I dreamt of Stacey last night big time, not surprisingly, since she popped into mind shortly before bed and I had been browsing for the latest online news on her. One dream I remember, one I don’t.

I guess Stacey’s still district manager in the same apartment management company, and her 13-year-old daughter was Dancer of the Year a couple of years ago at some gym/dance school she trains/performs at (she’s got 3 kids and I feel sorry for each and every one of them, too).

I’m surprised Stacey’s kid is listed as being of mixed ethnicity. I just didn’t think Stacey would ever date out of her own ethnicity. She always struck me as the type to only want to associate with those who were just like her, though I also picture her as wanting a passive man. Those, like her and my mother who are domineering, usually want mellow guys who they can boss around and who will put up with them.

I have written about Stacey in my bio which is at the beginning of my blog as well as being re-posted a little at a time, but I’ll do a quick rundown on her for those who might not know who she is after I summarize the dream I remember.

There wasn’t much to it. All I remember is that for some reason I had to live with her and her family as a live-in housekeeper and there was nothing either of us could do about it even though we both hated the idea. She hated having me in her house and I hated being in her house, though a part of me found it a bit amusing to know that she was just as uncomfortable as I was and maybe even more since it was her turf I was intruding upon no matter how much I made it shine and free of dust and dirt.

In one quick “scene” we were all piled into the family car with her youngest kid (Jake) squeezed in front between her and her husband Jim. The girls, Hanna and Abby, were in back with me.

Abby. What a boring name. Crabby Abby.

Back to the dream. We were approaching this Italian restaurant and the kids all started whining that they were hungry and wanted to stop.

“Yes, I’m hungry too,” I chimed in with. “I’ll work harder and longer if we can just please stop and get a bite to eat.”

I guess part of the “arrangement” called for them having to feed me too, LOL.

Next thing I knew they were accusing me of killing the small dog they had when they either weren’t looking or no one was home (I didn’t really), but we all still stopped and ate. The waitress there asked why Stacey seemed so hostile to me and I said, “Because she failed to kick my ass in court in 1993.” The truth was that Andrea, with whom she became buddies, failed to kick it with a conjunction against me, but I’ll get to that soon enough.

Okay, so what happened with Stacey and I? Well, she was the manager of the very first place I came to when I moved from New England to Phoenix, Arizona. It was the apartment complex Andy (who started going by his first name of Mark at the time) lived in which was the summer of 1992.

He, along with others, warned me that while Judy and Paula were nice, along with the maintenance guys, Stacey was a flat-out bitch.

But as we would learn the hard way about 6 months after I moved to the complex, she was particularly hard on me. Several theories as to why were thrown at me – she hated Jews, she hated gays, she had a crush on me but freaked when she realized it and just couldn’t handle it well being a conservative, married woman in a conservative state who would have her first kid in the fall of 1993. So since she couldn’t get the kind of attention she wanted from me, she got it in a nasty way instead. Looking back on it, her behavior does suggest the last theory could be true, but I’ll never know for sure.

I myself developed a little crush on her despite the asshole she could be. She sort of reminded me of a blue-eyed, blond version of Kate Jackson. She was tall and her voice and her mannerisms were a lot like Kate’s.

First she caught me with the cat I’d moved in with and wasn’t supposed to have since I wasn’t in a pet apartment. Okay, no problem, so Andy and I just dumped it in Stevie Nicks’ yard in Paradise Valley, figuring someone would take care of him since they had a lot of money in that area. It was either that or get evicted and I certainly couldn’t afford that. I missed him for a while, but I got over it and moved on. It was later confirmed that Stevie’s neighbor took him in.

Then I moved to an apartment behind Andy and next to a woman named Andrea who lived above a woman named Mary. All was fine, or so I thought, until Stacey dragged both Andy and I down to the office and spoke to us each separately. She mostly tried to get Andy to dump me and accused me of things I both did and didn’t do. This is back when I was still a prankster and I had been making prank calls to this crazy woman named Ellie along with a guy who lived above me in the first building and drove me crazy by walking like an elephant on top of my head so much of the time. Why they went to Stacey about it beats me since she was only the apartment manager and not the police, but they did.

I brought her a tape of Ellie screaming and threatening me on my answering machine and she said something like, “Well, those are the kinds of people you don’t have anything to do with.”

As I told her, I was trying not to, but Ellie kept calling for a while and eventually came to my door till I scared her off by chasing her down the stairs. That was it, though. Ellie left me alone after that one.

Stacey also accused me of vandalism which I was totally innocent of. I do remember hearing glass shattering one night after our so-called little meeting. I was out on my patio but quickly ran indoors because I didn’t want to be accused of whatever was going on.

Firecrackers were also shot off at my place.

The strangest – even creepiest – thing that she said was that she “knew all my movements and activities at the complex, and if she didn’t find out what I was doing firsthand, she would through someone else.”

It was true, too. She did seem to know it all. She knew when I was in the laundry room, when I was at the pool, who I spoke to, what we talked about, when I was home, when I wasn’t, etc.

“What are you, spying on me or something?” I asked her, which Andy said he also asked her.

One time I was in the Jacuzzi when she was trying to pass her after-hours number off on this guy who was sitting next to me. The guy kept wanting to refuse it, saying he didn’t want to bother her while I couldn’t help but feel like it was a trap of some kind. Like she wanted to give the guy her number to see if I would ask him for it or something.

Andrea had been fine till she had her 15 little siblings (no joke) over for a few days. The place was rocking. Even Andy could feel the bumps and bangs and he lived diagonally from her.

For some reason, Stacey had started being nice to me by this point. I would receive little gifts left at my door at times (mostly beauty supplies) and suspected she was behind them. As a test, I thanked her for the “gifts” one time and she never denied that it was her leaving them. This was after I started dancing.

Anyway, it was horrible for Andy and I, but Mary got it the worst since she was underneath it all. These were small 400-square-foot studio apartments. Andrea’s door was right next to mine and I listened just inside my door when Mary and I called and complained to Stacey. Stacey said it was overcrowded when she came to check out the situation, and that the kids would have to leave. So after Andrea said I “did the same thing” she said they would be gone the next day. Then Stacey said “I understand Jodi’s situation,” whatever that meant.

But despite the fact that I, along with others, clearly had every reason to be annoyed and upset, Andrea never got over being complained about and went out of her way to be as noisy as she could whenever she was home and not sleeping. I wanted to wake her up at night just like she did with me when I was trying to sleep in (I had to dance till 1am), but didn’t want to spite others while spiting her. So I waited until she drove me crazy enough to run me out of there and “accidentally” bumped into her door the night I moved out at 2am. Tossed some empty boxes and old wire hangers onto her enclosed patio too, on the way out, LOL.

Andrea ended up doing me a favor in the end, though, since I not only ended up in a bigger, nicer apartment (even though it too, could get noisy), but next to Tom!

Andy moved a month or two later too, and we handled her the way we usually handled people we disliked back then – by prank-calling them. I recorded Stacey when Andy was hopelessly trying to get the deposit money she’d cheated him out of and “edited” her voice so she stuttered like crazy, then later played it on the office’s machine when the office was closed.

We sent Andrea a wacky letter and all kinds of magazine subscriptions.

Mary later told me that Judy had asked if she’d gotten any prank mail. But Mary was always good to us so we had no reason to bother her.

In the summer of 1993, I was summoned to appear in court at which time Andrea (who had Stacey along with her) failed to get a conjunction against me for lack of proof. But it was enough to scare me into leaving her alone from there on out, and I did.

I was young, dumb and naïve in every sense of the word back then. Today I would handle such a situation much differently. For one, I’d be damn sure to let Stacey’s boss know that she’d given client information out by giving Andrea my new address.

Fast forward to 2007. I’d thought about her on and off throughout the years, but she popped into mind one day shortly before we left Oregon after being out of mind for quite a while. Social sites weren’t quite what they are today, so all I could find on her at the time was a physical address where I sent a letter claiming that she confessed to having feelings for me to Judy, and Judy asked that I let her know I forgave her for the past and shit like that, LOL. I was curious as to whether or not I’d hear back from her, and as I figured would be the case, I didn’t.

Then I wrote a story with us as lead characters as I like to do with those I’ve had crushes on. Well, I just sent a copy of that story to 3 of her coworkers, LMAO! Can’t wait to see if my journal gets any Arizona hits!

This isn’t the first time she’s heard from me online, though. I contacted her at work a couple of years ago, and told her daughter on Facebook to say hi to her mother and that I posted the story in my journal which I provided the link. This was back when I was using MD regularly.

Hanna’s profile and Stacey’s picture disappeared the next day, LOL.

I even called her a year ago but got sent to voicemail. I just said that I was told to call her. You know, enough to annoy her and let her know I’m still around and remind her of my existence, but that’s all still perfectly legal.

This latest picture of Stacey is even nicer. She’s aged quite well if I do say so myself. Her hair is just below her shoulders and parted on the side. I downloaded it even though I expect it too, will quickly disappear, LOL.

Later…

I’m having one of those days where I just can’t seem to wake up. I’ve gotten a lot done, but at the same time, I feel like I have no energy at all. So maybe doing a second entry will get me going, even if it means I might skip doing any tomorrow.

I still can’t figure out what that damn cock is up to during the week with the starting and stopping of the fucking truck. I only know it’s obviously not going to stop anytime soon since this has been going on for weeks now. He runs the damn thing for anywhere from a minute to several minutes, guns the engine, then turns it off. Is he just trying to annoy me?

Alison gave me some very inspiring feedback yesterday and is really liking how my story’s coming out so far. She feels that I gave her the courage to share her erotica stories which deals with dominance and submission. Just like with her, I’ve never cared to live or experience this sort of life but thought it interesting and that it may fit into one of my stories well. Her positive feedback helps give me the drive to stick to it as I almost didn’t bother doing this story since I have other stories I started as well. But in this story, Nane meets Tesla online much like we did for real. Tesla tours throughout Europe every summer with a production company that does musicals. Then Tesla meets Nane in Munich, and when Tesla learns that the U.S. has started to check incoming travelers for outstanding warrants, she decides to take Nane’s offer to let her stay with her in Germany. I’m still not sure what I’m going to have Tesla running from, though. Maybe theft? Either way, Nane broaches the subject of her being her submissive and all is fine and mutual at first until Nane starts getting a bit carried away and becomes overly domineering and even abusive. So now Tesla’s stuck between a rock and a hard place, not wanting to return to the U.S. just to get arrested, but not wanting to stay with Nane anymore either. That’s where the real suspense will come in; when she figures out how to break away.

I never would’ve come up with this idea if it weren’t for Aly opening my eyes to this whole new subject which I’ve never really heard much about before or explored in any depth. She’s been my consultant and an insightful one, too.

A couple of days ago I had trouble breathing. It happens at times and I’m not sure why, but it’s like I can’t suck in enough air.

He just left on the motorcycle and then came back. That’s the fourth time I’ve had to hear from him in just 4 hours.

I noticed I had a couple of regular blog visitors from New York. I wondered if it could be Marie accessing me from a different device and location. I figured Sharyn wouldn’t be the least bit interested in me and my life, so I asked Dorene if she had my blog bookmarked (she lives in Rochester) and was coming in regularly. She said it could be her or her sister.

I think that girl, Betsy H. who insisted on Facebook that her mother wasn’t the Jan I was looking for, was telling the truth after all. Betsy told me her mother went by her middle name, Lynn. But the Jan I knew never mentioned that name. The number I just called said to leave a message for Jim and Lynn. So I guess the real Jan doesn’t have a husband named Jim and 3 kids and 2 twin grandkids after all, and I may never be able to track her down either. She may not even be in K-Falls still, but I think she is. She told us she loved it there.

Rain, rain, don’t go away. Rain, rain, keep Jesse at bay. Well, it at least keeps him off the ATV, dirt bikes and motorcycles, though he’s usually a little quieter on weekends anyway.

This is the first time in weeks it’s rained. It should only be for today, though, so it’s a good thing Tom doesn’t have to go anywhere today.

Why is there still so much childbirth on TV when each year (except for 2007) fewer and fewer women are having kids?

I’m backing up MP3 files on Yahoo. I’ve been at it for days now but am only on the E’s so I have a long way to go with nearly 1000 MP3s in my collection.

Tom and I were discussing the various options for buying a place. Of course it’s still going to come down to what he has for a job and the pension money, assuming they don’t screw us out of it.

One possibility is to buy a place in this area on some acreage and then go to a retirement community in Florida once he’s retired in another decade or so. The reason for this possibility is that if he is hired on and the job pays well and is going well overall, we’re not going to want to throw it away and take the same risks we took upon moving to California. This place not only has good benefits but a 401K thing too, which would greatly help with our retirement years since they would double whatever we chose to save. It would be a lot safer if we waited until he’s retired to move to another state because then we wouldn’t have the pressure of him having to scurry to find a job once we got there and worry about finding a place close enough to wherever he’s going to work. Also, there are no retirement communities near where he works anyway.

I’m currently proofreading the late 1994 and came across this interesting paragraph: When I read back on Maliheh, I couldn’t believe how vague and shitty a writer I was. I failed to write how she asked me to dance with her the second we met, and she shook my hand. And also how she kissed me as I was leaving.

I remember the kiss, but not the handshake and her asking me to dance right away. But my memory isn’t what it was in 1994, so I’ll take my word for it, LOL.

I’m still not hearing as much from her, but whether or not it really is personal, it’s okay. I’m running out of things to ask and tell her anyway.

Later…

Nane.

Oh, Nane, Nane, Nane. Why do I miss you so? Why do I wish you’d reach out to me more often? We’ll never meet. You’re halfway around the world. I know this. And I also know that we just spoke a couple of weeks ago. I even know that most people don’t keep in regular touch with their “friends” anyway on social sites, yet oh how I wish you’d pay a little more attention to me.

She uploaded a new picture of herself. It was taken down in Turkey. She just hadn’t posted it until now for some reason. But she added that along with a few other pics to her photo albums.

God, what a hottie! I studied her picture and said to myself, “That does not look like a 50-year-old.”

But I just have to be in California and she just has to be in Germany.

As much as I wanted to “like” the picture or leave a comment, I wouldn’t let myself. I still want to see if she’ll ever contact me on her own. I’m starting to think she hasn’t read my book or that she might’ve started it, couldn’t get into it, but is afraid to tell me so.

For some reason, though, I feel more neglected by her right now than I do Maliheh. If more than 3 days went by without hearing from Maliheh I’d miss her, but Nane’s really made me feel like she’s just not into me despite letting me know she finds me attractive.

Oh well. We can’t make people feel things they don’t and want to do things they don’t want to do. If she doesn’t want to be friends, she doesn’t want to be friends, and I just have to respect that.

And so I thought of a way to get her attention without directly contacting her and posted a couple of status updates I hope will do the trick. I made reference to my book and said that I wondered if certain people would ever contact me again if I never contacted them first. This is true, too. Maybe in a couple more weeks, I’ll post: Wish I heard from a certain someone here a little more often. I’ll give you a hint – we’re not related.

But then Alison really cheered me up and made up for this bored, restless feeling I’ve been having most of the day. I’ll discuss it in tomorrow’s entry.

Tom had an encouraging conversation with someone who’s worked where he works for a long time. Apparently, they don’t give you any warning if they’re going to hire you on. They just do it. And they usually do it within 5-10 months, and if they don’t like you they’ll get rid of you before you’ve been there for 5 months. Well, he just passed the 5-month marker, so that’s hopeful!

I just wish I knew when they were going to hire him on and how long it’ll take for the insurance to kick in after that. If I knew they weren’t going to hire him on until July and the insurance wouldn’t kick in until next January, then I’d still want to get the ball rolling as far as dealing with my teeth ourselves goes as soon as things stop coming up to delay it and make me wonder if something’s trying to tell me something or not. But if we could be insured in just a few months, I’d be tempted to hold out.

His getting hired is step 1 to Operation Get Home. They don’t usually like to sell houses to those who haven’t been at a job as a permanent employee for at least a year.

I can’t wait until the day comes when it’s time to get serious and actually begin making decisions as to where we want to buy a place! Depending on what we have for money we’ll begin by taking the 5 states on our list and deciding why we should or shouldn’t live there. That’s going to be a pretty emotional time for me. I just hope that time comes!

Until yesterday I’d never seen a picture of Kim since becoming online friends with her. Yet she finally posted some pictures of herself on her latest Facebook account (yeah, she and Alison love to have multiple accounts), and I was like – OMG! That’s Kim? I could’ve sworn she once listed herself as “athletic” and in this group photo she has in her main account, the only one that fit that description was a tall, thin, wiry blond. That’s what I thought she looked like. So when I saw this absolutely HUMUNGOUS dark-haired girl I was both shocked and grossed out. Looks don’t matter if you’re just a friend of mine, but the poor girl really is hideously ugly. Her face and neck are HUGE. Bigger than Tammy’s kids. She makes me feel anorexic. Either way, she’s still a nice girl. A bit flaky and annoying at times, but nice enough. We chatted on Facebook yesterday.

I’m also using my dummy account on Facebook to “befriend” Molly. After so many months of her viewing my journal countless times a day, I can’t deny that my curiosity has risen. All I know about the nut is what she’s written and what others have told me about her. But who is Molly M.? Just who is she? Okay, so I know she’s not all there. But I am curious to know more about just what makes her tick and what her life is like, so faulty wiring or not, “Kate” will be her friend for a while, then she’ll coldly drop her like a hot potato.

I started posting old journal entries from the East in another MD account I had that I originally intended to use to back up letters years ago. I let people know who I was, though, and explained that they were getting a “blast from the past” and where they could find my current journal. I’m just curious to see how much traffic trickles over to MyOpera from it. It seemed to be quite a bit when I started backing up language notes in my main account.

I slowly came awake at around 9pm. As fragments of dreams began to fade away, I remembered last night. I was just relaxing and listening to music when all of a sudden a blast from the past hit me in both good and not-so-good ways. I recalled the stress and fear I went through when we first came to Cali. Then I recalled our lives in Oregon. Not on the mountain, not in the motels, not in the duplex, but in the house. That old, scummy, rundown tilted house with loud car stereos blasting by every few minutes. Yet despite the cold, the snow, the noise, the condition of the microscopic house loaded with spiders, our lives were easier in some ways back then. Tom had just a 6-minute walk to work and I was more carefree there. I had my stressful moments and there were some annoyances there, but life was – I don’t know – more fun in some ways than it has been here. The money Tom makes (which is exactly what he was making there) is just okay for this area, but it was great for K-Falls where the average house rents from just $400 to around $600. I miss the excitement I felt over having so much extra money and the fun of shopping my ass off like I did back then, building up my doll collection like crazy.

These days, however, money doesn’t excite me the way it used to, not to mention the fact that I grew tired of collecting dolls and the dust in which they themselves would collect. I guess 36 hours of homelessness and 8 months of motels can do that to you. It changes your priorities in life. Where I used to focus mostly on what I could do with our extra money, now I focus more on worrying about paying for the necessities in life. Staring death in the face like we were for a while really changes your whole outlook on life. I’m less selfish than I used to be, too. Don’t get me wrong. I’d still be thrilled to win a shopping spree, and I still pride myself on being a selfish, heartless little bitch, but it’s just not the same anymore. Where I was glad I had no friends living nearby that could possibly pester me or make trouble for me, now I wish I had at least one. I won’t say which one I wish that was. It’ll never happen, but I wish it anyway.

Yes, I admit it. I miss not Klamath Falls, but some aspects of our lives up there. Jan, Liz, Randy, Estella, Jane… what are their lives like now? Are they even still there? I wish I knew Randy’s last name. If anyone’s still there, it’s him. He was one of our mailmen which I so adored. Maybe a part of me even liked him a little more than just a friend. And I think he liked me, too. Sure seemed to anyway. For some reason, when a woman likes me I’m usually the last one to know it. Do you know how many inmates back in Arizona had to spell out for me that Officers Palma and Johnson liked me before they let me know in their own ways? Yet whenever a guy has liked me, I’m always quick to pick up on it. Perhaps it’s because they’re less subtle about it that allows me to catch on right away, though Randy said and did absolutely nothing to directly imply that he liked me. But I just know he did. Yup, he sure did.

Despite being in Cali longer than we were in Oregon, no one here stands out in any special way in my mind as of yet except for a few folks back in the extended-stay motel in Sacramento – Michelle, Kissum, Josephina, Prasaad, Satish… though I came to not care much for Prasaad and Satish in the end. Prasaad was rude to me and Satish got my hopes up for nothing, though this could’ve been a good thing after all. Guess we’ll never know for sure.

Tom’s now lost over 50 pounds! His goal for this year is to get under the 200-pound marker.

And every time I think I’ve got my own damn weight figured out, it hangs on like the dedicated, faithful stalker Molly the troll is. Yeah, she’s the electronic equivalent of a female peeping tom, LOL. Always, always in my journal dozens of times a day. Sometimes hundreds.

So many story ideas but no way to get them in print as fast as I can think them up! And I’m a fast typist, too. But the voice recognition program sucks and my fingertips just can’t always keep up with my brain regardless of how fast I type. So I’m just doing what I can. I’m finishing up chapter 6 in the book I’m working on now.

They finally caught on that we haven’t paid for our UPS Store box in well over a year. When the other owners moved from Elm St. to Bell Rd. they screwed all their records up and never bothered to charge us. Besides, Tom’s such a likable guy that everyone likes and so they were especially nice to him. But recently new owners have taken over and want us to pay up. Since PO boxes are way cheaper we’ll be getting one in March. It’s a good thing I won’t be sweeping for a while what with how shitty the economy’s been because if I remember correctly, they won’t accept packages from UPS or FedEx. If that’s still the case I’ll have to tell my folks to send any packages they may have here. Jesse won’t steal them.

I miss those days of winning thousands of dollars worth of stuff and cash! God, do I miss them. But the longer the economy sucks, the more I wonder if it will ever get better. IDK, maybe it’s gotten so bad that we’re at the point of no return.

I stopped backing up my language notes in my old diary since I found I could download the entire exercise video for each lesson in each language. I backed the PDF files up on Yahoo, then the whole thing on my laptop and on iTunes where I can play the videos. It’s way better than reviewing on their site because it’s a slideshow that plays on its own with both foreign and English captions and voices. I’ll only use their site from now on if I want to do the “magnet” exercises. I still like that government site too, just not how complicated it is to remember where I’ve left off and dealing with their HUGE PDF files which have to be matched to the proper audio files.

The weather’s been holding steady in the low to mid-60s. Where December was very wet, January’s been very dry.

Have I become boring or something? Andy keeps in touch but says he’s too busy to read my journal even though I always have something interesting to say. Alison and Kim don’t do MyOpera much anymore, and Nane’s become a virtual stranger.

I was just about to wonder what was going on with Maliheh too, after the longest break of not hearing from her when she emailed me to say that she’s still sick. She’s not coughing or sneezing as much, but is still rundown and sick of feeling that way. She’s due for blood testing, she says, but since that makes her ill when they do that, she doesn’t want them doing it when she already feels ill.

She had me cracking up earlier with the way she said she’d tell her dad, whom she didn’t get along with in the end, to “head for the light and leave me the fuck alone” when she’d sense his presence. She said that a moth was flying around her face at his funeral that really annoyed her and wouldn’t go away. Then she learned that some Indian tribes believe that’s a sign of a loved one returning to say hello. She had a butterfly living in her place for a while that she knew was him and said it was creepy and cool at the same time. But she kept telling him to “hit the light” and I guess he’s backed off since.

If I see a butterfly in here after my mom dies, I’ll be chasing it with a fly swatter for sure!

I kind of miss the days when she’d be on my blog every few hours. But I’d rather be her friend and hear directly from her than have her on my blog more often.

I’ve been missing her lately. No, not her. And not Nane either. The other her. I’ve thought of her every day since we stopped talking, but lately I’ve been missing her more than usual and more than I ever thought I would. I’d just like to respect her wishes and not mention her name even if some people may be able to put two and two together and figure out who she is. But yeah, I miss her at times. I know, however, that to go back in time would be to start a whole new round of trouble. Trouble I don’t need. I have absolutely no reason, no matter what I may be told, to believe anything would be different now than it was a year ago. So I’d rather just miss her, wonder how she’s doing and hope she’s doing well. It’s easier that way.

Tom still thinks there’s hope for getting hired on. One of the bosses was hired on after 7 months. Tom’s had experience with upper management, so hopefully he’ll be hired on in March. March would be my guess. That way they get to stiff him out of most of the holidays, and it’s another 3-month interval, too.

I still keep in touch with Andy in a variety of places – email, Twitter, and Formspring. But I haven’t talked to Maliheh in a few days, she’s been visiting my blog less and less, and I have a feeling I’m never going to hear back from Nane regarding my book.

While Andy’s suffering at -14º I’ll be backing up my language notes in my old diary over the next few days or so. LM’s gotten greedy and their courses are no longer free. Therefore, I assume the free ones will disappear soon enough.

They’ve either got a glitch on their end or I’ve gotten that computer savvy that I was able to hack their old plus courses because, to the best of my knowledge, the PDF and audio files were never free. Then again, there was nothing to “hack.” I simply pressed ‘download’ and it worked this time. I’m glad I swiped what I wanted before they realized these files have been a free-for-all.

I’m considering dropping Esperanto since the sound files on that aren’t so great, it’s not a major language, and I’m studying enough languages as it is. I may even drop the Portuguese and just stick with my Spanish, Italian and German.

The publishers did get my manuscript submission after all, and sent a message saying to give them an extra two months since it’s #14 in the queue. Whatever. I mean, I know they’re going to reject it. I just want to know what they like about it and what they think needs work.

Although Tom said it didn’t get warm enough to open windows today (I slept all day), it has been a lot nicer lately. It’s still cold at night, but where it was wetter than usual in December, it’s been dryer than usual this month, allowing the sun to shine through and warm the place up in the afternoon. Even the rat’s been wondering why there’s no condensation to lick off the slider.

You know you’ve been spending a lot of time freezing your ass off when 76º suddenly becomes rather toasty to you. It’s actually 78º in here right now with the windows open, but it was 76º when I got up. In Arizona, I couldn’t stand the house to be under 80º because it was so hot so much of the year and that’s what I got used to; constant heat.

“Stop jabbering about yourself which is the ultimate show of conceit,” someone in Europe left as a funny/rude comment on my last post before I deleted it.

Oh, I’d love to write about others in my MyOpera blog. But they told me not to do so and so I have respected their wishes. Blame my conceitedness on them, LOL!

“Do something productive. Help someone,” they also said.

I suppose doing Tom’s laundry and cooking his food isn’t much help. Hmm… maybe I should choke him not to death but nearly to death so I could really be helping him by “saving” his life in the end. That’d really be helping someone if I was kind enough not to choke the life out of them completely, would it?

Nah, I think I’ll help myself put back one of the few pounds I lost by taking a break from dieting today. :)

Maliheh and I talked last night, mainly about movies and music.

It doesn’t look like we’ll get any snow this year. With February right around the corner, I’d say we’ll get to get out of it this year, even if all we usually get is a dusting once in a blue moon that doesn’t usually stick. The weather’s actually been very spring-like these last few days. I can wear shorts in the daytime and open the windows.

Tom’s been a bit rundown lately, but hopefully he’ll perk himself back up over the weekend. I made him a ziti and meatball casserole and now he’s in bed. And I’m now waiting for Maliheh to return home from the open mic she’s at. She didn’t want to be there but because the owner lent her some equipment for the Christmas show, she was there helping out. She checked my blog and messaged me from there on her iPod. I was surprised when I saw the Four Oaks, NC hit, though she says she’s actually in Hope Mills.

I never got the receipt of acknowledgment I was supposed to get upon submitting my manuscript, nor did I get a reply when I asked about it at another email addy, so I guess I’ll take it as a sign that it’s not meant to be.

This diet and exercise regimen I started last Tuesday seems to be the most effective so far. I woke up at 136.0 pounds on Tuesday and now I’m 133.8. Along with cutting my calories, I’m running super fast in place (though sometimes I zip up and down the trailer which is 50’ long). I do this for 5 minutes every hour for about 10 hours so my body is “tricked” into thinking it ran for nearly an hour at around 10MPH. I broke a “wing” though. I flap my arms super fast to work the arm muscles while I’m running and now I have a sharp cramp-like pain on one side of my upper back. No more wing-flapping today, LOL.

I want to get those latex exercise resistance bands so I can work more of the muscle groups in my arms.

We’re usually our own worst critics, but even I agree my body (not my face, unfortunately) looks much younger than it is thanks to all the years of doing thousands of ab crunches and other exercises. My stomach’s almost perfectly flat despite being as short and as heavy as I am.

I’m now wearing earrings for the first time in years. The good ear went in easily, but the bad ear took me a few minutes. All I really have right now are danglies. I want to get something small (and shiny) that I can wear all the time. I’d like a pink or clear gem of some kind.

I wish I could say I was in a better mood today, but I can’t. Tom and I both worry about him being laid off, though he still feels they’ll hire him on at some point.

Although Tom’s going to continue doing research for the “perfect” dentist I know doesn’t exist within a 50-mile radius, I’ve decided not to bother with my teeth for a few reasons, mainly that it’s obviously not meant to be. I wouldn’t be suffering this long (since 2004) if I were meant to see a dentist, would I? And honestly, pain is all I know. I’ve lived with chronic pain for many years now and I just can’t imagine life without it, though it’s not like I’m in pain every day. So just the fact that things keep coming up to prevent me from going pretty much tells me something right there. That it just wasn’t meant to be and that I can handle my teeth on my own. They’ll slowly die off on their own over the years. But I just don’t want to take a chance of getting things started with any kind of dentist and a dental plan just to have him possibly get laid off. We’d be really screwed if we could pay for them to extract my teeth, then he got laid off and there was no way to pay for dentures. The free clinics in California no longer cover dental, so I would be forced to walk around toothless if that happened. It probably wouldn’t happen, but I don’t want to take the chance. It’s too risky to deal with my teeth right now with him as a temp no matter how much he makes. And it’s also become more than obvious to me that enough is never going to be enough. Not only is having a few grand in savings just a dream but so is having enough money. Even when we have enough, like we do now, it’s still not enough. But the main thing is being able to pay the rent, and right now we can.

For now.

Always for now.

All good things eventually come to an end.

I totally regret leaving Phoenix. We should’ve just learned to live with the freeloader’s chaos. If we’d just learned to put up with the blasting music, the screaming kids, the fighting adults, the vandalism, the trash…the house would’ve been all paid for years ago, we’d be in a nicer climate, and we’d have a pool. But like a fool I let them run us out, never knowing we’d have a lifetime of money problems because of it. So once again Tom and Jodi S have to pay for someone else’s shit.

The house wasn’t the greatest. The layout sucked, it was old, it was ugly, and it only had one bathroom, but it was adequate.

I also worry about something going wrong with the pension fund. Why wouldn’t it? We’ve been teased with money before, and something up there loves to tease us with it, so why not? It also took away two of our places in two different states. So why would it let us have a place of our own in the future if we were meant to have one? Something’s going to go wrong with that pension. I just know it. It either won’t be there or it’ll be just pennies.

The thought of being one of God’s designated little poor-ass bums in dumpy old trailers for the rest of our lives makes me want to scream. But I really fear that no matter how much we try to get ahead, something up there is going to kick us back, only allowing us temporary relief like it is now where there isn’t much extra money, but we can afford to pay the rent and put food in our tummies.

I haven’t been putting much in mine, though, cuz I’m back to dieting and exercising. Instead of running non-stop for 20-30 minutes, I’m running 5 minutes every hour for about 10 hours a day. This way I end up running longer in total time, but without getting sweaty and sore joints. I’m also cutting back on the calories, too. This is only the third day of this new setup, but it seems to be working so far. Here’s a sample of my menu:

I got up at 1pm.

3pm: 6 meatballs (200 cals)

5pm: a slice of cheese (60)

7pm: a potato w/ margarine (200)

9pm: cheesy cauliflower (40)

11pm: oatmeal (160)

1am: 6 more meatballs (200)

3am: fruit cup (25)

Plus I’ve had 1 regular and 3 decaf coffees throughout the day/night, each with 60 cals worth of creamer. I even stole one of Tom’s Oreo cookies.

Tom and I just talked again and it’s helped ease my mind a little. I still worry things will go wrong, but he agrees that while there are no guarantees with the pension, he still thinks we’ll get something. He also thinks we could still get a place even if we don’t.

I asked him if he regrets leaving Phoenix. He said no, but what we should’ve done was have a dumpy trailer hauled onto the land in Maricopa before investing in a nice house. But we’ve since learned to get the security before the luxury. If only we could get the chance to get it right!

He also pointed out that in a twisted way, something was looking out for us. Not only were we in danger in Phoenix, but the Maricopa/Stanfield/Casa Grande area has become a very dangerous place thanks to the Mexican drug cartel. And Oregon turned out to be a favor in itself what with how cold it was there, and up on Bly Mountain where we were going to build a place, it was much snowier. So between the dangers of driving in several feet of snow on such steep inclines, and the risk of forest fires in the summer, it worked out for the better. I just worry there’s no place for us anywhere and that we’re going to spend most of our lives struggling no matter what.

Due to the economy being so bad, the pension people could invest in it poorly, leaving us with nothing and no way to sue for any kind of compensation for being screwed out of the money. While we certainly hope to hell this doesn’t happen, it would be just our shit luck.

Regardless of what the future holds, it was a nice day today and I could open the windows for a while when I was cleaning the bathroom.

Got up at noon and was amazingly blessed with 3 hours of peace and quiet. Then Jesse took off somewhere and left us with the barking, though I only heard a couple of barking fits. One when he left, one when he returned. Nothing continuous, but still annoying. I was trying to watch a fucking movie.

I was actually watching a documentary on the concentration camps in Germany in the 40s. After seeing such horror I realize that I’m okay after all. Not even my most meanest, most selfish, most evil of thoughts compare to the horror I saw done to those poor prisoners. I’ve had some seriously ghoulish thoughts pertaining to some people that have screwed me over in life, but what I saw in this documentary had me ashamed and embarrassed to even think of calling the Nazis “fellow human beings.” Those weren’t human beings. Those were animals.

I was pleased to get an email from Maliheh shortly after I awoke. She’s still sick but getting better. She said she may be busy and tired and unable to chat for a couple of days but we’ll chat as soon as we can. I told her I understood and that I appreciated her checking in regularly and said that she really seems to care about me.

“I do care,” she said.

Awww…

I skipped a day of posting because there truly isn’t much going on. My life is that adventureless, LOL.

Besides wondering if I should cut my hair off since it’s such a pain in the ass and I’m just never going to have the thin straight hair I wish I had, I’ve been wondering when this sexist country is going to have a holiday on account of a woman other than Mother’s Day. How about Amelia Earhart Day? It seems a lot more impressive to fly around the world than it does to “have a dream.”

Everybody has a dream.

For now, the almighty male will rule despite the fact that your average woman is much smarter (and better looking), and I’ll just deal with these thick, waist-length curls.

Oh, wait. There are two more things I’m wondering, actually. How many more months, or even years, will Molly stalk me? And how did I come to be the stalking victim of a complete stranger? Aren’t we usually supposed to know our stalkers unless we’re celebrities? Well, I’m no celebrity. The Arizona Republic sure tried to make one out of me for a while, but their success was incredibly short-lived.

Jesse was amazingly quiet yesterday and so far today, too. His dogs drove me crazy Friday and Saturday nights, but there hasn’t been nearly as much in the way of engine gunning. I only heard him once or twice yesterday, then I heard the truck come in shortly after I got up at 10:00 this morning. I’ve got the sound machine going now since I’m sure he’ll come and go a few more times between now and 6pm.

Later…

For the millionth time, why does God let good things happen to bad people??? I’m talking about Barbara I., the bitch that lived next to me in the projects in Norwich, CT when I was 26 in 1992. The mean bully who took advantage of how sick and weak I was (with severe asthma) and threatened me for trying to get her to control her fucking kids that were like two-legged animals. Their 9-year-old daughter wasn’t so bad, but their 3 older sons were a nightmare. Barbara took pride in flaunting her so-called toughness, and I honestly don’t know which of us was luckier that I was as defenseless as I was at the time since she would’ve spent time in the hospital and I would’ve spent time in jail.

She popped into mind earlier and I thought how I would just love to be threatened by her right now as a non-smoking, fit and healthy individual. Immature or not, I would love to see the look of embarrassment on her face after I picked her apart limb by limb.

I always said that I truly believe God protects my perps. No matter how bad they may burn me, I know they have His full protection. This really bothers me, too. Someone could kill me right now and I know God would see to it that they were never caught or punished in any way shape or form. Andy tried to assure me by saying that we’ll never know when those who wrong us get theirs and that karma really does exist. Oh, I know it does. It just doesn’t seem to exist for anyone who’s ever wronged me. And I doubt it will for anyone who ever may screw me over in the future as well. The only one that’s paid for certain assholes (I won’t bother naming all the names) is me. Just me. If any payback’s coming to them, it ain’t coming in this life. That much I do know.

“God doesn’t just protect them,” I complained to Tom one day years ago, “He rewards them. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of my perps have won the lottery.”

So I looked for her on Facebook and was surprised to be unable to find her, her husband or their 4 animals. Instead, I found an article saying that she was awarded 8 million bucks in court!

Thanks, God, I thought to myself and started seething with rage. But then when I saw what she went through and is still going through I felt a little better, but only a little. The bitch smoked for 25 years, and 5 years after I last saw her, she had her larynx removed at age 36. She now breathes through a tube in her throat, has no sense of smell, and can only eat soft foods.

Hmm… guess she won’t be threatening anyone anymore. Especially those she knows are too damn sick to defend themselves. I used to smoke too, and between that, bad asthma and allergies, and the stress they put on me and the sleep the fucking animals stole from me, I was sicker than a dog while I lived with her and her brood. She and her family made my life a living hell for 4 months, ultimately causing me to have a breakdown and end up hospitalized for a couple of weeks before my folks sent me to Arizona.

While it’s gotta be a real bitch walking around with a tube stuck in your throat, wouldn’t all that money more than make up for it? I would think that with all the comfort and security she can now afford, even though she didn’t win the money till last year, all the things she could do with the money would take her mind off of any tubes.

“Now I can go to any doctor I wish,” she was quoted as saying.

And I’m still sitting here wondering where I can go to get my teeth taken care of. I also wonder if we’re really going to be able to come up with the grand or so we’ll need in a few months like Tom says we will. That’s about the cheapest we can find that’s not a million miles away, but we’re still researching our options. Unlike her, I certainly can’t go to any doctor or dentist I wish. We wanted a place that makes dentures, figuring it’d be cheaper that way, but we just can’t find anything around us. A grand for the plan we found is better than 2 grand without it, but it still sucks to have to spend so much money because no one will hire him on or pay us for our own hardships in life.

Really, I have no sympathy for Barbara. She could have quit just like I did. Instead, she chose to go out and keep buying cigarettes. Quitting isn’t easy, but if I can do it so can others. It was her choice to smoke until she got cancer. The cigarette company didn’t force her to go out and buy their cigarettes, and it clearly says right there on their products that cigarettes are harmful to your health. Wish I could get paid for some of the stupid choices I’ve made in life! Too bad I’m not the type to go out and pick on those who are ill and defenseless. That may up my chances of that happening.

Finally heard from Maliheh and am talking to her now. We’re swapping emails. She’s been sick and says she’s been sleeping a lot and it’s nothing personal. I figured that was the case.

As for Nane, I wonder if she really ever intended to read my book in the first place. I guess time will tell.

It’s been a quiet day so far, but the day is still young and so I know I’ll hear something from Jesse and his fucking dogs sooner or later. Yesterday I only heard vehicles twice, but he was out all day and all night. This meant that once it got dark, the dogs went crazy.

Wish I had more to say as I’m in a writing mood, but I don’t. Just that it’ll be in the 60s again today and we’ll be able to keep the heat off for a good 10 hours or so. I guess I’ll spend most of the day proofreading and working on my story.

Later…

I wasn’t going to write anymore today but decided to say that I decided to submit Evil Amongst the Evergreens to the publishers. I don’t expect them to accept it, but at least if they reject it they’ll tell me why. I’ll know by March.

I’m getting sick of a certain furry bastard’s destructiveness. Yeah, he thinks that if it dangles, it must be a toy. That meant literally biting off the shiny heart pendant on my necklace and running across the room with it. I chased him down and grabbed it out of his mouth, then he got thrown into his cage for a while. The chain is still intact, but he demolished the finding that held the crystal heart on. So for now I attached the heart to a pearly beaded necklace with thread and threw it on my Joy doll. It actually looks quite good on her and goes well with the shiny gold accents in her outfit.

This damn rat needs to learn to keep his mouth off of things, though!

I chatted with Maliheh today. :) Not long after I got up I received a message asking, “You there?” And so we swapped a few emails. She’s still sick, unfortunately, and says she’s been sleeping a lot and that it’s nothing personal. Hopefully, she’ll remember to scald her throat the next time around as soon as her throat feels scratchy or sore before the virus has a chance to spread.

I was surprised to learn she makes only $800 a month. If the rents in her area range from $800-$1000 excluding utilities like she said, how can she swing it?

At least she’s happy doing what she does. She charges $20 for a half-hour lesson, and could always go to full-time hours and gather more students if need be. She said she’s happy with what she makes but could use more. Same for us! Enough is never enough for us, but at the same time, we are making enough right now.

She said building up a clientele was slow at first and she doesn’t always know how many students she’ll have from month to month, and while that can get a little scary, it beats working at McDonald’s. She’s been her own boss since college and says that for her it’s the only way to go.

I’m so fucking pissed! Tom has to lose yet another day of work, this time thanks to MLK Day. Every single month there’s something. Next month it will be President’s Day. So Monday we’ll get to lose another $100 all because some cock “had a dream.” I had a dream, too. That dream was about someone, somewhere hiring him on in a world of ever-growing temps. Should we make my dream a fucking holiday, too?

Other than the usual engine gunning sprees and barking fits, we went out for a while. We picked up the mail and browsed around Goodwill. They had a shitty selection of incense, dolls and stuffed animals, and they didn’t have any wind chimes. They did have a whirly gig which I got because my other one broke. This one’s nicer and more colorful. It was only $2.

For just $5 we got an excellent sound machine for the kitchen since a certain someone seems to think his responsibility as a dog owner stops when he leaves his house. It works great, though, and has a good selection of sounds. It’s kind of sad that whether we’re in the city or out in the country we have to have them going if we don’t want to hear anyone else’s shit, but it’s better than having no defense at all. At least this way I’m not as likely to have my train of thought disrupted when I’m writing, though it makes it hard to do my language studies or watch movies. I wanted to watch a movie last night, but the prick was out, the dogs went crazy, and so I went to Gamesville instead and tried to win a few hundred bucks at bingo to no avail. Maybe tonight I’ll be able to watch something.

I saw Fatal Rescue a few nights ago. It was damn good, too.

On the way back we grabbed some KFC. It’s been a while since we stopped there so it was a nice treat. Tomorrow, however, it’s back to dieting and exercising.

I made a half-assed attempt to sew Velcro hooks onto my robe to replace the belt. It will hold but I should’ve cut longer strips. I’ll redo it some other time. I like it better than the belt because the belt slips loose as I wear it.

The weather’s been nice. Chilly at night, but fit for shorts during the afternoons. We’ve had the heat off for 9 hours now, too.

It seems no matter how many times I swear I won’t talk to Nane unless she contacts me first, I go and say hi on her wall or send her a message or something. But hey, I’m getting better because I went for two weeks this time around. So I won’t contact her till around February 7th unless I hear from her first, making the next time around a 3-week reign of silence. Or maybe I won’t bother. I mean, what’s the point? She did say, however, that she’ll let me know when she’s read my book.

In other news, she told me she had fun swimming, sunbathing, shopping, drinking and enjoying the warm weather in Turkey. Oh, and she was with a 31-year-old guy, too. I don’t know if she went down there with him or if she went to some club and met him there, but she says she’s “not one of those cougars, it just happens.”

And it just “happens” that no opportunity ever presents itself to me here in the good ole USA. Should I be all that surprised, though? I live like a hermit.

I’ll still finish her story, but Nane is never going to hear from me again if I don’t hear from her again, I missed chatting with Maliheh last night, and I woke up with a backache.

I miss having a full-wave waterbed. As soon as we get a place of our own and have a bedroom that’s not so damn small, I think I will get one. Foam mattresses are great. It’s just that they sag over time.

We rarely get take-out, so on his way home from work yesterday Tom stopped and grabbed some fast food. I made sure I didn’t eat much all day so I would be nice and hungry and could really enjoy it. But after I’d eaten my burger, fries, Cheetos cheese puffs and drank my strawberry soda, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. As a person who is twice blessed, I have at least two things to look forward to each day – him by day, her by night. But instead I ate myself to sleep. :( And she’s been sick too, and probably could’ve used the “company.”

In the message that was waiting for me when I got up, she said she didn’t have a fever but was still sick. She also said she was about to tell me something about her nobody really knows – an earth-shattering biggie - and that’s that she likes to sleep with the light on when she’s sick. Normally she likes it dark, though.

First of all, there’s nothing wrong or earth-shattering about that. Secondly, if she’s been in relationships before, wouldn’t her exes know this?

I posted all of Evil Amongst the Evergreens in my story journal and started posting Digital Confessions.

Jesse’s been out tending the land, as usual, and has already come and gone a few times. I think I’ll stick my earplug in soon.

There’s nothing like stepping out of the shower smelling of bleach. :( Why’d he have to go and dump so damn much in the tank? Thank God for perfume!

Once a month Tom’s going to make a Walmart run so we can save money on non-edibles and stuff like that. I keep a master grocery list and make the weekly list from that. That way I can never forget anything. And if I get into something new, I add it to the list. It really helps make the shopping more organized and faster.

Okay, the house is clean, the laundry is done (for now), and so now I’m free to goof off for the rest of the day. I’ll still look for MT work and get chapter 5 of my story going on and off, but it will be nice not to have any more cleaning to do.

Later…

“I said F chord. What do you not get about F?” Stephan, AKA Steve, said to me one weekend in 1989.

“But F is kind of hard to play,” I said. “Especially with steel strings instead of nylon. Besides, I’ve been focusing on the keyboard more because it’s easier than the guitar and my calluses have softened and my fingertips feel like I placed them on the stove.”

Laughing and rolling his eyes, Steve took his hands from his own keyboard and then took my guitar and placed it on his couch nearby where we sat in his tiny living room. We lived in the same apartment building.

“Okay, just sing,” said the 6-foot, 4-inch black guy with the friendly white smile. “Cuz lord knows that’s about all you can do well enough when it comes to music. Just sing.”

And so he played while I sang. And 22 years later I still wonder whatever became of the guy that would have loved to have married me had I not had to have my cake and eat it too, and be attracted to a person I may be intimate with. If I had been one of those looks-don’t-matter types, though, I never would’ve met Tom. But Steve was such a great guy. His last name is fairly common so I couldn’t just look him up. Especially since I don’t even know what state he’s in these days. He was originally from Chicago, was working at Westover Air Force Base in W. Springfield, MA, then supposedly moved here to Cali. But Cali alone is a lot of ground to cover. I really wouldn’t even know where to begin as far as finding him goes.

They need to create a different kind of Facebook. A lost and found kind of a site that lets a person type in the name of a person they’re looking for, where you knew them, how you knew them, what you knew about them, and then if a person wants to they can type in their name and see if anyone’s been looking for them.

And whatever happened to Angie, the girl from Natchaug Hospital I briefly knew in 1992 before leaving for Arizona? I was 89 pounds, barely 4’ 11”, and had recently had a breakdown. She was my roommate and she liked to write in a journal, too. One day she got upset about something and decided to take it out on me by threatening to put my head through the wall.

Tossing my little pink teddy bear aside, I jumped up off my bed – so what if she were more than a few inches taller than me and a hell of a lot more than a few pounds heavier – and charged over to where she stood to brush her hair before the aluminum mirror. “Don’t you ever threaten me! Threaten me again and I’ll make you just try to put your actions where your mouth is!”

She turned around and stared into my eyes. She must’ve seen something pretty scary in them because she took a step back, apologized and left the room. That was cool. I didn’t want to fight. But I didn’t want her (or anyone else) thinking they could threaten me at will either.

The next day she asked to be moved out of our room.