There wasn’t any money left over from Friday’s grocery trip, so I won’t be ordering that Esme doll on the 21st. Definitely at the end of the month, though, and instead of ordering the mugs at the end of the month, I’ll order them in early or mid-April.

It just started raining. The new plants will like that.

I got to thinking about how Mary surprised me by saying she was going to demand to be housed alone in Florida and that she was housed alone before because I thought she had told me they didn’t have Ad-Seg there which struck me as odd. All jails have to have some form of segregation, I’d think. Anyway, I think she’d be crazy to go general pop, and I’d be surprised if they even let her with her high-profile case. And especially in a state where more people would know about it. As long as the media’s going to be allowed to open their big mouths and endanger people like Mary, they gotta have Ad-Seg. Most people will feel bad for her and be on her side, but every so often she’d be up again a Nancy K who’ll see her as just as guilty for not protecting Gretchen.

The bougainvillea’s still alive. I’m trying again to put a spell on this bitch of a rat here. For Tom’s sake, I’m not doing death spells, just sick ones. If I have this gift, ability, power – whatever you want to call it – I may as well hone it as best I can. I’ll ask Mary if she wants me to try to make anyone she knows fall ill.

This morning we made my music computer part of the network, though we needed to get a newer, faster network card. They’re only $10, though. Tom said that it’s best to have backups on at least two different mediums, so I’ll still back up to CD once a month, but only on one CD instead of two. Meanwhile, I’ll send stuff to my music PC on a daily basis. At the end of each day, I’ll send whatever I’ve done during that day.

Tom’s going to visit his mom tomorrow, give her some puzzles I don’t want, and do some mooching. In other words, he’s going to see if Mom will pay for the grid fence, but I doubt she will. As Catholic as she is, she’s too selfish to volunteer that kind of money which would be over $500, even though she could easily afford to. It takes a crisis like when the well went out in order to get more than a measly $20 out of that woman. She’s as obsessed with the $20 bill as Mary’s obsessed with the camera.

He picked up the water dispenser today. It only does hot and cold, but all we have to do is turn off the cold, for example, and there’s my room temperature water. It also has a mini-refrigerator below for cans of soda. This thing would be ideal for offices, but in our case, it’ll save us $50-$100 a year. Not a huge sum of money, but it’s something.

We also now have all the posts we need (59). I believe him when he says wire wouldn’t be a settlement and that it’d be just as effective at keeping dogs out, but I’d still prefer the grid. They call it a field fence, I guess.

Let me guess, though, Mary will bitch about my jumping the gun in Mom’s letter, and Tom will defend her. I don’t know what it is with this man siding with others, especially to their faces. Art O. defended his wife at all costs, even when she was clearly in the wrong, yet I could be clearly in the right and my husband won’t always defend me.

Another thing that bothers me is his answer to a question I asked earlier. I asked him, if a woman were sexually neglected by her husband or boyfriend, say if he had a lot of business trips or whatever, and the woman stepped out on him, be it with another woman or not, would he A, blame the woman and say she was responsible for her own actions, B, blame the guy for being neglectful, or C, blame them both. My answer is C, cuz to me, it usually takes two to tango, but his was A. I was like, my gosh, you mean you wouldn’t feel the least bit guilty? Not that I intend to step out on him, but that really bothered me. He didn’t even feel guilty in the past either when he was jerking me around about the child I once so desperately wanted. I don’t like the way he’s assumed things about me and taken certain things about me for granted. In a sense, he’s expected me to give up so much for him. I have to wonder, is he ever grateful things turned out the way they did? Because most women would’ve walked. There’s no way he could’ve just expected them to give up a kid on account of his lame excuses, and put up with the lack of sex. That’s assuming and expecting too much of most people. I know he’d have been a good father if we’d had an accident, but that will never change things, though the past is the past. He’s handling the sex the same way he did with the kid; instead of coming out and admitting his lack of desire, he’s saying one thing and doing another. In other words, he’ll say he’s interested, then not make a move on me. He also places an awful lot of blame for his problems on me. I know he knows he’s not perfect, but to blame things I may’ve said or my attitude on his lack of cumming was really bad. He should’ve said, “I have a problem, it’s been years yet it’s not improving, so I should see a doctor if I want to cum and have a child, or I should just level with my own wife here. I owe her that much.” But instead, he strung me along with one excuse after another to tide me over between crying spells. Sometimes he was compassionate, sometimes he was sensitive but never guilty. The man seems to rarely ever feel guilt. It’s like he’d rather directly blame or imply it’s someone else’s fault. I still can’t believe to this day that he simply expected and assumed I’d just forget about a kid. Well, I did, though I don’t think I could ever fully forgive him for how he handled things in the past (I’ll certainly never forgive God for the depression and mental anguish he sat back and watched me suffer through for years). And now he just assumes I’ll live a life of celibacy whether or not I want to cuz he can’t come out and tell me the truth. Well, mark my words, if the opportunity ever does present itself between another woman and myself, I’m going to go for it, though I can’t see that happening and I don’t want it to. So you see, it’s not his lack of desire to get it on with me that bothers me, for I don’t desire sex either, it’s the not coming clean about it.

Back when he told me that the “cure” for his lack of cumming problem was for us to not talk about it, well, any decent therapist would say that that’s the worse way to handle a problem. Facing it is the best way, not ignoring it. Ignoring it won’t make it go away, but that’s just what he hoped would be the case. Not that his problem would go away, if it ever really was a true problem that was out of his hands, but that my desires for normal sex and a kid would go away, and believe me, I wish they went away in ’93 rather than ’98. But those aren’t things we can help. I couldn’t help wanting a kid back then and I can’t help not wanting one now. I’m only glad that the desire did go away in light of the circumstances. Besides, for every one mother I’ve met who’s praised motherhood, there are 20 who bash it, saying all it does is cause you pain, ruin your body, steal your life eat your money. “Hang onto your life and your money,” they’d tell me, “and keep your cute little figure.”

On the flip side, he’s more than made up for any faults he has with the things he did give me that I’d never have had the chance to experience if it weren’t for him.

He agreed with me that not having kids so you can have a life isn’t being selfish as some might say it is. What’s selfish is those who have kids that either don’t really want them or aren’t emotionally or financially ready for them. That’s both selfish and irresponsible.

Later…

Even on this damp, cloudy morning, the hunters are at it. They still shoot from sunup to sundown, and while I wouldn’t exactly describe them as obnoxious, I wish they’d give it a rest for the year. Hearing these little pops that sound like car doors all day gets old, though I do tune most of it out.

Later…

Sure enough, his cheap selfish mother didn’t pitch in anything toward the fences. Not even her famous $20 bill. This information was emailed to me from work, so if Mary or Mom started shit about me to Tom, I have yet to hear about it.

I also got an email from Mary’s lawyer in response to Murphy’s pictures I sent saying, “Wow, he is really grown up, thanks.”

We read together for a little while yesterday and discussed plans we have for around here. I got a great idea concerning the pond. At first Tom was skeptical, but after going out to take measurements, he agreed it could be done. Well, inside of having the pond out across the wash, making it hard to see into even though the house is elevated a good 3’ off the ground, I thought it’d be cool to have a long skinny pond close to the front of the house running alongside the living room and office windows. It’d be totally awesome to step up to the window and look down into a pond! It’ll also shade it from the afternoon sun.

We also busted out a lower shelf from one of the lower kitchen cabinets, allowing us to put our pails in there. That way they’re out of sight and the smell’s contained. I also won’t have to worry that certain eyes hired by the state to ensure I live my life according to their rules will see any mail from Mary. I used to make sure it was buried under other trash during the weekdays, but now it won’t matter. It probably wouldn’t matter even if it was still exposed since I doubt he’ll ever come here again, but the better my ass is covered, the safer I’ll be.

Last night while I was searching for MP3s, someone emailed me saying, “You’ve been busted as a leech and ignored!” (I did not have any music files set up to share) At first I thought it was the program itself, but Tom told me it had to have come from an individual. Nonetheless, I loaded a lot of my music on since I don’t mind sharing and it’s always neat to see what people want. They’re certainly coming at me more often now that I’ve got more files. I made two music folders. One for the slower stuff I don’t want to jog and exercise to, and then a folder for the more upbeat stuff. The upbeat folder is the one I’m sharing, though I may set it up to share both. I have a total of 794 songs right now. I’m very generous when it comes to my music and graphics, but with all else on this computer, I’m a stingy, selfish bitch. As selfish as his mother (at least she didn’t abuse him and pawn him off on other people, camps, funny farms, etc.).

It rained on and off throughout the day. Every time I think it’s not going to rain again till the monsoons, it does. Even the hunters called it quits early. We haven’t needed the AC for the last couple of days either.

It’s looking more and more like the fences are definitely going to be up sometime next month. I can’t wait! So my vibe was right all along about it not being much before I had 6 months left to go with the freeloaders.

Amazingly, despite being stuck for a couple of days and eating like a pig, I awoke at 125½. I really thought I’d be 128. Rather than having one big goal and telling myself I want to get down to 105-110, I think I’ll have multiple little goals. For starters, I’ll work at a goal of 120, though I doubt I’ll get much lower than that without nearly starving myself to death due to my age and muscle weight.

The more of Mary’s book I type up, the more sad, sick and cursed I see she has been so far. Get this, after Justin punched her out on the street, then cut the electricity and tore off the screen door to their roommate’s house to get in at her, slapped her again, busted down the bathroom door to assault her yet again, she goes and forgives him the next day saying that she loves him and love forgives all. That’s sick! Totally sick. How incredibly sad it is to read how she forgave him for all this shit, then insisted that God sent him, her “soul mate,” to her. That’s some God she’s been worshiping and some soul mate. Sorry, Mary, but nothing up there likes you. Can she ever be brave enough to see and face that fact as unfortunate as it is? Nothing up there has anything other than evil intentions for her. Maybe that will change someday and I sure as hell hope so, but the first step is going to be in realizing and admitting that she likes abuse and she likes abusive people. As soon as that illness is recognized and dealt with, the sooner she can do her part to help herself by avoiding people like Justin, Todd and Clarence. She can’t make God send her a loving soul mate if it isn’t in her cards, but she can at least stay alone if her only other choice is to take up with an abusive person. With the way she’s been going, though, she’s going to actively seek, be it at a conscious or subconscious level, an abusive guy the moment she gets out. In fact, her love of being slapped, kicked, punched and abused is so intense that I’m surprised she doesn’t request general pop. On the other hand, this type of disease usually pertains only to those the sick person is intimate with. It wouldn’t be the same if some fellow inmate took a swipe at her. It wouldn’t give her the gratification it would if it was a lover.

Nonetheless, it’s too obvious that she liked every minute of the abuse given the number of times she allowed herself to be abused by forgiving him, which essentially, was telling him it was okay. The only thing she didn’t get off on was the abuse of her kids. Yet still, her love of abuse was so much more powerful than her fear for her kids. Imagine that! To love to be beaten so much that it’s worth it to you to put your own kids at risk! And this is an otherwise compassionate and intelligent woman. I believe she really truly was scared at the times she was abused, but that was part of the thrill, the adrenaline rush she got from the fear. She’s what’s known as a fear junkie and a pain freak. I just can’t fathom it, but I know she hasn’t changed. Not when she’s still associating with people like her mother, who in a sense, was worse than mine. Her mother’s not her mother any more than mine was, but merely the woman responsible for her being born, yet people continue to obsess over biology.

She has no self-respect. She may as well go into a bar with a shirt saying: Buy me daisies and I’ll be fond of you, beat me up and I’ll love you forever.

It’s like all she knows is abusive men and having kids for them to abuse as well. I wonder how many kids she’d have by now if she’d never been to jail. Well, either way, I sure am worried for her future kids, that’s for sure.

If she were still alive, she’d still be with him today if the two of them were never jailed. She said it herself in her book: “True love forgives all error and I’ll be with you, Justin, no matter how much right or wrong you do.” Even if he killed all her kids by now, she’d still be with him.

After waiting forever in line, all the MV did was give him a number to call that doesn’t look at all promising for getting the title, so he’s going to make the transfer. I knew he’d have to anyway. Anything to eat up his time so it seems. I never realized just how much time all the home improvement and other projects would take up once we moved, but I should’ve figured as much. So see? Better to be just friends or else I’d still be going through the same old shit I went through with him in the past as far as being neglected goes. Anyway, it’s not that I can’t get off, it’s that I simply don’t want to. Not with him anyway, but maybe someday with a woman. I can’t see it happening anytime in the near future, though, so who knows? Maybe I’ll end up celibate for the rest of my life. Not something I could’ve handled in my 20s, but now that I’m older, had the experience, and no longer find it anything new or exciting, it’s okay. I think a lot of people end up feeling as I do.

Now that I’ve learned so much about the laws out here, Larry’s damn lucky he didn’t live here in ’97, cuz believe me, I don’t think he “blacked out.” I don’t see how you can blackout just cuz you got a little cough. I really think he was on something that night if he didn’t fall asleep at the wheel, and like I said, there’s no way he’d have gotten away with it out here. They probably felt too bad for him to check for drugs or alcohol, but out here he’d have been given no pity, no mercy, no nothing. He also took it awfully hard. Any parent would have guilt, yes, but “I murdered my son, I murdered my son,” was all he kept saying for the longest time. Well, maybe he did, though certainly not intentionally.

And so it came to pass that March 13th of this year begins the beginning of the fences! Yes, for just under $100, Tom got 25 posts today and put them up at 39’ apart across the front, leaving 6’-8’ for hedges. He said that all the posts, plus the wire, should come to around $550, $100 off of my vibe of $450.

The posts have bright white paint on the tops to make them more visible to vehicles. How wonderful it was to wake up and go outside to see the first of the fences installed. Tom said digging was a piece of cake. He’s going to cement all the posts, too. He realized, though, that if next door could have their posts so far apart, so could we. Theirs is probably a good 45’ or so, though it’s in shit shape. I don’t know why, but parts of it look like someone rammed a vehicle through it. Mexicans are stupid, though, so they don’t strike me as the type to do things right. In other words, the dumb shits probably didn’t cement any of the posts. Nonetheless, digging’s so easy, he says, that it would’ve been a waste of money to get an auger. At that, I was like, oh my God! You mean we didn’t waste money buying something that was either broken or useless to us – wow!

I wonder if we keep it unlocked if anyone will be brave enough to open the gate to ask us about property for sale around here or something like that. Especially at night. I mean, I sure as hell wouldn’t open gates. I could never know what may be in there hiding, waiting to pounce on me, like maybe some Doberman from hell.

Tom’s going to try to get the green truck’s title by going directly to motor vehicles tomorrow. Only one of two things could happen. He could either end up getting the title, or he could end up getting nowhere and being forced to set up the white truck. He asked me for my vibes, but I couldn’t sense anything. That’s mainly because I’m a doom psychic. I didn’t ask to be one, but that’s my strength within the psychic world. Not sensing good things. So if tomorrow’s going to turn out good and he’s going to get the title, I could never sense it. Very rarely do I sense such things.

I don’t seem to be able to help plants either, although those who have fallen ill at my wishful thinking are still a hell of a coincidence not to be ruled out. Plus the thing with Little Buddy. Even so, it still looks like it’s going to die.

I’ve learned that when I have paper jams if I just turn the paper around, it’s usually okay. Therefore, I may return to the back-to-back printing.

Tom told me a funny joke earlier that I enclosed in my joke file, plus I sent it to Mary. We agreed it’d be okay to send something every few days. The worst that could happen is that it gets returned to me and I resend it to Florida. I got 4 regular envelopes from her today and 2 big ones.

To my surprise, she wasn’t calling for a favor or to say she was leaving. She was just calling to call but said she hung up after a few rings, realizing it was early and very expensive. That’s cool that she understands that, though the phone could never wake us up and our schedule varies. What may be “early” for me this week will probably be late for me next week. I was worried, though, that she was going to get a little too carried away with asking for favors pertaining to those I don’t know. Emailing Chuck, her lawyer, a quick note along with her book is fine. It’s when she wants me to write to people in jail that I don’t dig or if she were to send lots of letters to type for others, but as long as it’s email where I don’t have to go buying more stamps, and as long as it’s not too often, it’s no problem.

I still worry she’s going to hang out with the same types of loser cocks once she’s free. Remember, it’s that illness some people have. She has a deep, dark craving to be abused. It’s what she likes, what she wants, what she’s used to. She never even tried to fight back most of the time Justin hit her. She’d just scream at him and try to get away.

She cracked the both of us up when she was bashing guys in general, saying that because she has no discrimination, she needs me to balance things out. Well, it’s true that she loves everybody as much as I hate everybody! Also, I’m as vulgar as she is not. For every 20 hardcore swears out of my mouth, she may say the words darn or damn once, but the thing that’s really cool about us is that we let each other be themselves. I hate people like Lora who bitched how much she hated it when I’d use God’s name in vain by saying the word goddamn. Not that she didn’t have a right to not like it, but people have a right to express themselves as they see fit. That’s why I can’t get along with most people. They either expect me to be like them or they assume I’m out to make them like me.

A part of me was glad to hear she was hanging up the fantasy writing. Not because it bores me or that she’s loony (maybe a little naïve at times) or that she should be ashamed or embarrassed by anything she writes, but because I have enough typing to do with her book alone, which she just learned she can’t profit from. I knew this, but she just learned that if you’re involved in a case, you can’t make money from it, so she may use an assumed name and have the proceeds go to her family. I think she should use a fictitious name anyway because then she can legally use people’s real names without being sued. All she’d have to do is put a disclaimer on the front of the book saying she changed names (even though she didn’t) and that anybody with the names used in the book is purely coincidental.

I was surprised to hear that she was worried about not hearing from me. I thought she knew that the only reason I was laying low was cuz I figured they could move her anytime and that my mail would only end up returned to me. Tom agreed it’d be okay to send something every few days. The worst that could happen is that it gets returned to me and I resend it to Florida. So tomorrow when he goes to do the grocery shopping, I’ll have him drop a letter in a box and she should get it Sat. or Mon. if she’s still there. Anyway, I still had to laugh when she said she was going to send the paramedics out and have them search all the Maricopa ranches!

Anyway, just after sunset, Tom and I went to Circle K for snacks. Some stupid fuck pulled out in front of us and I was so grateful there wasn’t a car on the other side of us so we could jump out of the way.

As usual, we had to stop and play leak with the car before we left. The cashier who was outside on her break mentioned it. He poured water into whatever was the problem this time around. “It’s a Ford, so it’ll make it,” the woman said, and it did.

Mary didn’t try calling back, so she either was calling to say goodbye, or she wanted something and found someone else to do what she wanted.

Tom cleaned my ear out some more with the earpick. It looks like we’ll manage just fine without having to deal with referrals and specialists.

Last night and today I did something on my office wall that’s way cool, though not without disaster. I made colorful silhouettes by shadow-tracing the outlines of the two Playboy dolls and Patrice, the queen of all my ballerinas. Victoria’s in purple, Karen’s in pink and Patrice is in blue. I stacked two speakers about 4’ from the wall and placed the doll on top. Then I made another stack about a foot behind it, using Sacajawea to prop the flashlight at an angle. Then I’d turn off the light to make my shadow sharper and would trace its outline. Yesterday went fine, but tonight I moved Patrice before remembering to do the inner section of lines and had a hell of a time lining her back up, then Sacajawea fell and broke from just below the elbow down. Fortunately, it wasn’t her head and I was able to glue and tape it, but how stupid of me! I should’ve used a towel or a shirt like I did afterward. I taped it with masking tape after gluing the sections that I glued, because there were tiny fragments missing that made it sharp and unstable. Taping it gives it extra security. It doesn’t look too bad but I’d rather have a funny-looking hand than no hand at all. It’s taped between her wrist and elbow and her sleeve covers most of it.

As predicted, the truck won’t be up and running anytime soon. Tom simply can’t get the title for the green one, so he’s going to have to set the white one up.

He fixed and installed the indoor/outdoor thermometer in the kitchen. The wire runs out through the oven’s vent. It’s 50° outside now and 75° in here.

Anyway, Tom met the renters today. When he was down there searching for that corner’s property marker, which he did find, it stirred the dogs up. I like what he had to say about them but was quite dismayed to learn there are at least 7 dogs back there. 7 dogs! He said there were about 3 adult dogs and 4 puppies. He couldn’t tell if any of the adult dogs had the puppies or not. Just that he got the feeling they intend to keep them. What surprised me was that most of them came from the house. He said they’re all mutts, not too big, and only one of them that they had in a pen outside, seemed like it could be more of a guard dog. I don’t exactly like the idea of swimming (once we get the pool) to the tune of 7 dogs barking, but he says it shouldn’t be a big deal, and after thinking about it I realized that maybe it won’t be. I’ve been outside enough lately and can truly say I haven’t heard barking from over there. After all, I sure as hell didn’t know there were that many of them. I thought they only had one dog.

So anyway, he can’t remember their names. The woman appeared to be in her late 20s to early 30s and the guy was mid to late 30s. He said they seemed quite nice and even were considerate enough to worry that they put their horse on our property and that their kids might be too loud (he only saw one 3-year-old, but we figure there are probably 3 or 4 kids in all). Nothing of theirs is on our property, though you could see old tire tracks clipping a corner of the property. They haven’t been throwing trash back there either which is nice, and as for the kids, I have heard a few shouts from outside, but nothing even remotely close at this distance to bother me. They could never be as maddening as the kids screaming just a few feet away from our old house for hours at a time.

Tom told them we were getting ready to put up fences and the guy offered to help which was nice of him, but Tom assured him he could manage. Remember, we don’t want problems with our neighbors like we had in Phoenix, but we don’t want to be friends with them either. All we want is to get along. Being friends with neighbors can be as bad as being friends/lovers with coworkers. Still, I really do appreciate their consideration, and it’s people like this that I’d consider being considerate of myself. The more someone’s considerate of me, the more I am to them, whereas if the blacks or Mexicans had asked me to tone down my music, I’d have told them to come back and ask again after they themselves shut up, and meanwhile, they could go fuck themselves. No black or Mexican could ever be like them. Very few of them could be anyway. They’re too me, me, me, me!

George still owns the place, the woman does ride the horse (though I’ve never seen her do so) and they’re planning on getting another one, and they hear karaoke parties at Dan’s place on weekends, though they certainly didn’t refer to it as “Dan’s place.” We didn’t even know it was karaoke, just that it was coming from Dan’s, but they’re closer to Dan’s and don’t have the 6” walls and dual-paned windows we have, so they can hear better. At first, I thought Tom was saying it was my singing that was mentioned, but then they said they hear guys that sound drunk. Well, I don’t sound like a drunk guy when I sing and I don’t throw the doors and windows open to purposely let the sound out for others to hear!

I can see why they sacrificed their housing. With 3-4 kids, 7 dogs and soon-to-be 2 horses to feed we’d have to live in a dump, too.

The Mexicans that were in the furthest rental took and dumped a bunch of shit across the street before they moved. Yeah, those Mexies are filthy people, that’s for sure! Tom said he could see stuffed animals, clothing, etc.

The woman obviously works, Tom said, because the guy told her she ought to hurry up so she isn’t late for work. This was at 1:00, so she might work second shift.

He says they didn’t look or talk Mormon and that they thought this house was vacant because they never saw anyone outside. I know we’re not outdoors much compared to most people, but I’m surprised they didn’t see us at least a few times over the year they’ve been here.

To sum it all up, although the high dog population isn’t comforting to know about, I do hope they stick around for a while as it really seems like we’ve been compensated for the shit we had in Phoenix. I’m just so glad we didn’t get Mexicans in there what with the way the illiterate junkies are invading the country, and you how it was for me for the longest time; I always had to get the blacks and Mexicans next to me. These are our first white neighbors since ’96, aside from Dan and the people after him.

Tom got a lot of brush cleared with the chainsaw and is going to pick up some posts and a hole digger today. Then we’ll set them in cement and see how they do. We’re now thinking of going with barbless wire to make it easier on his hands. As long as the thing will keep dogs out, get what you want, I told him, but if we ever do see a dog, we’re going to install a low-voltage wire that will zap them away. That’d cost about $150 if we do need it and will probably come out of the savings account.

The bougainvillea’s still in the same condition.

I asked myself if I’d go live on a ship or a submarine right now if I could. At first I was hesitant because I wouldn’t be able to shop as much, but on the other hand, it’d be a little hard for a bunch of freeloaders to get me thrown in jail in the middle of the ocean, so yes, I’d take the ship or sub. I still worry about that, too. Not the freeloaders but somebody somewhere. I know it’s only a matter of time before someone new makes my life miserable for years.

I added a couple more silhouettes. I did one of Lily, the bronze ballerina figurine, on another wall in my office. She’s in a reddish-pink color. Then I did a silhouette of Colette in green in the retreat.

Mary tried calling this morning. It came up as “inmate phone” on the Caller ID box, but he didn’t get to the phone on time. Tom said he thinks it was cuz she was about to be moved, but knowing her, she probably wanted something. Let me guess…she wanted me to contact a friend of hers with long-distance blocks? Either way, I’m getting tired of being used here. She’s worse than Andy! I swear I’ll be gone in a heartbeat if she pesters me on the outs. I don’t know. Maybe she was just calling to make sure I’m still alive, though I doubt it. Anyway, if she’s there, she’ll hear from me tomorrow or the next day. Also, there’s no way I’m going to get in the habit of letting her call. Those calls are outrageously expensive. That jail seizes every opportunity possible to make extra money.

I should have a better idea by tomorrow if she was calling about moving or not. If it wasn’t about moving, she’ll probably try again. If it was, then I probably won’t hear from her till she contacts me by mail from Florida.

It got up to 82° in the house. Getting closer to that AC! We put the grill in the skylight and pulled the den shades down behind their blinds.

I woke up at 124. I’m not too surprised about that, but I probably would be if I hit 120. I sent Mary and Dave a progress picture I took. Every few pounds I’m taking pictures. That ought to shock the shit out of them; me sending them a picture of myself.

Before I get to the landscaping news, it really hit me today that no, it’s no coincidence that people I’ve practiced my sick curse on have gotten sick. I did it with Scot, someone I don’t dislike, but don’t like either, and I did it when Mary pissed me off the first time at the casino. There’s also the time I healed Little Buddy’s illness. So, I figured if this modern-day witch could make people sick and heal animals, she might be able to heal plants too, and I took myself out to the very shocked, but not yet dead bougainvillea and did my thing. It’s a concentration thing, I guess you could say. Similar to Mary’s visualization thing. I know that although most of us have a basic psychicness to us, most people can’t do the things I do. Not in such detail and quantity, anyway. I don’t know if it’ll work as this is something new to me. I mean, I never tried to rescue a dying plant before. It won’t be the end of the world if it doesn’t make it, though. Tom put an oleander behind it today. A bigger one, too. Yes, we’ve been on quite a landscaping frenzy. Now’s the time to do it as well as in the fall. He also got about 30 petunias in pink, magenta, purple and white, and a few tomato bushes to plant in the midst of them which surround the palms. Lastly, he got a little strawberry bush which is off toward the side of Palma. I only hope the prairie dogs and rabbits save some strawberries for the rats and I!

The petunias, strawberry, and tomato bushes aren’t perennials. They’ll die in the winter, but they’re dirt cheap to replant. It was only like $1.80 for 6 petunias.

The big barrel cactus at the southeast corner fell over after all that rain we had, but that’s okay, I’d prefer prickly pears.

Tom checked that site out more and found we can get some pretty awesome stuff for dirt cheap. We’d never have believed that for just $240 we could put 5’–10’ Rose of Sharon hedges along the perimeters of the property, but we can! Maybe something isn’t so against us after all, as long as we can get the stuff shipped to Arizona reasonably soon and have it survive, too. We’re going to do a test and get Sharon hedges of about 80’ wide which will go between us and next door. We can’t see next door from in the house because there are no windows we can see out of on that side. There’s only the back door window and the bathroom window and they’re frosted. However, we can see part of their property from outside. We’ll need to run those skinny black rubber hoses around the perimeters for watering too, and water them every few days since they’re not native to Arizona (unless it rains). I don’t know if the Rose of Sharon hedges are really roses or if they just look like them. They come in purple, red and white and they pick the colors. I’m sure we’ll get a good variety and that they’ll all be lovely.

Later…

We ordered the trees and hedges online. We got so much for so little! For just $38.22, we got 16 Rose of Sharon hedges that will be 80’ wide, 5 poplar trees for shade in back between the house and wash which will be over 50’ tall in just 4 years, 12 elm trees for privacy that will grow to a height of 45’ and about 36’ wide, 1 very pretty and sweet-smelling English lavender bush that will get to 3’ and 2 tulip trees. I don’t know where we’ll put the lavender bush and tulip trees. I wanted a walnut tree too, but we’re in the wrong zone for that. I don’t know where these will go either. We’re also getting some free stuff with our order. Some flower bulbs, and a planting instruction book.

Assuming these things make it, we’ll order more at some point till we have all the shade and privacy we want.

We’re going to go back to planning to get barbed wire fences. That way we can use the extra money for the Rose of Sharon hedges. They should be thorny which will also make a good dog barrier, though the way we plan to string the barbed wire will be a good enough block in itself. I guess we’re going to put the hedges on the outside of the fence. It’ll be a very appealing selling point whenever we do move.

The only bummer is that they ship parcel post. We were hoping UPS would bring them right to us, but oh well. At least the PO has been more reliable.

Another thing we’ll want to ultimately hedge is that ugly well and water tank. That won’t take much at all, but the perimeters, shade and privacy stuff are way more important. Whether or not we’ll get any bird of paradise bushes, pansies, or any more oleanders and bougainvilleas, I don’t know. I do know I still want prickly pears.

Tom thinks he found the problem. Something he did messed up the whole network after all. Good, then instead of having to stop and be set back by having to play fix-it all day on my computer after setting up the new satellite system, he can clean his damn office which is trashed as usual.

Since bombing, the spiders have been non-existent inside the house which is nice. It’s still unknown where they were coming from. The drains? The vents? I only know I hope it was the drains because there’s no way anything that might’ve been living in there could still be alive at this point.

Later…

Tom fixed the network and will soon be working on the TV. The thing that was supposed to take less than an hour ended up taking 3.5 hours because as our luck would have it, we were sent someone who didn’t know what they were doing. I know I sound like the biggest sexist in the world, but fucking cocks! I swear 99% of them are so stupid. We need more women doing more things. They’re more patient and not so quick to cut corners and do such half-assed jobs. At least it’s done, though, and we didn’t get ripped off. It’s one thing to have people’s stupidity consume our time and another to have them eat up our money.

Our goodies came today. When I first saw the size of the box, I figured things were on backorder, but nope, they squeezed everything we ordered in.

The pink, rose-scented roses are in the big bath and the mauve, fleece-lined slippers will be great for next winter. This winter seems to have exited practically overnight. It got up to 81° inside the house. We’re getting really close to needing the AC.

The tool he got to clean my ear with seems to work great so far so long as I soften things up with oil first.

Got the blind cleaners, which certainly do seem like they’ll make cleaning blinds a lot easier and more effective and the state map with its state coin holders. In 1999, they issued Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut. I’ve only got Georgia. I’ve got all of 2000 coins which are Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Virginia. The states issued in 2001 are New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Kentucky. I’m missing Rhode Island. For 2002, the coins are Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana and Mississippi. I’m missing Louisiana. I have no 2003 coins yet, but it’s only March. Arizona won’t be minted till 2008 as it’s the 48th state.

The filters are now in the vents too, and since they do a better job of sealing than the screens, I removed most of the screens.

The stuff came with some offers, one of which consists of a bunch of beauty stuff you can get for next to nothing. If you order $12 of stuff, you get free shipping and with $16 of stuff, you get a free 3-piece travel set and 10 free lipsticks. I got just under $20 of mascara, Ming Shu perfumed lotion, and 6 bath gels – peach, rose, blackberry, vanilla, lilac and lavender.

The pedals are terrible. Another $10 wasted. They’re of a better design, but they move all around when I use them. The things can’t weigh more than a pound or two. Unless we decide to strap them to the floor, I’ll just keep on jogging. Besides, I’m not trying to lose weight anymore but just stay the same. I don’t need to jog that long, on top of the other stuff I do, to stay the same weight as long as I don’t make a pig of myself. Who knows, though, maybe we could mount them to a heavy piece of wood or something.

At least the saw’s working. He got a chainsaw for clearing away brush. It’d make no sense to put up the corner posts and try to run string from post to post with brush in the way. The string, as I might’ve said earlier, will be our guide, keeping the fence installation in a straight line. We’re probably going to have a 30’ buffer on each side. The last thing we want to do is chance putting fences too close to easements or out of the property lines. Tomorrow he’s going to look for one of the back corner markers, but it’s likely to have gotten washed out over time.

I fed Shiny, the big black cat that hangs out here, some chicken today. He’s all black and shiny like the Phoenix Shiny was. I can’t let him inside, though, with the rodents and breakables. I don’t know if this cat’s fixed or if it belongs to anyone or not. I doubt it, though. I think he was dumped and left to fend for himself like most cats and dogs out here seem to be.

Also amongst the offers that were enclosed with our stuff was a landscaping brochure that looks quite promising, as well as a great value. Their Siberian elm hedges are said to grow to 45’ and as it is, we’re going to have to replace one of the bougainvilleas, though everything else is doing fine. It shocked so bad that we’re pretty sure it’s going to die, and gee, it’s quite a coincidence that it’s the one right in line with the renter’s little deck, the place I can see them the easiest. It’s like something’s saying, “You can run, but you can’t hide from society.”

Yeah, but I’m still going to try.

Anyway, Tom’s going to look into the landscaping’s website more thoroughly before we decide on anything for sure. The cool thing about it is that it tells you how many plants you’d need to make a wall of whatever feet wide. The elms are boring looking but with the way they could block the sun and give us privacy at that height, I don’t care. I only hope we won’t have to be dead for a century or two before they reach that height. All we need, though, is a good 10’-15’ to block out the renters. What we’ll need to do is find out how fast things grow and if they can live in Arizona. The site didn’t say much about the plants themselves, just the sizes and prices. Fortunately, though, Tom says elms will grow pretty much anywhere.

My God, though, I never thought I’d be buying trees! Not the girl with the food stamps from the inner-city projects amid the drug dealers and the rundown buildings littered with graffiti. Yes, I’ve certainly seen all financial levels. I was a rich kid who became a poor young adult who’s now a very comfortable middle-aged person. As I told Tom, though, we’d probably have a better chance of getting rich by suing one of the many people who fuck us over than by this property.

Because it’d cost many hundreds of dollars, speaking of money, to get a water softener/filter so we could drink our tap water, we decided to get a water dispenser. It’ll end up a lot cheaper than buying the 2½-gallon jugs we’ve been getting. For $100, we can get a dispenser with a 5-gallon jug. It has 3 controls on it. One for room temperature water like I usually prefer, one for cold, and one for hot. There’s a place here in town that dispenses water so we can fill the jugs up there for a lot less than buying these jugs from the grocery store. It’d cut down on the recyclables a lot, too.

Got 4 envelopes from Mary today. She asked if I could help her find a publisher in Florida, but like I told her, I couldn’t even find one for myself if I tried. Besides, I don’t want to be doing any more than typing for her and I already told her this. I have a full enough plate with my own stuff. I had no idea that the home improvements would steal so much of our lives, but it does. Then I have my usual responsibilities and my own writing projects. I can’t do it all for her anyway, and I’m not going to be like most people and tell her I’ll do stuff I don’t want to do.

Anyway, she sent me 62 pages of drafts and said she might be there for a month or two more, but even so, I’ll probably hold off again on the mail to her after the letter that’s going out tomorrow. I caught her up to date on things and enclosed some pictures for her. A couple of doll pictures and a few of our land and palms.

She also says she’s alone now and tickled pink to be enjoying the added peace and privacy.

Mary said she’d be gone the first week of March. Well, the first week’s done, so is she gone? I wonder. I don’t have any vibes either way. Meanwhile, all I can do is sit and wait till I’m contacted.

I got up at 3:30 to find Tom gone to Casa Grande. Today’s the day we should get the first of the fencing material. At last! I just hope we can get the whole thing done before the springtime bee swarms get here and before the snakes wake up. Of course, we’ll be dodging ants all along the way, too.

I’ve been waking up at 125 lately. Although I know it’s possible, I still doubt I’ll get below 120. I may not even get below 125, but I’m starting to suspect I will if only by a pound or two.

I decided to let my pierced ears close up. I simply never wear earrings anymore. I’ve never been big on jewelry as opposed to most women. It’s a pain in the ass. Earrings get in the way of my headphones. Hell, I don’t even wear my wedding band unless we’re going out. I’m not so into clothes, makeup, and jewelry like I was in the past. That’s more of a 20s single thing. Now that I’m a chunky, middle-aged married woman, it doesn’t matter so much to me.

Later…

And our shit keeps right on breaking. Yeah, today’s problem is that for some mysterious reason, I can’t get on the net. Tom’s been trying for hours to fix the problem but to no avail. He reloaded Windows and other stuff. He did find some corrupt system files, but getting rid of them hasn’t solved the problem. Meanwhile, the rest of the network is just fine.

Tomorrow, between 8:00 – noon, someone will be coming out to install the satellite uplink, and hopefully, though I highly doubt it, that will fix things and make them less complicated. The digital TV system I thought I was going to love and was going to be so easy to use and the program sucks as it is.

I’ll be asleep when the installer gets here and if they wake me up, they do, though I don’t think so. Not if I sleep with the fan on high. Also, the bedroom’s pretty far from the den.

It is such a beautiful, beautiful day out there. I have most of the windows open. It’s up to 78° inside the house. Naturally, the renters are out and about. We should see less of them as the temperature rises.

Tom’s now shoveling more dirt onto the pipes. Tomorrow he’s going to get cement, some posts and some fluorescent string. We want to put string from post to post as best we can so we know we’re putting the fences up in a straight line. He also thinks we can cut down from 120 posts to 80. He said he’s seen fences like what we’re getting with at least 30’ between them, so he’s going to get 8-10 posts or so and put them up in an area that doesn’t have a lot of brush to see how sturdy they are. This way, though, each post will have to be cemented, but that’s no big deal. It’ll save us a lot of money if we can cut down to just 80 posts. They’re 3 or 4 bucks each. The whole thing’s still going to cost $700-$900, but will be plenty worth it and a good selling point.

I finally got some serious sleep, too. I slept for 11 hours with no interruptions.

Poor Tom is still stuck. Wednesday he had diarrhea, so we picked up something for it at Walmart, and it worked alright. He hasn’t gone since!

I decided I would proofread the 1998 and 1999 files after all. I just won’t print them out when I’m done fine-tuning them. Together the files have just under 700 pages. I want to do about 10 pages a day.

I did manage to burn my MP3s after all too, by making sure I put a reasonable amount of songs on each CD. Each has a little over 100, and I figure every new 100 songs or so, I’ll burn a CD. Meanwhile, I’ll use the old set for traveling.

Tom has to work tonight, then he’s on vacation.

There are now 34 weeks to go till the freeloaders are out of my life forever. About 238 more days left and about 161 in which Scot could show up here, but I really doubt he will. I hope not, but if he does, I’ll know that there won’t be 20- or 30-something more months in which he could continue to do so. So, I wouldn’t like it, especially if I was sleeping, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world either. Yes, there are many worse things than Scot popping in.

It dawned on me that you really can write to someone in prison from Estrella and get a reply, so I told Mary about the time I wrote Bob and got a response and suggested she give it a try.

Little by little it’s been warming up. Maybe that’s why there hasn’t been any activity in back when we go out to water the plants. The bougainvilleas are still in shock, but the rest of the stuff is fine.

Since I decided I don’t like flags enough to get more once the rest of the ones I have get old and tattered, the palms will be good for telling the direction of the wind like the flags are. Especially when they get bigger and fuller. It’s hard to tell the way the wind’s blowing with the bushier trees.

My prairie dogs remember me from last year. Both they and the rabbits are pretty brave around us, but the prairie dogs are definitely the bravest. I stepped up to an open window, and down on the ground just a few feet away, a cute little prairie doggie stood up on its feet staring at me. Then I went out and fed it.

We turned the heat off for the year which means it’ll get pretty chilly in the early mornings for a while, but we’ll live. The heat’s now not coming on till 4-5 AM.

To my extreme surprise, I was up 21½ hours and only slept for 6½, yet wasn’t tired when I got up. Maybe I’m finally getting to that point in life where I don’t need as much sleep, as is common with age.

Anyway, here’s a rather sad, sarcastic, yet to-the-point poem I wrote earlier.

Because of Them

Because of them, suffered great stress.
Because of them, I could not live in peace.
Because of them, I shed many tears of sadness.
Because of them, I raged with anger and frustration.
Because of them, I lost faith in God.
Because of them, I was forced to turn on fans or music to drown out their racket.
Because of them, I could not always enjoy being outdoors.
Because of them, I had to sleep on a cold, hard floor.
Because of them, I had to return to the city I thought I had escaped.
Because of them, I could not live with my husband for six months.
Because of them, the last six months of my pet’s life were stolen from me.
Because of them, I was forced to eat overly bland or spicy foods.
Because of them, I had no privacy.
Because of them, I had to pee in front of others.
Because of them, I could not wear my own clothes.
Because of them, I could not sleep in my own bed.
Because of them, I was forced to take cold showers.
Because of them, I fell out of shape and gained weight.
Because of them, I lost many hours of sleep.
Because of them, I lost thousands of dollars.
Because of them, I lived in a world of concrete and steel.
Because of them, I froze my ass off.
Because of them, I got the flu.
Because of them, my newly straightened teeth shifted.
Because of them, I was forced to interact with strangers I didn’t care to know.
Because of them, I could not use my stereo, computer or other things.
Because of them, I had to deal with even more noise and chaos.
Because of them, I had to deal with some crazy, mean people.
Because of them, someone stole my heart and broke it.
Because of them, my husband also lost time and sleep.
Because of them, I was humiliated, degraded and treated as a criminal.
Because of them, I had to go places I’d have preferred not to go.
Because of them, I live in the constant fear of reverse discrimination.
Because of them, I can no longer trust the system.
Because of them, I learned that corrupt cops aren’t only on TV.
Because of them, I was forced to do things I didn’t want to do.
Because of them, I learned many new things I didn’t care to learn.
Because of them, I learned I was tougher and more capable than I thought.
Because of them, I became friends with Mary and Rosa.
Because of them, I have written and published things I may not have.
Because of them, nothing will ever be the same again.
Because of them, I WILL fight back if I am ever again legally railroaded.

I’m also going to put a copy of the letter I’m going to have Mary mail to Johnson in here.

Teddy Bear,

I have sent this letter in to Mary to give to you if you should return to Estrella while she’s still there because I’m trying to keep you out of trouble while I say what I wish to say to you, so please, if a sergeant should ever get a hold of this, just please make sure officer Johnson gets to read it, too. I want her to know just how much I’ve suffered on account of her rather poor conduct.

Yes, Teddy Bear, it’s me. Do you even remember me? The one you thought was too pretty to be a Jodi? The one you nicknamed Dawn? The one who called you Teddy Bear? The one whose heart you broke with your false promises of getting together a year after my ’01 release?

First I was hurt over what you did to me, but then I became angry. Especially after learning that there are other victims of your games and lies, which in a sense, is what’s inspired me to give you a piece of my mind. I had to do it, not because it can change the past, but because I hope it will cause you to think about what you’ve done and not make the same mistakes again. Life isn’t about avoiding mistakes altogether, it’s about trying not to make the same ones more than once.

So tell me, have you really simply wiped me out of your memory forever? And what about the property near my old place that was for sale that you asked me all about? Have you really forgotten the jokes we shared, the chats we had, etc.? Have you forgotten our joke about the dolls? Have you forgotten how I used to guess your name? I got new names for you, none of which begin with an R or would be appropriate to write.

For someone who’s considered to be pretty smart, I often wonder how I could’ve been so blind and dumb where you were concerned. And I thought you were oh so professional? Yeah, right! What kind of “professional” leads someone on the way you did with me? I know I wasn’t the only one and I know why you were transferred. I don’t want to “get you” and I don’t want to see you fired, but your behavior, looking back on it, was disgusting. Utterly appalling. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Don’t you ever feel the slightest bit of guilt? I was a human being you played with, not a toy. I had feelings, you know, and you really ran my head through the wringer. I was so, so hurt. I cried, brokenhearted for months when I realized you weren’t going to respond to the ’02 letter you told me I could send. No, I wasn’t going to leave my husband whom I love dearly, but I had hoped for and looked forward to some kind of relationship with you which you gave me every reason to believe would happen. Well, I guess it really is too late now, for I’m no longer even in Arizona. Now I know why you told me to wait a year after my release before sending that letter, too. As soon as you told me they had a 1-year policy, I became suspicious so I did some checking and found that wasn’t true. You only told me to wait, figuring I’d forget about you by then and how I wish I had, but see, you don’t understand the impact you had on me. It wasn’t just a crush I had on you, I fell in love with you and there was no denying it. One really can’t control who they fall in love with or how fast, nor does it matter if we don’t know the person too well, because I assure you, if I’d known what you were all about, I’d have avoided you at all costs. Flirting’s one thing, but must you tell people you’re going to get together with them when you know you won’t?

I busted my butt trying to breed you your favorite mice like I promised you I would, and what did I get for it? Totally ignored. The least you could’ve done was to call or write saying, “Thanks, but no thanks and I can’t make it to see you.” Instead, you blew me off completely as if I never existed. I mean, that was so cold, and you’re one of the last people I’d have thought would ever do such a thing. I thought you truly cared. I had no idea I was merely a game to you, and all on top of having to deal with why I was there.

I was there because I’m Jewish and I lodged a complaint against the wrong people with the wrong connections, unaware of the laws and my rights. I was tricked and manipulated by a public defender into pleading guilty for something I wasn’t even charged with and by the time I realized what had happened, it was too late, I was already convicted. And all for something I never should’ve done time for even if I had been guilty. Our old neighbors were black/Muslims, most of whom hate Jews, particularly them. They had section 8, were very loud, trashing our yard, etc., so we lodged a city complaint. They had a cop friend who typed a threatening letter, hauled me into the station, thrust it into my hands and asked if I’d seen it before. That’s how he got my prints on it. My point in telling you this is that first I had to deal with being set up and tossed in jail, then the media’s labeling me a stalking racist and having a field day making me their source of entertainment at my own expense with their fictitious tales, then you come along and shaft me all over again in a whole new way. There’s no excuse for what you’ve done. I trusted you, I loved you, and you used me while I was in custody. You, along with this corrupt cop and system, have really helped to shatter my trust of those within law enforcement in general and I have lost all respect and admiration for you. To me, you were very intelligent with such a vibrant personality and great sense of humor, but to you, I was a joke. Don’t worry, though, for I’ll be damned if I’ll always be the “woman scorned.” Little by little I’m overcoming the pain and emotional damage you’ve caused me and I will survive you, Officer R. D. Johnson, I will survive!

We watered the palms, and I swear Queenie’s grown half a foot overnight! The other one still looks the same. One of the bougainvilleas went into shock, but we think it’ll be okay. That’s a common occurrence when something’s been replanted in a new place.

Got a letter from Mary postmarked the 4th, but whether or not she’s still here is a mystery to me. I have a feeling she probably is. I wish she’d just get moved since we know Teddy Bear won’t be returning while she’s there, and then I can get on with sending her stuff to her and with writing to her in a place where nobody knows my name. She enclosed a draft and that’s it.

I also got my fashion and gold shoe boots. The shoe boots are nothing more than another few bucks wasted. First, I had to cut the backs of them just to be able to slip them over the doll’s feet, then they looked all funny once I got them on.

As far as the fashion outfit goes, it all worked out okay, but I was pissed at first. That’s because Robin, the woman I bought Alex, Eve and this fashion from, told me that Gene outfits would fit Eve. Not quite. The back of the strapless gown has 3 snaps and not one could make it around Eve’s waist. She’s fatter, even though she’s an inch shorter than Tyler and her friends. Then I tried it on Alex and found I could snap all 3 snaps, but it was loose at the top where it goes above her boobs and under her arms. So, it ultimately ended up on Tyler. I could snap only the top snap, but it looks best on her and goes perfectly with her gold/pearl earrings. The very light blue gown has pearl teardrop beads, gold beads, gold threading, and gold stars. It’s very nice and I don’t regret getting it. It came with a chiffon scarf (I’m not using it or the gold boots) and a pearl necklace. I put Mei Li’s light pink strappy sandals on her for now till I can give her Sydney’s light blue ones to better match the outfit once I get that doll. I can see why I thought it looked white online when it’s really what they refer to as celestial blue. In regular daylight, it looks like the color it is, but at night, under my 60-watt office light, it looks almost like an eggshell white with a slight tinge of blue.

I know dolls may not be Mary’s cup of tea any more than women are, but I’ll sure have a lot of pictures to catch her up on by the time I get the bulk of her stuff sent to her.

Eve ended up in Tyler’s original business outfit – the black wool skirt and white blouse. Alex is in a satin cranberry robe which matches her lipstick and nail polish well. Mei Li’s just in her pale pink teddy.

I’m determined to get out of having to do CDs altogether. I’m having too many problems with it. I went to make new backups of my MP3s, thinking I was adding more and more songs to the CD till it was full, while it was really overwriting whatever was there before. I thought CD-Rs couldn’t do that and that that was only a CD-RW thing. Nonetheless, if all goes well, I’ll back all my stuff up onto my other computer’s hard drive. I don’t think even we could be so cursed as to have two hard drives fail at once. If I could do this, though, there’d be no need for CDs. The 5 things I’ll have on both drives will be my journals, my drawings, my journal cover scans, and my graphics and music. Then, if we get either a portable MP3 player for traveling or one in the truck, I can use my music CDs there.

Surprisingly, I didn’t sleep as long as I thought I would. I slept just under 8 hours after being up for just over 18, and sure enough, something woke me up for a second at 8-something. I don’t know what it was. I woke up a lot of times. It seems the Melatonin causes me to do that, so I think I’ll skip it tonight. Besides, my schedule doesn’t matter right now. In a couple of days, Tom will be on vacation, and he said he didn’t have a preference as to when I sleep. He’s going to be doing his own thing for the most part anyway. Things I can’t really help much with, like his cleaning his office for the millionth time so I can get in there to dust and vacuum. I expect he’ll just want to relax in front of the TV a lot, too.

We were crashing like crazy on the net, but lately it’s been fairly stable. We’re thinking it may have something to do with the static on the phone, but soon it’ll be gone anyway.

I’m also having trouble burning CDs and even more trouble getting them from my work computer to my MP3 computer, so we’re going to run a cable under the house so the MP3 computer can be connected to mine, his and the TV computer.

Mary finally filled a floppy up with her stuff, so I’ll be sending a disk to her aunt to hang onto as well as keeping one here. If we were killed in a car accident and the shadow men of Florida stole her book, she’d be out of luck, so it’s good to have her aunt have a backup, too. You never know, some guilty Myra-like character could get paranoid, thinking Mary’s writing all about her evil deeds and tear it up while she was at medical or wherever.

Anyway, we were both pretty tired when we got up. We could’ve slept another 2-4 hours between the two of us, but we’ll be okay. He got more sleep later on and I’ll sleep a good 10-11 hours when I crash (I hope).

Once again Scot was out. I saw some other guy instead. I guess Scot’s been sick, though who knows why he was out the last time, too. Damn, though! That will make a month and a half that I don’t see him, assuming he’s there on the 19th.

Just 15 more reports. Where the water was once flowing steadily, it’s winding down to a trickle now. Once we get down to 10, it’ll barely be dripping. Then 75% of my life will belong to God and 25% will belong to me, rather than 45% to God, 45% to the blacks and 10% to myself.

I managed to get Chris some shoes that fit. They’re 10s. They fit well enough anyway. They extend a little past her toes, but not too bad. They’re Barbie sandals I slipped over her socks that go well with her windbreaker and culottes.

We also got two palm trees! I’m glad to finally have them and to be adding color to this otherwise dull land. They’re now planted out front. I can see one from my office window and the other from the living room, the windows I see out of most. One’s a date palm I call Palma and the other’s a queen palm I refer to as Queenie. Palma’s definitely the better-looking one so far, healthier and fuller, though they’re both still quite young. The date palm is about 3’ high now and the queen’s about 5’. Queenie’s a bit droopy at this point. That one will grow 25’-40’ tall and Palma will make it up to 50’. They were $16 and $21.

Hopefully, everything we plant will survive. For a week or so we’ll be watering everything to get things stabilized. Between the palms is where the pond will go. I mentioned getting a cute little statue or figurine like people often do for ponds, and Tom had me cracking up when he asked if I’d get this one in particular he once saw of a little boy peeing. Now that would be a funny one. Then we could invite Mom and Mary over!

We still have plans to get junipers, bird of paradise and more oleanders and bougainvilleas, as well as some petunias for color in front since we’re doing the front up more for looks and the back for privacy, and we may even get a prickly pear cactus (saguaros are too expensive). You can make multiple plants from one prickly pear plant.

Sure enough, Tom did have to play fix it on his way home from work. He got a flat tire which he replaced in the bank’s parking lot. Because it caused him to be way late, he was able to stop at the PO as soon as they opened to get the mug which is exactly what I pictured it to be. It’s way nice, and after I get the Esme doll with micro braids (I still want to get her ASAP, even though they don’t expect her price to change soon), I’ll get the remaining 3 mugs I designed. I should have them sometime in April.

I also got stuff from the Humane Society, finally. They sent 15 address labels, though we won’t need them as much as we used to, and a notepad.

Mary annoyed me by enclosing a note to send to José in prison in Florida because I told her I wasn’t going to cater to her friends, but in light of the huge favor she’ll no doubt be willing to do me at the end of the year, I told her I did it, though in truth, and I know this is probably going to be one of the most dishonest, meanest things I’ll ever do, I ditched the letter. I’m not going to play messenger with some prisoner I don’t even know.

Anyway, I’m a bit tired today, thanks to the freeloaders and the damn DVD I so stupidly rented that’s got to be returned tomorrow by noon. We agreed to hang up the DVD renting, either in person or online and just get HBO which is way cheaper. I’m tired because I knew that if I let myself sleep till 1:00 like I could have today, I wouldn’t be able to go to bed early enough, nor would I be able to stay up late into the morning, either. I just worry they’re going to boom me awake an hour or two earlier than I’d like tomorrow. They were flying today and yesterday. Fortunately, they waited till after I got up, but they could boom by tomorrow at 8:30-9:00, and I don’t want to get up till 10:00. I’ll snooze till 10:15 or so, but by 11:15, we’ll be out the door. We won’t be able to see Scot till 1:00 which means we’ll have over an hour to kill. We’re going to be bored out of our minds. It’s not going to take us that long to buy two trees, a pair of shoes and a snack. Perhaps we ought to eat at a sit-down place.

It’s really cool to see all the different license plates on cars. Especially at this time of year.

The fashion that I plan to put Eve in, along with the gold shoe boots, were shipped today, and the site I got Mei Li from answered my question of how long they plan to have the Esme doll I want on sale. They said they don’t expect the price to change anytime soon, so in that case, I’ll have it by the end of this month, beginning of next.

We looked around and found there are a couple more options for fencing. There are a range fence and a hybrid fence we may end up getting which will be better than strands of barbed wire. It’d be an even better dog barrier. Due to all the rain we’ve had, digging should be easy enough so we shouldn’t have to rent an auger. In fact, planting our 2 new bougainvillea plants and our 3 new oleanders was a piece of cake. Yes, we’re finally doing it; getting/doing things we’ve wanted to for so long! It’s going to take a couple of years, but those rentals will certainly be out of sight sooner or later. We’re only going to hedge about 150’ in back if even that. Since we never hang out at the very edges of our property, for example, it makes no sense to bother hedging it. Just so we can’t see them from the house and like 30’-50’ at the sides. That way, we can have privacy when we get a pool that may be off to the side of the house. After this, we’ll do a little planting on the south side to give us a little more privacy from next door, though we already have quite a bit. Large trees block their house from our view unless we walk way out towards the road.

We’re planting just inside the back wash closest to the house. We’re thinking we’re going to split this property in half when we go to sell, so it should be a rather appealing feature.

Wednesday, before we see Scot, we’re going to pick up a date palm and a queen palm for in front. We decided to landscape the front and do it up really nicely. Even throw in some petunias and pansies and maybe some other colorful flowers, but not till we get the palms stable and growing well. I don’t care as much for white, yellow and orange flowers. Especially yellow and orange. I’ll be getting mostly pinks, reds, purples and a little white for its brightness. Of the 3 oleanders we have so far, one’s pink, one’s red and one’s white.

Though our hedges will consist mainly of bougainvillea and oleander plants, we may throw in some junipers in line with the kitchen window which is where we can see the renters the most. They’re boring as hell, they don’t bloom flowers, but they grow tall, wide and fast which is what we’re after.

Tom also got the pipes covered with enough dirt that not even the biggest dog could lift them. Next, he’ll put a layer of cement over them. We might even get some pavers at some point. They sell them in Walmart’s garden section which we were at today, not to get plants but to look around and get ideas and prices.

Instead, we got other things. A caramel ice cream bar, peach-scented lotion, socks for next winter (not Hanes which turned all holy in no time), a pink sports bra, daisy paper for Mary whose favorite flower is the daisy, a simple, easy-to-use recorder that uses regular-sized cassettes, something we still have around here, and a smashing Barbie outfit. Yes, it is quite dazzling. It’s a rock and roll outfit that even came with a little plastic guitar, not that I cared to save it. I just wanted the fashion. The low-cut pants are long and wide at the bottoms like bell bottoms, and the top’s a halter that’s shorter on one side than the other. It’s turquoise with purple glitter. It glimmers brilliantly as you move it in the light. It came with purple thick-soled pumps. Some of my dolls have nicer outfits than I do!

Mary was so right when she mentioned in one of her poems that one can be happy in a dungeon without money. Meaning, no, money’s not everything and I’d gladly give up all material things and live with my husband in a noisy dive if that’s what we had to do to stay together. Love really is the number one thing. However, if you do have money to spend on fun things, it sure is a nice added bonus.

As far as Chris goes, this time I measured that damn doll’s foot which is 7”. She’s a biggie! Wednesday, I plan to take a little tape measurer with me into the store. I saw these cute little Barbie sandals I hope to get her if they have any that are 7” long. I know I’ll find something, though.

Later…

Just got an email from Tom. I got two letters from Mary waiting for me and something to be picked up which we assume is the mug. If it is, that sure was faster than the Little Buddy mug we got before Christmas.

We have revised bed plans, too. Tom found a site that sells that memory foam, but not the mattress. Just a pad that goes on top of the bed. So, it looks like what we might do is buy new inner foam to replace the worn foam inside the mattress cover at the side, then get an additional bed frame, all of which are adjustable to either twin, queen or king size. In other words, we’re basically going to try to split this king-sized bed in half. The airbags are separate, so they can each go in twin-size beds. We’ll have to either modify or get new covers too, which the airbags go inside. So, hopefully they’ll be identical twin beds side by side. The only difference will be that mine will have the memory foam on top and his won’t.

Anyway, if we can stop having to play “fix it” so often, we just may get ahead with things. As it is, we’ve been crashing a lot when we go online. We’re doing different experiments to try to figure out why and it looks like his computer’s the one fouling things up. When his is powered up, we crash. But it’s been down all night and I’m still connected to the net.

And the breakage curse lives on. Yeah, it took out the car’s water hose this time around, so Tom can’t dump recyclables today. Instead, he’s gone to Casa Grande to get a new hose and drop off the DVD that’s due back today. Before we get the truck running well enough to be licensed, we’re gonna end up having to put a ton of money into the fucking car!

Tom’s worried we may not be able to get a title for the green one. They fucked up at the DMV and wrote this truck off as having been crushed so if they won’t title this truck Tom will have to pull everything out of the green one and put it in the white one which, of course, will mean more delays. He’d have to rent a lift to pull the engine out as it’s not something people can do with their bare hands.

The woman at the site I got Alex and Eve and now Eve’s dress and shoes from, says she plans to ship Monday and will email to confirm. That will mean the stuff will come Wednesday or Thursday this time around and not Saturday.

Our other stuff shipped a couple of days ago, but it’s coming by regular mail which means it’s hit or miss. It may take us a few tries to get it.

Webshots took the money Thursday night, so I should be getting the mug on Monday or Tuesday.

Later…

Wow, the renters may not be home. There’s not one vehicle over there.

Anyway, I called Carolyn to see if she knew anything about Justin, but then Tom found stuff online saying that he got 15 years, plus a lifetime of probation. Also, it could take anywhere from 2-6 weeks to extradite him.

So she left a message while I was taking a nap, saying she noticed my number on her Caller ID, even though I didn’t leave a message, and said she’d be home all night. So I decided to call her. She talks as much as Paula, barely letting me get a word in edgewise, though she sounded quite nice.

At first I was a little wary about Mary saving my letters, some of which Carolyn’s got, knowing anyone could read them. But then I figured it wouldn’t matter if they did. I wrote nothing wrong or bad in any kind of way.

She doesn’t know exactly when Mary will be leaving, but my guess is that yes, this is it. Sometime this month she should be gone. The sad part of it is that she doesn’t know anyone in Florida, so she won’t be having any visitors there. Carolyn said she thinks they’ll pay for Mary to return to Arizona upon her release, but I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of them paying for transfers, though I’m sure they’ll allow her to make the transfer. She said she’ll let me know the minute she learns that Mary’s gone, but as I warned her, 90% of the time we’re online, so she’ll probably get the machine. Although it’s true that we really are online a lot, I probably won’t answer if I see her number cuz I won’t want to gab for an hour with her. That’s why I told her to leave a message and since she loves to talk, I’m sure she’ll have no problem with that.

She too, learned the hard way that the media’s never a friend, just like Misery had told me. She said all they do is twist her words. “Oh yeah,” I told her. “If you say pink, they’ll print blue.”

She surprised me by saying that she sent those bookmarks and religious things to jail. I thought she got them inside the jail. See, we can’t send stamps, we can’t send money, so this was why I automatically assumed that bookmarks and pamphlets were a no-no. If I’d known they were okay to send, I wouldn’t have sent them to Carolyn, but Mary never objected when I first mentioned my hesitancy in sending things that weren’t pictures or that were of odd sizes or that had multiple pictures like the religious pamphlet did.

She asked if I were Catholic and I told her I didn’t follow/practice any religion, and then went on to explain to me about a picture of the Virgin Mary with knives in her representing the sorrow she endured when Jesus was killed. Well, she sent this picture to Mary, but it got returned to her as “inappropriate.” We both had to laugh about that one.

She mentioned Mary’s mom being coo-coo with guilt which is good. I mean, it’s good that she recognizes she did wrong, but I don’t know if that’d necessarily mean it’d be a good idea for Mary to live with her. We both agreed Mary’s only faults are her poor taste in men and her running like she did, but at least Mary’s learned from it all. I hope so anyway, but we’ll find out by what guys she takes up with when she’s free.

She surprised me by saying that as much as she hated to admit it, Derek’s a good father despite the horrible way he treated Mary. The reason I was surprised was that usually, if it abuses the girlfriend/wife, it abuses the kids, too.

We also talked about Todd’s burning Mary and Michelle’s silent treatment. She too, tried to get Mary to stop writing Michelle, but as I reminded her, she was trying to get those pictures back of Gretchen that Todd has. Speaking of Todd, I learned something new about Todd too, though I don’t know why Mary didn’t tell me this herself. Maybe because she knew I’d chastise her for associating with him. Well, he supposedly spent 5 years in jail after being implicated in a robbery/murder in which charges were dropped. He’s still on probation, though I’m not sure for what. Anyway, as Carolyn was saying, and I totally agree with this, it could very well only be a matter of time before he gets picked up for something else. Something that could pull Mary down with him. See, I’m just not sure Mary gets it. I’m afraid that just like Paula, she might not break her old habits. Like I said before, it’s what she’s attracted to, not just what she attracts. She probably doesn’t even know it and would deny it if you even so much as suggested it to her, but she likes abusive men. It may terrify her, it may hurt her, but at the same time, she likes being punched, she likes being kicked, and she likes being called a worthless whore. It’s as sick as it is sad, but some people really truly do have this illness that attracts them to shit like that. In the end, though, it’s her life and she’s going to have to be the one to decide who she hangs with.

I was way surprised to hear her say that Texas and Florida are the two strictest states. Supposedly she got this from a cousin of hers who’s a sheriff in Texas. I thought the worst two were Texas and Arizona. Either way, I know firsthand that Arizona’s bad enough.

She said Mary constantly speaks quite highly of me, which was nice to hear. Mary’s so right when she says that you can know someone for years and think you know them inside and out, then they turn on you or dump you. This is why I tell myself, “I’ll enjoy the time Mary and I are friends,” rather than, “We’ll be friends forever,” cuz Mary may very well decide someday not to associate with me. If she does, she does, but meanwhile, I won’t be going anywhere. It’d take a lot for me to dump her. As long as I’m not pestered with the 1-3 visits a week I used to enjoy, or expected to gab by phone for hours, I see no reason to dump her. I’ve already told her we don’t like to have a lot of company and that I’m not the phoneaholic I was in my 20s.

The poor girl had to ride on the same bus with Monster, who said to her, “Mary, you were right. I should’ve listened to you all along,” whatever that means. Mary said she ignored him while some other girl yelled out, “Shut up, you monster!” Also, Mary gave a beautiful speech in court. She has a video with news clips on it, all of which I have yet to see.

Lastly, she doesn’t seem any more thrilled with her neighbor, a drunken guy. Something about him breaking her van window with a weed whacker that he’s too poor to pay for. She’d be too scared living in a rural, snake-infested place, though, she said, and of course, her husband Rick is quite ill.

As far as the car goes, we ended up both blessed and cursed. He never would’ve made it to Casa Grande and had to stop in Stanfield where there was just one more water hose left. Had the problem been what he originally thought it was, it would’ve cost $130 instead of $30, and that’s all well and good, but it’d be even nicer if our shit could stop breaking so much. He even had to stop and play phone at one point. He said there was tons of static so he went outside and wiggled wires around. It was fine when I spoke with Carolyn, though. We might each get our own cell phones and get rid of the regular phone altogether so we won’t have to deal with power outages, etc. If the number changes, I’ll give it to Mary and Carolyn, but I don’t know about Paula. Maybe it’ll prompt her to write for real if I don’t just like it did when we moved from Phoenix.