Apartments, condos, townhouses – I hate any place that’s attached to someone else’s place. I’m a modern freak, yet I’d take this dumpy old trailer any day to remain in such a beautiful area before I took a nice, new spacious place attached to someone else. It is just so gorgeous and so peaceful here!

The only negative to my otherwise busy and productive day was the allergies I awoke with. They drove me crazy all morning long. We had our first rain in a few months. Is there a connection? Hmmm… I wonder.

Tom and I went to put $50 on the card to cover our net/phone bill, then we browsed through Goodwill looking for any flippables. There was nothing good to flip, but I grabbed a few bags of incense – Peach, Obsession, Opium and Coconut.

My allergies were too crazy to do anything else and we didn’t want to spend much money anyway, so we came home and I popped a Benadryl. I didn’t want to take one before leaving, knowing it’d knock me on my ass for a few hours, and it did. After I got up I made some coffee to try to clear the cobwebs from my head and then I changed the rats’ cage, cleaned the kitchen and did a few other household chores.

I’m starting to lose hope of finding the mystery woman of Camp Naomi, but get this – I’m no longer so sure it was 1974 that I was there. I remembered me and some of the other kids were trying to convince the staffers that we were bionic. You know, like Jamie Sommers from The Bionic Woman? So then I decided to check when The Bionic Woman first aired and found that the show ran from 1976-1978. I knew this memory wasn’t from the second camp I was in because I know I was 13 or 14 when I attended the second camp and by then we pretty much had the bionic stuff out of our system. It’s definitely something 11-year-olds would do, though. So I zapped Gregg, the guy who’s helping me with this little investigation, a message letting him know that since there was no bionic woman in ’74, he may want to check ’76, ’77 and ’78, with ’76 being the most likely. He said this would make it easier to find out who the unit heads and nurses were back then as he’s a few years older than me.

I don’t usually send friend requests and instead, I let them come to me but I sent him one for helping me and he accepted.

I also got accepted into that group but didn’t bother going through the photos. This is because I can’t remember what she looks like. She could walk into this room looking exactly like she did back then and I still wouldn’t recognize her. I just think she might’ve had dark hair and eyes and that she was a unit head who would now be in her 50s.

I wish I could’ve written journals all my life! Or at least since I was old enough to write. I swear I remember my mom asking me if I remember when the last time was that I was in camp while we were packing me to go to the second camp when I was older and living in the older house. Then I said, “No, how old was I?” and she said I was 9. 

So either her memory was messed up or I’m remembering a conversation we never had. Tom said that from what he’s learned about how the brain works, we tend to fill in the gaps with false memories when we’re kids. That makes sense too, as I remember asking my mom if there was ever a door in the kitchen of the first house. In the doorway that led to the living room area, that is, and she said no. That’s when I figured that the “memories” of a door being there was probably a dream I’d had.

So there are probably more factual memories of this camp and this woman, but as Tom said, I couldn’t trust anything else I may remember to be real. I’m pretty sure the buses were real, though. That’s another memory that just popped into my head for the first time in decades today. Something like 5 or 6 buses picked us up at the JCC and took us to the camp. And of course, while most of the kids saw it as one big party, I just wanted to go home, LOL.

Tom suggested I “do inventory” to try to remember things.

When did I first learn I was going to camp?

I don’t know.

Who sat next to me on the bus?

I don’t know.

Off to a good start, huh?

Why is it so important that I identify/contact this woman to thank her? That one I can easily answer. Without being an abused child, it’s something that I suppose would be hard for one to understand. Let’s just say that with all the shitty people I’d known, I just didn’t take the few good ones for granted. I still don’t.

I can’t ask my parents anything because they tend to be paranoid and they may be suspicious of why I’m asking and assume I have some sort of ill intentions in mind. Plus, they’re getting a little old for their own memories to be that reliable as I mentioned the other day when a certain young and naïve individual went a little coo-coo on me.

Anyway, I joined the group and left my own post, but haven’t gotten any replies yet. Haven’t heard from Gregg yet either, though I suppose it may take him a while to do what research he needs to do.

If I don’t get to thank this woman in this life, and it’s looking like once again I’m not going to, I hope there’s some kind of afterlife I can thank her in. I know that many believe we meet up with those we knew on earth, something I have mixed emotions about. Of course I’d want to reunite with those I love and care for. But I don’t want the assholes in the mix either. Well, not unless I get to kick their asses! And kick ‘em good.

Random pet peeve of the day – men and abortion. I don’t think anyone should have the right to make other people’s private, personal decisions, be it who they marry or what they do with their lives/bodies, but men having the right to vote on abortion really pisses me off even more. Why should they? They don’t carry/have babies! Most of the time they say they don’t want the responsibility of kids anyway, so why should they have any say in the matter? Especially since the kid’s not literally half theirs. They may’ve had a hand in influencing its existence, but it’s more a part of the woman. It’s like giving someone a black eye. You can give it to them, but THEY’RE the ones that carry and live with that black eye, not you.