After having horrible back pain yesterday, Tom and I swapped office chairs. If this and the topper that’s on the way for the bed don’t help I’ll scream! So far the chair does seem to help give my back better support, but it hasn’t even been a day yet so we’ll see. But so far it looks like I’ve swapped in the backaches for the monthly cyst pain. Yeah, just when I thought I was going to get a month off, it gets me. So now I’ll have 72 hours of having to deal with that shit, and each hour gets progressively worse, too! You know I always gotta have something. If it were a contest as to who could have the most heart failure symptoms, I’d have won for damn sure yesterday! I had it all – chest pain, palpitations, bloating, shortness of breath while lying down, etc.

Yesterday I peed off all that water that mysteriously appeared out of nowhere like it sometimes does. I wish the water bloaties would just wait till it’s an appropriate time of the month for them!

So D and I ended up chatting for an hour and 20 minutes. It was 5am my time when we had to stop because my back was that bad. At that time I realized it was kind of cold and that the heater hadn’t come on for quite a while. Yup, we ran out of propane around 3am last night. At least this time around it was because we were stupid enough to wait too long to call the propane guy and not cuz we were broke. We have plenty of money. But from now on we’re calling him at 15%-20%, not 12%!

I turned the portable heaters on, put the bill on Jesse, then Tom went out and hooked up our small 5-gallon tank at sunup. It only has a little over a gallon in it. Tom asked if I thought he should get more tomorrow or just let it run out again on Monday night like it no doubt will, and we’re both okay with letting it run out since they’re coming the next day. Tom will just have to relight the pilots on the hot water tank and heater. The water tank was a bitch, and he almost had to call Jesse.

Speaking of Jesse, he hasn’t been down lately and I don’t know when he’ll be down next. Whiskey will let me know if he goes to work today, but that doesn’t mean he might not come down afterward.

If I had any worries as to whether or not Eileen might find my journal a bit much for her, they’re gone now! I was both surprised and pleased to hear she spent a pot of tea and 1½ hours reading. She said she couldn’t stop reading, I was a good writer, smart, witty and strong, and she found my story riveting and was glad to see I’m still standing strong despite my hardships. Well, I’m just glad to know my journal wasn’t too overwhelming after all! Sure she seems very open-minded and agrees with me on a lot of things about the world in general, but we seem to have lived very different lives, so that’s why I was hesitant at first to share it with her when I came to suspect she missed the link on my Facebook page.

I briefly scanned the gay marriage cases starting in federal court, and once again I couldn’t begin to guess the outcome. On one hand, I still think gays have a good 50 years or so before they get their rights. On the other hand, the bigot’s argument makes no sense in today’s times. They cry for tradition yet there are no “traditions” or “stereotypes” anymore like there used to be 50 years ago. About half the married people have kids these days as does half the singles. Not all gays want kids any more than all straights do, and studies have shown time and time again that it’s not your gender or marital status that raises a productive, happy child, it’s love. So I don’t know that old and outdated traditions will be enough for them to rely on, for saying that only straights are capable parents would be like saying only tall people are capable drivers.

I enjoyed my chat with D. She said she’s thinking of going blond. Kind of hard to picture on an Italian, but we’ll see.

I read her third entry today and got a kick out of it. Not the part where she kicks ass some 13 years ago in a bar, but the part where the chick is accusing her of eyeing her man when in those days it was your wife you had to worry about, as she herself said!

Then I was laughing even harder when she mentioned escaping through the window when this chick’s husband came home early one day and tried to put her pants on while running. I can just picture it, too! OMG, that’s sooo funny!!!

Yeah, my buddy there really got around when she was younger, LOL!

She shared more of her life with me, like how her father, who’s just as fucked up as her mother, hadn’t seen her since she was two. Then when she sent him a ticket to see her, he sent it back cuz she’s gay. I say, however, that that was just a convenient excuse. If it weren’t that, he’d pick some other lame excuse not to see his own daughter cuz of her “lifestyle.” It’s not even a lifestyle. It’s who she is! It used to annoy me when people would say, “Oh, so you chose the alternative lifestyle?” But I did not choose to be attracted to women and it’s not an alternative. It simply is what it is and if anything, I’d choose to be attracted to just men if that was something within my control to choose because of all the prejudice out there. I don’t think there’d be many gays if one could choose their sexuality.

She liked my poem and sent me one she wrote a while back. It was very powerful and very well said.

Many times throughout my life I’ve wondered what would have been if I’d done things differently. Again, I ain’t about to trade Tom for nothing, but I do wonder about how it would’ve been had she and I been together and just how special I am to her. Has she ever felt this way for anyone else? I’m coming to see that no, it’s not just about sex for her. At first I wondered if perhaps she was simply in love with an image of me from long ago, but now I can see that it’s not just about how I look, and she assures me she’d still love me if I were suddenly 200 pounds. She is definitely more romantic than Tom ever was, but not always as calm, cool and collected, as even she’ll admit herself, LOL!

As I told her, I’m not going to sit here and lie to her and say I don’t fear any complications arising from a visit from her. There is a bit of worry there. At the same time, if I could snap my fingers and have her here, I don’t see how I could resist! We are only human. Put two people who are attracted to each other alone in the same room and they’re bound to get it on.

But after the 20-second or so orgasm, would I feel any guilt and like I cheated on Tom even though we’ve evolved into basically being damn good friends? If she visited and we did anything, would he feel hurt if he knew?

She pointed out that she got me for Christmas last year since that’s when we first made contact. I was thinking the same thing! For someone who’s not into Christmas, she was one hell of a Christmas present! Like I said, despite starting off with money worries, 2009 turned out to be a pretty damn good year.

And yes, I love you too, D.