It’s now been over a week since my dad died. I keep hoping for a sign from him somehow, somewhere, as spooky as it may be, letting me know he still exists. Yet I have received absolutely no signs at all. I guess this can mean only one of three things. He is unable to beam back a sign. He has chosen not to for some reason. Or there is no afterlife at all and we simply blink out into total nothingness after death, which is what I prefer most unless the afterlife is much, much better than this life as we know it to be.

Unfortunately, they decided not to hire anyone for the job Tom applied for at work. I still don’t think he’ll ever be a permanent employee there. Usually, if they don’t hire you after the first few months, they’re never going to. I don’t mind him being a temp, though, for the rest of his working years because it’s not only obviously what he was meant to be, but because I’m used to it since that’s how it’s been for almost half a decade, and also, we don’t need insurance; we need dental. But very few employees offer regular benefits these days let alone dental. Jobs with dental are very, very scarce. I’m also used to dealing with dental pain on my own, so I can continue to tough it out until the next tooth gets infected and the pain is so bad I can’t even sleep. So what if it may kill me? I’ve lived a long enough life as it is, and well, I gotta go someday anyway, don’t I? Some risks are worth taking in life. I won’t gamble with my husband’s life, but I’m willing to gamble with mine. Especially when the risks are so low I’d have a better chance of winning the lottery and just paying for everything outright. Assuming God doesn’t have to get a kick out of yanking the carpet from underneath us yet again and things keep running smoothly, I may be able to do just that anyway towards the end of the year. Sometimes I think to myself, “You know, you really oughta just call off the move and do your teeth first. Small, noisy places are what you’re used to anyway.” But I don’t know that I could do that, and yesterday wasn’t that bad. I only heard Jesse come and go twice, but I can’t say how much barking there was because I had the sound machines on. I don’t even know if they were sawing today, but they might have just started as I was falling asleep.

It’s been amazingly warm the last two days. Yesterday we didn’t need to turn the heat on till 5:30 am and just two hours later it was off for the day. Well, it’s now just after 4am yet it’s been hovering at 72° in this room. Strangely enough, though, it says it’s only 45° outside now. They say there’s a 30% chance of rain today, but that usually really means 0%.

I never did hear back from Tammy, though there has been activity within her account so I know she’s been on Facebook reading the news and playing games. She’s probably pissed because I don’t want to talk on the phone with her. This is alright with me because personally I just don’t care. Whatever happened between her and Larry is between them. I don’t know, I don’t want to know, and I don’t want to get involved. I just want to keep the peace until I drop her, with or without an inheritance. Even if I suddenly knew I wasn’t going to get anything (and I find it hard to believe my parents would have a store so late in life if they had a lot of money), I’m still willing to play nicey-nicey till mom goes and that is for mom’s sake only. I know how Tammy operates when she gets pissed off and then vengeful. The first thing she does is get others involved. The second thing she does is twist the truth and throw in lies. Well, I don’t need her dragging Mom into something she may get pissed at me for and then Mom getting on my ass about it. I just want to play it cool till she’s gone and then I will quietly walk away from the entire family for good. And the pain and memories that go with them. Countless times she has bragged about siccing the pigs on this one or on that one that has pissed her off. And while she sometimes may have good reason to be pissed at people, I don’t need the cops showing up at my door because she got pissed when I said something she didn’t like or agree with.

Speaking of cops – usually, any dreams I have of them are unpleasant, but the last one I had was weird. Tom and I were walking through a large parking lot. There was a cluster of pigs in the middle of it doing who knows what. Like half a dozen of them or so. One of them, a guy of around 40 with dark hair and a thin mustache, was standing sort of off by himself doing something with a sign or a large piece of paper. He said, “Hi Jodi,” as we passed by. I looked at him confused as I wondered how he knew my name. I simply shrugged and said hi back. Every day we passed this same parking lot and this same bunch of pigs he would say hi, more in a polite tone than a friendly one. Finally, I said to Tom, “The curiosity’s killing me. Next time I gotta ask this pig how he knows my name,” but there wasn’t a next time.

Anyway, people online piss me off bad enough as it is. Like a certain troll and her enabling mother who’s always full of excuses. Her latest excuse for her darling daughter’s behavior is that she’s coming out of a broken engagement. But as Alison told her, that’s no excuse for her to use her full name in a blog rant. Besides, she’s the one who let her go to a guy she knew was no good for her.

Then she turns around and replies by saying that part of the troll’s behavior is her fault because of what she writes in her own blogs. That’s ridiculous. Just utterly ridiculous! I’ve read all her blogs. Nothing in them is inappropriate in any way nor does it go beyond first names. To say that Aly’s partly responsible is like saying a woman who is raped is partly at fault because she wore bright pink lipstick. How fucked up is that?! But knowing the troll, she no doubt lied and told her mother that Alison wrote some really horrible things about her that she never wrote. She’s also crazy and delusional so she may perceive her posts as being more than they really were, and as paranoid as she is, she probably thinks Alison’s out to get her. That’s another trait of people with her type of illness. She’s written many blogs about fearing that people are spying on her and plotting against her when all we want her to do is just leave us alone. But as we know, she’s never going to learn to leave those alone that dislike her. That’s what she lives for; focusing her time and energy on those who simply don’t care. If her only choices in life were to associate with those who like her and truly care about her and want her in their life, versus those who don’t want anything to do with her, it’s a no-brainer as to what she’d choose. That’s just what sick people do. They choose destruction and hate over love and productivity.

The only good thing is that the almost-as-crazy mother has been keeping her offline, even if we know damn well it won’t last more than a week or two. Someone’s been in her Thoughts account, but it couldn’t be the troll because the troll wouldn’t be in it without posting her usual mythical sob stories. I have no idea who it is and what they could be doing since whoever it is never posts anything.

Amber keeps checking my KB profile even though that blog is private. LOL, I hate to cut her out if she’s that interested in my writing like she has been lately, but these days I’m only using that blog for the stuff I send Maliheh. She loves cats and so I set up the entries there to include cat pictures. The only reason I made it private is that she gets to read things I don’t normally put online. Maybe I should set it back to members only and see if she comes back.

When you study many languages you learn the similarities they often share. Where there’s a c in English there’s usually a k in German – America, Amerika. Words that end with ect in English usually end in ecto in Spanish and etto in Italian – perfect, perfecto, perfetto. But mastering a lot of this damn German grammar becomes a matter of guessing and memorizing since oftentimes there are no set rules. It is one frustrating language!