Got up at 5pm, let the rat run around for an hour or so before Tom crashed, and now the night belongs to me, myself and I to do whatever. :) Well, I still gotta do some work, LOL.

Andy and I have been having fun on Formspring. One of his friends and I were Formspringing each other, too. They’re all big Stevie Nicks fans. I’m not as big of a fan as they are, but I do like some of her songs and Fleetwood Mac’s.

Molly hasn’t viewed my blog in days. It’s a miracle. A real miracle. I don’t expect it to last forever, though. I know all good things come to an end. But for now, it’s nice because even though my blog is public, it was a bit unnerving to have someone I don’t want a damn thing to do with view it dozens or even hundreds of times a day.

According to Tom, people at work are saying that when the rain stops and it dries out in springtime here, it leaves behind a lot of molds that turn into spores. When it’s windy like it was the other day, the spores get stirred up and blown around, causing allergy attacks like what I had a couple of days ago. My chest muscles are still sore from all that sneezing.

El Cocko took off a couple of hours ago and left me to have to deal with the barking. It’s not as consistent as it used to be when he’d take off at 4am, but still, if it’s your dog why should I have to hear it? Well, let’s put it this way - if we ever have a dog of our own and it’s barking its ass off when we’re out somewhere, I’m not going to feel the least bit sorry for those around us. :)

Oh, good. I think I hear Mr. Not Gonna Take Responsibility for my Own Damn Dogs When I’m Out’s truck roaring up the drive now. Or maybe not. Get back here you fucker!

I was really hoping he was settling into some kind of a predictable schedule so I could know when I could count on getting some peace, but I guess he doesn’t have much of a schedule after all. All I know is that he tends to be noisier in the mornings and that he better get his ass back tonight so I can watch a movie later on in peace. I always worry he’s gone somewhere overnight when it’s coming up on 8:00 and he’s still not back. When I heard him leave at 6:00 I thought he was just bringing his kid home and that he’d be right back. What is it, Friday night in his mind?

Okay, now it’s back for sure. So let’s see… I’ll be up till around 9am so that means I can have at least 11 hours of peace – yes!

Haven’t heard from Maliheh since Saturday, but that is okay. We know each other so well now that there’s just not much to say, LOL.

Later…

I swear I heard his truck come in a while ago. So then why are there still scattered fits of barking? sighs Why don’t I just keep the damn sound machines on all fucking night and forget about the nighttime being the peaceful time it usually is around here. Unless it’s raining or hot, the days are hit or miss. So it sucks when I can’t at least count on the nights being quiet.

Went back to thoughts.com but didn’t tell anyone. On her profile page there, Molly has a big announcement – I’ve stopped going to MyOpera and Formspring and bothering my former friends.

Now let’s see how long it lasts, not that I was ever a friend of hers.

Anyway, after I figured out their latest version (which will change any time now) I decided it’s got enough cool features and so I stopped blogging at OpenDiary and started there. I just hope Maliheh doesn’t find out about it, though I don’t think she will. It’s just that I’m a little more detailed over there than I am on Opera and talk about things I don’t always talk about on Opera because there I have not so much an unbiased crowd, but one that doesn’t have anyone in it that I know. It’s really only Maliheh I don’t want to know about it because her feelings are important to me. I know she wouldn’t want me writing about her, but figure that what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. This way I can still “be myself” in my own journal but not upset her. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if Kim and Aly stumbled upon it, but I’d rather they go to Opera where I can see them on the visitors’ list. Thoughts.com only has a hit counter. I can see where one would get a lot more viewers there, though, than on Opera.

Later…

Andy’s currently 50º colder, LOL, the poor guy!

I still can’t believe how huge and ugly Kim is, the poor girl. You know what that means. Yup. I can have aaalll the attention I want from her. She’s so big her cheeks practically rest upon her shoulders. I don’t see how she can get around and function carrying all that weight. There was a picture of her with a hoodie on, and with that and her glasses which are just as oversized as her face, she looks almost comical. I feel bad for her. Then again, do I really? I still say that anyone who lets themselves get that big can’t care all that much about their weight. Losing weight is hard having to deal with a hunger that pretty much never ends even if you do get a little “used” to dieting, but still, there’s no excuse for being that fat.

Later…

I just turned on the sound machines again, this time quite loud since I know Jesse might start up that fucking truck of his any minute now, idle it for 10 minutes, rev the engine, turn it off, then do it all again 15 minutes later as part of his strange morning ritual. Is he hoping to wake everyone up on this side of the mountain?

And is the grass really greener on the other side of it? I think not. And therefore I think today’s the day I shall give up my dream of owning a modest home somewhere and let my dream remain just what it is – a dream. The word must exist in the English dictionary for a reason, right?

Think about it, I told myself earlier. When have you ever really turned a dream into reality?

I’ve met a lot of goals in life and had a lot of fun experiences and surprises come my way. It’s not like it’s been all downhill for me or that I’m “giving up.” I’m just trying to be realistic. Some people really do get their dreams, though. Some people get to have the kid they once thought they wanted. Some people get to have the careers they once wanted. Some people get to have the women (or men) they want, even if it’s just a lust thing.

But whenever I’m so lucky as to come close to achieving a dream, something up there takes away whatever I obtain. Except for Tom, I seem to lose all things good. Maricopa became a very bad and dangerous place to live. Arizona may have a lot of problems as a whole, but losing our house and land like we did really hurt and it still does, even if, as Tom pointed out, something up there was also looking out for us in a twisted kind of way.

Then we lost our land in Oregon and our dream to build our own home. Again, it was so damn cold and snowy up there that that too, worked out for the better. But see the pattern there? I surely see it. Even if we could buy a house right now, I’d only worry about losing it all the time, especially if it wasn’t an old, ugly noisy dump. It seems the more I like a place the easier it is to lose it. It’s safer to just stay renting someone else’s tiny little dumpy trailer and to just put up with the annoying landlord and dogs that go with it. I wonder if it was actually foolish of me to think we’d be forced to choose between homelessness and death back when we were on Unemployment and I was worried the benefits would run out before he got a job, knowing that I just can’t seem to lose the places that aren’t on the top of my list. This isn’t a bad town or a bad place to live. But it’s not ours, Jesse and his dogs drive me crazy at times, the place is old and we have shit for space. I’m a super organized and neat person yet often it’s hard to find things in here because we have to have so much stuff jammed into such a tiny space because there’s simply no room to spread it out. I have to move 20 things just to get to one thing most of the time. I have to pick and choose what I want and where when it comes to the big stuff because there’s no room to have more than one thing in a certain area. If the rat cage and computer desk are by the back wall of the living room, then the couch can’t be in that area, too.

I miss having space and a more modern place to live, but that’s just not meant to be in our case. Would we have had to rent little dumps like we’ve had to do since 2004 if this wasn’t how we were meant to live?

So I will give up my dream – and that’s exactly what it is – and just forget about buying a place. Buying new furniture, picking out our own carpet – that’s just a dream. Hell, I couldn’t even get the carpet I wanted when we bought our last place. I wanted champagne pink, not denim blue. But the manufactured home company didn’t have my goddamn champagne pink carpet.

looks down at what’s someone else’s stained coffee-colored carpet and sighs Dreams are dreams, reality is reality.

It’s been over a year now since I last heard from Mary (no sense in calling her Sabrina anymore online). Inmates are often encouraged – make that threatened – not to associate with anyone who’s ever been in jail before, and so I suspect that’s why I stopped hearing from her. She’s not the type to just dump people, and if she is, then wow. She had me fooled. Whatever the reason is doesn’t matter. I was just thinking of her and how horrible her pre-jail/prison life was. Much worse than my worst of times in many ways. If something up there doesn’t like me, it sure as hell hates the shit out of her. It has in the past anyway. I just hope she’s okay and that she really is released this summer like I heard she would be. And that she succeeds and is happy and doesn’t go back to the bad boys and baby-popping thing. It was all she knew; to fall for abusive guys and to “collect” kids.

Thanks to yesterday’s 18-hour sneezing fit, my diaphragm muscles are sore as hell. I feel like someone took a bat to my ribcage, but that sure beats non-stop sneezing hour after hour.

Swapped messages again with a rather tipsy Nane. LOL, I still don’t know what to make of Fräulein Nane. She kind of gives me mixed messages. She’s clearly stated directly and not that she’s attracted to me, but sometimes acts like she isn’t and like she only likes guys. But I asked her again, just to be sure, and she said that yes, she has indeed been with women before. Good. The last thing I want to do is flirt with a straighty as I like to give them the same respect I want people to give me. We really don’t flirt much, though. Just a passing thought or compliment here and there, but nothing like what used to transpire between my former Italian “girlfriend.” We didn’t just flirt, LOL. No, we went way beyond that. We talked dirty.

I wonder if she’s an alcoholic based on how often she mentions getting drunk. She drank a whole bottle of champagne because something “weird” was happening. I guess she had a friend who went down to Libya a year ago to work. They kept in touch weekly, but then the guy started acting weird and she stopped hearing from him. She thought he was dead. Then she got a message from him saying he’d been in jail, and so now she’s all confused and not sure what to think. He had gotten a touch of “Lagerkoller.”

Either way, I could tell she was kind of out of it. She knows I spell my name with an I yet spelled it with a y, told me to see a homeopathic for my “skin” allergies which I told her before were really sinus allergies, and invited me to this concert in Munich 3 times, LOL.

She was telling me that while her English isn’t too bad, she prefers to communicate in her own language, isn’t much of a writer, and prefers speaking with people face to face, seeing their gestures and looking into their eyes.

This I understand as most people seem to hate to write. And yeah, her English isn’t too bad, though she makes some funny mistakes at times like when she said doctors “describe” medicine, LOL.

What does my rat not understand about the word “no?” Every chance he gets he makes a grab for my necklace and tries to either chew or pull it off, that little devil. Plus I so stupidly left a bag of trash sitting on the kitchen floor which he chewed through. I found him happily gnawing on an empty sugar packet before he could make too much of a mess.

He’s hilarious whenever one of us goes into the kitchen. He comes running in to beg at our feet. He stands on my foot and hugs my ankle. He definitely can’t keep his mouth off of anything for long, LOL. He even tries to chew on my fingernails. Something I’m sure those who are creeped out by rats would love to imagine.

Because I was sick yesterday I couldn’t do much more than update my journal and watch movies. And I couldn’t even get through the whole movie. So I’m going to finish it, then it’s back to work.

I know I shouldn’t have done this, but I couldn’t resist. I called two numbers Stacey works at (she manages a storage company, too) and let my electronic reader read her the part of my journal where I last wrote about her on her voicemail, LMAO.

“It’s not mine,” I said with annoyance thick in my voice.

“But isn’t that your handbag?” some anonymous lady asked me.

“It’s identical to mine, yes, but it can’t be mine based on its contents. What would I be doing with rubber duckies and stuffed tarantulas in my handbag?” I shouted in my dreams last night as I frantically tried to pick my handbag out of the dozens that were present.

Yeah, I had strange dreams last night. I didn’t seem to know Tom and was living in the second house I grew up in with my folks. I attended some kind of musical or play and had placed my handbag with all the other women’s handbags in this odd-looking coat room before going into the auditorium. After the performance, my handbag was missing and I was not only pissed but worried about my checking account and the hassles that would go with having to get a new ID and all that.

In the next scene, I was walking around outside. I don’t know what state (or even what planet) I was in but I found this hidden little piece of beach and I ran home all excited to tell my mother all about finding the perfect little slice of beach to hang out at.

In the last dream, I had my own apartment and I went to call “Nervous” even though he’s dead, LOL, and he kept saying he couldn’t hear me. He said, “Don’t you have an amplifier to hook up to your phone?”

On the verge of tears I said, “No, it’s gone. Everything’s gone!”

My allergies really gave me hell today. I was determined not to take a Benadryl so I wouldn’t get all groggy, but I broke down and took one after a couple of hours of sneezing. So now I’ll be pretty out of it and useless throughout the night, unable to do much more than watch movies and waste time. I’m just not in the mood to work on my story or study languages. My mouth is so dry now from taking the stuff, along with snorting up my snot spray.

Andy finally got his own Formspring account, so that’s cool. We’ve been having fun playing around there.

I had a nice chat with Nane, but haven’t talked to Maliheh in a few days. While Nane is very sweet, I still get the feeling she’s – IDK – reserved a bit. Like she suspects I have some hidden motive for wanting to be her friend. Especially since she said I was so nice to her and she wondered why in her last email of the day to me before she went to bed. Really, though, she’s just an attractive, friendly woman who’s interesting to talk to.

I have been formally invited by Nane to go with her to see a Turkish grunge band play in Munich, LOL. Yeah, I’ll just run halfway around the world and join her! All joking aside, I would if I could so long as it wasn’t snowing.

It started off with me sending an email saying that unless she’s just been too busy to read my book, she totally has my permission to tell me it sucks if that’s the case and that the manuscript ought to be used as toilet paper. That made her laugh, she said. She was just about to go to bed when she got the message and so I didn’t wait around for her to reply to my reply because I wasn’t expecting one. But when I finally got around to getting it she said she’s been sick, busy and planning her next trip to Morocco and so she hasn’t had time to read it yet.

I told her I hated to travel but that we might still take the Italy trip I won, and she said don’t cancel that trip! She said there are more exotic places than Rome, but she was in Rome two years ago and really loved it. Venice is nice too, she added.

If we ever do make it to Italy I’m hoping we can meet up with her at some point there. I let her know I’d give her all the hotel info as soon as I get it, and maybe she can drop down from Germany, though I doubt I’ll ever see anyone worth seeing that I’d like to see. Still, it’d be nice to try to line things up. Especially since she’s a travel fanatic who travels 4 or 5 times a year.

She said she can’t understand why anyone would hate to travel but that’s for me to know and her to find out. Well, it’s simple. I’ve always found traveling to be a hectic pain in the ass, and having a sleep disorder doesn’t help at all.

Either way, the possibility of seeing her, Paul and Marilena helps make the idea of a trip to Europe not seem so bad, and it motivates me to keep bettering my German and Italian. But there are no guarantees. If we can’t get the time for it, then we just won’t make it.

The rat’s taking a “track nap.” Lately, he likes to lie along the track of the slider up against the glass. He’s been banned from the bathroom again for chewing behind the toilet.

Another warm day in the low 70s. Wish it could last, but know it won’t. All good things come to an end. So tomorrow it will drop 5º, then another 10º the next day. I don’t know why. There are no storms on the horizon. Except for a wet December, it’s been a very dry winter overall.

I chatted with Maliheh a couple of times yesterday. She was in the orphanage till she was a year old. That’s pretty sad to think that no one gave a shit and that no one wanted her for a whole year of her life. It was bad enough to think no one that could’ve helped her gave a damn when she was homeless, but to be a baby left all alone in an orphanage with no one to care – that’s bad. That’s really bad.

She doesn’t even know her exact date of birth. The orphanage didn’t have that information so her mother chose May 13th because it was her father’s birthday. It was Tom’s dad’s, too. And Michael M, my high school music teacher I was once so into whom another student managed to snag.

Here I am on what I expect will turn out to be a very boring Saturday. I just don’t feel like doing much of anything other than what needs to be done like the laundry. It’s a beautiful day of 73º out there so it’s ideal for hanging clothes, especially the heavy stuff like jeans and towels.

My allergies don’t appreciate that it’s springtime so I had to take a Benadryl which will probably knock me out for a while.

After Tom got home yesterday I told him of my strange discussion with my mother. He thinks that because she’s old she misunderstood me and that while she can think just fine, it takes her time to think. And so if I talk too fast she can’t keep up with me. He thinks she thinks I was saying we might move to Florida soon, not when he retires in about 12 years, and just like I don’t want company pestering me every week, neither does she, and that’s why she was trying to deter me. And they’re not moving either, he says.

Nah, I think she got it. She may not be big on company any more than I am and they may not be moving, but I think she got it. I just don’t get what it is they’ve come to dislike about Florida, but it doesn’t matter because if there’s something bad about it it may not necessarily be a problem 12 years from now. So we won’t write Florida off completely. If ever the time comes when it’s possible to move there, that will be the time to really do our homework. Not now.

“I’m not saying she’s senile, but Alzheimer’s runs in your family,” Tom also added, and this is true. My grandfathers died suddenly of heart attacks, but my grandmothers were both flat out of their minds in the end. One screamed that she didn’t want me to get what she had when I visited her one last time in the nursing home she was in, another kept waking me up every hour insisting it was time to go to work when I spent the night with her shortly before she died.

Despite our past differences, it’s so sad to see them grow old and know they don’t even have a decade left to live. I know that regardless of every bad decision they ever made pertaining to me if my father had to kill someone to save my life even if it meant spending his final days in prison, he would do it. Just like my mother would refuse to treat a deadly disease she may acquire if she knew it would save me.

They swore they’d never let themselves become dependent on their kids, which is understandable, but that’s sometimes easier said than done. Wondering what will become of them in the end is a sad thought, but one I can’t seem to escape lately. Maybe that’s why I don’t like to talk to them more than once a month or so; because it only leaves me feeling sad and there’s just no way to avoid it as it is. My mother may’ve been a bitch for most of her life, but it’s still sad to see her wither away.

Thoughts of death have my mind flashing back to 1985 when I overheard my mother talking on the phone just 6 months after Pa died. Most people call their grandparents grandma and grandpa, but for us, it was Nana and Papa, or just Nan and Pa. For Tammy’s kids, it’s Bubby and Zadie which is Hebrew.

“Art, we have to go over to my mother’s now,” Ma was telling the person. “Why, he asked. Because something’s wrong, I told him.”

I listened as she explained that the storm door was locked and he had to smash his way in. My mother, who had waited in the car, didn’t need to ask him if she was gone when he returned to the car. His face said it all.

Nana was a bitch too, unlike her husband, and no one cried as hard at her funeral, but it was still a sad time laying her next to Pa in Beth Israel Cemetery that cold November day in Springfield.

I called my parents back and this time my mom answered. She sounded horrible at first and I thought she was sick. She’d actually been napping along with Dad.

I realized I’d forgotten to tell them not to send anything when I left the message yesterday till we get our new PO Box address next month, and also let them know that PO boxes don’t accept packages from UPS or FedEx. Those will have to be sent here. At least we can forward our mail from the PO Box whereas UPS Store boxes won’t do that. These greedy bastards want $90 for 6 months, but we can get a PO Box for a year for $45.

We talked about getting everything sent here, but even though I’m not sweeping right now, we don’t want to overwhelm Jesse as we still get a bunch of crap. Also, it can be confusing for the carriers when one person forwards mail from a particular address while the other person doesn’t. We don’t want some of Jesse’s mail forwarded to us while some of ours gets held back here, so that’s why we opted for the PO Box. I don’t want Jesse coming down here every time I get samples either, which is almost every day.

So after asking about Dad, their store, etc., I bring up the idea of moving to Florida when he retires and she says in a very stern and serious voice, “Not here. Don’t come here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked her, and she said things are very bad there. I asked how and she said, “Jodi, I’m sure you read.”

“But I haven’t,” I told her. “You know I rarely read the news. It’s too depressing.”

But try as I would, I could not get her to tell me the specifics of what’s wrong, despite promising not to put it in this blog (and I won’t if I find out what it is). All she would say was that it was things in general that have been bad for several years, that explains it in a nutshell, and they’re talking about moving. I asked where they’d move to, and while they know they would never want to go where it snows, they don’t know where they’d go.

I hope they don’t go to Arizona! I asked if they wanted to come to Cali and she laughed and said no, but that we’re in a fine location. Yeah, I agree. The winters are still a bit cold, but I love the hot, dry summers. It doesn’t get insanely hot like the desert, but it’s still desert-like in the summer. The rain is nice too, since it doesn’t rain too much or too little here.

Then it hit me that they might be having legal problems, but I couldn’t find anything online, so I’ll have to ask Tom what he thinks and if he’s heard anything in the news.

Anyway, I’m kind of surprised. I thought my folks loved Florida and would basically spend the rest of their lives in the condo they’re in now. For them to want to move when they’re pushing 80 makes me think it’s got to be pretty bad, whatever it is. I didn’t want to push her, but I am curious. Next time I catch my dad alone, he’ll probably give me some hints as far as what’s going on.

As I was telling someone I was talking to last night, not knowing what lies ahead for us gets tough at times. Yo se que I’ll eventually learn the answers to some of my questions since it’s just a matter of letting time play itself out, but sometimes I get impatient and I wish I could have some answers right now. Will we really get a house of our own? When? Where? Will I ever see anyone again I’ve actually met, particularly Maliheh?

Nane knows a little Spanish from when she lived in New York for a few years back in her 20s. Next to the latest picture of her taken down in Turkey I wrote: ¿Por qué tienes que estar tan lejos? (Why do you have to be so far away?) She replied with: no sabes como sufri :)))))))) (You don’t know how I suffer)

She still hasn’t said anything about my story, so I guess she’s either still reading it or didn’t like it, but isn’t saying so for some reason. I’m surprised. I thought she was more honest. Well, we’re attracted to each other, and we share a love for languages, but that’s pretty much where our common ground stops, LOL.

Swapped a few messages with Maliheh last night who said the sole highlight of her week will be painting her living room that’s how bored she is. She said there are things that could be done, but she doesn’t want to do them and isn’t ashamed to say so.

I still get mixed signals from her, too. I sense someone who’s lonely and who wouldn’t hesitate to run over, pick me up and take me back to hang out with her – possibly to do more than just hang out – but then I remember how she says she values her space and has only had company a few times in all the years she’s lived there, so I don’t know what to think at times.

Jesse’s schedule has become more predictable which is a bit comforting to me because then I know when I can have some peace and quiet during the daytime. He goes out in the truck around 9am for a couple of hours, then leaves around 1pm on the motorcycle and doesn’t come back till around 5pm. I guess his kid hasn’t been coming over lately after school; because he would bring him home around 6:00.

Whiskey barked once as he was zooming out when I was hanging sheets and he yelled “Quiet!” It worked, too. I’m amazed at just how much quieter they’ve become, though they’ve always been quieter when left alone in the afternoon versus at night or early morning.

It’s just after 2pm and I’ve been up since 7am. Yet already I’ve heard Jesse come and go twice in the truck and twice on the Harley. How many fucking places could this guy, who’s out of work, possibly have to go?

So right now I’m sitting here wishing we didn’t always have to have one of those “there they go, here they come” neighbors. I’d kill to have mystery neighbors which I had no idea when they left or returned! The only thing that’s improved lately is the barking.

I stupidly asked Nane on Facebook if she’d begun my book yet, and “liked” one of her pictures. So much for ignoring her for a whole month like I originally planned. Not surprisingly, I haven’t heard back from her yet, though there’s no evidence to suggest she’s even been on Facebook since I sent the message. She hasn’t added content to her wall, commented on anything, liked anything, etc.

Got a message from Jessie who’s lost 19 pounds and is down to 120. That’s ideal for her height. She does the treadmill in the morning and works out at night, too. She’s been eating whole grains, low-fat dairy products, and laying low on sugar.

Been having that short of breath feeling again today. I cleaned the bathroom earlier, so maybe the chemicals in the cleaning stuff irritated me, IDK.

I left a message on my parents’ machine saying hi and letting them know that all was well.

Maliheh has only just now recovered from being sick. She said part of the reason it took longer was that she’s older. I got to thinking about those I love and care for who are getting older. I have a few cyber friends who are younger than me, but most of the people I’ve actually met and who are very near and dear to me are older. Just watching them get older is kind of sad. I know that none of us are exempt from aging and dying, but it’s still sad. The thought of one day learning of their deaths saddens me, but I will hope that they’ll live on somehow in a different form. I’m still not sure if I believe in the afterlife, but if there is one, I hope it’s better there than here.

In some ways, it sucks that I’ve been “cheated” out of dying of natural causes in the end. But while I don’t know when I’m going to die, I know how I’m going to die. Unless I get hit with some surprise disease or injury or maybe murdered by some ax-wielding maniac, I doubt Tom will outlive me, and I know I would kill myself the moment I learned of his death. Even with all the money in the world, I wouldn’t want to live without him. I think the only thing that might stand a tiny chance of getting me to live on after he died would be if someone else I loved begged me to and would be willing to not pick up where Tom left off but to be there for me. I mean literally there for me. In person. Not in electronic form or even by phone. But physically there for me. This is highly unlikely to happen, though, and so I just have to accept the fact that I cannot and will not carry on without Tom, and therefore it’s also very unlikely that I’ll get to die of natural causes, too. Instead, it will be suicide; the same thing that nearly killed me almost 30 years ago.

If you think loving one person that’s likely to die first is rough enough, try loving two people that are older. I’ve figured that even though that second special person is older too (Maliheh), I won’t have to go through the sorrow of losing them when their earthly existence expires. I figured this because women live longer than men. Well, if they’re the same age, wouldn’t that mean that I would lose Tom first, thus take my own life and then get to skip out on the heartache of losing them, too?

Then again I suppose anyone who might – and I must emphasize the word might – have read this much of this rather sad entry is starting to wonder just what kind of a loony I may be, LOL. But if being saddened by the idea of losing those I love and hoping to dodge having to experience the loss of both of them and having to endure the double whammy that would bring means that I’m loony, then yeah, I’m a real loony tune. And with my perfect pitch, that’s one hell of a tune. :)

Today’s been filled with the usual vehicle racket from Jesse, and barking, though not much barking. The nuisance is out on its Harley now and hopefully it will stay out and its damn dogs will stay quiet for a good long time.

I’m up to the Ms with my MP3 backups.

Wonder who left the comment saying that the only people who care are just as narcissistic as me and to please give up my blog? Someone connected to Molly? The closest match I came up with was someone in New Jersey who came in on a search for “cyberbullying.”

“Kate” told one of Molly’s friends just what an ass she is, and told Molly herself to fuck off. Molly unfriended “Kate” and then “Kate” blocked her. “Kate” still punishes Molly by fucking with her every now and then on Thoughts and Ask but not KB lately. I just never use any of these sites. Thoughts and KB have blocks, but I don’t care for these sites, and since Formspring, which has a block, is just like Ask, why bother with Ask? I’m sure she’s still checking my old account for reactivation every few minutes, though.

I just started proofreading my 1995 journal filled mostly with the confusion and frustration that went with Tom’s lack of cumming so much of the time and whether or not he truly wanted a kid.

After all these years, do I think he deliberately held back in bed and didn’t want a kid? I don’t think he wanted a kid deep down but would’ve been a great father had we had one. As for the lack of cumming, I’m not sure. Although I had yet to hear of this type of problem at the time where the guy gets hard but doesn’t cum, research later taught me that such a condition does exist. At the same time, he seemed awfully content with the way he was, so I can’t say for sure that he kept himself from cumming. I just don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t know either. If he had a mental block deep down in his subconscious, then he may never have been aware of it.

I just know I totally resent God for allowing me to go through such stress, frustration and depression over the situation like I did for so long, even though things worked out for the better in the end. I don’t know that I could ever forgive Him for it just the same. That was quite a biggie. It drove me crazy for years.

I also wish so many guys (since it’s common for guys to not want kids) wouldn’t say they did just to please the woman, even if they don’t mean to hurt them and I know Tom didn’t mean to hurt me. I just don’t think they understand and realize that there’s a big difference between saying they’ll clean the kitchen or they’ll take out the trash when they really won’t, versus saying they want a kid when in fact they’d rather not have one.

Since Jesse just came in and spoiled my movie, I thought I’d do some writing.

I thought to myself, maybe he’ll stay put and be quiet, but sure enough, he fired the truck up for a minute a few minutes after pulling in, then turned it off. I still don’t get the point of doing this either. What does it accomplish?

Next, I expect it will roar out on its motorcycle. Five more hours and I can expect peace for the rest of the day and night. Only problem is I won’t be awake to enjoy much of it because I’ve been up since 3:30 am.

Anyway, the damn cock first left at 9:30 and I told myself to enjoy every precious moment that he was out which I knew wouldn’t be for long. Also, sure enough, it returned at 1:00. It must’ve had the dogs with it too, cuz there was no barking while it was out.

If I don’t hear from Maliheh today then I suspect she’ll at least peek in on my blog before bed which she now seems to do every other day. I wonder if she even reads much of it anymore, especially the past parts. I won’t be up this evening, her preferred time of contact, which will make it the longest between messages. Guess I’m breaking records with both her and Nane as to how long we go between contact.

Stacey’s picture didn’t disappear, nor has my blog gotten any hits from Arizona. So unless she’s come in on a proxy, I doubt she, or her colleagues, have been in. Or that they’ve read my email.

I’ve had fatigue, nausea and trouble breathing the last couple of days, but no ear or tooth pain. I don’t get it. I’m not wheezing or congested, just short of breath at times. I guess the nausea and fatigue could be from anything, but I’m totally stumped on the shortness of breath.

I set up the perfect rat barricade to keep him out of the bedroom. I wanted a way to be in the bedroom where my computer is yet still able to see him when he’s on the loose. I refuse to let him in the bedroom again so he can damage my stereo speakers again. Or chew up any more bedding and whatever he may feel like destroying in the closet.

The doorways here are pretty narrow so I was able to jam the box fan in the doorway. Since it’s not quite wide enough to fill the doorway I just shut the door a little and then he can’t get in. He can climb the grille on the fan, though, but by the time he reaches the top of the fan, I’m able to spot him and keep him from climbing down and into the bedroom. Of course the little devil thinks it’s a game, too. Still, it’s nice not to have to sit out in the living room while he runs around out there and amongst an arrangement where I gotta really watch him like a hawk. This way he can enjoy his freedom without us always having to be right there with him while the bedroom is still safe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abby. What a boring name. Crabby Abby.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Firecrackers were also shot off at my place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later…

Nane.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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