Ah, that felt good! I just came in from walking instead of running. How nice it is not to be dying of thirst or to have my heart pounding like it’s going to jump out of my chest or to be as sweaty! But I feel like I had a genuinely challenging workout just the same.

Tom was reading an article online about the fitness benefits of walking versus running. They say that lower-impact exercise for longer periods of time can have more effective and lasting benefits than quicker high-impact exercise like the running I’ve been doing. It supposedly increases your metabolism and kills fat cells better. With quicker bursts of hardcore workouts, the body conditions itself to it and that’s probably part of why I stopped losing weight, along with the fact that I’m not considered overweight anymore for my age.

Since Tom can’t run because of his joints, and because he’s not in good shape right now, he’s only doing a mile a day. His goal is to be up to two miles by his birthday. I wanted to do an hour today as they recommend between 1-2 hours, but I only did 25 minutes because my iPod crapped out on me. I totally forgot to check the battery, so it’s charging right now. I contemplated continuing on without it, but it’s so boring that way. It gets kind of boring after 10-15 minutes even with the music, but I do love how it makes me feel and the calories it burns. An hour should burn about 300 in my case. It just sucks that the weather won’t always be suitable for it and that when the weeds grow back in the back area of the lot, it’ll be hard to walk through there till Jesse bulldozes again. I guess we could go up and down the entire driveway at that time. But there’ll be times when it’s too wet or too hot, and of course my damn schedule is an issue too, so I’ll have to walk when I can. I’m going to take those Melatonin supplements and try to stay on days as long as I can if only because I lose more weight when I sleep at night for some bizarre reason.

Tom’s not walking today to give his muscles a break and because he’s going to be busy running errands for a few hours. It’ll be interesting to see if I get sore from this. I doubt I will because I’m in good shape, yet it is a different form of exercise than my body is used to, so we’ll just have to wait and see. I personally don’t think I’ll lose any more weight/inches. I think my body has settled in at what it’s most comfortable at, even though I say I still could afford to lose 4-5 inches.

We’ve been walking from partway up the hill in back, across the lot, then up the driveway almost to the fork. I think sometime I’ll walk up the driveway and to the main road and just keep on walking for half an hour before turning around and coming back. Scaling the hills isn’t too hard if you’re in shape, but coming down the drive can be a bit tricky because of the gravel as opposed to the dirt of the hill in back, so I have to be careful not to slip.

Now for the good news. The jury convicted the monster of 1st-degree murder! Yay!!! Mary must be rather overcome with emotion. We watched some video clips of her testimony. She looked so frail. Very thin, haggard, fragile and even scared too, not that I can blame her. The monster wore a suit, but she was in a jail jumpsuit.

The only negative thing they really had to say about her was that she didn’t cry when she was shown pictures of her dead baby. She’s probably all cried out to the point that she’s numb, and believe me, she’s cried plenty over the years.

Next comes the sentencing phase, and unfortunately, according to the way Mary’s plea agreement was amended in April, it doesn’t look like she can get out of jail for another year. She got 5 years off her 15-year prison sentence in exchange for her testimony. That means she has to do 10 years. Well, she was first taken into custody in the summer of 2000, so unless there’s something I’m missing, she can’t get out before next summer.

Mary’s always told me I was like the sister she never had. I wish I could’ve been there to support her and cheer her on before testifying. And to hug her when that victorious verdict was finally handed down!

A good thing is that it doesn’t look like she’ll have a lifetime of intense probation, but just 5 years instead of I guess standard probation. I just hope she’s learned from this and that from now on she’ll choose love and life over bad boys and babies. Abuse was all she ever knew, and I don’t think she realized that she didn’t need men or babies to be a human being. Meanwhile, she does still have her son, who’s around 15 or 16 now. I think she would make a great advocate for other women in her shoes.

Kiwibox is down yet again, and while they may be doing a huge, complex job as Tom says, I’m sick of their tech issues! Just so fucking sick of it and some of the rude bitches there as well. For the millionth time, I’m thinking of not bothering with them, but not with nearly 30,000 points and being owed yet another 30,000 points. They’ve been down ever since I got up and are moving their servers now, so who knows how long it’ll be before I can get on? Instead, I’ve got other things I can do like study Italian, work on my story, and do some proofreading.