So I did hear back from Andy but first things first…I keep ending up liking and wanting to keep the diamond paintings I plan to send Aly for her birthday, LOL. So now I have two owl paintings that were going to be hers. I’m getting a two-pack of unicorns for her instead that I’m at least reasonably sure I wouldn’t want to keep for myself.

We’re going to be getting some frames for the big one I’m still doing. I should be finished with it in a few days or so. He saw a tutorial on framing diamond paintings where you get colored poster board to slip behind it in a frame that’s bigger than the painting and you have that color for a border. That way you don’t have to worry about a precise fit.

Tom’s been slaving away at the floor in the small bathroom. The foam tiles are coming up easily and the vinyl tiles are coming up easily, but the adhesive isn’t. There’s a horrible sticky film all over the floor that he’s slowly trying to scrape and mop up. It’s probably going to take multiple moppings. Now he’s trying the carpet cleaner on it.

I finally ran out of patience with long hair and cut it off myself. It’s barely to my shoulders but looks okay and is MUCH easier to manage. It poofs out a bit but I don’t want to layer it myself. I keep it in a ponytail most of the time anyway, and a salon can straighten it out for me in a couple of months or so. I just didn’t want to deal with the length for another couple of months.

Good to see the critical cases slipping under 100K for the first time in a while. We should be a month or two away from vaccinations.

Aly and Cam did The Return to Sender spell yesterday and I’m hoping it helps them the way it’s helped us.

I remained calm yesterday which is something I have mixed emotions about. Of course I don’t want to feel anxious under any circumstances for any reason, but I also don’t want it to be a brand issue either. It’s too soon to say for sure either way, though.

So I awoke to a few funny memes and a few messages from Andy which sort of surprised me. I mean it did, but it didn’t. He swears it wasn’t him that said, “Jodi gets free stuff always” or “Tom’s the worker bee silly rabbit,” on MD years ago. Unless he did and simply isn’t remembering it, the one thing he’s never been guilty of is being a liar. He’s actually always been pretty honest with me.

I guess it could have been anyone since, after all, a woman in the US is seen as bad for not working as a woman in India is for not having kids. It just seemed a little too personal, almost as if it was someone close to me. And the “silly rabbit” comment seemed like something he would make as well. Doesn’t seem like any family members would say that, and those currently in my life aren’t judgmental otherwise they wouldn’t be in it. IDK, maybe it was a random reader. I’ll never know. But women do get bashed for having kids these days and twice as much for not having a job outside of the house, even if they still work from home. Other than when there’s a lockdown going on of course.

He admits to being judgmental and that his family and I have accused him of being negative and that everyone seems to expect perfection from him. He said why not just accept him as he is? Also, the thing that would bother him most was when I expect him to agree with everything.

I never expected him to agree with everything. Just to keep in mind that sometimes there’s a difference between an opinion and a fact. I think, though, that we all can be judgmental and negative at times, so I can understand that much. I mean even if we don’t always voice them, it’s only human nature to form judgments and opinions on what we hear and see.

He apologized for pressuring me to be in constant contact years ago. Aly used to do that to me too. He says although he doesn’t know why he was like that, he realizes it was wrong and says he’s just as busy as I was then. Well, I don’t know if I was always busy, but I do try to keep myself occupied so I don’t get bored and out of shape. Still, anytime I feel smothered isn’t a good thing. We all need some breathing space.

He said what he loves most about me is my silly sense of humor and that no one else has ever made him laugh as much as I have. But in so many ways my mind is creative in devious ways, many of which he participated in and that scared him and made him question being friends with someone who was capable of being that way.

Oh, the deviant shit I admit I used to pull in the past without blinking an eye that I would never even think of doing these days due to either feeling guilty or worried about Karma getting me for it. Like writing “fuck you” on Andrea’s IRS statement that was accidentally put in my mailbox at the Vista Ventana before returning it. But never think that deviance doesn’t live on in my mind, though, for it does. Oh, the things I do to some people in my mind!

Regardless, he always remembers our history and that it dates back to the late '60s, and loves being friends with people who knew him for that long. Precisely why I would never tell him that in many ways, Aly is the bestie he never was or could be. Because I know that would hurt since we’ve met face-to-face and go back to the '60s as opposed to a cyber friendship that goes back to 2008. But even though Andy will always be like family to me, I know which one I’d choose in a heartbeat if I had to!

2008 was the year he said Adam dumped him and he’s not sure he would ever want to resume a friendship with him but for some reason I’m different and he does want to be my friend. He said he visited Marla in 2018 and would have loved to take the train up to Sacramento once again. Yeah, I admit that would’ve been nice.

I think it would be good to keep in touch every now and then rather than be so all or nothing. I can’t say that I’ll ever consider him the bestie I once considered him to be but more like the bestie of the 20th century while Aly’s the bestie of the 21st century.

Oh, the obvious differences in their intelligence levels! He says he doesn’t know why I think he’s in Ohio. He’s still in Springfield, Massachusetts, and loving every second of it. Ah, but does he not realize the address on his cover photo? Obviously not, LOL.

He said he remembers when he sang me the song How Do You Do and I was so excited because I’d forgotten that song.

And again I forgot about that song, LOL…until he just mentioned it. We used to sing it to each other at the beach when we were kids, he said, although I don’t remember that much.

As far as that deviant thing goes, he mentioned a guy at the Vista that would call him a faggot and that I wrote a letter anonymously to say that I knew where he was and was going to come and get him, and then he moved in the middle of the night and we were laughing about it and all that. At first I had absolutely no recollection of who he was talking about. I’m still not sure I know who he’s talking about but it does sound like something I would have done. My best guess is the pervert who lived next to me when I had the ground-floor studio. Hated that bastard! And I hated the guy above me because he walked like an elephant. Andrea would end up worse than both of them, though. But he must be talking about Mark. Robert was the guy above me, but Mark…that must be the 6-foot-plus perve I, barely 100 pounds soaking wet at the time, must’ve scared off. Haha!

Mark was a definite hater, alright…gays, blacks, poor people…he hated them all. Didn’t we red-bra him, though? It seems like my parents sent a package and we took some of the things we didn’t want and left them by people’s doors just to baffle them, and I swear I took a red lacy bra that was too big for me and left it hanging on his door, LOL.

I mentioned putting the house on the market and he said with confidence that we’ll get a great offer in just one day because the house is beautiful, but I think he forgets that manufactured homes don’t have the value that on-site built homes have, plus it is outdated.

I would have had the answers if I’d just been able to speak clearly! I had the information in my dreams. I excitedly told the dream people our moving date but was so choked up with emotion and crying happy tears that I could barely talk. Right now I have a mild vibe about getting an offer in April and moving in June but it’s not as strong as the flying vibes and dreams I’ve had. He was comparing costs between flying and different ground variations and right now it is looking more likely that we will fly. If that’s true, it will be interesting to see if it’s first-class like in the dream and if the window is to my left.

Here’s the most interesting and amazing thing he told me. Well, we switched to leaving voice messages because it’s easier. He sounds great and very easy to understand, as always. Can’t deny that they put a big smile on my face just like when he would leave voice messages on the old-fashioned answering machines we had in our apartments back in the 80s. He thanked me for that classic laugh of mine.

Anyway, back when he started popping up in my dreams, I remembered how he once told me that people that know each other sense when they’re on each other’s minds and he would often pick up the vibes when someone was thinking of him and vice versa. I wondered if him being in my dreams like that all of a sudden meant that he’d been thinking of me. Well, it turns out that he hadn’t thought of me in months, and then last October he started dreaming about me a lot and asking himself what the hell is going on? Is she thinking of me? Is she going to come back into my life? And then he told himself nah, she’s never going to contact me ever again. But now, here I am. Way cool but makes me wonder why the termites are on my mind every day. I certainly don’t miss them and I would never under any circumstances ever take them back into my life for any reason, but I wonder if it’s because they’re thinking of me constantly that’s got them on my mind regularly or if it’s just my anger that has them on my mind so much. Probably the latter. I’ll get things off my chest when I feel the time is right and that will purge some of the anger even though I’ll never forgive them.