Ever since my blog was featured, I’ve been getting nearly half a dozen friend requests a day. I don’t mind clicking the accept button and being “friends” with anyone who doesn’t annoy or offend me, but I still have to wonder why some people would want to be friends with someone they both never met and never talked to before. Do they just want to “collect” friends or something?

I get a lot of requests in the middle of the night from Asia being that it’s daytime over there when it’s nighttime here. So in just the few months I’ve been here I have around 70 friends, but only 41 on Facebook, which took forever to accumulate in the years I’ve been a member there. I think I’m still only in the 30s on MySpace. I’ve never friended anyone there, but Gloria. I let them come to me, and most seem to be local business owners and bands.

I still wish Marie the best, but the more I read back on our cyber lives together, for lack of better words, the more I’m glad she’s moved on. She wasn’t just an obsessive, overwhelming pest, but so immature and childish as well. I won’t miss the stress she put me through. I hate to say anything bad against those who are bipolar. It’s not their fault any more than it’s my fault for having ADHD or my mother’s fault for having breast cancer, but they are just so hard to deal with! They’ll take you on the rollercoaster ride from hell and really leave you winded in the end! It’s not her fault she was abused either. But I will always love Marie and hope for the best for her. I know what it’s like to have abuse make you do things you might not ordinarily do. Not to shift blame or excuse myself from the way I hounded Maliheh on the phone, but I have to wonder – would I have done so to such a degree if my childhood had been different?

I know I’ve said it before, but I’m sorry about driving Maliheh crazy years ago, and I do hope she’ll find it in her heart to one day forgive me if she hasn’t already. And for falsely accusing her of harassing me online.

Boy, California really has been the “state of reunion” for me when I think of all the people I’m back in touch with that I never thought I would be – my parents, my sister, Andy, Maliheh, Rosa, Eileen… anyone else I’m forgetting? Yeah, probably. But that’s ok.

Anyway, my period’s due Monday so I’m dragging real bad here. Not even two cups of caffeinated coffee have perked me up.

Later…

“First we lose 10 acres and a brand new 2100-square-foot house in the desert, and now we lose 2.5 acres and a chance to build our own home in the woods!” I sobbed miserably as I pelted the flimsy metal shed with the biggest rocks I could toss.

“Sweetie,” said Tom, “why are you destroying things?”

I turned to him incredulously. “Do you really want someone to get what was supposed to be ours?! What we paid for?!”

“Jodi, it’s 2004. I promise you we’ll do it right next time and within a decade. There’s a home for us. There really is. Three times the charm.”

“Oh, fuck that fucking bullshit, Tom!”

More rocks went flying. Sheets of metal came tumbling down. The sound was deafening.

“Don’t hit the truck. It’s all we’ve got left.”

“I’m nowhere near the truck, and I don’t need any reminders that despite all our hard work and the money we lost that all we have left is a piece of shit of a truck, a few personal possessions, and a dumpy old motel room to return to. In the city. In the fucking city we’ll never escape!

A rush of movement somewhere in the stand of ponderosa pines behind us made us turn and glance in that direction.

“Not bears, I hope,” said Tom. “Wouldn’t want to be their dinner.”

“Ooh, lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Actually, they’d be doing me a favor by turning me into their dinner. What better purpose do I have in this fucked up world anyway, but to lose one thing after another and suffer one heartache after another? Hey, Jason, you out there?!” I turned to shout into the woods at the side of the clearing we stood in. “Michael Myers?! Come and get me! I have nothing to live for. I’m just a fucking loser destined to fuck up and lose all her life.”

“Sweetie, come on.”

“Where? Back to a cold, dingy motel room? Sorry, sir, but I’m in no hurry.”

I swooped down for more rocks that lay between the scattered patches of snow and started battering old “Gertrude,” the name I picked out for our old, ugly RV. I thought that an ugly RV deserved an ugly name.

“The rats will take it over before anyone comes up here, finds it, and considers taking it, not that I expect they would since they didn’t take the nicer one someone else abandoned on the parcel adjacent to us.”

I pushed over our clothesline and stomped on it.

“Come on, part of this was our fault for buying the land sight unseen. If we’d checked it out first, then maybe we’d have realized we’d be on a volcanic mountain that’s way too rocky to build on. You saw me try to start digging for the septic. There’s just no way. Not even with an ice pick and all the other tools I used.”

I collapsed onto an old tree stump of a dead tree the forest rangers had long since sawed away in hopes of preventing forest fires and burst into tears. “Why?” I cried. “Why does God hate us so much? What have we done?”

My husband was at a loss for words that chilly autumn day, back in Oregon. And so was I other than to continually ask why.

Just another PMS-induced memory, I guess, of some of the sad times in our lives. wipes tears from cheeks

Well, I can’t swear to it, but I see a little light spot in the satellite image I’m checking out. I think that’s our little RV, ugly, old Gert, still sitting up there and probably home to the local rats. This was where we were going to live until we built our two-story dome house. It was supposed to be about 1600 square feet. I would have hated the cold and snow at 5300’ in elevation, but it was still another dream lost, and oh - I’m just crying too hard to go on right now.