I feel worse today than I did yesterday. I’m congested, my allergies are going crazy, and I feel drained of energy. What the hell is wrong with me and when am I ever going to get over whatever it is I’ve got???

Yesterday I watched a movie and did some reading but I’m continuing to neglect my book. I doubt I’ll get to it today either. If I have to take Benadryl for these allergies it will knock me out for a while and make me groggy as hell. Then I’ll really be able to complain about not doing as much as I’d like to do. All I’m doing today is a couple of loads of laundry. I didn’t even work out. I’m too weak and I would only have to stop to blow my nose along the way. It’s enough of a struggle just to do this entry.

I seem to have some kind of fungus in my toenails that is causing a few of the nails to be thick and discolored. It doesn’t hurt or anything; it’s just a bit unsightly. I think you need a prescription to treat nail fungus, though, but I’m not sure. I’m uninsured so I can’t see a doctor.

The troll just peeked in on me. Hopefully, she and her mother will be too busy with the baby the troll’s sister just had to pick on me.

Dustin, Aly’s BF, tweeted that Aly pulled through surgery but is remaining in the hospital overnight.

The next few hours are going to be a bit tense and anxious. I just dread the thought of Tom coming home to say that he was told not to return to work next year, though I didn’t have any bad dreams. More than likely, though, if they’re going to lay him off, they wouldn’t tell him that at work. Instead, the temp company would call this evening to tell him the job was over. That’s what happened last time. Anyway, the first quarter of the year will be a bit stressful unless they hire him on permanently and I just can’t see that happening.

Some German author named Clarisse whom I’ve never heard of friended me on Facebook. She’s got books on Amazon, too. Yup, I’m a magnet for those German ladies, LOL.

Later…

Before I get into what’s going on, yes, I have gone public again with my journaling. I was determined to stay underground for a while since it seemed to be the only way to purge my life of those I’ve asked to leave me alone a million times, but then I said to myself, “Why am I the one running if I know I haven’t done anything wrong?” I may have said some things that pissed some people off and that they may have disagreed with, but I wasn’t making any threats and wasn’t doing anything wrong, so why should I run and hide simply because some people just won’t take “no” for an answer when they try to contact me with their incessant needs and pleas? “Don’t contact me” means just that. Period. And so does “I don’t want to hear from you anymore.” This means that if you’re one of the ones I’ve ordered to leave me alone, I’m just going to keep on blocking and reporting you no matter how many accounts you create to harass me. I can’t control what my friends do. That’s up to them. I can only tell you what I will do.

The year is not ending on a very good note, I’m afraid, although things could be much worse. The water tank is leaking and I’ve been forced to go Mac since I’m getting too many attacks and viruses in Windows. This may take some getting used to but it simply doesn’t have the holes in it that Windows has, and like it or not it’s a lot safer to use. Rarely does OSX crash or encounter the kinds of problems Windows has. I was having tons of problems and nothing we did seemed to fix them. I had a barrage of pop-ups, I was being redirected, and we also suspected my computer was being used as a proxy. Pretty scary when you never can know for sure just what kind of illegal activities one may be up to who uses other people’s computers to hide behind.

So I’m learning this whole new system and this whole new way of doing things, although some things are very similar. There are some things I like better about it and some things I don’t. I love how OSX doesn’t need to be shut down, but the colors are hideously ugly and there doesn’t seem to be any way to change them. I’m also using OpenOffice since I can’t use WinWord and I don’t know if I like it very much at all. It takes large documents forever to load and I’m not finding all the functions I’m used to having readily available.

OSX’s choice of text readers sounds drunk but the text reading program I usually use isn’t Mac-compatible.

Anyway, it sucks that we have to deal with yet another thing breaking around here. I know I’ve said it a million times already, but I am so sick of living in dumps! I really hope we get out of here next summer. I’m sick of being cramped in here and I’m sick of all the problems this place has had. I’m glad it won’t cost us anything to replace the tank (we had this happen to us in our house in Phoenix), but it will cost me sleep. My schedule is the worst it can be for this shit! And the hot water tank is wedged in between the bathroom and bedroom so I’ll hear Jesse just fine when he comes down in the morning to see how bad the leak is and what he can do about it till he can get a new tank on Tuesday.

As for this cold; I feel like I’m never going to shake it. :(

The good news is that Tom’s going back to work next year and they expect to be very busy, too. This much is a huge relief to know.

The Google comment thing appears to not have had anything to do with me after all. I went back and re-read it and the troll was actually talking to someone else about something that had nothing to do with me.

She told Aly that while she was blocked from Thoughts on her PC, she could still get in on her laptop, so she’s been harassing her that way. She found some other Facebook account Aly had set up just for her cousins, and she’s sending all kinds of messages and requests, being the needy, obsessive desperado that she is. Aly said she’s already sorry she added her there and may have to block her. Also, the troll couldn’t keep a secret to save her life, so if the mother were really plotting any sort of legal vengeance on me, she’d have been quick to brag about it. Yeah, I’m not worried about it. I’m not going to let people like that scare me despite my always being paranoid about the law after what happened to me in Arizona, just like I’m always paranoid about going broke after what happened to us since being here in Cali. But I’m also not going to let them stress me out again either and so that’s why my Thoughts blog is set to friends only.

Just when I thought she was going to go a whole day without peeking in on me, she spent over an hour on my profile page not too long ago (listening to my mixpod player?). That’s all she can see, though, since my status updates and posts are friends only.

I still don’t believe her when she told Aly that mollysmadre wasn’t her mother but there were some comments on her profile from mollysmadre that she deleted and she’s no longer mollysmadre’s friend. As long as they continue to leave me alone is all that really matters! She did admit to Aly today, though, that her mother has left comments on my blog before. This would be when she and her so-called lawyer friends harassed me on MyOpera.

The troll is continuing to pester Dani and Dee on Thoughts, and even posted her number on Dani’s profile for all the world to see begging her and anyone else to call her.

Aly’s having both breasts removed tomorrow, poor girl. I just hope this will be the end of her cancer!

Andy’s sad tonight because Stevie Nicks’ mother, Barbara, died today at age 84. He doesn’t know the particulars yet, but he’s sad because they became friends and she eventually set him up to meet Stevie a few times when he lived in Arizona.

Paula left a text-to-landline message that said: Send my perfume and the (inaudible).

Well, the greedy bitch is just going to have to wait! :)

Jesse was amazingly quiet today, and I’m still not 100% up to par yet. :( But I’m getting there. I was able to do a light workout, though most might not consider 150 crunches, plus the arm work I did, plus the running/walking as “light.” But the point is that it didn’t even last for 30 minutes when I usually work out a total of 45 minutes.

Hopefully, soon enough I’ll be back in the land of the living and able to catch up on my current story, reading, and also taking advantage of my month as an Amazon Prime member, though they really don’t have that many good movies.

I just can’t shake this rundown feeling. Even Tom’s still a little congested and rundown and he got sick a week before I did. I think I’m going to have to take it easy for the rest of the night.

For those of you interested in buying my second book but who don’t have Kindles, no problem. In a few months, it will be available on Smashwords, now that I know my good friend and one of my top fans, Monica, doesn’t have a Kindle. But I have to wait 90 days. I gave Amazon exclusive rights to it for 90 days.

I got the beauty box I won. It’s got an array of organic products including perfume, facial masks, soaps, nail polish, and laundry detergent. I polished my nails and I really like the color. It’s a very bold shade of blue.

Ok, here’s the latest and hopefully the END of the troll saga. As I’ve said before, giving Molly a chance was the dumbest thing and it totally backfired on me. I thought that maybe if I just acknowledged her instead of being so quick to push her away or ignore her she wouldn’t be such a pest that way. But I was wrong. She was not only the pest from hell with all her 10 million demands, pleas and shit like that, but she can’t handle rejection very well at all. She turned on me instead of just respecting my wishes not to have anything more to do with each other, and just like she once did on MyOpera, she got her mother and possibly a friend to help gang up on me on Thoughts with all kinds of comments, insults and other childish shit. Personally, I don’t care if someone’s trashing and bashing me in their blog. It’s their blog. It’s when they take it on over to my blog and leave unwanted comments that I draw the line.

Well, I had blocked the 4 or 5 accounts I knew her to have but then her mother joined and left a comment, which was promptly deleted as soon as they saw I was online. I blocked her mother on Facebook after sending a message months ago basically shaming her for making excuses for her daughter and for being such an enabler of her online behavior. The comment she left me last night agreed that Molly needed to leave me and my friends alone, but that she’d like me to contact her on Facebook because she had some “information” for me. Oh, and don’t insult her intelligence again because she’s got a degree in mathematics, and 14-year-olds talk like I do in Texas (I had commented that she wasn’t very bright for a teacher in the message I sent her months ago since she hadn’t caught on to all her darling daughter was up to).

I didn’t contact her mother, of course, as there’s nothing to say. And perhaps I’m just being paranoid but that so-called information has me a bit worried. Especially since I saw Molly had written that she Googled but didn’t find anything. Then there were two comments in regards to that from the mother, both of which were deleted. I hope my fears are unfounded but I worry the “information” had to do with court-related stuff or maybe to rub in my past brushes with the law, guilty or not.

Another strange thing is that I sold a copy of my book just hours after it was published. A coverless copy of my book, that is. We only just now got the cover problem resolved. While I’m thrilled to make a sale, especially so fast, I just couldn’t help but wonder if it was troll-related and if they plan to bash the book. Or worse, leave nasty and unrelated comments/links.

Even though I know I didn’t do a damn thing wrong (Molly wrote post after post bashing me and half a dozen other people, though she ran and deleted them when she got Mommy involved), I always fear being thrown into another legal nightmare after what I already went through down in Arizona. Life is unfair. God is unfair. These things really do happen where the perps find ways to legally victimize their victims after victimizing them in other ways. I should know. They could only make up and falsify what they don’t actually legally have, and even though it seems highly unlikely, I still worry about these things.

Molly and her people haven’t bothered me today, but Kim was run off the site too, fed up with the troll’s stalking and ugliness. But then she went back and left a post wishing Molly the best in life but to please let her and her friends be. She feels what Andy feels in that she shouldn’t let one bad apple spoil things for her. That may sound like good advice and be easy to say, but sometimes it’s not that easy when the person is so damn determined and obsessive. She keeps creating new accounts (and sometimes her friends and mother do too) to get at me faster than I can block them. So yeah, sometimes one bad apple is all it takes to really spoil things and take the fun out of things. Some people simply refuse to coexist peacefully with others and allow others to ignore them.

Molly’s swearing to Aly that was NOT her mother who contacted me and wondered if it could be a friend, but I think it was the mother. We know Molly’s a pathological liar, and I can tell by the way it was written and by the things she said that it’s almost certainly her. I’m hoping that because the troll didn’t mention any lawsuits or anything it means I have nothing to worry about. Aly said there was desperation in her tone in her message.

So there I was determined to quit all public blogging save for email and a select group on Facebook when I got the sweetest message from a woman named Dani on Thoughts who has also been pestered for over a year by this obsessive, needy pest turned monster when rejected, complimenting my writing and urging me not to let her run me off. But I was still determined to go when yet another woman named Dee said the same thing and how she enjoyed reading my posts and all that. Really, I am beyond flattered that some people really seem to like my writing. :)

Creating a new account under a different name was suggested to me, but it wouldn’t work. The troll would find it. That’s what stalkers do. The others have tried that and it didn’t work for them. She found them in no time. And so I decided that as a compromise I’d make my blog friends only. I know Andy probably wouldn’t want to register and friend me there so I’m emailing him my entries.

Aly also said Molly’s now blocked from Thoughts and is blogging on Xanga. I’ve heard of it but never cared for it. This much might actually be true cuz she hasn’t viewed me in a whopping 10 hours. I realize, though, that she’s not going to go away on her own for more than a few days to a week, and that after a year and a half, the only way to get her to go away is if I go away. This is why I have to keep things private or at least friends only for a good long while. I’m just sick of the drama. As I said, sometimes one is all it takes to ruin an otherwise good thing. It’s like trying to eat your favorite meal at a restaurant with a kid screaming in the next booth or with tons of flies buzzing around your head. If that one thorn is sharp enough, it’s really hard to concentrate on enjoying the rose.

So other than having an overhaul in pop-ups I can’t seem to get rid of, and then the runs which knocked me down 4½ pounds in just one day along with a loss of appetite, life is good as long as I don’t have to hear any more from Molly and her associates. I’m finally getting over my illness. I can’t believe how sick I got! It’s been years since I was that sick, though I could still function for the most part. My head is finally draining and I coughed up some shit from my lungs. It didn’t taste all that great but it was good to get it up. I slept horribly, though, due to all the stress the troll and company put on me, so hopefully I’ll sleep better next time around.

But why me? If the mother really is after me, why me? Others have written similar things about her precious daughter in their own blogs.

Anyway, sometimes I think of how Tom said the other day, “I don’t have any friends. I’m safe,” when I was telling him about the latest in online drama, and sometimes I envy him. But it’s a little late for me to turn back now. I can keep from making more friends (or as many), but I’m certainly not going to dump the ones I have. But yeah, I’d rather play it a little safer from here on out even if it might slow book sales down a bit.

Speaking of friends, I got a friend request from one of Nane’s friends in Leipzig, Germany, Christiane. I thought I sent her a request months ago but she decided not to accept it and so I was confused to get one today. I messaged her about it, and she said she sent me one but didn’t see me on her list. So I accepted the request she sent me and Christiane is now on my list. She’s tall and dark but with light eyes. She’s got a great body and appears to be around Nane’s age. She’s not outstanding looking but she is attractive. And guess who’s staying away? Yeah, me. :) Personally, I don’t know anything about her or what her orientation may be. She doesn’t look lesbian and she does have a son, so I guess that leaves either bi or straight. It doesn’t matter, though, as I learned my lesson from Nane as far as staying away from the cyber girlfriend thing goes. She knows Nane and I “broke up,” too, LOL.

I’m surprised she doesn’t have any pictures of her and Nane in any of her albums. They seem to be close, longtime friends.

Been up for an hour and a half and amazingly I haven’t heard from Jesse yet, or his dogs. If someone were here and willing to bet I’d hear from him by 2:00, I’d gladly go along with it, though.

My book, A Rainbow in Munich, is now available for sale (for free for 90 days to Amazon Prime members), but I’m having issues with the cover displaying. Therefore I’ll hold off on sharing the link till it’s resolved.

Uh-oh, guess who’s coming up the drive right now in his loud obnoxious truck? That didn’t take long. I’m sure the motorcycle will be next.

The hurt and anger I’ve felt towards Nane for coldly dumping me are beginning to ebb. As any normal human being with any ounce of self-respect would do, I am focusing on those who do care about me and not those I wish had cared but didn’t. Maliheh is one of those people. She’s in Hawaii now but says that even though she’s a little late in wishing some folks a Merry Christmas, and even though she’s busy, she should be home in a few days and we’ll catch up then. I told her I’d be up for New Year’s Eve and if she doesn’t have any other plans that night, maybe we can hang out together online like last year.

I had a dream that I hope wasn’t a warning of an impending layoff for Tom. It’s too soon for him to be laid off now. We’d be totally screwed. Even he admitted that it would be an issue if he were laid off before mid-January. But with my accuracy rate for bad dreams coming true, it’s got me a little alarmed. In the dream, I woke up at what seemed to be 12:30 in the afternoon. I noticed through the living room blinds that his car was here and heard movement at his desk. I peered around the corner and saw him playing one of his car racing games. “Why are you home?” I asked. “Did they lay you off?” but I woke up before he could answer.

I just hope there’s nothing to worry about for real! The dream didn’t leave me with the bad feeling the “riot” dream left me with, but it’s still unnerving when someone like me has these dreams. I know I could pray and pray to God not to let it happen, but if God wants to beat us over the head with money yet again, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Fate is fate and we can only do so much to alter it as much as some folks would rather believe otherwise.

I feel better physically, though still a bit out of sorts. I don’t understand why I got so sick. First time in years. But I shouldn’t get any worse at this point. I should be totally over it in a day or two. Even though I doubt I could run much, I’m going to make myself at least walk on the treadmill so I don’t start falling out of shape. I’ve taken too many days off as it is and my weight is starting to get out of hand again.

The drama queen is bitching about her health. Well, if she had just gone and gotten a deadly disease instead like she should have, she wouldn’t be alive to be in pain now, would she?

This isn’t going to be much of an entry because I’m still pretty sick. Wish I knew what the hell was wrong with me but I guess it’s the same flu Tom had. Last night and most of today were the worst. My throat became scratchy last night to the point that I couldn’t stop coughing because I kept feeling like I had a tickle in my throat. So I took some nighttime cold/flu medicine though I didn’t sleep well. I kept waking up a lot. I finally dragged my ass out of bed around 11am but felt like my head was under serious pressure and I felt so run down. Nonetheless, I managed to go out today for a while. Picked up some KFC and spent most of the day in bed as Tom rid my PC of a virus that somehow managed to weasel its way in.

What else…? I think that’s it. No other events stand out in my mind since I last wrote other than Jesse’s truck and motorcycle, and that ever-present chainsaw buzzing away somewhere in back.

I’m getting back into bed. Maybe I’ll write more tomorrow.

Finished a book on my Kindle last night and crashed around 1am. At that time my throat was “stable,” so to speak. I awoke at 4am with cramps and found them to be even worse, but the ibuprofen I took for my cramps also killed the inflammation in my throat and I woke up as good as new just like I said I would. :)

In that last hour or so before I fell asleep my near-future and long-term fears came to haunt me and I had a little “Nane attack,” too. I miss her and our chats, but she’s the one who dumped me and I reminded myself that and that anyone who doesn’t believe in me doesn’t deserve a place in my life anyway. Anytime you’re the only one who’s sending cards and messages and asking how the person is while getting nothing in return is when the cold hard truth becomes obvious enough. She’d only dump me again if I was dumb enough to forgive her anyway, but Nane’s not the type to go begging for forgiveness or to realize when she’s done wrong in the first place. In her mind, she did absolutely nothing wrong by toying with me, then ignoring me for two months, and then dumping me cuz she didn’t believe I was really having the rough time I said I was having. But while one can only insist so many times that they weren’t just “out for attention,” they can’t make them believe it. It’s got to be up to them what they want to believe. I still think, though, that she knew me well enough to know the truth and that she only said I was playing with her feelings because that’s exactly what she was doing to me. Some people are just hypocritical like that.

It isn’t just what happened with Nane that bothers me, but the same old continuing trend I’ve seen going on with me basically all my life, and that’s the non-mutuality. I hate to sound mean, judgmental and stereotypical, but it really does seem that the uglier and the crazier they are, the more they like me while the so-called “stable” and better-looking ones look down on me and see me as this inferior being. I’m not saying every hottie is a bitch or that every ugly person is nice to me. I’ve dealt with some mean, ugly bitches in life just like I’ve met a few kind hotties where the attraction was totally mutual. But for the most part, it’s not. The ugly ones are the ones that are nice, the crazy ones are the ones I get the most attention from, and the hotties don’t want to know I exist. Or at least not most of the time. The troll, who’s both ugly and crazy, has been looking for me on and off all day despite it being Christmas and having her family and extended family over visiting. Yesterday she spent over 3 hours looking for me over a 12-hour period. I wouldn’t want this much attention from even the kindest, hottest chick on earth, but if I must have it anyway, why can’t it be from someone who’s sweet and hot to make it a little more worth it? Why must it be from a psycho who looks unkempt, disheveled and drunk in most of her photos?

But I don’t know that I want to go back to public journaling anytime soon. I know I will sooner or later and that I should just do my best to ignore her and promote my books, but I like the idea of keeping her in the dark for a while as far as what I’m writing about these days (and she’s not going to like it when she finds out just what that is). Eventually, though, I’ll probably go back to Thoughts, MyOpera and MD. The more places I post the links, the better.

Today we did the cover design (very pretty) for A Rainbow in Munich and tomorrow we’ll be launching it to submissions. It will take a few days to either be accepted or rejected. They have a process they go through where they check for plagiarism, then they go over the book if not to read it word for word then to at least get a general idea of the plot and any obvious spelling/grammatical errors that may be present.

The cover shows a picture of a rainbow against a cloudy sky and is much brighter and easier to see than my first book cover, but hey, we were just learning and when you’re self-published you have to do most of the work yourself if you don’t want the hassles and pressures of contracts or any of that fun shit.

I have ideas for Renting Ginny which will be the third one I’ll submit, but I must remember not to make it too feminine in appearance since most of my readers will be lesbians who don’t usually like anything overly feminine. So, no colors like pink, no long hair, no makeup, no heels, no curvy bodies.

Anyway, back to the non-mutuality bitchfest. I know a lot of the rejection I used to get and would continue to get from most lesbians in general if I were as sociable as I once was, was due to my femininity and my height. Or lack of it, I should say, but especially my femininity. People see my pictures online and I think that after expecting to see some tomboyish-looking chick they’re like – WTF? Is this some kind of joke? But what you see is what you get and the fact that I continue to attract mostly uglies is kinda insulting if you ask me. It just makes me feel like I’m an ugly dog myself. I’m no beauty queen, I never wanted to be, and I have no intentions of actually getting together with anyone. But it doesn’t stop me from wondering about myself at times. Most people tend to go for what they feel are their “equals,” sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously. So does this mean that the uglies see me as ugly, too? Just wondering about that one. Did Nane truly see me as “not pretty enough” even though she often complimented my photos? Again, I really wonder about these things and what makes me such a magnet for the uglies as harsh and as cruel as it may sound as I know we can’t usually help our looks for the most part.

Even after all these years I still ask why. Why did God feel I didn’t deserve to act on my lusty fantasies like a normal human being? Why did He deny me that in life? I think I deserved to act out my fantasies the same as anyone else, but apparently something up there thought otherwise. Yet settling never worked for me. I tried it with Ron and then with Al and then with Brenda, but I just couldn’t get into sex with someone I wasn’t attracted to. I was certainly more attracted to Brenda than I was to Ron and Al, but it was nothing like my attraction has been to people like Nane, Barbara, Teddy Bear, Maliheh, Rosemarie, etc. I was attracted to my own husband too, and ever since we met I have never looked back despite the crushes mixed in, nor could I ever imagine life without the guy. He’s anything but the dumb, crazy and mixed-up kind of person I usually attract. But it’s still not the same if that makes any sense. I just was never as hot for him on the outside as I always was/am on the inside. I have always wished I could be one of those with a looks-don’t-matter attitude. Sorry, but I just can’t get it on with someone simply because they may be nice as hell any more than I could eat liver for dinner every night simply because it’s good for me. We try to eat what we like, listen to the kinds of music we like, watch the kinds of movies we like, and it seems that way with those we’re intimate with, too. If you’re just a friend of mine I don’t care what the hell you look like. But I, like most people, just can’t get into the idea of sex with a “sweetie” if there’s no lust involved. If anything I think lust is more important to most people than personality, right or wrong. Even I’ve had one-nighters with people who made it clear to me that they were attracted to me but didn’t think I was “right” for them.

Well, let’s put it this way…if I ever again hear another woman tell me she’s hot for me or has feelings for me, I’ll scream, for chances are she’ll be ugly, crazy or both. Maybe someday this recurring “coincidence” won’t bother me so much. After all, Nane did like me for a while, Christine is anything but ugly or crazy and neither is my husband. Also, the attraction between Teddy Bear and I was definitely mutual and she wasn’t crazy, so there are 4 people right there, plus a few guys I can think of that liked me that weren’t so bad-looking themselves. :) So even though it’s a rare occurrence, even ugly little Jodi S can occasionally catch the eye of someone who caught hers. :) Amazing, ain’t it? The only problem is that nothing ever actually happened with these people. It never will either. And strangely enough, I don’t want anything to happen with them at the same time I think, aw, too bad nothing can ever come of it. Is this normal? Or am I just as crazy as the crazies I often attract? Is it normal to have these mixed emotions and these mixed desires?

As for my short and long-term fears, doubts and worries…they were the usual. Will we just end up in the same old poverty trap we’ve been trying to escape on and off since coming to this damn state in just a matter of months or even weeks? And who will care for us when we’re old and unable to fend for ourselves? I don’t want to grow old alone and die alone, but unless I’m suddenly killed in a car accident or something like that along the way, that’s what’s bound to happen to a woman whose husband is 8 years older and as long as women continue to live an average of 10 years longer than men.

Believe it or not, I’m sick today. But I’m determined to wake up as good as new tomorrow, never knowing that today I awoke with a scratchy throat and that rundown and kind of off feeling that goes with colds. I don’t know why the two cups of coffee I had didn’t kill my sore throat, but the throat lozenge and hot tea I had Tom get me helped it quite a bit. It makes me love him and appreciate him all the more, too. When I was alone I had to fend for myself and go out either on foot or by bus to get cold remedies and that could be hard, especially at night or when I lived in snowy places. So it’s nice to have someone love me enough to go out and get what I need, and I know he would do it by foot or bus in two feet of snow if he had to. It was nice, however, that he could do it in the convenience of a car with no snow or bitter cold.

I don’t know how I got whatever it is I’ve got. It’s been too long to say I got it from Tom and his symptoms were totally different. His started with a stuffy head like an allergy attack, then turned to a cough. Because the worst of it only lasted 72 hours is why he thinks it was the flu and not a cold. He still has a bit of a cough, though. So far I haven’t been congested or coughing and I don’t intend to start either.

Work went well for Tom on Friday, but they were busy and shorthanded. We could be insured as soon as January, believe it or not, but that’s only if they don’t let him go and we feel like paying $40 a month. It would be nice to get to an ear doctor who can deal with phony canals and all that, but that’s a lot to pay for people who are otherwise healthy. If we paid a little more I could even go to a dentist, but IDK. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

I was in Florida again in my dreams but I was only visiting. I don’t think this particular dream meant anything. It didn’t leave me with one of those “feelings” and Tom and I don’t visit people even if we had the time and money. But in the dream, I was standing on the beach looking at the palm trees and watching a giant wave crash upon some rocks that extended out into the ocean. I vowed silently to myself to get back there to live someday.

Jesse got on my nerves yesterday with the truck, the motorcycle and some banging, and by the time I was up barely 4 hours today, I’d already heard from him 4 times. I am like, God please, please rain this bastard off his fucking motorcycle and his dirt bike and his ATV, please! I’d still have to hear the truck and some bulldozing as the rain tore up the drive, but if it could just rain during the day for once that would eliminate everything else. beats head Oh, that little wittle cock.

I really hope to try out an adult community someday, though I suppose you can’t compare one to all of them. My first concern is excessive barking, then screaming kids visiting too often, but I still can’t imagine dogs being allowed to live outdoors unattended every day and night in an adult community any more than I can imagine 5-hour basketball games breaking out every weekend and maybe sometimes during the week, too. But like I said, if that’s the case, back to an old shitbox in the country we go.

Today we’re not doing any book prepping. All we did was upgrade my version of Firefox and we dumped my Yahoo! toolbar because I was sick of them redirecting me to their search page. We’re spending most of the day just resting up and I’m indulging in chocolate and pistachio nuts.

The drought is still causing the inside temp to get close to 80º in the afternoons and so we opened windows for a little while to air the place out. I’m not burning any incense today either.

Still journaling mostly privately for now just for my closest friends. I just really need a break from stalking trolls that just won’t go the fuck away no matter what I try to say or do. Molly is one seriously unstable motherfucker. Just minutes after telling me she’s “my friend no matter what” she deleted me from her friend list and she’s just too up, down, left, right and totally insane for me. I’ve never met or even heard of someone with such erratic mood swings before or with such conflicting and confusing thoughts and emotions. One minute she’s calm, the next she’s a raving lunatic. She loves her family, she hates her family. She misses Alison and her exes, she’s better off without them, and back and forth and back and forth. Her entourage of shrinks, therapists and medications are obviously completely worthless to her and again I have to wonder just how she’s managed to stay out of jail. I think that’s because she’s so lacking in intelligence. Usually, it’s those who are too smart for their own good that end up in jail. The smarter you are, the more creative these types of stalkers and nutjobs can be, and those are the ones that usually turn dangerous. But Molly can’t even drive, so she has no means of jumping in a car and driving to where Alison is so she can graduate from online stalking to in-person stalking, then maybe try to harm her when she can’t get her way in the end.

But she belongs locked up somewhere – a funny farm if not a jail – and she definitely should be forbidden from going online unless she has serious supervision.

I wasn’t going to do an entry today but then decided to. Can’t promise much over the 3-day weekend, though, as that’s when we’ll be busy prepping manuscripts for submissions. Even though Amazon’s standards aren’t as high as a traditional publisher’s, and even though I already got published with them, I always worry they’ll find a reason to reject anything else I submit. So I’m doing my best to make sure the format and everything are as they should be to meet their submission guidelines and all that.

Eileen started reading Renting Ginny and said she was “hooked,” LOL. She asked if she could get it on her Kindle and I told her we were planning to submit my last two books for publication soon. I just didn’t think she’d want to have to buy a copy being a friend and all that, LOL.

So far it does seem that Renting Ginny just may be my best book based on the feedback it’s received so far. Even I thought it came out ok and I’m my worst critic.

Thought I heard my pest of a landlord come down (probably to get something from his shit pile) while I was in the shower. What’s he gonna do, come down every week? I can’t wait to get away from this guy! I really hope we do make it out of here next year. I sooo miss living in a real house with adequate space. Even if this place turned into a spacious, modern house, I’m sick of living with this guy and his dogs!

While the dogs go crazy when left alone at night at any time of year, this is the time of year they go crazy when left alone in the daytime, and like most people, Jesse’s in and out several times a day.

Most people have company anywhere from several times a week to several times a day, so yeah, I’m a little worried that this may be annoying to have to deal with in a senior community, and I still worry dogs won’t be allowed indoors because dogs aren’t pets in the west. I hope they have a rule there, however, where people can get them as household pets only and that they adhere to these rules. Lastly, there are the car stereos to worry about. But the only way we’re going to know if adult communities really are quieter than the mainstream is to actually spend some time in one. If it’s just as noisy as any old part of the city and rowdy kids are visiting every day, back to some little old shitbox in the country we go. I hope it really is quiet, though, because that’s the only way to take advantage of conveniences like cable, regular trash pick-up, mail delivered to your door, etc., without going back to the city with the freeloaders, college kids, etc. As I’ve learned, if we live anyplace where we can have the worst neighbors on earth, we will. We’ve had it all – welfare bums, Mormons with a million kids, home renovation freaks, drummers, partiers…

I have been utterly famished for the last few days. Nothing I eat satisfies me. I’m always, always hungry. I suppose some is connected to my cycle, but it seems a bit extreme even for that. So much so that I am seriously contemplating cutting my lips or tongue to cut back my eating. I’m tired of working out just to yo-yo back and forth within the same 5-pound weight range. All it does is keep me in good shape. This is better than nothing but I need to “transfer” the hunger to pain. I figure that if I’m in enough pain I won’t feel the hunger. Pain is easier for me to live with than hunger as I’m a little more used to that. But it’s hard to concentrate for long with this constant hunger always gnawing at me. I don’t understand just what the hell is making me so hungry in the first place. I know we’re supposed to be a little heavy when we’re older and I guess my body wouldn’t be so determined to hang onto the weight if it didn’t feel it needed it, but I just wish there was something I could do about it without going to such extremes. I simply can’t deal with the hunger and the fatigue that goes with it. But I can’t puke up my main meals either. I have tried and tried to coax myself into doing that but being as disgusted as I am by the idea I just can’t do it. Yet I have to diet and exercise somewhat because I’m not like most people in that not dieting means they just don’t lose weight. For me not dieting means I’ll gain indefinitely. Tom thinks I’d eventually stop gaining, but I disagree. I think that as long as I take in more calories than I burn on a regular basis, I will continue to gain an average of 1 pound every 10 days till the day I die. Well, I certainly don’t want that any more than I want to be hungry!

I don’t want to cut my lips because that’d be visible and I wouldn’t want people getting the wrong idea and thinking Tom did it. I’m gonna have to take a razor and slit my tongue. The thought of it makes me cringe and I don’t think I’m tough enough to muster up the courage to do it, but let’s see this pig stuff herself then.

Still getting a strange wave of spam. Still get the usual sex calls and lotto scams, but most of those get filtered out. This new round of shit is mostly from real sites as if someone signed me up for all these newsletters or something, and so they’re not hitting my spam box. I’m getting over 100 a day between both.

Irene just messaged me saying that Nane told her about what happened with us (yeah, I figured she would and that’s ok), and Irene said she wondered if I was in love with Nane and said I seemed like an extreme person to her though she cares about me very much and thinks of me a lot. She also said she’s had to see a therapist in the past and thinks I’m lonely and that therapy would be good for me, LOL. And with what insurance? LOL, yeah, I can see where one would mistake the lustless for the lonely, but a therapist couldn’t have given Tom a job or stopped the Unemployment people from cutting our checks like they did. Nor did I love Nane, though I did have feelings for her.

I can also see where due to not knowing me well and due to the language differences, one who might be facing starvation in the streets just might be seen as “extreme” and in need of therapy. But I also don’t feel bad, guilty or ashamed for the way being faced with that possibility like I was a few months ago made me feel and react. Anyone would be a basket case that was in that situation. Anyone. My only regret is not keeping my mouth shut about it. But ever since he found work and our survival hasn’t been on the line, all has been fine. Not perfect, but fine. I never expected to have a perfect life and be in a perfect mood every day, but since then I haven’t been depressed or anxious. I know all good things come to an end and that sooner or later God will once again be getting His kicks at watching us suffer, but until then I have no reason to frown or think of suicide. Ok, so like most people I’m frustrated with my weight and life’s everyday little problems – pesky landlords, leaky pipes, cold weather, etc., but my problems of today don’t even come close to being as extreme as they were a few months ago.

I really can see where Irene would’ve gotten the wrong idea about me. I disagree with Nane and how she said virtual friendships can’t work, but I also understand that online you can’t see expressions and you can’t hear tones. Therefore, it’s easy to misread someone you don’t know well and it’s not like Irene and I have communicated all that much.

Nane seems even less forgiving than I am, so I don’t think she’ll contact me, but as I told Irene (knowing she’d tell Nane) I am at the point now where I will not take her back as a friend. It’s too late for that. In fact, if I hear her name one more time today I think I just might scream. Then Irene can really think I could use some therapy.

I have decided to take a break from public blogging for a while. Until and if I decide to return to it only 6 people will read my journal for now. Maliheh will be emailed a copy, Andy will get a copy on Formspring which is now protected along with my Twitter account, and in a customized note on Facebook, Alison, Kim, Christine and Mitch will get a copy as well.

I’ve decided on semi-private blogging for two reasons. One is that I was actually starting to get sick of the social scene altogether and so many people coming at me so often with comments and questions and whatnot. I simply didn’t think my writing would draw that much attention when I first went public in 2008. But I’ve been writing publicly since then and tracking since 2010, both of which have lost their excitement as it’s no longer anything new to me. I will still be out and about in public to help promote my books, but that’s about it for now. I’m not saying it’s going to be like this forever or for a set amount of time. I, like most writers, am just acting on a whim and how I feel at the present moment. And right now I feel like sharing only with my closest friends.

It was Molly who compounded and basically locked in my desire to leave the public spotlight for a while. No, she hasn’t done anything wrong by way of making threats or anything like that; she’s just driving me crazy. I’m not going to block her, delete my blogs or disallow comments. I only went private on Formspring and Twitter. Everything else is just gonna sit there. I left a note there saying that I was sick of public blogging and was going to take a break for a while. That way people know what’s going on and won’t be worried.

I considered blocking Molly since “giving her a chance” seems to be a mistake, but that may piss her off into being a much bigger pest than she has been. Yes, being a pest who simply refuses to listen (or does she just not get it?) may be her worst fault, but I’m just sick of her never-ending presence that just never goes away. And now that we’re “friends” I don’t expect to even get so much as the occasional few days to a week off I used to get without her hovering over my shoulder.

I’m untracked on MyOpera and other sites, but my Thoughts tracker is still sitting there watching to see who comes around during my absence. I wouldn’t be surprised to get a message every hour from the troll asking where I am. Well, that mixed in with her repeated requests for “help” with those of her former friends who still don’t want to bother with her on account of her moods, lies, pushiness and delusions.

She still talks of Kathy and Aly regularly in her posts, especially Aly, and I realize that nothing placates this nutjob. Nothing. Even if those people suddenly started communicating with her every minute of the day in every way possible, she still wouldn’t be happy. It’s like she’s naturally just a miserable person who lives for having something to complain about, most of which most would find totally unreasonable and silly. It’d be like the difference between me bitching about Jesse’s dogs barking for hours as opposed to a tiny sliver of paint peeling from the wall. Not even I was ever this unstable in my craziest of times as a teenager and young adult. But this nut’s 28 already. Young, but not that young.

There’s no trust there either. I asked her how she beat my blocks I had on Tumblr. She swears no one told her how to beat them and that she didn’t do anything at all. All she did was go there and find that the account was one-day public and she could read my posts. One problem with that story, though, and that’s that that account was always public.

Sometimes I think she’s just too out of her mind to get the things I tell her like NOT trying to involve me in her disputes with others or expecting me to play messenger, and other times I wonder if maybe she does get it but is deliberately out to piss people off for kicks. She claims she can’t deal with rejection and that rejection pisses her off, but I don’t know about that at times. It seems she lives for pissing people off, rejection, and trying to “win over” past boyfriends and past friends who don’t want to know her anymore. It really does seem like she’s a negative attention junkie and gets off more on reading bad things written about her than good. Is this just normal for some people? Are there really people out there who enjoy being badmouthed???

I have told her a dozen times or more that I don’t want to discuss others with her yet just yesterday she emails me to say that someone named Barbara ran into Kathy in a grocery store and Kathy told her she was disturbed and all that.

“Why would Kathy say that?” she asked of me. “I’ve been leaving her alone since last June! I promise not to bully her or anyone else ever again! Please, Jodi, you gotta help me!”

What the fuck does she think I can do anyway? Go to Kathy and demand she be her friend? Kathy’s her own person same as anyone else. She has a right to do as she sees fit without the pressure of anyone else.

I stupidly emailed Molly a few of my stories since she said she wanted to read them, so hopefully she won’t abuse that address. As it is there’s been a huge surge of spam since yesterday. That addy tends to get waves of spam anyway, and I don’t think Molly would take the time to sign me up for every newsletter on the planet, but you never know. They’re coming in every few minutes, faster than I can mark them as spam.

Andy’s another one that doesn’t seem to get it. Despite my telling him that it really bothers me when people imply or accuse me of being a liar and doing things I didn’t do, he said, “Yes, you would” when I said I wouldn’t even want to hear from Nane or Barbara every day. It makes me uncomfortable to have friends with such serious trust issues where I gotta always wonder if they believe the things I say and insist I’m not lying or joking about whatever. Why would I lie or joke about something like who I would/wouldn’t want to hear from every day? I’m generally mistrusting of people too, but if you feel you can’t even take your closest friends for face value, then maybe you need to rethink that friendship. If you feel you can’t trust me, then you should let me go and find those you feel are more “trustworthy.” As I told Nane, if you can’t handle me at my worst (and she proved she couldn’t), then she doesn’t deserve me at my best. No matter how many times I insisted I wasn’t kidding or fucking with her about our plans to kill ourselves, she refused to believe me. Sorry, but I’m too selfish and blunt to lie to people about my intentions and shit like that. If I didn’t want people or certain people to know the truth about something in particular, I just won’t mention it at all.

Speaking of Nane, two days ago I half-hoped I would hear from her even though I knew I wouldn’t and today I have no desire to hear from her at all. She simply wasn’t what I thought or hoped she would be and those are the kinds of people I don’t need in my life. I feel confident that I’m over her and her shit enough to ignore her if she did contact me, not that I can see why she or Barbara ever would. Well, I can’t be 100% sure about Barbara, but I’ve had enough of Nane’s silent treatments and bullshit accusations. Relationships, be it intimate ones or not, must be built on trust. There’s just no way that I can see where a relationship would be even remotely possible without it, so for the last time, if you feel I’m not being entirely upfront with the things I say, feel free to let me go. :)

They say that if you care about someone enough that asks you to let them go, you will. Well, despite the fact that Nane turned out to be an ass, she was someone I did come to care about. I didn’t love her like I love Tom, of course, but I had feelings for her. Honest, I did. To those of you with trust issues – I really, really did come to care for Nane. And so I have let her go and would continue to do so even if I woke up tomorrow wishing we could reconnect once again, even if it meant being dumped and shit on all over again by the hündin. I think she’d fuck with me and dump me even if I lived down her street. That’s just Nane for you.

We’re at our coldest now, almost hitting 29º last night. That’s what they said we were to get down to, but I only saw it go as low as 30º. Plenty close enough. :( I’m freezing and I hate it! The kitchen floors are cold even with socks on unless I stand over where the heating vent runs. I really hope this is our last winter in a trailer!

Sure love the dream I had last night, and yes, it left me with one of those feelings. Not that we’re going to buy a house or anything like that. I refuse to ever own again unless we have enough cash to buy a place outright, something I just can’t see ever happening in our lives. But last night Tom and I were talking about buying a brand new house in one of my dreams for $42,000 and how we could pay it off in 5-6 years. It was so cheap because it was made of this special new material. It seems there was some mention of Arizona and its population continuing to grow, but we weren’t actually in Arizona, fortunately. I awoke asking him how many bedrooms the house had.

I told Tom about the dream and he reminded me that it’s not usually the particulars of my dreams that matter since the only place you could buy a new house that cheap would be in the slums.

I can’t believe the spam I’m getting today. Was it ever this bad? Did I ever get spam every 5-10 minutes?

Anyway, I lost a couple of pounds for some reason even though I haven’t been dieting or running as much as I wish I could say I have.

Molly’s been looking for me all morning and I wonder how many years she would check my blogs in hopes of my return. She left a message on my profile page saying she’s really “calm” today and hopes I haven’t left Thoughts. Yeah, I’m calm too, Molly. :) Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!

I can’t make any promises, but I’m determined to at least make a little progress on my new book today. Jesse was amazingly quiet yesterday. Hopefully, today will also lack barking and loud vehicles so I can concentrate. That is after I run these poor little joints ragged again on the treadmill. Ah, but it still feels so good and brings such comfort to know I could probably catch any potential mugger out there. Then when I do I will be sure to strangle the fucker with the straps of the purse they thought they could swipe from me. :)

I woke up perkier both physically and mentally than I had been waking up the last couple of days and so it’s nice to be happier and not so sluggish. Fuck the Nane’s of the world. :))))) Meinem Welt ist besser onhe ihr (My world is better without her). And no more being the “punctual” friend who responds to certain emails right away. For once I think I’ll make people wait on me and maybe I’ll take days or weeks or maybe even months to get back to people. Wir werden sehen. :)

Yeah, I’m convinced that Maliheh has “set” the time frames as far as when she emails me goes. It’s got nothing to do with her health or her schedule. It’s got to do with her consciously deciding to keep me at arm’s length and only contact me once or twice a month.

Ich bin kalt (I am cold)! Oh, how I long to be in Florida now, but even if we suddenly had a ton of money, Tom’s not 55 yet and there’s no way I want to live in mainstream Florida. Well, I don’t want to live in the mainstream anywhere. That’s why we’re out in the boonies.

Anyway, the Unemployment rate in California is now the lowest it’s been since 2009, so that’s good. It’s also continuing to be nice here in the afternoons. Nice enough not to need any heat during some of the daytime, but right now it’s freezing! It says it’s 46º but it sure seems colder.

Buon giorno a tutti!

Yesterday I took a much-needed break from the usual grind and spent a near internet-free day just relaxing with a movie, reading and some music. I did some cleaning and a small load of laundry but it was the first day in months I didn’t do any story-related writing/editing at all. I only wrote in my journal. Today it’s back to the usual, though. Gotta work out and get drafting my next book and fleshing out the characters and all that fun stuff.

I received the nicest writing compliment on Nexus from Monica about my journal and she said she’ll always be the first to buy my books, LOL. :) Just as soon as Tom gets over the cold he thinks may really be a flu and my allergies settle down, we can hopefully get my last two books out there.

Tom overheard something a little scary yesterday at work and that’s that they’re going to be laying off 60% of the people. The good news, though, is that they were talking about another department, and they’re still training Tom to do new things. We’re hoping they wouldn’t think it was worth the bother for someone they intended to let go soon. There are only two others who know how to do his job (including the supervisor), and he’s still the highest-paid employee, or one of them, as far as he can tell. My vibes and logic are still in disagreement with each other. My logic is saying there’s nothing to say he won’t get laid off during the first quarter of next year, while my vibes are saying this is it. Next year we’re outa here.

I only had to hear from Jesse 6 times yesterday. Once with the truck, twice with the motorcycle, then a few barking spells. Two of the barking spells were just a couple of barks. They really went crazy, though, when the propane people got here shortly before 3pm and gave us a magnetic calendar and a pen for the holidays after shooting the tank full. Love to see the needle on that gauge climb! We were down to 12% which is as low as the tank registers, so we could’ve been just about to run out for all we knew. I was dreading that foul smell and those clicking sounds. The place reeks when the propane runs out and the heater gets click-happy every so often when it tries to ignite just to find there’s no propane to fire up with.

I have bad gas pains in my tummy now from my Slim-Fast shake. I’m lactose intolerant at times. It’s a Jewish thing. Like it or not, while I may not consider myself to be of any religion, my body’s genetics are as Jewish as can be, and one of the traits we tend to have is being lactose intolerant. And so I guess I better take my Israeli-descended ass and get it over to a bottle of Tums soon enough and see if that helps. Or maybe I’ll just fuck it up worse and have a Twix. :)

I checked into Facebook this morning half-hoping to find a message from Nane saying something like: This is silly. Let’s just forget the past and be friends again because I miss you.

I would have been dumb enough to forgive her for dumping me yet again too, but my family is a reminder that I’m not as compassionate and forgiving as I sometimes worry I am. I peeked into Larry’s account out of curiosity and was surprised at what I saw. He’s “friends” with Tammy’s kids. Wow, maybe they wouldn’t really kill each other at my parents’ funerals after all, but there’s no saying what shit Ronnie may start.

The point is that there’s still a lot of anger there and I realize that after all these years it’s unlikely I’m ever going to be able to forgive my sister or my brother for the shit they’ve put me through in the past, be it directly or indirectly. Not fully forgive them, anyway. I really truly honestly don’t want a damn thing to do with my sister, brother and nieces and the only reason I’m in occasional touch with Tammy as it is is because of Mom and Dad. If it weren’t for them and my needing to keep the peace to help ensure that I get whatever it is they want to leave me (I doubt it will be much) when their time comes, I would see them as people and not family. And I know I wouldn’t like what I saw enough to want to bother associating with them. Some things are just too grand to be forgivable in my book. Larry’s worse crime may’ve been just pissing me off as opposed to Tammy who helped pave the way for the pig and freeloaders to get at my door and wreak havoc on my life, but there are just too many bad memories connected with anyone in my family, including my parents. But it is a little different with my parents as opposed to my siblings because my parents, despite their abuse in the past, saved Tom and me and would do it again if they had to. My sister probably would too, but as I said, she cost me half a year of freedom, thousands of dollars, and an untold amount of anger and anxiety. This just isn’t a case of someone pissing me off or embarrassing me or making me cry without years of bad memories to go with it. And just knowing that I have a feeling – a big feeling – that my brother wouldn’t care if I lived or died tells me something about him right there.

Forgiving or not, the last thing I care to do is to try to weasel my way back into the lives of those who simply don’t give a damn about me. I may miss some of them like Nane, but I have no desire to contact and buddy up to those who either ignore me or tell me outright that they don’t want to associate with me. I may also be the one who dumped Larry back in late 1999, along with Andy and the rest of my family when I felt the need to “wipe the slate clean,” and right or wrong, he has proven he’s not interested in me by not contacting me. And yes, he could do so if he really wanted to. I’m not hard to find, and then there’s my parents and their big mouths. I have to remind them every now and then that I don’t care who obtains my email address or who knows what’s going on with my life, but DON’T give out our address or phone number!

I have my nieces blocked. I wonder if they tried to look me up to add. When I was checking my blocklist I saw that Jenny was on it, so she didn’t block me after all. I forgot that I blocked her. If someone blocks you then you can’t block them because you can’t bring up their profiles if they’ve got you blocked.

Later…

I have spent the day tired, cold, angry, hurt and pretty withdrawn from the online world altogether. I don’t know if it’s PMS or if PMS is just helping to compound things or what, but I was thinking of Nane on and off and how she threw me away and all that and my emotions keep going back and forth between hurt and anger. I’m sad and I miss her. I wish she would have a change of heart but know she never will. Then my angry side comes out and I find myself wishing and hoping that karma gets her for it and that someone throws her away like some old piece of shit and falsely accuses her of playing with their feelings or “just trying to get attention” or “making excuses” for something that really truly is out of her control. I think to myself that maybe then she’ll know what it’s like and how I feel. But from what she once told me she should already have a good idea of what it’s like to be dumped. She told me she was in a relationship for 16 years when she was dumped and the pain was so bad it was physical. I really have to wonder sometimes – why do people put people through the same misery they’ve gone through? Why would anyone want anyone else to feel the same misery? Shouldn’t they of all people be more empathetic? Or do they feel that their past experiences give them a right to do the things they do? Does she feel entitled to cast people away like yesterday’s news because someone did just that to her?

And why do I feel the way I do about someone I never met and never would have met? Hell, I’ll never again see or meet any of my friends in my own damn country, so why would I feel so hurt by someone on the other side of the world I could never meet simply because of their appearance? What is wrong with me? Seriously. I can ask myself what’s wrong with other people a million times over, but what the hell’s wrong with me? Why would I care about this near stranger that I never met and knew I never would meet? I just don’t get how one could come to care for someone they only knew in the virtual world, proving her theory totally incorrect in saying that a virtual friendship can’t work. Maybe it can’t work for some people, and I’ll admit that when social sites first hit the scene, the idea of buddying up to an “electronic being” seemed silly as hell. They were just avatars, weren’t they? Just a bunch of silly screen names. Right?

Wrong. Nane was real. Alison isn’t just a digital invention either. And neither is Monica. They’re real people and people I care about. I don’t know Monica as well as I’ve come to know Alison, and Alison is just about my longest-running cyber friend since she was one of the first ones I met, but they’re way more than just a series of ones and zeros. They have feelings just like I do.

Nonetheless, I’ve been withdrawn from most people for the last two days. Yes, my fatigue and gloominess are probably somewhat PMS-related, but I also think Nane’s part of what’s got me down. I’ve experienced rejection on and off all my life since I was a baby. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. It’s just another one of those storms I have to wait out. But those storm clouds will clear and time will dull the ache in my heart and Nane’s memory will fade away. And yes, immature or not, a part of me hopes karma bites her in the ass for what she’s done and she finds herself alone and wanting to talk to someone just to find that no one’s there. No one’s there because they don’t give a damn and the ones that did she threw away.

Although I woke up tired, I hopped on the treadmill expecting some muscle breakdown after working out just 1 out of the last 4 days and therefore a tougher time working out. Instead, I was in better shape and ran faster, LOL. Didn’t go as long, though. Then I got really cold for some reason and took a two-hour nap. I still feel kind of out of it both physically and mentally and even though I expected to get on with my next book today, I haven’t. All I’ve done is read, watch a movie and listen to music.

Jesus, what the hell is wrong with me?

I’m still a little down over Nane’s official Dear John message to me yesterday. Nane, who still believes (unless she’s just saying that) that I was playing with her feelings when in fact I’ve never had the desire to do this to anyone at any point in my life. I may play pranks, but I never cared to confuse or hurt people’s feelings. But if anyone knows the anguish and frustration of not being believed or taken for face value, it’s me. I also know, though, that those who accuse others of basically being a liar are often guilty of the same exact thing as well. So Nane, who’s also so sure that it’s not possible to have a “virtual” friendship, has asked that I let her go but with warm wishes to me, Tom and the rat. She has also said she’s a little sad the friendship is ending even though it was a pleasure in a weird and interesting way to know me for a while, and even though she’s the one throwing it away.

While her Dear Johning me is no surprise, it’s going to be weird for a while getting used to the idea of knowing that there’s no possibility of hearing from her when I go to check in on Facebook and that she’s gone forever. I’ll get used to it, though, and I’ll move on.

I blame myself just as much for ending up stabbed in the back by the bitch. Not that I feel responsible for her own actions in any way. Oh no, she’s responsible for what she’s done. But where I feel responsible is that I should have known better than to approach someone I was attracted to in a virtual world or not. I learned young just what is/isn’t meant to be. Twenty years ago I vowed to stop approaching women I was attracted to in person and I did. Now I’m vowing to do that online as well. I’m sorry but I’m sick of the shit I get from them! I’m sick of attracting only ugly or crazy chicks and I’m sick of the so-called sane ones and the hotties fucking with my head, blowing me off, or being downright mean to me on account of my appearance or because of something else they perceive to be wrong with me. If this is how they feel, why don’t they tell me up front? Why string me along first? I’m used to those I’m attracted to not being attracted to me back, and no, I’m not perfect, but by God do they really have to be these mean, cruel fucking bitches and play these kindergarten games???

Well, let me just say that no one should have to have a friend they feel is “lying” to them when they reach out to them in a time of need or that puts their trust in them by divulging anything about them – their lifestyle, their physical limitations/problems – so feel free to not have anything to do with me if you don’t think I’m an honest enough friend for you or that I reveal too much about myself to you that you either don’t agree with or you just don’t get. :) I wouldn’t want to burden anyone with my so-called lies, honesty, uniqueness or anything else. I mean, shame on me for having a driving phobia and shame on me for working at home. That’s simply not “normal.” Can’t accept non-normal, though? No problem; just insist I’m lying instead or out for attention and that I’m making excuses so I can be “too lazy” to fix myself and make myself normal just like everyone else. :)

Tom’s got his first cold in quite a while, the poor guy. I tried to get him to scald his throat but he insisted his super hot tater tots were enough. But they weren’t. It needs to be done with liquids. It’s the only way to kill the virus from taking hold and fully setting in. Maybe next time he’ll listen to me even though he hates tea and coffee. He should have burned his throat with hot water.

Speaking of the virtual world, it sure overwhelmed me yesterday. It seemed that everyone was coming at me with a zillion comments and questions on a zillion sites and I just need a break at times! I’m just not into doing social sites every single day like some of my friends are. Not that I don’t enjoy it for the most part; I just need/want to be doing other things as well. I should probably restrict them to just weekends, but we’ll see. Maybe it’d be better if I learned to discipline myself by not checking them so often and by making people just wait till I feel like being social. I’ve never been much of a people person anyway. I hated to see people every day in person so why would I want to every day online?

So much for hoping for peace on weekends, though Jesse still tends to be noisier during the week. He had his fucking truck running and gunning for 10-15 minutes yesterday, then we got to hear the motorcycle, and then some barking while he was gone and I was trying to watch a movie. While I have certainly lived in much, much noisier places, I shook my head sadly, angry that God would keep allowing this to happen in every single place I’ve lived for the last 20 years or so. All I can do is hope we’ll get to rent a place next summer in a senior community and that I’ll be even happier there in a real house that’s newer and nicer and that’s less likely to have barking dogs, motorcycles and dirt bikes zipping through it, etc. We have nearly a grand in savings and that’s even after all the expenses we just had to pay, so hopefully God will be kind enough not to allow the carpet to be yanked out from under our feet between now and next summer. I will be more convinced than ever that something wants us here for Jesse’s sake since good tenants are so hard to find if Tom gets laid off soon. If he does, though, it will probably be within the first quarter of next year, so I’m getting a little nervous as the New Year approaches instead of excited like I wish I could be. First, we have to hope he doesn’t get laid off, then we have to hope they’ll be willing to rent to someone who’s just a temp. Then again, all he has to do is say he works at such and such a place. How would they know if he’s a temp or not? Probably by common sense. If you work in Cali, then you’re probably just a temp.

Anyway, today, just like almost every single day, I will be annoyed periodically by someone over a hundred feet away and that I shouldn’t have to be annoyed by. I shouldn’t have to go to bed wondering if someone over a hundred feet away might wake me up, and I shouldn’t have to worry that they’ll distract me from my work when I am up. I never expected any place to be 100% soundless, but hopefully they’ll simply come and go just once or twice a day in a senior community in a civilized way and not have company 5 times a day every day like most people in the city did that we’d live next to. When your neighbor’s driveway is just inches from the wall of your house, that’s a lot of car doors to have to deal with when they and their company comes and goes and comes and goes all day and all night. But it’s hard to believe they’d do that in a senior community or have loud, old trucks they sit and rev up for several minutes before taking off in them or on motorcycles. I also can’t believe they’d be allowed to leave their dogs outside for me to have to listen to during the hours they were gone. But I’d like the chance to find out.

I hope today’s workout will be better than yesterday’s. My joints were fine but the muscles around my ankles burned so badly the last time that I had to stop running after 5 minutes. I suppose carrying around an extra 40 pounds doesn’t help. Once my sugar-laden coffee creamers run out I was thinking I’d just switch to tea. I may still not lose weight, though. I think the only way to really lose a significant amount at this age is to starve and I’m just not willing to do that and be hungry, sluggish and bitchy all in the name of weight and appearance. It seems that no matter what I still have the same tits, hips and thunder thighs, so they’re obviously not meant to go anywhere. sighs Everything a guy wants and nothing a woman wants. Oh, the straight women usually want these ample curves for themselves, it’s the gay women who don’t like seeing them on other women. Well, not unless they’re either mean or crazy. I know I shouldn’t stereotype like that, but for me, this is how it’s been.

I sent a copy of my manuscript to Tammy. Instead of thanking me for it or expressing any kind of interest in it whatsoever, all she did was go on about her health, saying the doctors say they can’t do anything more and don’t know where the inflammation is coming from, so all she can do is see a pain management doctor. Ah, but only the good die young. You ain’t going belly-up for decades, big sis. It was all I could do to tell her I knew where the inflammation was coming from. But she probably wouldn’t believe me and the mood-influencing thing and all that anyway. I didn’t knowingly and intentionally make her sick, but that’s just what happens when people piss me off bad enough like she did in 2009.

I’m really worried about Tom. He just got out of the shower and says he feels “weird” and isn’t sure what he’s got is a cold. He said he woke up constantly throughout the night and had to pee like 20 times. I worry about him because he not only has a 25-minute drive to work, but he also has a very physical job and no insurance. Unless the healthcare reform becomes more than just talk, he’s got another 10 years before he can have insurance, and I won’t be insured for another 20 years, so we’ve got to stay healthy.

Molly is crazy. I mean totally, totally crazy. I knew this was a twisted individual but it’s like she has no concept of right and wrong even though she’s written a million times in her own journal how sorry she is for bullying others and how she promises never to do it again. I just hope I’m not going to have to block her soon (already she’s hit me up for a phone chat I had to refuse) and that it won’t make things worse for me if I do have to. Unfortunately, there are people out there who can’t simply feel hurt or angry by those who no longer want to be friends with them. Instead, they feel they must either “punish” them for it or try to win them back over. She seems to believe she can make people like her and want to communicate with her, but no matter how many times I or others try to encourage her to seek out those many other fish in the sea that will want to be her friend, she’s still obsessed with those that have cut her off on account of her possessive pushiness nearly a decade ago. I used to have some of these negative traits myself where I tried to win back those that dumped me or I’d just shit on them for it, but as I learned, that usually only makes things worse. I wouldn’t mind playing kiss and makeup with Nane now even though she’s proven to be a bitch, but she told me to just let her go and so I intend to respect her wishes even though it’s her that’s letting me go.

Just seconds after Alison (who does still seem to be the root of her obsession for some reason) changed her profile picture on Facebook, Molly messaged her to say she liked it and asked yet again to be added there after Alison told her several times she wasn’t going to add her there or call her or write her a postal letter. That’s another thing she doesn’t seem to get; that we can’t make people add us. I canceled out my own unaccepted friend requests figuring that if people I’ve requested to add haven’t added me, then they must have their reasons for it. Meanwhile, if they change their mind they can send me an invite and I’ll consider it.

Also, the troll made a review of the same Chinese restaurant Alison recently reviewed even though Alison’s in Nebraska while the troll’s in Texas.

Alison was pissed cuz every other journal post (she makes like a dozen a day) is all about her supposed concern for Alison’s health. Aly and I just don’t get why she cares so much about someone she hasn’t been friends with for so long. And this is right after claiming she was “better off without her in her life.” WTF?!

Oh, good. I just read in the troll’s blog that her older sister is having another baby in two weeks so maybe that’ll keep her occupied for a while. She does seem to love being an aunt, always gloating about her niece Ella who’s about to turn two and all that. Imagine if they knew just how crazy their stalking aunt truly was.

What the hell is wrong with my rat this morning??? He seemed to have no energy all weekend, but now he’s all wound up and won’t leave me alone.

Later…

I lazed out of running/walking altogether today. I know sore boobies and other PMS symptoms are a lousy excuse, but I seem to not want to do much today. I don’t want to work out, I don’t want to socialize, I don’t want to do this or do that. Don’t take it personally, though, if I didn’t reply to today’s millions of comments and questions, LOL. If I don’t get to them later, then I will tomorrow. I just want some alone time today from both the virtual and non-virtual worlds. :)

I just love the new Kindle. I downloaded some books and am into Patricia Gussin’s Shadow of Death right now. I usually only read during the last hour or two of my day. It’s great for when I’m too tired to do anything constructive, but not quite ready for sleep. The only thing I don’t like is that the Kindle is a little heavy to hold in this little hand of mind, and you can accidentally “flip” pages at times if your finger taps the edge of the screen.

It’s after 8am now so I suppose I’ll be hearing Jesse any minute. I’ll put the sound machines on loud enough to drown him out, but not the propane people, though they shouldn’t get here till the end of the day. The guy doesn’t like driving the truck down the steep drive when it’s full.