I’m so damn hungry that a few bites would be worthless. I’d need about 1000 cals in one sitting to fill me up. If it turns out that he’s right about my being able to lose weight and I’m the one who’s been wrong, then come Saturday I’ll decide what to do from there. I know I’m not ready to spend the money on the 1500-2000 cals a day I’d love to have, then the clothes I’d need once I gained a million pounds, so that means I’ll either stay wherever I’m at on Saturday or I’ll keep torturing myself with what feels like near-total starvation. A part of me is curious to see just how far down I could go, but I also don’t like being hungry. I was stuck too, for the first few days. I always get stuck when I have under 1200 cals.

Yesterday I got quite a hell of a workout, but it was fun and I felt so good afterward. A little tired, but good. We rode our bikes over 6 miles. First we rode to McDonald’s where we split a whopping 1220-calorie breakfast platter. We arrived a few minutes before 6:00, so we had those few minutes to kill while we waited for them to unlock the doors. During that time we watched an employee feed a few seagulls. They sure do make the coolest sounds, though I’d take a frying pan to their heads (better not tell Mary this) if they were in the house here as pets. Their behavior is very pigeon-like, but unlike pigeons, they’re very loud.

After we ate we jumped on this bike path we’ve been wanting to go on. It was so fun not having to constantly cross roads and dodge traffic. We could really pick up speed this way too, whereas along the roads, by the time you’ve barely had a chance to pick up speed, you have to slow down to cross the road. The bike path leads all the way up to where the old Albertson’s is, which we prefer over Safeway any day. We may one day ride up there so we can shop there. It’d be a longer ride distance-wise, but there’d be less stopping and starting along the way.

Not much in the way of wins other than another instant win tee I hit. He hit an instant too, winning a $25 Visa card.

He trimmed 3” off my hair this weekend. Now it’s only to my waist. I’m definitely not trimming it again for a year, maybe even two. I’m amazed at how healthy it is despite the dying and frying I’ve been doing to it. I’d say it was definitely the cigarettes that caused it to be so shabby for so long.

I’m a little concerned now because the Incense Rack hasn’t gotten the order we sent via regular mail last Monday. What, is the package curse returning? I hope they get it today! Especially since there’s no mail tomorrow and I’m almost out of incense/oils. Maybe Mary was right. Maybe Oregon really does have a screwy mail system. Meaning that because Klamath Falls is such a small town, maybe they don’t send mail out as often.

Tom thinks Eddie must’ve wanted help with something yesterday afternoon because there was a knock on the door while I was in the bedroom with the air cleaner on. He said that when he went to look out the window, he saw what looked like his truck pulling out.

I hit another sweep I was concentrating on, a site that makes OOAK fairies, but it wasn’t a fairy I won. It’s just a lousy bracelet. This time, since I want to work my way up slowly, I’m trying a weekly (the Incense Rack and fairy site were monthlies) that gives away an autographed book and a bottle of perfume each week.

I also won a coupon for a free Domino’s pizza with the purchase of one, but this little shit town doesn’t have a Domino’s. That’s okay, I’m finally settling my curiosity and am starving myself for one week. I sure feel like I am anyway. I’m having just two vitamin-rich shakes, plus a 300-400 calorie dinner each day. I want to know for once and for all if something’s wrong with me or not. If I’m not 120 pounds or less come Saturday, then I’ll know it’s either because something is medically unkosher, or all those fatties that claim they can’t lose weight really aren’t lying after all.

We got the 9x12 sheets of clear plastic, and although they make good temporary doll covers for Barbies, and although it was worth experimenting with, I’d be better off buying vinyl dust cover bags for various-size dolls for about the same cost.