I think the rat would have fun running on the treadmill (sort of like a wheel) if he just knew how to use it.

I started the new diet today and had 30g of protein during the first hour of my day. The reason behind this is supposedly because your body handles protein differently than other foods and makes you feel fuller longer. Well, even though I didn’t feel that full after eating two eggs, a slice of cheese and a pork patty, it’s now been 4 hours and I’m still not that hungry unless it’s psychological. The ice on the chest for a half-hour is something I don’t think I’m going to be able to do.

Andy loves keeping in touch on Formspring but couldn’t leave questions with a protected account even though he was listed as a follower, so I turned it public again. Had to also turn Twitter public when I realized I wouldn’t get extra contest entries for tweeting about contests with a protected account there. I’m keeping my FB account private, though, in case the troll gets it in mind to harass my friends when she “needs someone to talk to.”

I noticed someone left Irene a frog heart on her wall yesterday, like the ones Nane and I would leave each other. I asked Irene if Nane sent it but she said she had no idea who sent it. My first thought was that she might be lying because it clearly said that Irene had just sent me one. When I went to send one back, however, there was a heart waiting for me to accept from the application itself. But I’m still not sure that it was anonymously sent to me as I see no way you can do that. If Irene’s being honest, maybe she went in and found one waiting for her just like I did and thinks it was anonymously sent, IDK. I do wonder if Irene may like me, though, LOL, just by all the comments and goodies she sends me. When I first saw her picture I thought she was hideously ugly. Some were with red hair, some blond. But when you really study her face you see she’s not that bad-looking at all. She just needs to lose a lot of weight.

Another hug just came in from another application, LOL. Again, this is nice, but I sure wish it was coming from Nane.

A while back I had a bad dream about Maliheh where we were sitting on a speedboat and she fell overboard. But this was after she narrowly escaped being hit by a tornado and so I wrote it off as just stress. But then I started hearing less and less from her, and as dishonest as it was, I sent a letter saying an “acquaintance” suggested it may be that she only friended me to make sure I pulled her name out of my book. I was curious as to what she had to say about it.

Well, she told that person she has a message for them – to fuck off because as long as I want to be her friend, she’ll be mine. And I can bank on it.

Well, it turns out she may’ve had a heart attack, the poor girl. Now I know why I had that dream. Right around the time I had the dream her energy levels declined and even a friend noticed she wasn’t herself. She just didn’t want to say anything until she knew what was going on. She thought she was having a heart attack while driving last Monday and although no damage was visible, she was kept overnight in the hospital. They’ll be running some tests on her over the next few weeks.

I let her know I’m here for her and that I wish this damn planet weren’t so big at times. I wish I could see my friends and meet some of my cyber friends, too! I just hope she’ll be ok.

As for the oversized bug dream I mentioned having in my last entry – I went into the kitchen just after midnight and what should be waiting for me but a HUGE spider! It was like a daddy longlegs with fat legs – ugh!

I wasn’t surprised to see that Casey Anthony is appealing her lying convictions. It’s like enough is never enough for her. It’s not enough that she already got away with murder or at least neglect. If I were her I’d cut my losses. Especially if I already did the time for the lies I told, so what’s to appeal?

At least I had a small win (a $10 Visa card) to help balance out some of the worries and gloominess I’ve been feeling.

Tomorrow I’ll be experimenting with Dr. Oz’s diet aid recommendations. They won’t make me lose weight, but will hopefully allow me to get more out of my diet. I’ll still have to cut calories and exercise.

After two days off, the troll was in and out of my blog like crazy today playing catch up. She came from everywhere and she went everywhere, combing the archives, individual entries (including old ones), and the comment section.

“Don’t like gay marriages? Don’t go to one.. Don’t like cigarettes? Don’t smoke them.. Don’t like abortions? Don’t get one.. Don’t like sex? Don’t have it.. Don’t like drugs? Don’t do them.. Don’t like porn? Don’t watch it.. Don’t like alcohol? Don’t drink it.. Don’t like guns? Don’t buy one.. Don’t like your rights taken away??? Don’t take away someone else’s.”

That was my Facebook status a couple of days ago which I reposted from someone else’s wall. I totally agree with all it says, too!

Yet there I was reading about how the military’s twisted Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy will remain in place as once again the gays have their rights given and taken and bounced around like a damn yo-yo. It makes me sick that even in 2011 some folks still have to fight for the right to be who they are. Meanwhile, other “minorities” continue to have more rights than anyone else ever has to date. It’s no wonder I can’t stand people in general but am getting sick of this country. I just can’t imagine what other country I’d go to if I were to leave the US.

Just got done showering and I swear my hair has already grown back an inch. Now I’m loving my $150 desk chair that Tom got at the Goodwill for just $6! I couldn’t believe it when I saw it! I’m just amazed at how wonderful this chair is. You can tell it’s expensive not just by how it feels but by all the features. Most chairs simply have a height adjustment, but this one also lets you adjust the width of the arms and the slant of the entire seat and back. The cushions are more than twice as thick as most office chairs. The only thing I don’t like about it is the weight. It is one heavy chair! Don’t care for the dark gray fabric either or how wooly it is, but it’s better than that mesh fabric, I guess. I gotta wonder who would give away such a nice chair.

I was compensated with Jesse and his son’s racket yesterday – argh! One on the saw, one on the dirt bike. The damn kid even cruised down here once that I know of (I ran and drowned the racket out with my own noise). Why couldn’t this one have been a girl? Damn cocks. Most of them are little pricks no matter what their age. If the animal, who may be living here throughout the summer or close to it, makes a habit of zooming down here, I’m going to tell Jesse to keep his damn kid up at his own place and to himself. I don’t care that it’s his land! Talk about a guy that’s as kind as he is inconsiderate to his tenants. The main reason I opted out of having kids was so I wouldn’t have to deal with the chaos they bring. Yet I have been forced to deal with other people’s kids so much in my life – WTF? Few more years and the damn kid will be coming and going with a loud car stereo.

I don’t know if the saw I heard was the one we sold him, but if it was then I’m sorry we didn’t throw it on Craigslist. So many guys are so lazy. So many. Yet we just have to have a landlord who can’t sit still and who always has to be doing something. We just couldn’t wind up with a lazy couch potato.

Tom and the rat were pigging out on barbecued Fritos yesterday, and he was happily underfoot in the kitchen the entire time I prepared dinner later on. He was so like a dog, quick to suck up any scraps I’d throw down for him from the table, LOL.

The inside clothesline just broke again. Ugh, I’m sick of our shit breaking!

And I’m sick of feeling down as well. But I’m stressed, depressed and feeling a sense of doom and gloom so much of the time. I feel like if I lived or died my life would still be basically over in a sense. I wish I could shake it.

Even when I’m not having nightmares, my dreams are still mostly negative. Take last night’s dreams for example – panicking over not getting a job I wanted, a rising fever for no apparent reason, and supersized bugs on the walls – WTF?

Tom’s going to redo his résumé and omit all his prior management experience. It’s sad that experience can hinder you from finding work when it should actually help you. I still think the main issue is the curse that’s determined to hold us back, whatever it may be, and his age and color. Especially his age.

As I hear less and less from Maliheh, I get more and more convinced that she only befriended me last year to make sure her name was pulled out of my book. But as soon as the book’s published I start hearing less and less from her. Funny, huh?

I was going through the place picking up the rat’s toys when I thought to myself - if I’m ever going to get my German like my Spanish – or even like my Italian – I’ve got to start studying more. Irene has taken over Nane’s role in helping me. Not by anything she does in particular but just in our communications and by me following things on her wall. She does know English as well but doesn’t seem to know as much as Nane. She added Nane and I to a spiritual group she’s starting that does tarot card readings and stuff like that, and even she’s mystified by Nane’s disappearance. But as I told her, who can know what’s really going on in her life but her?

It is so nice to be pain-free! My gums are now just about completely healed. :) For a while there I thought they would never heal. So now I am truly glad I got the damn thing out of my mouth, especially since it was so far in the back. Even my dry skin is better. That was definitely brought on by cheap bodywash and cheap lotion. But now that I’m using better stuff again it’s not so bad.

After vacuuming out the lifetime supply of dust inside the back of Tom’s chair, we swapped chairs for now because I got sick of the way mine was rocking back and forth. We’re deciding on whether or not to get a new chair, order the parts to fix my old one, or see if we can pull the parts to fix it from the last chair that broke that’s sitting in the shed. The lift on that one broke so that it would stay up really high. Not a good thing when you’re so short. I don’t want to have to keep his chair for long, though. I had to stuff a pillow in the back to keep the support bar from gouging my lower back and it’s kind of big for the area it’s in.

The only other thing going on I’m not so thrilled about, besides the unusually cool nights, is the lack of win notices. I don’t know if I’m being compensated cuz I recently won big or what, but I’m getting worried. This is what happened in the summer of 2009 before I ended up quitting. I won big and then my wins just stopped.

I have a feeling Jesse’s gonna be running around on the ATV any minute now. :(

I watched as Tom pulled the center of the chair apart and a small object – apparently broken – fell out of it.

“There are your ball bearings,” Tom said.

The ball bearing in my little pink office chair broke, so we learned after I sat in it and noticed it felt funny. This sort of “completes” the dream I had where he was saying “bear beads” which I later told him when I woke up might’ve really been ball bearings.

What is it with these damn chairs anyway? This is like the third or fourth chair I’ve gone through. I can still use it; it just rocks a little. But next time I think I’ll go from cheap crap to first class. :)

Out in the country, you notice some things more than you notice in the city. Like the moonlight. I turned the lights off so I could relax in the dark, but a sliver of moonlight shone through the window and kept it from being pitch dark. It’s better than city lights and all the chaos that goes with them. I do NOT miss having a house just a few feet away from me! That’s just too apartment-like.

Tom’s starting an experiment and if what he does works for him I’ll try it myself. It’s something he saw on TV where this famous doctor, Dr. Oz, tells of these supposed scientifically proven tricks to help make weight loss not be such a bitch. You still have to work out and eat responsibly, but it seemed interesting.

There are 3 things you have to do, 2 of them every day. Every day you must have 30 grams of protein during the first half-hour of your day. Then you must place ice on either your upper spine or your chest for a half-hour a day to cool the body’s core. This raises the metabolism. Eventually, you want to get to the point where you’re taking cold showers, then sitting in a tub of ice up to your waist for 10 minutes, but we both agree that there’s no way we could take such cold. If I just think the word “cold” I get cold. Lastly, once a week you want to drink a glass of grapefruit juice prior to binging. This doesn’t mean you eat all day or until you puke; just all you want – whatever you want – until you are full. If you don’t want the juice, then you can do 1-2 minutes of squats after pigging out.

Speaking of food, the fryer broke so no more fried foods for us. Why do those damn things break so easily, though? In fact, why does all our shit break so easily?

I’ll eventually give this chair to Denise, my sitting mannequin. But that’s only if I don’t sell the bitch.

I still have a thing for Nane and wish I’d hear from her more often but I have a feeling that after her so-called computer issues are resolved I’m not going to hear much more from her then either. It’s funny, though, because if I were suddenly single and in her area, I wouldn’t hesitate to get it on with her if she wanted to, as self-conscious as I may be being this fat, and knowing she’d probably be all wrong for me relationship-wise. She’s just so damn hot!

It was nice hearing from my Ohio buddy and knowing she cares enough to keep in touch. We were talking about our different theories. I’m a very philosophical person and I believe that if all there is out there is a God, then that God is more evil than good. If there is a God and a devil, then the devil is stronger than God because there is more bad in the world than good. As for random events, that’s harder to believe since some of us seemed to get picked on by life over and over, year after year, which has a way of making one feel singled out and picked on.

Eileen turned 60 today and the rat was funny as hell earlier. I love it when he gets all playful and rolls around on his back.

Jaycee Dugard’s book already sold 175,000 copies. I’m happy for her and all that, I just think it’s kind of sad that one has to be kidnapped, raped and held hostage for 18 years (unless their books are turned into movies) in order to sell many copies of their book. And she just got 20 million from the state of California, too. I also wonder how can she stand to keep her kids now that she’s free, considering the monster that fathered them.

Sometimes I wish Tom and I could live in a different country every year or two for variety’s sake. Except for the impoverished countries and the crazy countries, of course, like in the Middle East. But even if we didn’t have to work, we both still need to be able to learn the languages and I’m the only one here with a knack for languages, LOL.

As for Casey Anthony, I hope someone kills her but I know better than to think she’ll be harmed in any way. Knowing how twisted, backward and unfair the world is, God will protect her (I got it a God cuz I don’t know what else to call the evil above or exactly what it is) and see to it that she gets filthy rich and has many more kids. As it is it’s been confirmed she’s already adopted a Romanian baby. She put in to adopt it last year, pending the results of the trial. So the Romanians don’t mind giving babies to convicted liars even if they might be baby killers or at least definite baby neglecters. Lovely. Just lovely. Kids drive me crazy. I can’t stand to be around them and their loud, uncivilized, bothersome and often animalistic ways. But that doesn’t mean I like to see them abused or in the wrong hands.

The jury may’ve been unable to prove she murdered her kid, and maybe she didn’t. Maybe the kid really did drown and she panicked, even though her post-death afterward doesn’t seem appropriate for a grieving mother. But even if it were an accident, shouldn’t she have been sent to prison for neglect? And for neglecting to notify the authorities? Instead, she gets convicted of lying to the pigs – WTF? So I did (both in and out of jail) almost the same amount of time as she did in jail for a fictitious letter – WTF?

And one of the lies is just ridiculous. Convicting her for lying about the fictitious nanny is one thing, but convicting her for petty, harmless and silly lies like telling a couple of celebrities what was going on is a joke. And I’m sick of the double standards! Why is it we can’t lie to the pigs but they can lie to us all they want?

I disagree with that famous lawyer who compared her case to OJ’s. OJ wasn’t charged and convicted of all the lies he told the cops. Also, in OJ’s case, two people were killed instead of one. The only similarities are that they both got off scot-free.

This is a prime example of why I’m no friend of God. It’s not just about my own perps He’s protected and the bad things He’s allowed to happen to me personally have deepened my hatred for Him, it’s also what I see going on out there in the world. If God doesn’t make mistakes then why do 2-year-olds die, accidentally or not? And if God is “good” why do thousands of people get wiped out by earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters? sighs As always, to each their own, right?

And so that brings me to our weather. I just can’t figure it out. Each summer is colder. It’s not only taking longer each summer for it to get here in the first place, but this is the first summer we’ve had to close windows at night in the middle of it. :(

You’d never know I was once a dancer if you saw what a fatty I am right now, LOL. But that’s what I get for spending so much time eating too much and moving too little. But I am making progress, however slow it may be. Regardless of weight, I feel so much better already and I love the way it’s firming up my body. I’d rather be fat and fit than thin and unfit. Yesterday I ran a little faster at 3.5 MPH, but only for 10 minutes and with a 52-calorie burn.

Anyway, happy Monday, everyone since it’s just after midnight now. I hope this week brings me some good wins! Last week was kind of a dry week.

I got to talking about my old neighbors – the ones that were the most problematic – and was asked if I myself did anything wrong during the years we were neighbors or if I was the perfect little neighbor all along. Well, we’re all human. That means that sometimes we’re right, sometimes we’re wrong. And I have no problem admitting when I’ve done something I shouldn’t have done. So the answer is no. I’m no angel. Never have been never will be, although I do try to treat others with kindness and respect and am a little more forgiving than I wish I was or even like to admit I am. I hate to fight with people. Disagreeing is one thing, fighting is another. I was a prankster in my younger days who could be a bit of a spoiled brat. These days, however, I really would prefer to keep the peace. I’ll do what I have to defend my rights, my property, my loved ones and myself, but I’d rather not have to do so to begin with.

But now that person - or possible persons – is stalking me online, following me from site to site, and their latest site to play with me on was Pandora. If it’s not really them, then it’s someone doing a fine job of making it look like it is. I have pulled a certain email that was suggested to me from the auto-send feature after getting an “anonymous tip” that someone had used my Pandora account to post parts of this journal (they edited some of it) in their comment section, so I ran and changed my PW, then left a few comments of my own in my defense.

So someone who apparently knows them seems to want to “protect” me from any evil intentions they may have in mind, and again, if it isn’t them (and I admit that you can’t always know for sure who’s on the other end of a computer as it could be anybody) then they’ve done a good job making it look like it’s them.

Back to what they asked me – no, I wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t loud, rude, inconsiderate, obnoxious, and hell-bent on rubbing my presence in their faces and making my every move known to them right down to every little hiccup, but I sent them some journal excerpts (which I suspect were altered) that I should not have sent. It may be no excuse, but in my mind, I did it as a way of venting. They really put a world of stress on me.

They probably never knew who sent it but one day they received an anonymously sent card with confetti in it, a joke I learned from a friend who pulled the same stunt on me, knowing they’d open the card and that the confetti would fall out and make a mess. Well, that was me who carried out that lovely deed.

I was cleaning up some of the crap one day that they’d toss over the block wall and was already in a foul mood. My 16-year-old nephew had just been killed in an accident. My sadness and my rage at God and His unfairness along with a glass bottle in my hand at the time wasn’t exactly a great mix. I hurled the bottle over the wall and it smashed all over their carport.

Last thing – right after they moved I called them at the new place. The lady that answered thought I was someone she knew and I went along with it. She probably eventually realized who it really was, but no, I was no angel. It doesn’t compare to stealing one’s sleep, peace and sanity for a few years, then their freedom and bank account for another few years for something I actually did not do while they lied to the police, DA and media, but no, I wasn’t perfect. Happy?

Did it tarnish my view of people of that race? I’ve been asked. Yeah, for a while it did. And while studies show that men in certain groups tend to be a bit aggressive while the ladies in some groups tend to walk around with a chip on their shoulders, I understand there are good and bad in all kinds. If I wouldn’t hate all whites if a white person burned me, then why should I hate all non-whites if one of them burned me?

What did I do? That was another question. When I was really young I mostly babysat and worked in the housekeeping department of hotels. When I was just young I sang and danced. Then I shifted to entering sweeps/contest in my 30s, and writing and languages. I’ve always been into writing and languages, I just didn’t do it professionally till my 40s.

Where have I lived – New England till I was 26, then 12 years in Arizona, 3 in Oregon and going on 4 in Cali.

I speak – fluent ASL and somewhat Spanish. I know a lot of Italian and Portuguese and some German and Esperanto. Other Romance Languages are at least somewhat comprehensible to me as well like French and Catalan.

My best personality traits – I’m smart and I’m damn funny.

My worst personality traits – I’m a bitch and I can be very negative and impatient.

Best physical features – hair and eyes, though I think my days of sitting on my hair are over.

Worst features – definitely the legs and teeth.

Time changes most of us for the better. However, these were the types of people who could care less about others and I’d be willing to bet they still wouldn’t care if I lived or died. On the flip side, I’d be the biggest liar on earth if I said I cared about them. Curiosity is one thing, caring is another. It’s all the same to me if they won $100 or stepped on a sharp nail.

Hey, I just said I could be a bitch, didn’t I?

Later…

Had a couple of strange dreams and one was a bit alarming when you consider my track record for dream premonitions of a bad kind. As I’ve said before, sometimes reality plays out exactly like the dream, other times it’s just a warning of trouble to come but may not be the kind of trouble that occurred in the dream. Well, it was but it could’ve been a lot worse as long as there’s no more bad news around the corner. I don’t have any bad vibes right now, so I hope not.

The strange dream was about the dogs. They were barking their asses off and I yelled out the window for them to be quiet. The landscape looked different than it really is. Instead of hills in the woods, it looked flat and open like the desert. They ignored me and so I ordered them to be quiet again. They still ignored me. Then I looked out to see that while Whiskey was far off in the distance, Brandy was struggling nearby as if she were caught in something.

So I ran to get a better look at what held Brandy trapped, but suddenly we were in the basement of some house and not outdoors. I crept through a large room and then into a smaller room where Brandy was whimpering and struggling to free herself from where she was on the cement gray floor. I looked back at Tom who was right behind me and said, “It’s what I think it is.” Then I looked back at Brandy who sat atop a black king snake and appeared cat size instead of the 50 or so pounds she really is. The snake, even though not poisonous, somehow prevented her from moving.

Tom passed me and touched the tip of the snake curiously. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s just let them die off and then we’ll bag them up.”

That was the end of that dream, LOL.

The worrisome one was of us on the road somewhere. Something was wrong with the car. He stopped, got out to inspect things, then reentered the car saying something about “bear beads.” When I later got up I wondered if that really meant ball bearings.

I shook my head in the dream and said, “It’s like everything on a car is set to expire at the same time.”

“Well, it actually gives out little by little,” Tom said, “but when you only have 100 bucks…”

I started to panic and asked if he wanted me to call my parents for help.

“That’ll be the next step,” he said, and then I woke up, worried that something was going to go wrong.

About an hour later he went to check our debit card and found that the money he transferred to it hadn’t shown up yet. Fortunately, we’re not desperate for money right now so it’s not the big deal it might’ve been if we needed it right away.

Notice it’s always the bad things that come true? I haven’t won that $2500 I dreamt of winning yet and so I’m hoping that now that I’m finally able to sleep straight through and aren’t in constant pain anymore I’ll go back to winning something good every few days or so.

Heard from a lot of people today. Shelley told me she was sorry about my tooth pain and was going back to Maine and partying with friends. LOL, she sounds like she’s still in her 20s.

Andy got the camera, Kim tweeted to me, Mitch emailed me and Tammy left a message asking if I remember her, LOL. I think that was in regard to a discussion I was having with someone about some “friends” not keeping in touch as much as we’d like. I let her know that she wasn’t one of the ones we were referring to.

Last night I finally broke through my writer’s block and hope to keep going with my story, but am still unsure as to how I want to end this one.

In one of Kim’s tweets she said that before the troll deleted her blogs, she had a little hate list going. Alison was #1 and she was #4. Didn’t see my name on it, though. Let me guess, Roman and Kathy were #2 and #3, right?

There was something chilling about hearing about that hate list of hers. She may be a woman and she may be slightly disabled, but don’t most of the people who suddenly go out and start shooting randomly in public have hate lists also? Tom said the crazy people do. But that’s just it; this girl is crazy. I just wonder if she’s the type to one day snap without warning as harmless as she may seem today.

Head beating. Yeah, this next part is going to sound kind of sick. I don’t get it myself. All I know is I’ve been consumed with the desire to beat my head in the wall regularly though I only did it that one time my gums were really hurting. It not only seemed like a distraction and release from the pain but my curiosity was drawn to the idea of it. I can’t do it with Tom around, of course, and it’s harder to bring myself to do when I’m not in pain, angry or depressed. But I wonder about it. Would I die in time if I kept doing it? Who knows for sure, but what I do know is that I don’t want any unwanted effects from it like severe headaches to add to any physical or mental pain I may already be feeling. And I certainly wouldn’t want Tom thrown in jail if I did die. That would be totally something God would do too; protect my perps but have an innocent man charged with my murder that wasn’t even murder.

The old lady’s strange chanting woke me up in the adjacent bedroom. I got up and tiptoed into the hall in the early morning hour and peered into her bedroom through the cracked door. And there she was chanting something that she obviously thought would resurrect her dead husband who lay in the bed next to her and who was supposed to have been buried just days ago!

I freaked in my mind and bolted down the old house’s stairs and out the front door. Next thing I know I – Miss Driving Phobia – am guiding an old van onto the street. I guess I got around the block or something when I jumped out of the van only to spin around a second later to find that the old lady had somehow gotten into the van as well and was now in the driver’s seat.

I stared down the double-barrel shotgun she aimed at me. “Get in the back of the van!” she hissed.

“Ok,” I said. But instead, I ran to the nearest house and awoke pounding on their door with both fists.

Yeah, that was one of last night’s goodies from Nightmare Land. I had other dreams too, but can’t remember them.

The good thing is that last night was the first time in 12 days I didn’t wake up in pain. The bad thing is that I’m still in pain anyway. The kind that you’re just aware of to be plenty annoying enough but that doesn’t make you wish you were dead. But this doesn’t mean I’m still not bombarded with more and more thoughts of death lately. Tom’s what’s keeping me alive. That’s the one sucky thing to having someone you love so damn much; knowing you can’t kill yourself no matter how much you may want to because of what it would do to them.

Later…

OMG, I’m so fucking sick of having to blare the sound machines to block out the 6 hours of barking I’m being assaulted with for what’s now become 3-4 nights a week! Damn that mother fucking landlord of ours for not giving a damn about his dogs or his tenants! Damn him to hell and back! I asked Tom to help me kill them, especially Whiskey, and he said he would, but yes really meant no. He’s just too chicken. He’s afraid of getting caught. I can understand this and I would be chicken too, but it’d be plenty worth the risk. How many more years of this shit are we going to be trapped here for and forced to listen to?!?!?!?! Now I have to figure out on my own how to fix the problem myself so I can live in the peace that’s rightfully ours and that we TOLD them we came here for in the first place.

Has anyone out there ever been victimized in any way be it in a violent way or by someone who was just plain mean, spiteful, vengeful and vindictive and who may’ve hated you for being who you were, then had a strange sense of curiosity about the person? An odd sort of connection that forever connects the person even though you’ve made up your mind years ago that A, you will never forgive them, probably not even with an apology, and B, they don’t even realize or believe they did anything wrong in the first place and are no doubt hell-bent on forever hating you in return. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

From 1996-2003 I was violated by someone in almost every way but physically and sexually. Then again, they have affected me physically as well for stress does a number on one’s health. They directly or indirectly violated my right to undisturbed peace, my civil right to free speech, my freedom, my bank account, and my emotional state, and then they had someone plant false evidence against me which they later got my prints onto “tie” me to it. Evidence that the person either manufactured on their own or that the perp-played-victim received from someone else they pissed off. Actually, it was a handful of people that screwed me, some of which were authority figures. Yeah, it’s a shame when those we’re supposed to trust and count on to see that justice is done are not only tricked and deceived by the perpetrator into believing they’re the victim but when they don’t want to see the real victim in the first place anyway as some states tend to be automatically biased against certain colors and religions. Sadly, some use their authority as a shield to hide their hatred and a means of lashing out at those they dislike.

As a former victim of reverse discrimination for having the balls to complain about someone with the wrong connections – well, the right connections for them – I swore to myself that I would never again let myself be victimized in a similar way or let the incident scare me from exercising my right to express myself, be myself, and see to it that justice is done. In this case, there will probably never be any real justice. I still believe in karma and that those who aren’t made to answer to a court of law in this life for the perjury and other crimes they’ve committed will be made to answer to a higher court that exists only in the afterlife, but I doubt true justice, in this case, will ever be done. The statute of limitations on most of the offenses has simply expired, much in the favor of my perps.

But sometimes that old don’t-let-‘em-scare-you thing I and others tell myself to live by doesn’t always cut it. Every time I move I still live in the fear that these people will find me and take another shot at making my life hell all over again. I know a hell of a lot more than I did in the year 2000, though, and so it’s not that I fear they would win. Not from a legal standpoint they wouldn’t. But how could I “beat” a bullet if one of them decided to hunt me down and get trigger-happy or something like that? I tell myself I doubt they will since it’s been over a decade now, but how can we really know for sure we’re forever safe from our past tormenters? How?

For a while, I sought a therapist to help me deal with the stress and anxiety I experienced on account of them, but as the therapist herself said, there were no magic words anyone could say to me that would fix or change things nor was there any magic pill I could take.

Others have suggested that forgiveness is the only way to finally put this horrible time behind me, but how do you forgive someone who won’t admit they victimized you? I don’t even know that they know they did what they did. Maybe they truly believe in their minds that they’re the victim. All I do know is that sometimes people take a quick swipe at someone in some way shape or form in the heat of the moment, never thinking of the long-term damage they’re inflicting upon the person. I guess my only hope is in the much-believed theory that in the afterlife a God or something like a God will be the one to “take care of” what they got away with here in this life.

For many years my answer was the same (and not something I’ll share here) when asked how I may react if certain people came to my door. But these days I think I may actually be torn between fearing for my safety (though that was always an issue) and simply shaking my head in pity. Really, one has to feel just as sorry for such degenerates as they do anger. After all, wouldn’t one who practically made a career out of making others suffer have to be suffering really badly themselves?

Back to the whole point of this entry – my curiosity. How can I be curious about this person after all the emotional and financial pain they’ve inflicted upon me? Just what the hell is wrong with me? I’ve heard of Stockholm syndrome where a kidnapping victim sometimes falls for their kidnapper. Ok, so I’m nothing like that. The last thing I would do would be to fall for my main victimizer or those who lent her a helping hand if they suddenly kidnapped me. But I still wonder about this person and why she has done some of the things she’s done. What kind of life has she led? Why is she the way she is? Does she ever remember or think of me? Has she ever – even for a tiny millisecond – felt a shred of guilt or remorse for what she put my husband and I through? Or would she, if someone mentioned my name to her right now, be like Jodi? Jodi who?

The other question I still have to this day is how the hell I could have received a sentence fit for someone that beat the shit out of a dozen people. Even if I’d been 100% guilty of what I was accused of, would the punishment really have fit the crime? Many didn’t think so and many said they felt bad for me along the way. I received many special favors in jail and special privileges and accommodations. And while that was all well and good, these were all people who were as powerless as I was to do anything about it once it was too late for me and I’d been tricked, lied to and manipulated to the point of no return as my naivety at the time was grossly taken advantage of.

I’d love to see the person who lied to the media about me dare to repeat their “stories” under a lie detector test, but I know they would never have the guts to do that. Nor would they admit they threw sexually explicit notes, however poorly spelled and childishly written, into our mailbox slot and committed a federal offense in doing so.

Nearly 4000 days later, and even though I was exonerated in the end (vindicated is another term you could use for it) and my record was stripped of the ordeal, I still gotta look up at the heavens above from time to time and ask – WTF???

Later…

It was another hot, dry day out there today. My dear hubby has continued to be a loving, helpful support that words could never express my appreciation for. Not even mine and I’m supposed to be good with words. But I feel bad for him because I’ve been such a bitch on account of my having such a hard time lately. Last night – or morning – was horrible. I had a huge setback and woke up in pain at 11:30 AM after being unable to fall asleep until 7:30. Why is it that disaster always strikes after 4 hours of sleep? Another reason to hate that number!

Where I was falling asleep earlier and sleeping longer, now I’m having trouble falling asleep to begin with. I was up 21 hours before I finally crashed. Then I ended up falling back asleep after waking up in quite a bit of agony, though I killed it pretty fast, and slept 3 hours longer than I did yesterday. This means I slept most of the day away and didn’t get up till 3:30. When I did I found I was in a lot less pain than I had been in a while. But I’m not stupid. I know it will be back to haunt me soon enough, and I’m going to be left with no choice but to return to the dentist to find out why a whole two weeks after the fact my gums are still hurting. This just doesn’t seem right at all.

I only ran for 10 minutes at 3.4 MPH and burned 51 calories but something is better than nothing. Any little bit we do helps and I’m sure I’ll hit down at 138 pounds within a few days. I still can’t lose 1-2 pounds a week like most people. For me, it’s about a pound every 10 days. I still don’t know how low I’ll go, but I know I want to at least get down to 120.

The ab workouts with the big exercise ball are really helping my arms, shoulders and chest while I’m at it since you’re in a sort of a handstand when you crunch inward. I’m also doing my arms with the resistance bands and my inner thighs with the ball by squeezing the ball with my thighs. I don’t get a wide range of motion that way because the ball’s so big and not that flexible, but I can still feel the muscles working.

Got a reply from Shelley. I told her of a memory I had of us walking along the beach in the early evening. I was around 10 at the time and she was around 18. The beach was relatively deserted. A girl about Shelley’s age came screaming at us about God knows what. Shelley pushed her backward and she fell into the water (we were walking along the shore at the time). I don’t remember a word the crazy woman said; just Shelley later telling someone, “I thought she was yelling at poor Jodi at first.” I asked her if she remembered what it was about, but she didn’t. If that’s really true, I’m kind of surprised. If I remember this incident at 10, wouldn’t she remember it at 18? Or maybe she meant she doesn’t remember what the chick said.

Charlotte’s been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s, I learned from Andy. How totally sad. :(

I wish to hell they’d come out with tougher stalking laws that they’d actually enforce, too. They need to make it a law that if you’ve told someone not to contact you 2 or 3 times but they continue to do so, then they get a warning. If they do it again, they get fined. Yet again, they get jailed, etc.

I wedged a blanket under the mattress under my ass to level it out and it really helps straighten my spine and keep the backaches away.

Gonna let the rat out for his exercise now and then get some work done around here and just enjoy the moments that I’m not in such pain to the point that I’m almost tempted to do something stupid.

Later…

The troll took a day off from my blog today. But she’s been harassing the hell out of Kim on WordPress. I still think part of that is Kim’s fault and I wonder if she actually likes getting her riled up. She’s got a public blog in which she has a story with a character named “Belle” who is clearly based on Molly. So between Aly’s letter and Kim’s story, the troll is really spazzed out, promising to continue to “spy” on us and comment, contact, and “like” things all she wants.

I have tried to tell Kim that the more she mentions her in her journal or bases a character on her in her story, the more attention she’ll get from the troll. The sicko feeds off of negative attention, for God’s sake, but she can’t seem to see this. I realize she sometimes contacts people even if they haven’t mentioned her for a while, but eventually, she does go back to mentioning her and that refuels her fire. She still “spies” on me, but she hasn’t attempted to contact me in any way and I really think that’s because I refuse to give her the negative attention she craves. What also makes it different for me than for Kim and Aly, thank God, is that they were once friends. But we weren’t.

Tom and I were talking about the laws and why it’s presently so hard to combat online bullies. For one, Molly never threatens. She’s mean, she’s annoying, she’s a liar, but she never makes threats. She’s also dumb enough but smart enough to always use her real name. It’s technically against cyber laws to open an account under a bogus name, though rarely enforced.

Unless it’s bulk spam, threats, phishers or scams, one who complained to the authorities about unwanted email or blog comments from an individual would simply be told – if you don’t want their emails, mark them as spam. If you don’t want blog comments, disable that feature or stop posting things in public where anybody can see/comment. Too bad they couldn’t have told the sickos down south – if you don’t like what you receive in the mail, throw it out and don’t read it. But the concept, as twisted as it may be, is based upon the fact that most people get postal mail but not email.

Tom’s out working on some electronics in the shed. I really appreciate how supportive and helpful he’s been throughout all this pain I’ve been dealing with. Today’s better than two days ago but not as good as yesterday, and I honestly have to wonder if I’ll ever again experience a day in my life without pain. Tom says I will, and that our lives will still change for the better, but IDK. I’m still waiting. Sure, things could be worse. A lot worse. But enough is enough already with the same old, same old rut we’ve been stuck in for so damn long! And whenever we do get ahead we get kicked back in no time.

Anyway, the internet is another thing we’ve been struggling with. Thank God Tom set up the phone so we can get online because our connection’s getting so bad and no one wants to help us with it that I’m afraid it’s going to come down to us not being able to get online at all. Not with our computers anyway. As soon as we get the next check we’ll buy a new modem and hope that that’s all the problem is, but we’re both doubtful. We’re still pretty sure it’s their line and that this is the next step toward getting them to fix the fucking thing. As Tom said, there are so many old wires around here and this area will simply never ever have cable.

For those of you who don’t know me well yet, my husband pointed out about 5 years ago to me that he noticed that my moods seem to greatly affect the outcome of things in both good and bad ways but in a more extreme way than most people’s moods do. He believes I psychically will myself to win so much depending on my mood. Well, notice I haven’t won anything very good since getting my tooth pulled? After all, no one’s in a good mood when they’re in pain. All I got was this pass for 4 free days at an RV park in which they’d give us a 7” notebook for taking their tour, and a coupon for a frozen meal for two. The coupon would be nice if we could ever find the product, but the RV thing is useless because we don’t have an RV. The RV park, which has got to be worse than staying in hotels or apartments, is in SoCal anyway. I must’ve entered that one in hopes of whatever the grand prize was which was probably cash or something.

Without consciously doing so, I “hurt” those who piss me off and I bring good to those who treat me well. I just wish I were a better influencer and could win bigger more often.

It not only soured my mood to learn I didn’t win this house they were giving away, but something struck me as all wrong about the winner and that soured my mood even more. They just “happened” to be a young, old-fashioned married couple with a baby on the way. Doesn’t that just seem – IKD – coincidental to you? I mean why am I not surprised it wasn’t a childless couple or a single person? Really, how many married people do you know with kids these days? If you tried to think of 5 married with kids couples under age 40, I’ll bet you couldn’t do it. It’s simply not the norm anymore for married people to have kids. So while I guess anything is possible and they may be telling the truth when they say the drawing was random, it still seems a bit odd in an old-fashioned kind of way.

There’s more I could write about, but I’m not in the frame of mind to do so now. I try to remember every little thought and all that, but sometimes there’s just so much going on at the same time so little is going on.

I could say that Andy’s way excited to get the HD Flip vid cam that we mailed to him today. He said it makes him too, feel like a winner. He offered to reimburse us for the shipping costs, but we told him not to worry about it.

“That’s the first time you told me you’ve loved me this century,” he said when we were chatting on Formspring and by email. LOL, I’ve always loved him and have always seen him as a big brother. He just gets annoying at times with the way he seems to bring God into everything rolls eyes and doesn’t always take my word for things like what happened with our crazy Phoenix neighbors. I should know. I was the one that had to live with them. Anyway, he’s heading back to the beach again and says he’ll contact me in a few days. Maybe he’ll see Shelley this time, fake or not. Shelley, who Marla said that she said I requested to be friends with her on Facebook. Now why did she tell her that??? Has she something against me I don’t know about? Oh well, whatever.

Andy said he told his mom we’re friends again and she said she figured we would be sooner or later since he always mentions reading my blog, LOL.

Just when I go to sign off again yet another thing comes to mind to write about. People have asked why several of my accounts are now private. Well, no real reason other than that I guess I’m just not as open as I used to be. I don’t think some folks need to see some of the wacky shit that goes on my Formspring page, LOL. It just may be a bit much for some people, not that it’s forced on anyone to begin with.

I think I’ll finally call this an entry and go add more tags and descriptions to the Photo Bucket albums I’ve been setting up.

Later…

Well, the troll’s been nosing around on Andy’s Formspring page. I could tell this because she didn’t just make one of her many trips to my blog from Formspring but from Formspring’s “smiles.” Well, she can’t see who’s smiled at any of my answers which means she linked in from someone whose answers I’ve smiled at – Andy’s. Then again, it could’ve been from a “smile” I gave one of Alison’s answers.

The dogs have gone crazy both tonight and last night and my gums still ache, but sometimes it’s worse than others. I totally, totally regret getting this tooth pulled. Instead of helping myself I’ve gone and made things worse. I should’ve done nothing or had a root canal done. Tom disagreed at first saying that root canals are very painful. He was shocked when I told him Andy had 6 and said it was worth it.

Tom just told me it sounded like one of the dogs was hurt or trapped. LOL, I couldn’t get that lucky and if it was true I doubt it’d be the one that does most of the barking. He said he heard yipping, but I just heard typical barking when out of range of the sound machines. We do live in the forest, though, so it could’ve been coyotes. I just wish Jesse would hurry up and get his ass home!

No book sales lately. :( And still stuck with writer’s block on my current story. :(

Anyway, I played around with my photo albums which I may add to or edit later on, then laid down in bed for a few minutes to let the pain pills kick in. Laying still in the dark my mind took off on its own and this time it decided to wander back to the past. Back to Arizona. When I was going through the albums of the land, and especially of the house itself, I bawled my eyes out. Yes, I still bawl my eyes out even after all this time. Even though our lives were hell there and the area has become very dangerous, I cried for all our lost hopes and dreams. I thought of the things I loved about the place, the land, the climate, etc. I thought about all the goals we had and how excited we were to plant, build and decorate both indoors and outdoors a little at a time over the years to come.

Today’s going a lot better than yesterday ended up going, but I know better than to jump the gun. Just because I’m enjoying being at least relatively pain-free at the moment doesn’t mean I’m going to stay that way. I know better. In an hour I may be in agony all over again.

Yesterday started off ok, but then most of the day sucked and I had a horrible night again as well, waking up in pain or due to bad dreams, as well as a mysterious bump that could’ve been anything. At first I thought Jesse had come down here to get something from his shit pile (it was 7:15) and it was his truck door that jolted me awake, but there were no tracks, nor did he come to take our trash. Good, cuz I’d have really chewed his ass out big time if it had been him. It may be his land, but any landlord should have some common courtesy and some decent respect for their tenants, know what I mean? The thought of sharing this land with him and his dogs for many more years, even if this place were a spacious palace, makes me want to scream!

Anyway, yesterday’s pain wasn’t just the gum area where the tooth was yanked, it seemed to be the entire left side of my face from my ear to my jaw to my chin. :( But I can only take so many pain pills so often due to the risk of liver damage. Had I had a gun yesterday I’d have shot myself dead on the spot as I told Christine who always makes me smile when I hear from her. She knows and understands what I go through in life and I don’t mean just the pain part, but the financial, weight and emotional part as well. At least all that KFC yesterday didn’t cause any setbacks in my weight loss (I’m 139 lbs.).

I suffered all day and then crashed around 9pm. I’ve been falling asleep earlier and sleeping longer because my sleep is constantly being split up. At midnight I woke up in pain but not enough to take anything for it. At 2:30 I woke up in agony and took a couple of pain pills. An hour later I took a Benadryl to help me fall back asleep.

Aside from the mystery bump that woke me up (maybe it was his damn dogs which would be running around loose that early since Jesse’s a morning person that’s usually up by 6:00 - 6:30), I had 3 separate dreams where I was telling people I was “afraid I might’ve lost my check.” I got the impression I was working somewhere and it was a work check. I didn’t seem to know Tom in a couple of the dreams. All of them seemed to take place in hotels or two-story houses. The one of Jesse coming down with a blower at 6am was in a two-story house. I ran downstairs to let him have it when Tom was on the phone calling someone about the dead animals placed by our door. I guess it was a couple of bearheads, LOL.

Once my mouth pain was taken care of my back became my tormenter, and I realized I had to do something about this fucking mattress real soon. By the time we save up for a new mattress, my back will kill me if I don’t take care of the problem now. We tried placing the raised airbed on top of the platform, and while it’s more comfortable (though I don’t like the built-in pillow and the way it tips easily) it was simply too high. So as soon as Tom’s own back is better we’re going to disconnect the platform from the headboard shelves and just keep the airbed on the floor. Hopefully, it won’t spring a leak before I can get a new mattress.

We reapplied the Return to Sender spell yesterday. God, do I hope it changes our luck cuz prayer and wishful thinking certainly won’t change it! I just thank God I don’t have it as bad as Alison, who got through her mastectomy surgery ok, according to her BF, but is still going to need chemo. Gosh, something up there really hates her too, only in a different way than it hates me. I wonder if she’ll ever have a better life any more than we ever will. No wonder she too, hates God. I have a feeling, though, that sooner or later, unless I kill myself I’ll eventually be bombarded with health problems.

A part of me envies her. If I could just get cancer all I’d have to do is not treat it and then let it kill me. I wouldn’t have to worry about any botched suicide attempts or living to suffer anymore.

Both yesterday and today I shut the troll out when I happened to catch her presently snooping around in my blog. She even voted on my poll and said she reads it word for word, LOL, and I know it had to be her because she was the only one on the website at the time the vote was made.

Aly said my idea to be a “horrible” friend to her might work, but probably won’t because, in the end, it may cause her to harass me even more. I agree. I think it’s best to just continue acting like I don’t know she exists unless she practically grabs me by the shoulders and gets my attention by way of direct contact.

Dreams about a lack of jobs and money woes, waking up in pain, wanting to die, a mystery animal(s) making the fiercest ruckus I’ve ever heard on the porch at 3am…oh, what a wonderful life I have.

There was some good in it when I got up to find I’d lost two pounds since I started running and dieting last Saturday and then had KFC later on.

But let’s back up to last night. I crashed at 9:30 and awoke in pain at 2:30. Fed up with always being in some kind of pain or another, and fed up with circumstances beyond our control always holding us back in life, I thought about sneaking out to the shed for the bag of charcoal, then lighting a skillet full of it while in the car with the windows closed. I thought about how there was just as much – even more – to die for than to live for. I told myself that if I died I’d no longer have to worry about pain, money, controlling my weight, vision troubles, growing old – nothing. But then being the chicken shit that I am, I chickened out and took a Benadryl an hour and a half later to help me get back to sleep. Tom later told me the car wouldn’t be very smart anyway since it’s got too much ventilation.

Before it had a chance to knock me out I heard a fierce pounding on the porch that startled the shit out of me. It was only for two seconds but very loud. I bolted out of bed sure that Tom had gotten up and fallen or that someone had kicked their way in here. But Tom was sound asleep. I was amazed he could sleep through such loud banging that seemed too loud for a catfight or for skunks or raccoons. It’s possible it was a catfight and they banged against something, but the few objects that are on the porch are too heavy for cats to move, and the plastic chairs are strapped to the railing. It seemed like something hard – like the hooves of a deer – slammed onto the wooden planks. Maybe a deer wandered onto the porch and got its antlers caught in the clothesline we have strung across it and panicked, though it seems odd that a deer would be out in the middle of the night or attempting to walk across the porch unless it was small. There were a few bears sighted not far from here, but it was in a more remote area where bears are more likely. I would think bears would be too big to be on the porch unless they were cubs, and they too, are usually day animals. That leaves coyotes as a possibility. When we checked in the morning, nothing appeared damaged in any way so who knows if we’ll ever know what it was? I just know it wasn’t Jesse’s dogs. They’re always tied up at night.

Despite having the dream of winning big, all that was in the mail when Tom checked today was a couple of small wins. A coupon for a frozen Stouffer’s meal for two and 4 days and 3 nights free at an RV park (just what we need). I guess then you take a tour and they give you a 7” notebook.

I had another two-story dream where I was in a dumpy two-story house. Why do I keep dreaming of dumpy two-story houses???

All this pain and poverty are getting to simply be too much that I wonder if it’s time to reapply the Return to Sender spell. I guess it couldn’t hurt. My whole left side is aching now from my ear to my teeth – ugh. Thanks, God. You’re a real sweetheart.

Eileen asked if I wouldn’t mind helping her hairdresser’s sister to get her own book published on Kindle. I said sure, although there’s not much I can really do other than furnish her with the link to their step-by-step instructions, and tell her not to expect many sales to start with.

LOL, you know you’ve made it as an author when people start asking for your help, even if you’ve still only made 6 lousy sales.

Irene cracked me up the other day “liking” several comments and postcards I left on Nane’s wall.

I was friended on Facebook by another VH girl, but she left right before I hit the scene. I could tell this much just by her never hearing about a girl jumping windows. Sadly, I became a bit of a legend, as I told her, until Renee R took my place by burning the place down a few years later.

The troll’s back to snooping into my blog, as expected. Some entries she only views for a few seconds, making me think she’s just looking for her name or for Alison’s or Kim’s. Other entries she views for longer and I can’t say that she’s reading them or just idling on that page. I inserted a poll asking Do you…

1. Read my journal word for word?
2. Skim through it to get the general idea of what I’m saying?
3. Simply scan it to see if I’ve mentioned your name?

Even the troll can vote, so we’ll see if I get any votes for name searches.

I will admit to having fun with her when I saw she was at my blog at the moment I checked my stats by running and setting it to blog authors only to temporarily shut her out, thus frustrating the hell out of her, LOL. After a while, I set it back to being open to anybody.

Sometimes I wonder if I could actually drive her crazy enough to get sick of me and not want a damn thing to do with me if I actually let her friend me, then made a HUGE pest of myself by sending her tons of messages and then getting on her ass about it whenever she didn’t respond to me right away. Really, what if I became a friend but proved to be such an awful friend? Just the worst friend possible, totally bugging the hell outa her with all kinds of messages, demands and requests. Would she still follow me from site to site like she has since June of last year?

I wish I could say that things were better, but they’re not yet quite there. We’re just more organized. We’ve been doing a lot of cleaning and rearranging both indoors and in the shed.

The good thing is that summer has finally set in to stay. We can now leave the windows open all the time. It’s been hot and dry and today will be around 100º. Summer seems to come later and later each year. It took till July this year. What will it be next year, August?

I’m still waking up in pain, but Tom thinks my gums will heal now that I’ve run out of the Aleve I’ve been ODing on. He didn’t realize I was taking way too many, nor did I realize the consequences for doing so. But I guess it thins the blood and that’s why a scab wasn’t able to form over the gums so it could start healing. Every time a clot would film over it would break free. We’re hoping that this will finally be the end of at least this kind of suffering now that I’ve switched to Tylenol and am taking it as recommended. I was just in so much pain is why I was popping the Aleve like crazy, never knowing that ODing on pain pills can actually cause even more pain. I am at least doing better when I’m awake so that much is good. I swear, though, I will never ever step foot into a dentist’s office ever again as long as I can help it!

Finally heard from Nane yesterday! She said she hasn’t been online in weeks due to not being able to run Windows. She said her friend who usually helps her with computer problems was on vacation and when he got back he told her to get out her recovery CD, but she can’t find it. So she pulled out her old, ancient computer which isn’t wireless, but she got sick of being “disconnected,” so she’s using it till her notebook is up and running again. She says we’ll be back in touch then, though it may be “another little while.”

She didn’t fly below radar on my tracker this time around, so the other German visitors I didn’t get detailed info on May or may not have been her.

I also talked with Shelly this morning who describes herself as a Jill of all trades, roofing, painting, sheetrocking, farming, etc. She has a house in Florence and a good man in her life and is happy.