I’ve been getting asked questions about mentally willing and influencing things to happen and how one’s mood and determination can have an effect, for either the better or the worse, on the outcome of things. I’ve discussed my influencing abilities in broader depth in my bio. Check the Oregon parts if you want to learn more about it and how it works.

I wasn’t even aware of my ability which I see as both a gift and a curse until Tom and others pointed it out to me. Sometimes others see things within us we don’t see, and they understand us better than we do. Most of my life it was just the opposite. I got myself just fine while no one else did. So it was quite a shock to have someone else figure me out and basically have to spell things out for me.

The land that we had in Maricopa, Arizona bordered part of the Gila Indian reservation as well as part of the Ak-Chin reservation. One day we met “Miss Perfect,” my SIL, on the Ak-Chin reserve at their Harrah’s casino. I was in a foul mood that day, but don’t remember why.

“She’s making me lose! She’s one of them!” Miss Perfect complained to Tom when I was within earshot, then she stormed off to wherever.

Laughing, I walked up to Tom and said, “Has she lost her fucking mind or something? How the hell can I make her lose? I haven’t been anywhere near the bitch!”

“It’s your mood,” Tom said.

“What?!” I said, looking at him incredulously. “How can my mood make her lose a game of chance? I get vibes, I have dream premonitions, I see things, but how the hell could I make her lose?”

“We figured it out, so why can’t you?”

“Figured what out?”

My initial reaction was to laugh my ass off when he explained that my mood and attitude had an effect on things with a little more oomph than the norm. I just didn’t get it.

But then I thought back on some things I won’t bother getting into here because it would take too long, and I began to pay more attention to certain things. Once I realized that hey, they really do have a point here (yeah, one of them), I began to actively try to develop my influencing abilities, though most of the time I don’t have much control over it. That’s what makes it just as much of a curse as a gift. If we’re driving somewhere and we get a flat tire, naturally I’m going to be upset. But unlike most people, being upset means triggering other bad things to happen as well, and that domino effect is what’s awfully hard to control.

Big wins would spawn other big wins back in my sweeping days. When I won the Caribbean cruise I was so elated that I won thousands of dollars the next week, and so much more. I will post my wins in a separate post, and as I’m sure most will agree, people don’t normally win things every few days like I did, both big and small. My mood is improving now that Tom has a job, and as the economy picks up, I will eventually return to sweeping. And you know what? I’m gonna win thousands of dollars again, and I’m gonna win things like iMacs, big-screen TVs and trips too, even though I hate traveling (wouldn’t it be funny if I won one to Germany and saw Nane, LOL?). Well, be careful what you wish for and what you write! It just may happen.

It is also very true that life can sometimes imitate art, too. It happened to Christopher Reeves who, after acting in a role in which he fell off a horse and became paralyzed, really experienced this in real life. Tom Clancy (I think it was him) wrote a book about events similar to 9/11 before that day came. Someone online said they joked with their mother about killing off her dad in a story they were writing. A week later he dropped dead of a heart attack.

In the late 90s, a friend and I were discussing stories we would write where we would “play” certain characters. I wrote a story of a girl who got set up and sent to jail. In jail, she fell for one of the lady guards who liked her in return and made her stay as comfortable as possible when she worked her pod (extra food, getting the cell she preferred all to herself, more time out of her cell). Well, guess who this happened to in real life? Yeah, you guessed it. Only the real guard (DOs, they called them which was short for detention officer) was a redhead and not Mexican. I spent about half of my 6 months alone in cell #3, my favorite cell because it was the most out of the way on the upper tier. I hated #4 because it was a big 4-man cell with much less privacy than the dark little 2-man cells I preferred if I had to be in the damn place at all. That was the best it got for those of us, like myself, who were in Ad-Seg, AKA Administrative Segregation or Protective Custody. High profilers, child-related cases, or what the officers deemed as “scrawny beauties,” a category they decided I fit into rolls eyes were automatic seggies. Still didn’t keep me proposition-free, though, as every few cellies or so wanted to play with me, and I don’t mean with just a deck of cards.

Back on with the influencing – it’s very important that you never kill off those you love or at least care somewhat about if you’re using real-life people in your stories! And you might not always know it right away if you’ve had a dream that is going to come true. And not every dream will come true. If I dreamt Maliheh called me, that doesn’t mean she will. It would up the possibility in my mind, but I wouldn’t count on it for sure. I did dream of Nane, however, telling me I was attractive, and of course I woke up laughing, thinking the odds of that weren’t good. And I hadn’t even heard from her for a few weeks and was starting to wonder if I ever would again when I got the friend invite on Facebook and we exchanged a few messages. She had not only been busy but surprised to learn that I was attracted to her, LOL. IDK, maybe she thought it was a joke or something, though she must get hit on a lot. Even at 50, the woman’s utterly gorgeous!

Other than an experiment I did, just to see if I could do it, a few years ago which was quite a success on this gorgeous cashier I knew in Oregon named Liz, I decided I would never consciously try to make anyone like, love or lust me. I want them to do this on their own if they’re going to at all. So if I had any influence on Nane – and I don’t know if I actually did or not – it wasn’t deliberate. Nane is elegant, sophisticated, classy, stylish, beautiful and smart, and so I’m flattered as hell to have any attention she’ll give me, but it ain’t deliberate. And I really, really believe that Maliheh, simple, fresh and less glamorous and flashy in comparison but just as attractive, really does hate me, LOL.

While some of us may be better at it than others as with anything else, the ability to cast spells, heal/prevent illnesses, and influence the outcome of things can be developed with practice, time and patience. This doesn’t mean I can get everything I want just because of my mood and determination. I’m not God. But I have had countless dream premonitions, “vibes/feelings,” and I do seem to influence the outcome of things with little to no effort.

Later…

Andy said he’s been busy still, but things are well. Also, the weather’s hot and dry there. He said he thinks Nane looks her age, but she’s still attractive and older doesn’t always mean ugly (unless you’re me, LOL). He also agrees that yes, people seem to be more available the more you’re taken. Lastly, there are more bi and lesbos running around than ever before.

I know there is. It’s so much easier to meet people and also a bigger variety of types of people. Back when I was single you had to pretty much go to a gay bar, and not the greatest of people usually hang out in bars. Goes to prove once again that a woman was so not meant to be for me. I don’t know why. All I do know is that while I’d never give Tom up for all the money in the world, I do sometimes long for the passion I’ll never have with women.

The rat was tugging playfully on my shorts, climbing all over me, kissing my face, chasing me around, and begging for treats, so I only got two pages done of chapter 16. I’ve been a real waste product today, trying to decide on things more than actually doing anything.

I studied my Evil Amongst the Evergreens draft and notes trying to get a sense of where the beginning of the end may be, but I’m just not sure. I think I can wrap the story up in 3-4 more chapters. Part of me thinks it’ll be done by mid-October, but another part thinks it could still be around Christmas. Regardless of when it’s done, this is just the draft. The editing process, depending on how many changes I make and how big they are, will take 2-6 weeks.

The question is – I have two other story projects lined up to go next and I’m trying to decide if I should at least start mapping them out and fleshing out characters now rather than wait until Evil is all done. Hmm… should I, or shouldn’t I? It would slow Evil down, but probably not by much.

As I told Nane, I’m planning to have a German character in my book (I thought she’d make a fine one, LOL) and so I’m going to have some of it take place in Germany. Want to help? If you do, the question is how should the lead character – not the supporting lead – who lives in the US, end up in Germany for a while so they can meet? On business? If so, what business? Or should she win a trip there? Just like the real Nane and I, they start off as cyber friends. So I kind of need a good reason for them to suddenly end up in each other’s company when they live 6,000 miles apart.

Kim is being a pest, but she’s very nice. I just wish I could get this kind of attention from Nane, though I suppose even that would get old after a week or so. Kim asks the same damn questions over and over!

God, I can’t get that woman off my mind (not that someone else has been off of it just because she’s been on it)! For the first time in my nearly 45 years, I am coming to wish a certain country I never gave much thought to either way wasn’t so damn far away. But she loves to travel here, there and everywhere. So maybe someday we will meet. We’d be all wrong for each other, but I think we’d probably meet at least for fun if we lived near each other. She smokes and loves to travel and socialize, so that’s why I couldn’t imagine being with her if I were single and we lived near each other. Me, I’m more of a smoke-free, stay-in-one-place, leave-me-the-fuck-alone kind of gal. With Tom working I get the perfect amount of space. I see him a few hours a day and the rest of the time I’m off by myself. Except for weekends I don’t like spending the whole day with others day after day after day.

sighs I sure pick the right people to have crushes on, don’t I? One hates me and the other is on the other side of the planet. It’s still fun, though.

Nane’s down another friend. Now she has 38. Is she weeding people out, or are people getting sick of her or pissed at her?

Waking up to an “oho . :))” on my wall from Nane in regards to my old but very racy profile picture on Facebook put a definite smile on my face. I admit I purposely put that pic on figuring that if it didn’t generate any comments from her, it would at least catch her eye, LOL. Oho? Could the German hottie be gay herself? And could the influencer really be back at it again?

At first I thought she was saying “uh-oh,” after I posted an article about crime in Turkey, saying I hoped she’d be careful.

What with the good mood she put me in, I knew that was the time for Tom to get scratching! He got 3 tickets yesterday, but as an influencer, I find it best not to jump on them right away. I like to leave them lying around for a while so the “energy” can flow into them. While only 1 out of 3 tickets won a free ticket, we’re up to 4 out of 7 wins! That’s over half – woo-hoo!

Someone used the Fisher/Buttafuoco case as an example of the extremities some people are capable of forgiving. It had been a long time since I heard anything about the people involved, so I went and looked Amy up on Wiki and was like, WTF?!?! Journalist, writer, actress?! Why is it that the bigger an asshole you are in life the more success you have??? Do I gotta go out and kick the crap out of someone for Tom to get hired on full-time where he works? Maybe get him a raise by robbing Jesse while he’s at work? Or maybe if I’d just taken the time to vandalize someone’s property we wouldn’t have been uninsured since 2003. beats head Why is life so backward at times???

I decided not to auto-post these entries to Twitter or Facebook anymore. I figure that anyone who wants to visit my blog can just click on the links I have there, though I might post entries to Facebook again eventually.

Not many interesting dreams lately. Just one of Nane I don’t remember, another of Maliheh I also don’t remember, living somewhere else, and cleaning my parents’ place in Florida. I also dreamt that some guy left another one of those “hi sexy” messages in my shoutbox, and I replied with, “Now why can’t I get this kind of attention from Nane or Maliheh?” I probably would write that too, LOL.

Alison had asked me if I ever wrote anything lighthearted, and duh! I forgot about the short stories I sold. I mean literally sold the rights to and all that. I’d post them, but I’m not allowed to since I did sell them and no longer own the rights to them. But yeah, I was what’s known as a ghostwriter for a few people who wanted certain things written.

I signed up on a site where you write journal entries in other languages for native speakers to correct. It lets you choose two languages. Because my German isn’t good enough to write in yet, I’m alternating between Spanish and Italian.

Today was a classic example of how I don’t usually get the things I want, but I sure do a great job of getting what I don’t want. beats head Instead of hearing more from Nane, I got to hear from Marie instead. Argh! She tried to chat with me on Yahoo, but I blocked her.

Someone recently said I should be less forgiving. Well, I can’t exactly qualify for Miss Forgiving of the Century if I won’t forgive her, though it’s more that I don’t want to bother with her than that there’s anything to “forgive.”

She would complain about being alone, but as I quickly came to see, she’s alone because of how she is. Half a dozen times I went through the same cycle of shit with her, and had she stopped when she said she would, then we would still be in touch with each other today. But she didn’t and she was driving me crazy.

She told me a million times she loved me. But did she? Did she really? Or is she simply obsessed with whoever’s paying her the most attention at the moment?

Yeah, she probably did love me in her own way. And I’ll always love her back in some ways and I still think about her almost every day, too. But I can’t take the dozens of emails each day and the paranoid accusations if I don’t reply the instant she sends them!

She knew she had a problem, so she told me. But then why did she keep fucking up? Could her situation be like that of a smoker who knows they shouldn’t smoke and that it’s bad for them, but just can’t help themselves anyway?

I’d rather Nane or Maliheh email me twice as much every day! They wouldn’t automatically assume I was plotting against them and that I no longer gave a damn about them if I didn’t reply right away.

So I still feel the same – I’m sorry she was abused and has the illness she has. I do empathize with her and I know it’s not her fault. And maybe she really is powerless to help herself and control the way she is, even though she is in therapy and on medication. But that doesn’t mean I have to stick around and deal with it, does it?

So yeah, I’m still a bit of a selfish little ice princess after all, right or wrong.

I’m also frustrated at times, too. I have these urges and desires that can never be fulfilled and it gets old sometimes. I wish there were two of me like I was telling a friend earlier. I’d leave one of me here with Tom, my soul mate, and the other me would go out to play! I’d run over to Germany in a heartbeat if Nane would enjoy some company from my other self. And even though my other self would hope for more than just hanging out together, that other self would still be happy to hang with the tall, dark and lovely Nane!

I can just see some of you out there shaking your heads and muttering to yourselves, “I can’t believe this chick has the guts to bare her soul like this.” But yeah, I get horny at times too, and while I love my husband, we’re more like damn good friends as is usually the case with most long-term couples. Sex with the same person year after year gets to be too much like playing the same song over and over again no matter how good it may be. I could ask him to do me anytime I wanted, but just haven’t really cared to for a while now. It’s like I’d rather sit and wish for the impossible. beats head Maybe I’m crazier than Marie, LOL. Oh well, there are worse things in life than being sexually frustrated at times. Maybe that’s part of why I like writing stories; because then I can be and do anything I want, and go anywhere I want to go, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to experience in real life what’s coming up in my current book!

What’s up with Maliheh lately? She made her first check of my blog at 6am her time yesterday morning. That’s early for her!

I sent Paul the second picture I downloaded of Nane that I’ve been drooling over and asked what he thought. He said she’s got great boobs and a cute nose, but her hands are odd. He says they’re powerful-looking with thick fingers. She also looks a bit scary and like she knows what she wants in life. I agree with all that he said, but I don’t know about the powerful, thick-fingered hands.

Even though I canceled my MySpace account (damn it) I can still look people up over there. Out of curiosity, I looked Nane up, and when I learned she recently turned 50 I nearly fainted with shock! I thought she was 10-15 years younger! Guess I ain’t lying when I say I’m attracted to older women, LOL. If I could create that other copy of myself, and if she was gay (or at least bi), she’d be perfect for me. Beautiful dark hair and eyes, 5’ 7” in height, another language lover – it doesn’t get much better than that! But I don’t know much about her. She could be a bitch for all I know (she smokes – yuck!), something else I seem to fall for a little too easily, LOL. She does look a bit intimidating in one of her pictures, but as I said, apparently that’s part of the turn-on for me.

She’s single, slender, and an atheist, too. And Nane, if you’re reading this and you don’t like my saying these things about you, let me know and I will edit it out and shut my mouth. :)

Got a message from Paula, who’s looking for a new job and still hopelessly trying to find Mr. Right. And I always tease her, of course, saying she just needs to change genders. That’s ok, I don’t exactly have it all together myself. Would I be blogging about lusting over someone in the East who probably hates me, and someone in Germany who’s probably as strictly dickly as Paula is if I did?

It’s Friday night which means Jesse’s out, the dogs are going crazy, and the only way to concentrate is with the sound machines going. Another month and it’ll be an all-day, everyday thing.

Whiskey came to greet Tom halfway down the driveway when he was taking the trash up the other day.

Nane finally friended me on Facebook – yay! And she changed her LM profile pic back to a different one of herself and also checked out my blog. She didn’t comment, but the timing pretty much tells me it was probably her. She’s in northwestern Germany in a place called Detmold, Nordrhein-Westfalen. Towards the Netherlands and not far from Mitch in Cardiff.

What’s weird is that I swear she had 43 friends when I first accepted the friend invite, but now she’s down to 39 friends.

She’s been to Turkey before as she has many travel pictures in her Facebook photo albums, doesn’t appear to be married or have kids, and I don’t think she’s ever been to the US either. She has a great body for her age and dresses very stylishly. She is classy, sexy, sophisticated and trendy. I downloaded another picture of her, so now I have two.

I guess Nane is her middle name and her full name is actually Marion Nane L. Boring!

It’s funny that she also has a friend with Maliheh’s last name. Does everyone know someone with that last name, LOL? It’s a fairly common name, so I guess it’s not much of a surprise.

The frustrating thing is not being able to understand most of her page as it’s in German and Turkish. But this – along with having such a lovely teacher – gives me more of an incentive to learn more German!

Maliheh’s back. :) She’s been in twice today that I know of.

It’s just so cool that the dream was a premonition. Now if only I could dream of being buddies with Maliheh, Tom being hired on, me winning big…

Five things come to mind when I think of the last several months – unemployment, languages, Andy, Maliheh and Nane.

Yes, I’m talking about the Maliheh I so briefly knew nearly 20 years ago, but first, after a long, stressful 22 months, and wondering at times if we were going to make it, Tom got a good-paying job as a temp worker! We hope he gets hired on and that we’re both finally insured soon enough!

I found Maliheh on Facebook now living in the southeast, played with her for a while, then felt bad for it, and also for falsely accusing her of playing with me in return on Formspring when it was really Andy. Yeah, he and I are friends again, but his timing sure sucked! He started playing with me two weeks before I sent Maliheh a less-than-kind message on Facebook which she ignored. I was so sure it was her playing with me until Andy identified himself.

Andy’s done well for himself, so I’ve been pleased to learn. He’s still single, but he has plenty of dates and has quit smoking pot and cigarettes. He also owns his own cleaning business and condo next to his mother’s condo.

Back to Maliheh. We met in a gay bar summer of 1991. I was instantly hot for her. But despite swapping numbers with her, her kissing me on the cheek, and a few phone chats, the feeling, apparently, was never mutual. Thanks to my poor choice of words, I gave her the impression I was “Dear Johning” her one time when I really did want to see her. I was just scared after being burned before. I didn’t mean to come off as I did, but it was too late, and boy did I get a hell of a nasty reaction from Maliheh! I was shocked, pissed and hurt. I admit it. And I also admit I lashed out by prank-calling her. Soon after I received a subpoena to appear in court, but the case was dismissed a few months later because I had other legal issues going on at the time of a similar nature.

Anyway, I gave Maliheh the link to my journal and began writing a story with us as lead characters where I base a fictitious future on a fact-based past, all the while what I later came to suspect was an impersonator was leaving comments about it, plus other things, but I won’t get into it in detail here right now. Now I just want to cover the main highlights of my life.

I told Maliheh that I am willing to move on, be friends, and that I hope she can forgive me and would also like to be friends, but have yet to hear from her if I ever do at all. I still have a thing for her too, and she knows it. I’m just not sure she realized how much I was attracted to her and had hoped for a relationship in the past. I guess this revelation and the story must come as a real surprise to her, but like I said, I have yet to hear from her.

Marie and I are done. Or better yet, I’m done with her. I will always love and remember her and wish the best for her, but I just couldn’t deal with her anymore. She stopped communicating with me when her obsession turned to some girl in Texas. When they “broke up,” she tried to focus back on me but I wouldn’t answer her calls. I just can’t deal with the way she’d overwhelm me with so much attention, her moods, her paranoia, her false accusations, etc.

My current cyber crush (besides Maliheh) is Nane, a woman in Germany I met on the language site who has given me more of an incentive to further my German. Having a good-looking teacher helps, LOL. I’m continuing to polish up my Italian and Portuguese and hope to one day be as fluent as I am in Spanish. I’m also learning Esperanto, might go back and learn more French, and still hope to learn Hawaiian.

Nane and I are friends on Facebook, but I’d say the attraction part is as non-mutual as it is with Maliheh unless either of them ever tells me differently, LOL.

We recently got a wonderful rat I named Tinkerboy. He is dark brown and loads of fun just like Tinkerbell was. He’s very smart and friendly and definitely one of the fastest rats we ever had! He loves running around loose and climbing all over us.

I am still cyber pals with Mitch and Alison, as well as a girl named Kim, but haven’t heard from Dorian. He seemed to disappear when he left this site.

Unless Maliheh visits my blog within the next hour or two, this will be the first day in quite a while that she didn’t visit. Something I said? Something going on with her? At the risk of being as paranoid as Marie (like I was with Nane), could she really have it in for me after all? I mentioned that I should have the story done in the first week or so of next month. Could it be she’s decided to wait until then or until she’s emailed the rest of the story, not wanting to give me any more “attention?” Maybe I shouldn’t be too revealing with my thoughts and plans. It could influence what she does for the worse.

But could I influence her to contact me by printing that I’m not going to post or send her the rest of the story unless she contacts me and asks me to? I guess that would depend on how badly she wants to know how the story ends, wouldn’t it?

We’ll just have to wait and see how long or how often she fails to visit me. Right now I’m guessing something came up on her end, and that if she’s going to go away it won’t be until after the story’s done. She’s always seemed just as interested in the comments as she is in the story.

Nothing from Nane today, though I didn’t expect anything. If I don’t hear from her by the first, I’ll wish her a safe and happy trip to Turkey, saying I hope she’ll share pictures of her trip when she returns (which I’ll secretly hope includes her lovely self), but I doubt I’ll see any more pics of her ever again. Or that she’ll ever add me on Facebook.

I just wish I knew how and when this Maliheh thing will end! I was waiting till then to fill Tom in on all the details, but right now I’m still guessing that whether or not she’s impressed with the story, she’ll always hate me and will never contact me. I think she’ll fade away with the end of the story and maybe only come around once in a blue moon from there on out.

Assuming he gets it, I sent Mary and Dave an email asking how they are and included my blog link. I don’t care how they are; I’m just curious to see if he visits my blog. Other than Miss Perfect putting out the distress signal for us a few years ago, people who use my husband and go out of their way to insult me every chance they get aren’t people I care about.

Nickolena does not have kids, so I just discovered. She’s published more of her MySpace page and has chosen “undecided” for kids. Undecided usually means you don’t want them. Well, good for her that she at least doesn’t have any kids yet for she’s only 16. She falls too easily for guys and has the most “amazing” little brother, she says. Wow, not that many 16-year-olds would say that about their little brothers or sisters. And I remember she was oh so disappointed when he was born and she learned she wouldn’t be getting a sister.

Her family will always be there for her, she also says. I hope so. As it is she loses out on one of her aunts and uncles thanks to her selfish, compassionless grandmother and aunt. And of course David and Evie would side with them before they ever sided with us.

Alison has a long-time cyber friend named Kim, whom I’ve also become friends with. Both are 30. Alison’s in Nebraska, Kim’s in Connecticut. And while Alison is dealing with stage 1 of breast cancer, I’m finding Kim a bit annoying. She tweets so damn much that I have to keep scrolling to make sure I haven’t missed anything from others I follow. Then she complains about the textramp bothering her after she writes a “story” about her with Alison, her and I as leads. Well, what does she expect? I told her that the less she writes about her the more Molly will go away.

Molly’s amazing me so far, though it’s only been a few days, by saying “no hard feelings, I’ll leave you alone,” in my shoutbox, and actually doing just that. She still views my blog a handful of times a day, but she hasn’t been in my shoutbox.

Yes, yes, life is getting better! Tom’s job is not only continuing to go well, but ticket #4 won $4, Maliheh still visits me 4-8 times a day via both bookmarks and Facebook, and I heard from Nane! Another good dream premonition! I’ve been so excited, though I don’t know why I get so psyched over someone I’ll never see just because of how they look, LOL. She sent me two messages and corrected one of my submissions. Before I elaborate, here’s her “main” message:

hi ratgirl......

u didn´t offend me or anything like that, I was just a little surprised . :)

Busy? yes, I guess so, I just spent a whole lot of time planing my birthparty for 18 people. That meant a hell of a lot of shopping, cooking, decorating … it was a real nice party, I even had a belly dancer. It took me and my friend almost three days to clean up my appartment afterwards . :)

Also, I just started a new job, my colleague (how do you spell that?) was on vacation for 2,5 weeks and I had a lot of late nights in the office. She returned today, thank God for small favors . :)) PLUS I´ve been planing a small round-trip around Turkey next month, spending lots of hours in the internet at night. Everything´s booked now and I am off to Cappadokia in 2 weeks . :))

flowers, huh? . :)) what happened to the rat . :)
slm
Nane

I don’t know what the slm means, but I’m just so glad I heard from her! After 3 weeks I really didn’t think I would. So I guess she’s just busy with work, friends and travels as opposed to kids. I’m now getting the impression she has no kids unless they’re grown and on their own.

A week ago I sent a message asking her about the weather there from the account I set up in Tom’s name and got no reply, starting to think maybe she was ignoring everyone. Then I sent one last message from “Tom” (I hate to be too deceptive) asking again about the weather. When she replied to him saying she thinks November’s the worst month of all because it’s cold, gray and rainy, I was more convinced than ever that yes, she not only figured out that I liked her, but was offended when I confirmed it when I spilled the beans on her. Then I decided to try one last time, asking her about German holidays, even though I could look it up myself.

And then I woke up to her messages just like in the dream! The one about the holidays wasn’t worth copying in here because it was kind of short. I’m a little surprised she didn’t comment when I “thanked her for the nice comment on my blog,” she never gave me. Again, I know it was kind of deceptive, but I threw that into the message I sent telling her I was attracted to her to see if that would help generate a response.

I guess this won’t be much of an entry since there isn’t much to say at the moment. Tom, who gets up at 3:30 AM, will be crashing in about an hour and I’ll be spending the night concentrating mostly on my language studies and my story.

Just to clarify things about the story – some of the events and personality traits of the characters may be loosely based on the actual people portrayed in the story but were not meant to literally represent the people themselves.

I trimmed Tom’s hair earlier and he’s decided to keep dying it until and if he gets hired on so they don’t think he was trying to deceive them or anything. I hope he gets hired on so that he can then amaze them with how fast he goes gray, LOL!

The rat is getting to be like a naughty puppy, LOL. It’s a good thing they’re easy to train because before I got up Tom said he started pulling things out of the little wastebasket by his desk, and he’s starting to run off with small objects as well. So we have to be careful about what we put where.

Mitch surprised me by leaving a comment on my last entry (chapter 12), saying my writing style is improving.

Between 6 loads of laundry in our tiny little portable washer, a rat that never sleeps or wants to spend any time alone, and a husband I was enjoying hanging out with, I have been pretty busy so far today with little time for myself. Tonight I will probably get on with my story and things like that.

This rat definitely prefers to be the chaser as opposed to the chased. He really ran Tom ragged while I was in the shower, chasing him all around the living room. He continues to be loads of fun and he really loves hanging out with us. So much so that he’s a pest at times when I’m busy. I have to put him in his cage so he doesn’t get underfoot (literally) when I’m cleaning or doing things that take more concentration.

Things are continuing to be better, though I had some disturbing dreams last night. Tom assures me they’re nothing to worry about. I actually had tons of dreams, but the disturbing one is the only one I remember. We were living in someplace that might’ve actually been a two-bedroom, though I don’t know where it was or how old/new it was. Money was obviously a problem again and I was bitching to Tom about it, saying “Look how we live!” The bummy old furniture was rattier than anything we’d ever owned. Except for a few pieces, our furniture is actually kind of nice in reality. And even those pieces that are the least nice aren’t that bad.

In the next part of the dream Tom “found” Miss Perfect online in some forum and asked her to come see us. I guess the plan was to try to hit her for money when she got to us, though in reality, we’d discuss our real intentions up front, not that Miss Perfect would ever give a damn about us. And as Tom pointed out when I was telling him about the dream, she’s not the type to be very sociable online. Her life pretty much only consists of work, TV, and McDonald's. In fact, right this very minute she’s no doubt watching TV with a burger in one hand and fries in the other since it’s the weekend.

But the fact that I dreamt about money problems, be it in a realistic kind of way or not, always worries me after all we’ve been through. The dream ended with Miss Perfect coming to visit us, but I’m not sure if she helped us. When she arrived I ran up to her and gave her a hug she didn’t return, then she ordered a pizza and asked to borrow $35 in cash because she didn’t feel like running out to her car which was where she left her purse. I took Tom aside at one point and asked if he thought she would help us. He said, “I don’t know. If she doesn’t help us or pay back the $35 then we’ll be worse off than we are now.” The dream ended with me waking up the next day to find them gone. I ran into the living room to see if there was any cash lying around or a note from Tom, but there was nothing.

Tom is sure it doesn’t mean anything bad is going to happen, reminding me that pizzas don’t cost $35 and that the job is going well. We probably won’t know for a while if he’s going to get hired on, but according to him there’s been plenty of work, the work is straightforward, so he doesn’t expect to be laid off anytime soon if they’re going to end up doing that. In fact, he said that because I’ve done without things for so long I should indulge a little and take $50 a month to do what I want with as there would still be over $200 left in savings. Just maybe I will, though I do intend to mostly stick to things I need rather than want. The only thing I’ll get that I just want is those perfume roll-ons I’m so addicted to. We could really use new sheets and towels, and I still need a new desk chair, too.

Got up, checked my mail, answered Formspring and MyOpera questions, and now I can’t get back into MyOpera due to heavy traffic. I’m writing this in Word, as I usually do, and will copy it over as soon as it will let me.

LM is the absolute worst site when it comes to glitches, though MyOpera glitches are getting more frequent. With other sites that are glitchy, they at least manage to fix the problem in a day or two, but not LM. For a week now I haven’t been able to do the writing and speaking parts of my Esperanto lessons. Therefore it won’t tally up my final scores. I’ve learned enough of the language by now to be able to say that it’s an easy enough language, and so I would probably pass all 4 courses in the upper 90s. When you already know Spanish, Portuguese and especially Italian, since Esperanto is more closely related to Italian, there really isn’t much to it. German is still proving tougher than I thought it would be, but it’s progressing.

I canceled my MySpace account today (though it will take 48 hours to take effect) because I simply have no use for it. In the last 6 months alone I haven’t done much more than send Maliheh those two nasty messages I’ll forever feel just horrible about when I thought she was harassing me (damn Andy’s timing even though he had no way of knowing!) and accepted friend invites from strangers. All my friends there were strangers, none of whom I friended except for Gloria Estefan. I never even bothered sending Maliheh a friend invite there.

Next goes Facebook – maybe. Still not sure on that one because I not only have real friends and family there (Jessie was a childhood friend), but good cyber pals as well. And of course there’s Maliheh, LOL, who may or may not be able to see my friend invite, and who may or may not ever accept it if she can. I still hope she’ll one day accept it if she can see it, even though I don’t ever expect her to feel as I do. But we all gotta do what we gotta do, and maybe her not rejecting it is her way of accepting it. Like she’s kind of meeting me halfway or something. Guess I’ll never know. I know it’s pointless to keep beating myself up for the mistakes I’ve made where she’s concerned and that there’s only so many times I can apologize for my mistakes and let her know I hope we can move on and that I’ll be here for her if she ever wants to talk. I am naturally curious about her. Of course a “silent” friendship is ok too, LOL, if she ever wants to accept the invite, but still not communicate with me.

I’ve had crushes on many other women before, most of which wore off in a few months or less, whether anything happened between us or not. Yet here I am nearly 20 years later still crushing on Maliheh. Can anyone tell me why that is? LOL

Alison suggested Maliheh may contact me after the story’s finished. Hmm…I wondered this, too; if perhaps she’s just waiting until then. Time will tell!

The stats are kind of weird today. It usually overwrites the last time a person came in on the same date, but today Maliheh’s listed as coming in from Facebook at 10am, and then by bookmark at noon, apparently getting antsy for my next entry. She might’ve thought my account got hacked because MyOpera was glitchy again today and I slept much later.

And again she ignored me when I figured out another email addy of hers and sent a message saying that someone on Formspring “told” me to email her there – was it her or someone she knows?

But the story is obviously important enough to her not to care that I can see every time she visits my blog. I still hope to hear from her when the story’s done, but I won’t count on it. She’s back to coming in via bookmark since I stopped sending Formspring questions to Facebook. She hits my blog an average of 4 times a day. :) But will she ever talk to me?!?!

I guess my rat must be on drugs or something. I swear I’ve never had a rat this active! I let him out for his exercise earlier. Most rats love people, but I still can’t believe how friendly he is! He was giving me kisses like crazy, climbing and jumping all over me, exploring the place, running up and down like someone lit a stick of dynamite up his ass… LOL

Now’s when we would’ve gone from worried to scared had he not yet found a job, since it now would have been less than a month to go before the unemployment ran out.

Someone recently asked me on Formspring if I believed in ghosts and angels. I said ghosts – maybe. Angels, no. Yet I can’t help but feel like something was looking out for us in this case. We were really cutting it close! Now all we have to do is hope that if they’re not going to hire him on, they at least don’t let him go before the end of the year. If he can make it till the end of the year then he’ll qualify for another 6 months of unemployment and we should have it made. Then again, things are still so bad overall that it’s looking like they’re going to extend the benefits in November. We ended up really lucky in this case and once again we really skirted all kinds of potential disasters. There are so many things that could have gone wrong and things could’ve been a lot worse, even hopeless. I know I sure felt like giving up at times along the way. Poor Maliheh, LOL. I survived to write the story after all – hahaha!!! Maybe I’ll work on it later after I clean the bathroom and get some other things done around here.

Later…

Looks like Irene, my “friend” in the Philippines, was stealing excerpts from someone’s book for her blog. The author contacted me after she saw me leave some comments regarding her entries saying she doesn’t know Irene and she’s the author and copyright owner of a book that can easily be verified (she gave me contact info). She contacted Irene and depending on her response, she may take further action.

I told Irene, who deleted the blog, that I wouldn’t judge her for it, though this is certainly a concern for me and any other writer. I don’t care if someone copies/pastes my stuff or shares it with friends. But I would absolutely want to kill anyone who might make money from my creative works, and I know God would let them do something like that and get away with it.

Shortly before Tom got in I noticed the water pressure was sluggish again. If I weren’t so damn blind (even with my glasses on) I’d have seen Jesse’s new number written underneath his old one, but since I didn’t, Tom called him when he got in. It’s days like this that make me think maybe we should move. I’m sick of the water problems, and God knows I’m not looking forward to the non-stop barking that’s to come in a month or so and go on and on till next summer. I’m sick of being cramped in here and having just one bathroom, too!

Jesse was actually driving in with his son and the dogs when we called him and met him at the fork. I asked if he’d set up his voice messaging since I’m going to be here more often by myself and don’t know the first thing about plumbing and electrical stuff. Tom showed me how to turn the water off in case anything springs a leak, but that’s it. Jesse said he didn’t know how to set up his voice messaging and said I could text him instead. He also asked Tom about the job. Meanwhile, whatever happened with the well was quickly fixed.

With the pressure back up again, I let the rat back out. At one point he came running towards me with something in his mouth, but I couldn’t tell what it was cuz I had my glasses off (I hate having to wear glasses and wish I could get up the nerve to wear contacts!). So I grabbed him and ran for my glasses and saw it was a piece of a pork bone another rat had dragged off at some point.

I think I know why Marie may’ve called me. Because she drove that Texas chick crazy and lost her. Every now and then I check out her Facebook page out of curiosity (we can still do this privately, but since she knows she can’t view my blog privately, that’s probably why she hasn’t) and found she’s down from 11 friends to 6, most of which is just family. The chick from Texas, as well as a few others from there, are gone. Obviously, the poor chick got sick of the endless cycle of shit I had to deal with where Marie would promise not to jump the gun and be so paranoid when she didn’t respond to each of her 20 messages in 5 seconds. So now that she lost her she wants to try to get back with me, but like I said, I know some people just don’t change and so she’s just going to have to learn from this and quit being so obsessive if she ever wants to hang on to anybody.

Maybe it’s just me, but despite having the crush from hell on Maliheh for nearly 20 years, even she would drive me crazy if she sent me as many messages as Marie did, and even without the paranoia attached. Once every 2-3 days or less is what I’d prefer when it comes to keeping in touch with people by email or on Facebook, gorgeous or not.

Something hit me about Maliheh’s not accepting or rejecting my friend request. Maybe that is her way of moving on and being “friends;” by at least not rejecting it. I guess time will tell.

Molly only hit my blog – yeah, only - 37 times yesterday, and today she’s hit me 21 times so far.

I heard hammering from up at the summit, and I said to myself, oh no, not again! Please don’t tell me you’re going to do this every day until next summer just like last year!

I dreamt I got an email alert saying I had a message on Facebook from Maliheh, but when I went to log in, my inbox was empty.

Then I dreamt I got a phone call where she says, “Hello, troublemaker,” and I replied with, “Hello, boss,” but then the line went dead.

In other words, I can dream, but I can’t have (a message or call from her).

Before I get into the other dream I had of her, in real life I got a voice message from Marie. Argh! Yeah, I knew she’d try again. I’m surprised she hasn’t hit me by email or been on my blog, though I know other Facebookers from New York, not just her. Got a few direct hits or bookmarks, 3 Formspringers, and 2 twits. All in a New York minute.

All she said was to please text her or call her or something because she’s got to talk to me. Oh, come on, Marie! You don’t need to talk to me. There is nothing important you can tell me that I absolutely need to know. I didn’t lose a purse which you have found, you don’t know any of my friends who for some reason can only get a hold of me through you… so what can you possibly need to tell me that you haven’t already told me before? That you love me? That you know you have a problem but can’t always help it when your paranoid side comes out? That you promise not to be so damn persistent?

I went through enough cycles of her obsessive pushiness to know that it would only be a matter of time before the emails were coming in like crazy and she would accuse me of plotting against her when I didn’t respond right away because she either went off her meds or was PMSing.

Why is it that when it comes to women all I can get are the crazies while the so-called “normal” ones want nothing to do with me?!?! I hate to sound mean since a part of me will always love Marie and want the best for her. I know it’s not her fault she was abused, but many of us have been abused, such as myself, yet we learn to deal with it. I’ve been physically, emotionally and verbally abused, I’ve been starved, I’ve been lied to by those I was supposed to be able to trust most of all, and I’ve tried to take my own life. Then when I got older I started lashing out at society in general in the form of pranks, and God only knows how many people I may’ve assaulted that burned me in any way had I not been so scrawny. I was off to a slow start in learning to deal with my anger and all that, and sure it’s a bummer that Maliheh won’t talk to me, but I don’t go around accusing her of it being because she’s plotting to burn my place down or anything like that. Some people just don’t want to talk to us. Period.

People weren’t meant to be free of mistakes. It’s when we make the same damn mistakes over and over again that we’ve got a problem. I went through the same shit with Marie half a dozen times or more in just a few months. That tells me something about her right there. Again, I hate to sound non-accepting, unforgiving and insensitive and like I’m better than others. That’s not the case. I just accept the fact that some people aren’t going to change and I have just as much right as anyone else does to step away from those I feel are a negative influence of any kind on me. It isn’t that I haven’t forgiven Marie. There’s nothing really to forgive. I just don’t think we should bother with each other is all. There are only a few people I would never ever forgive even with a million apologies and a million dollars. In fact, I would applaud anyone who harmed them and even kiss the ground they walked on, too. Those who know me or who have read my bio know who they are.

When I think of every Brenda that wasn’t good enough for me and every Kacey that I wasn’t good enough for, I still have to wonder why. Why is it I can get stable guys like Tom despite how few men are stable compared to women, but the only kind of woman I could ever possibly have as a potential side dish to the main course must be crazy! She just has to be. But if she’s with it, she’s a no-no, even if she’s a bitch. How insulting, huh? Then again, I am allowed to have sane ones for friends, both in cyberspace and not, so I guess it isn’t hopeless after all when it comes to a certain someone, LOL. Well, she may not be “crazy enough” for me to say so, but your Caligirl who can never be your Caligirl since she could never “qualify” sends a warm dose of affection your way regardless of her under-qualifications. :)

I compared our 10-day forecast to Maliheh’s. I’m so jealous, LOL. Keep it up and I just may put her state on our list of possibilities for when it’s time to “go home” if she wants an underqualified part-time, non-live-in girlfriend, and I hate to say it but at her age, you just can’t afford to be so picky. It sucks and it’s not fair, but that’s just life. So I hope for her sake she is happily settled down with Miss Right-n-Qualified even if I’d feel a tinge of jealousy if I knew she was. She better be good to her too, if she exists! But it still snows there and I’m still no doubt too nutty, too short and too feminine for the likes of Miss “Haddad” with all my womanly peeks, curves and valleys.

I made some minor changes to my last chapter, then decided I just didn’t like that Big Mac, LOL. Joni jokes about how getting married shouldn’t take much longer than it takes to eat a Big Mac, and actually, it takes a bit of time to eat one of those things. So I made it a slice of pizza instead.

This rat is so much fun even if he gets to be a pest at times demanding so much attention and always wanting to be let out. He bolts out of his cage like a racehorse as soon as I open his door. He is a definite keeper and much like Tinkerbell. The only difference is that he’s not quite as smart as she was, but female rats are usually smarter anyway.

Tinkerboy is definitely the most playful. It’s so cute how he tugs playfully on my clothes, chases me, and loves it when I chase him back. As soon as I got up he was all over me, giving me kisses and just totally glad to see me, LOL. He’s been wound up ever since I got up at 9:30 yet rats are typically nocturnal.

He’s very gentle when he plays. He’s put his whole mouth on my fingers where I can feel his teeth, but he never bites.

I can see him from where I am in the bedroom (my computer is in the corner of the bedroom). He’s lying down now, but I know that if I just stood up from this chair, he’d be climbing the walls of his cage anxious for me to come and play with him, LOL. He literally tried to climb the wall yesterday. It was so funny! He jumped up as if he could grab hold of it and climb it. It was funny hearing him hit the wall with the little splat and then slide down it. He sure jumps high, too.

He stole a sip of my coffee earlier, LOL. Not sure if he likes it very much, but he loves popcorn.

I was singing earlier and he cracked me up. I sometimes talk to him from where I sit at my desk and he responds to my voice by excitedly hopping around and climbing the wall closest to me. I threw on headphones and started singing and he was so sure I was talking to him, LOL. He calmed down during a musical break in the song and curled up inside his burrow. But then as soon as I started singing again, out he flew. It took two songs for him to realize I wasn’t talking to him after all.

LM has even worse tech issues than Formspring, believe it or not, and so I’m going to see about finishing up with the Esperanto elsewhere cuz I’m really sick of it.

When I got up this morning I couldn’t walk at first. The muscles in my right leg are badly pulled. For someone who’s in shape and used to running, I couldn’t figure out why, but then I remembered I almost spilled on the gravel up the top of the hill on my way down so that’s why. So no running for me today until it heals.

I don’t know why, but my blog is getting an incredible amount of traffic lately. People are getting pushed off the list (I can only see 30 at a time) faster than I can see them.

Later…

Now that’s interesting. Look at the last paragraph in my last entry (about traffic pushing people off the list faster than I can see them, though, that’s not quite true). Well, interestingly enough, Maliheh came in at around 4:25, then again at 4:49, as if she might want a better chance of appearing on the list to let me know she dropped by. That’s a nice thought, but who can know for sure?

I logged out of my main LM account and went into the one I created in Tom’s name back when you could only load so many courses into one account. Then I messaged Nane to see if I would get a reply. I said I was planning to travel to Germany on business next year and was wondering what the weather was like. I wanted to see if it was just me she didn’t want to reply to, but nope. She ignored Tom too, even though she’s been in since I sent the message. She’s back to doing lots of reviews. I’d say that rather than being spooked by me, she just decided she wanted to use LM strictly for reviewing submissions and not for socializing. The only other thing she did was change her profile picture again to a more scenic one of a yacht in a little inlet somewhere. I doubt she’ll ever put herself back on after telling her how gorgeous I thought she was, LOL. But like I said, maybe I’ve got nothing to do with it and she would’ve changed it anyway. God, I hate to sound as paranoid as Marie! LOL

I was out running and saw Jesse at the fork as he was bulldozing his way up to his place. We waved to each other and I ran up and down the drive. I didn’t quite go all the way out to the main road because it was getting a little warm out there. I’d still rather trade temps with Maliheh! It’s too cold really early in the morning these days.

I thought Formspring was down earlier, but it turns out that I just had to re-login. Just so you know, I’m no longer having it send questions to Facebook because not all of them get sent there. There’s just no point in having something that only works some of the time. So you will need to go directly to Formspring to see any questions/comments you may want to see.

I don’t remember one single dream from last night, but I noticed a new trend with the palpitations. For the last week, they seem to come at the end of my day but have been mild, so that much is good.

I will try to finish chapter 10 today unless something comes up. I like Alison’s Domme idea for Maliheh, LOL, but am still unsure as to where to go next.

Gave my Twitter and Formspring pages a makeover. Speaking of Formspring, I will soon get over and answer what questions came in since last night. I was off to a slow start today since a certain furry little creature demanded some food, love and exercise. I let him run around loose for a while. He runs to the door of his cage almost every time I pass by, LOL.

Anyway, right now the rat is taking a spit bath and the Textroll had viewed my blog 208 times by the time I shut down last night. That’s 91 times in just yesterday alone. Now why can’t someone as hot as Maliheh pay me this much attention? Even a tiny fraction of the attention would be nice from her, LOL. Oh, well. I guess we can’t win ‘em all. If anything she probably hates me. Grrrrr!!! Yeah, I’m getting more convinced of this the longer I go without hearing from her on Facebook, but I’ll admit that this is just an assumption on my part. Only she herself can know how she feels and what she’s thinking. I just hope she’ll share it with me someday, even if it’s not all good.

Getting back to the Texturd, it’s been harassing my buds and I on our shoutboxes every chance it gets and so we have to turn them off since the block feature is worthless for that. I gotta admit that as sad, annoying and creepy as it may be, it was also funny the way Alison was correcting her misspelled words. I even played with her for a while. Here’s what was exchanged between us before I turned the shoutbox off again.

I loved how Alison came in in the end and said, “Jodi, you’d make a great teacher.”

Aside from these childish games that are really getting old, I gotta wonder why someone who was supposedly raped would reach out to a total stranger about it that hasn’t had any training whatsoever in dealing with personal crises of this nature? Or was this just something she was using as a pitch to try to buddy up to me in order to hopefully pit me against Alison and Kim? I guess I’ll never know, nor do I really want to know. All I do know for sure is that this is a seriously unstable person, and this shit she’s pulling isn’t new either. She’s been stalking and harassing Alison for years now and so far today she’s already hit my blog 30 times and other friends of mine. I guess this is my karma for what I did to Maliheh’s friends. Yes, boss, I have learned my lesson. I swear! I’ll be so damn well-behaved from now on you’ll sometimes wonder if it’s the same Jodi Lin you used to know, LOL.

Later…

Tom’s job is going well, but Jesse didn’t work today. I heard the motorcycle leave and return once. No barking, though. Too warm today for that yet.

Tom balanced the kitchen faucet. It’s a single-lever, and whenever we’d center it, it would still drip a bit unless we set it slightly to the side. So Tom took it apart and re-centered it. Oh, the time and dinero we save pesky Jesse!

Nane replaced the picture of herself on LM with a cat. Anything to do with me? Well, it’s a bit of a delay if it does, LOL.

The nut job ended up viewing my blog 100 times today after insisting she was “sick” of me. sighs Yeah, right, and I’m afraid of rats, mice and snakes. After today, however, I will no longer mention this person and give them the negative attention they so desperately crave.

I’m sitting here thinking of a certain someone who is very far away. But as far as she is in the distance, she is always close by when it comes to my thoughts. As she (or someone else) said a while back – I was her birthday present (almost). Will she be mine? I’d like that muchisimo. :)

I will try to think of her as I’m falling asleep to see if it helps me dream of her. I like dreaming about her when she isn’t telling me my heart may not work right. My brain sure doesn’t want to work in English right now, LOL! I keep writing in Spanish – lo siento! Dreaming of her is sort of my way of “visiting” her, as funny as it may seem, and I hope she doesn’t mind my saying so. Again, though, I assume anything I say is ok or else she’d tell me. Wouldn’t she?

I had a dream that took place in a different place other than this little trailer, but don’t remember enough about it to write any details down. Was it a place we just moved to? Just a place we were at? Something else?

Both LM and Formspring were glitchy all day. Formspring always has problems. I could see I had questions, but couldn’t read or answer them for some time.

I really love this rat! Every time I walk into the living room he runs to the door. He’s super fast and super playful when I let him out. I love the way he alternates between exploring and climbing all over me.

Swapped messages with Paul, Jessie and Andy, but haven’t heard from Dorian. It’s like he disappeared altogether when he left MD.

Not sure if I want to finish up chapter 10 tonight or if I want to study languages. And which one should I study if I choose that? sighs Sometimes I wish I was only bilingual and not manylingual. That would make my life easier!