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jodilin65 · 12 years ago

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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012 18 times? 18 times Nane’s gone to Turkey in the last 4 years, so I read on her wall?! What the hell was she thinking??? Ah, but now she’s thinking she needs a change. She just needs to figure out what kind of change. Why doesn’t she just come here? Jim and Tom could entertain the rat. She and I could entertain each other in the bedroom. :)

No offense to any TR lovers out there but I just don’t get why in the world she would want to go there and eventually live there. From what I’ve seen and heard, TR is filthy and overcrowded. It’s also a Muslim nation, which usually means a lot of hate for gays, Jews, women and children. The beaches suck, too. The water looks somewhat nice, but the beaches aren’t even real beaches. You know, with fine sand and things like that? Instead, it seems too rocky and full of pebbles that I would think would hurt one’s feet to walk on. Furthermore, Iran and Iraq are always threatening to take their rage on Israel out on them. So why would anyone want to endanger themselves by going there?

I did end up hearing from Christiane after all. Well, she responded to my wall post, though I highly doubt she reads any of my notes. Been wondering if Nane, who seems to be spending more and more time on Facebook lately, has been reading them, though. That’s because after I posted that rant about her being so selfish, she posted some wall photos with sayings on them that suggested she may be reading them like, “Never let them steal your joy.” And, “If you had a friend that talked to you like you sometimes talk to yourself, how long would you be their friend?” LOL, I was happy to share them on my wall too. :) Doesn’t she know I can see her shit? LOL, I appreciate the goodies she posts, though I’m kind of surprised. With or without her dumped ex-cyber GF in the picture, I’m surprised she’s not more private. Then again, she doesn’t exactly bare it all. I know she has a lot more pictures than what you can see from the outside looking in. That’s okay, one former stripper baring it all is enough. :)

I’m trying to remember if she posted publicly before she dumped me. I can’t remember for sure, but I don’t think she did. Like I said, I can’t swear to it. I don’t usually pay attention to who posts what and for whom because I just don’t care. All I care about is what I post and who sees it and so I only pay attention and think of myself. Yay, I can be selfish too, after all!

Her wall photos were all in English. I don’t think Nane realizes just how much German I’ve learned simply because we never bothered to speak in it because she is fluent in English (even though she pretended not to be in the end) and so she would not know. I’m far from fluent, but I know enough to get the gist of what I read and I could get my point across if I had to. It may be grammatically incorrect and some sentences may have some missing words, but you’d get the point.

But is she really reading my notes? Hmm… my first instinct is to say no, she’s not. Why would you want to read the journal of someone you dumped? But we all seem to keep tabs on either exes or people we don’t like. I read most of Molly’s so-called journal, but you can bet it’s not because I like her in any way. I do it because it’s so crazy that it’s funny. I also would like to know about it if I or anyone else is threatened. I don’t think Mommy got Alison’s message yet after all. I thought she did cuz Molly deleted both her blogs but she does that every few days anyway when she realizes just how bad it makes her look.

The only thing I read in her latest cries of misery and rejection from those that have either abused her or that she stalks, is that she just may end up in that group home after all. But would they keep her offline? Or at least limit her time and supervise where she goes and what she does?

As sad and as surprising as it may sound, a small part of me can relate to the nutty troll. I know how hard it can be to let go. Only I try to respect people’s wishes and let them be. I may peek in on them, but I don’t create one account after another to friend, message, comment and hound them from quicker than they can block them. Still, I know the sadness and anger that comes from being dumped, and Nane sure picked the worst timing, regardless of how many times she told me I was attractive, funny, and a talented writer.

I wish I were “meaner” and a bigger bitch than I can be at times with a much colder heart. I don’t have to ask myself if I would be dumb enough to be her friend again if she wanted to be. I know I would be. And I also know she would probably toy with me again and eventually she’d dump me again too, either for something I didn’t do or because I may hit another rough patch in life that she wouldn’t be strong enough to handle. But as they say, if you can’t handle someone at their worst, then you don’t deserve their best, do you?

Got a lot of wind and rain last night and we’re on for rain tonight and tomorrow supposedly, yet I don’t hear any falling. Then it’s back to being warm and sunny.

Alison’s pretending to be a troll like Molly from a bogus account on Thoughts, LOL, and Molly’s already responded to it. Don’t know yet if she found it on her own or if Aly lured her in, but I replied to Aly the troll’s cries for help and trying to understand why no one would talk to her with: Relax! It’s easy. All you have to do to be a successful troll is drive people batshit crazy with obsessive neediness and cries for “help.” If that doesn’t work, stalk them for years until they are forced to go underground and make up bogus accounts to escape your unwanted attention. Make up lies and stories about them, too. Get paranoid and delusional and make yourself believe they’re talking about you when in fact they’re not. This is because they really don’t give a shit about you enough to find you worth talking about in the first place. If this doesn’t work, drink a shitload of soda and gain 30 pounds. :)

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2012 Today’s the memorial service for Dad. I didn’t realize they also got plots for one who has been cremated, but it’s courtesy of the veteran’s cemetery since my dad was in the Navy, and well, some people still like to have a place they can go from what I’ve learned.

I remember a time at the beach when I was no more than about 10 years old. Dad and I took a leisurely stroll down to “the dock,” as we called it, heading away from the flat rocks. Those who know Old Colony Beach would know what I’m talking about. I was playing with a stick or a straw of some kind that I’d been carrying with me when we happened upon a plastic pail filled with water and a jellyfish in it. I don’t know whose it was or what it was doing there, but for some reason, I felt compelled to poke at it with that stick or straw I had. Just one of those funny/fond memories to look back on.

I wonder what my mom will do with the store. I would guess she’d have to sell it. I can’t imagine her running it all by herself, though Dad once mentioned having people to help them. It’s hard not to worry about her and wonder what will become of her.

I am very glad to know that despite the sadness I feel right now that Operation Bridge the Gap has been successfully completed. This means it is a huge relief to know we’ve got the rent covered till April when we could get unemployment if they laid him off right now! As well as a relief to know he could buy a new car if he had to and even if it meant being stuck here another year because of it.

Next, we can hope he gets a permanent job, but whether or not he does, we have to decide what operation March is. I guess it’s Operation Get Rid of Old/Unwanted Shit? Then April is Operation Sell Old/Unwanted Shit? I’m just glad he can get boxes at work. That makes it a lot more convenient, since packing and moving are enough of a bitch, though I don’t mind the packing and unpacking. We have a system now as many times as we’ve moved. I pack, he carries, LOL.

No matter what it sounds like around here, we’ve definitely outgrown this place. I still find it hard to believe the people in an adult community would be as loud and as regular about it as this fucktard is. I just hope we can get in and find out! I still think most would agree with me that 5-10 barks a few times a day is one thing, but 6 hours at a time??? Even just once a week, 6 hours is a bit overkill.

I was thinking of Tammy. I will admit I was hesitant to burn any bridges and walk away from someone who probably could and would rescue us from our next crisis if my folks weren’t around to do so, but I still think it’d probably be best to quietly walk away at some point. I’ve got time to decide this, but it isn’t just that what she did was too big to forgive or that she’s scarily vindictive when pissed, but because I simply don’t care any more than I care about some waitress that may’ve waited on me in Friendly’s in Springfield in 1978. So I can sort of relate and understand Tom’s family’s “moving on” ways. She was someone I once knew/saw long, long ago that isn’t the type I’d normally be buddies with anyway, and it will eventually be time to move on.

While I am glad to know I have thoughts of our goals to help keep me going, it’d be nice if I spotted some picture of a hot chick as a bonus to help carry my mind off to Never Never Land for a while and away from my dad. It would help fire up my creative writing juices again, but oh well. You can’t control lust any more than love. It’s just that one minute I’m thinking about what to eat or the weather, then next I’m thinking my dad shouldn’t be a pile of ashes right now. He should be home with his wife!

In the midst of my grief, I forgot to print a little retraction. I was wrong, Tom said, in saying Q10 helps with high cholesterol. It’s actually high blood pressure that it helps with. He’s been feeling better since he started taking Q10 supplements a few days ago, so hopefully this is the answer to revitalizing his energy. It’s also said to help make you live longer.

As for me, I still think my weight is going to keep climbing and climbing no matter how much I work out until I either miraculously find the strength to eat just 1200 calories a day every day, or I go to a doctor that finds something wrong with my thyroid, and I’ve wondered about that. Since learning of my dad’s death diet and exercise have been the last things on my mind, but tomorrow I may at least do a little walking. I’m up a pound or two since I quit dieting about a week ago. Initially, I dropped, but it was just water. Now I’m coming up as I expected I would.

Anyway, we’re not sure if he’ll get a permanent position or even if we’ll have insurance if he does. Even many of the permanent employees these days don’t have insurance. Sometimes it’s offered to them like it was in Oregon, but it’s simply not worth losing a buck an hour for and is just too expensive. It may be a week or two before we know if he got the job as they’re still taking applications for it and it will depend on what he’s got for competition.

Later…

Instead of getting the rain and peace I hoped I’d get, I got sun and saws instead. I’m sure it will rain when it’s dark and normally quiet anyway. Maybe someday I’ll get to live where I not only don’t have to hear other people’s animals but other consistent and annoying sounds as well. I won’t count on it, though.

I forgot to write about the latest Florida dream I had. Yeah, I finally had one last night, but oddly enough, still nothing pertaining to my dad. Not sure if I like this one as much, but in the dream, Tom and I were in Florida. We were at the home of two old ladies, though I don’t know who they were. One said we might be in for a record low of 25° that night and I sarcastically said, “Well, of course. I’m here now so why wouldn’t we be?”

Then Tom and I were driving along some road somewhere. Everything was very green and it appeared to be wet like it had recently rained. I was worried Tom wasn’t happy about being in Florida due to the humidity and lack of weather variety. He liked Oregon the best because of its mix of warm, cold, sun, rain and snow. Then I said something about how if you closed your eyes and didn’t know you were in Florida, you would never think you were in the desert.

It’s starting to get rather obvious to me that some people have been avoiding me and I’d really like to know why. I don’t know if they’re playing games, if they simply don’t care, or if something else is going on in their lives which I don’t know about, but whatever it is I hope they’ll tell me about it someday so I can stop wondering, worrying and guessing. If not, then I guess they’ve got their reasons. Even so, one example is how it kind of hurt that Christiane didn’t even care to reply to my message about my dad on FB, yet total strangers have come forth to offer condolences on thoughts.com, WTF? I think I really need to sit back and think about who’s really a friend and who’s not and stop wasting time over those who raise question marks in my head.

Later…

Yesterday was the first day I made it through without crying. Maybe that’s cuz I’m pretty pissed off right now – not hurt, not sad – just pissed. I’m going to go ahead and use first names so no one mistakenly thinks I may be referring to them when in fact I am not. It’s Christiane and Nane I’m pissed at right now and I don’t care if this note prompts Christiane into dumping me. Then again, she obviously doesn’t give much of a shit about me anyway, as I’m about to write about, so why would she care to read this, right?

Let me first start off by saying that most of us agree that a true friend is there for us throughout our good AND bad times. My buddies in the north and southeast that I’ve actually met – they’ve been there for me. Sure I’d like to hear from one of them a bit more often, but they’ve been there for me and that’s what counts. As one of them said, friendship shouldn’t be measured by how often you hear from your friends. I agree. But there are certain situations in which you should at least acknowledge a friend with a quick, “Hello” or “How are you?” or “I’m sorry” or “Hope you’re feeling better,” that I’m sure most people would agree with me on. Like when we lose a loved one.

Most of my cyber buddies which I’ve never met have been there for me, but I’m a little disappointed in Christiane and I’m thoroughly disgusted with Nane. Both know I just lost my dad, but neither one of them cared to take the time out to offer their condolences, and I know they’ve been online. Why the hell did Christiane add me if she doesn’t give a damn? To keep tabs on what I might say about Nane? I doubt it. She doesn’t strike me as the type to read my notes, though they can be read by friends of friends and I will admit I don’t know much about her. I know where she lives, when her birthday is, and what she does for work. That’s all I know. So no, she’s not a close friend. But still, if you add someone and you know they just lost their dad, wouldn’t it be polite to have at least a little common courtesy and offer condolences? Yet I only hear from her ONLY if I contact her first, and not all the time either.

As for Nane, that fucking Spitze Nase Hündin is a million times more cold-hearted and selfish than even I realized, and as I came to learn the hard way, she’s plenty bad enough! But now I’m at the point where I’m going from disliking her to actually hating her. I wished her well despite the way she so coldly shafted me in the end, but now I can’t wait till Jim dumps her and gives the bitch a taste of her own medicine. Then again, she’s already been fed a dose of that medicine after being with someone for 16 years, so you would think she should know better and what it’s like to be falsely accused of things and then coldly dumped like yesterday’s trash. All I know is that I was just totally ashamed and disgusted when I stupidly looked in on her wall today (yeah, that much was my fault). Instead of taking the time to at least send her condolences even if we’re not exactly friends anymore, she’s “trying to figure out where to spend her next vacation.” What a classic display of just how selfish and phony she can truly be! Oh, it isn’t that I have a problem with one enjoying the good life and their hobbies and things like that; it’s when they come before those they should still care about at least a little bit after all we’ve shared together. But that’s just Nane for you. First comes her travels, next comes her job, and last comes her friends and family. Nane wouldn’t cancel one of her many voyages to save her own mother’s life! When Jim gets fed up with her shit and leaves her I won’t feel the least bit sorry for her. He really oughta shove an anchor up her ass and pitch her overboard on their next little romp at sea!

It’s been a learning experience for me, though. I have learned to be a little pickier about who I befriend or let befriend me online, and these days I’m not really up to new buddies anyway, even if they’re sane, smart and good-looking. I just don’t want the drama again. It’s fun while it lasts, but then the drama eventually comes and ruins all that so-called fun.

My real friends definitely do help make up for some of these assholes. Maliheh had me laughing my ass off last night. She’s just funny even when she isn’t trying to be and has a natural sense of humor and a way with words (even if she did flunk out of writing in college) which cracks me up. I really needed that laugh, too. She also said there’s this song in Spanish she’d really love to sing but no matter how much she listens, she just doesn’t get it, LOL. It reminded me of Andy. About 20 years ago in Phoenix, he put on headphones and tried to sing along to a song of Gloria’s in Spanish as we recorded it. He had the lyrics in front of him and would sound it out to the best of his ability and how he thought the words should be pronounced. So fucking funny!

It was also the first time Maliheh “hugged” me. :)

A certain certifiably crazy individual had me going from amused to pissed and back to amused.

Last night I was amused to learn that in less than a week the troll left her engagement ring behind after she was smacked in the face by her BF’s elbow and told to find her own way to the airport if she wants to leave. Normally I would be appalled and enraged over any chick being physically abused in any way and would want to strangle the guy that did it. But in this case, if there’s any desire to strangle him it’s for not killing her or at least putting her in a coma so that some of us can live our online lives in peace. But knowing the kind of person this troll is, I have zero sympathy for her. Neither do my cyberbuds who are normally very empathetic people.

So her parents basically spent hundreds of dollars just so she could get “elbowed” in less than a week. Dumbshit should’ve kept the ring and sold it.

But then I stopped laughing once I realized that this sick twist would then take her anger at her BF and the whole damn world out on people online. I figured her mom would feel sorry for her after getting beat up and would be a little more lenient with letting her darling daughter go online unsupervised.

Sure enough, the sicko not only cried, whined, ranted and raved about the BF, but she also used a friend’s full name to bash and trash her with and that’s why I got pissed. I was pissed for my friend. I’ve been friends with this friend for nearly 4 years now and she has always been kind, smart, intuitive, funny and caring and just an all-around good person in every sense of the word. She’s also been through a lot of unwanted and unfair shit and the last thing she needs is to be verbally trashed by some delusional psycho full of all kinds of fantasies with no concept of right and wrong or fact and fiction. It doesn’t take a BA in psychology to see that this paranoid nutjob isn’t deliberately and knowing making up stories for the fun of it due to a warped sense of humor or anything like that. No, she’s truly delusional, out of her mind, and actually believes every bullshit thing she says. Most of the time, however, she is vague in her love/hatred for my friend. One minute she hopes to patch things up with a “former friend,” and the next she is spewing hate for her like crazy and wishing her death because my friend wants nothing to do with her and the psycho can’t seem to move on. It’s okay to feel hurt or angry over those who have cut us off. It’s even okay to write about it. It’s therapeutic. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it and some things you just don’t put online for the entire world to see. Thoughts gives its users the option of setting individual posts to private, but that would defeat the whole idea for this lunatic. The idea is to hurt my friend by airing their dispute in public. The Thoughts staff did remove one of the blogs that listed her full name, but then she just carried her bullshit over to Blogger where she hasn’t been reprimanded yet (she left a link to it on Thoughts).

That’s when my friend had had enough and contacted Mommy Dearest once again who told her to let her know if she became a problem again. She thought she had blocked her but apparently, there was either a glitch or she unblocked her. Anyway, she let her know what was going on and how the troll runs to the library to harass people from there whenever she’s not allowed to go online at home.

What’s really frustrating as hell is knowing that this person really is truly crazy. I mean totally and utterly mad. She’s not just disturbed. She’s not just having a “hard time.” She’s not just dealing with a case of “anger management issues.” She’s CRAZY. C-R-A-Z-Y. And no amount of drugs, therapists or time can or will ever change that. If she could have her way she would spend the rest of her life stalking and harassing people online every single day, writing nasty things about them, following them from site to site, and making unwanted contact. And the more sites you’re a member of, the harder it is to avoid her. I don’t understand this obsession with online people and why she won’t try to seek the attention she craves so much from people she can actually see and meet. Perhaps this is because you can not only meet more people online, but you can also harass them easier than you can in person. You can create an endless number of accounts on various sites as well as email addresses to keep coming at them after they’ve blocked your millions of other accounts. But it’s harder to force your existence on people in person. This troll has no desire whatsoever to get a life. She doesn’t want to work. She doesn’t want to take up new hobbies. She doesn’t want to learn new skills. She doesn’t want to do anything but sit at home and be pampered and supported by her parents while she harasses people online.

My friend is pissed (and I don’t blame her) because her local cops won’t do shit to help her, only deepening my hatred for pigs in general even more. Not just because most of them are power-hungry bullies, but because of their warped sense of priorities. They could throw me in jail for something I supposedly wrote to one person that only that one person saw, but they don’t do shit to this little punk who bashes tons of people for the whole world to see??? WTF??? Just WTF?!?! How fucked up is that? It’s too bad my friend and I wasn’t black. Then the cops would do something, all right. All we’d have to do is cry racism and even if she really didn’t utter a single racial slur, it would be her word against ours.

What I don’t get is why they haven’t gone after her since she didn’t actually “do” anything. After all, this damn country seems to be really big on non-action crimes vs. action crimes, so why has this asshole been exempt from this twisted rule so far? They’ll go after someone for something they said or wrote faster than someone who stole a car or beat someone up, so what are the pigs waiting for? For her to go from taunts lies and threats to actually harming someone?

What was a little funny in the end was that Mommy Dearest must’ve gotten my friend’s message right away because both the troll’s blogs suddenly disappeared. She’s now “keeping her emotions out of her blog,” but we’ll see how many days that lasts. We’re not stupid. We know how this bitch is. It’s the mother that needs to do some serious growing up and reality-facing. She needs to realize her daughter is 100% hopeless as cruel and as harsh as that may sound to those she hasn’t stalked for many years. I just wish that if the troll had to be this way she’d cycle through different groups of people to stalk and not just stalk the same damn people continually for years. But the only new people she stalks are anyone who may become a friend of my friends.

I suggested my friend consider going underground. She’s thinking about it but doesn’t really like the idea. Some people want to be able to be themselves. I like to be myself too, so that’s why I only have that one Thoughts account where I don’t use any real names. But thanks to her, the few places I am myself in have to either be done in private or for friends only depending on the site. For now anyway. Meanwhile, I pray for the day she really fucks up badly. Bad enough to be locked up in either a funny farm or a jail and physically prevented from going online. That’s the ONLY thing that will ever stop her. She needs to be kept offline forever or at least forbidden from submitting content and contacting people somehow.

My friend has expressed a desire to be just as mean even though she knows it would be childish and doesn’t want to do anything that could get her own self in trouble, since no one will do shit about this troll, but we honestly can’t think of anything we could do that she would perceive as bad. If anything the troll would get off on it. She thrives on negative attention. When the troll failed to respond to my friend politely asking her to go away, she got nasty instead but no matter how nasty she got, it did no good whatsoever. The troll still either takes it as kindness or gets off on it. It’s sick. It truly is. And frustrating.

Had to really push myself to work out and do any housecleaning these last couple of days. Maybe tomorrow I’ll do better.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2012 Here it is, day two of coping with the loss of my dad. Though he died on the 24th, I didn’t learn of it till yesterday. My dear mom, as disoriented as she was, kept calling the wrong phone. Our old cell phone which we rarely check and is basically only for if I need to get a hold of Tom in an emergency but can’t use the Magic Jack phone. The MJ runs through the computer which means it would be worthless if there was a power failure.

Mom also kept calling me Tammy, and while she’s still a little out of it, understandably, today she didn’t call me Tammy. She just kept getting Oakland mixed up with Lakeland instead. I called to see how she was holding up. Larry and Tammy weren’t there. She wanted to be alone. She cried on and off along with me as we talked. I feel so damn bad for her! She’s got to be utterly miserable all alone and with the realization and the finalization that comes with knowing her husband of 6 decades simply isn’t coming home this time around from the hospital. I just wish there was more I could do than be a sounding board for her. But she knows and understands that there’s only so much I can do from a distance and doesn’t hold it against me in any way. Funny how all these years I worried about this for nothing. Wish I could suddenly know I was worried for nothing about Tom’s and my own time in the end.

I felt it was okay to ask for some details this time around about the funeral and where it was to be held and all that and she surprised me by saying that there would not only be a service at a veteran’s cemetery in Lakeland, Florida, but that he was cremated. Normally Jews don’t do that but my family isn’t exactly very “Jewish.” Maybe 30 years ago it was, but we’ve always been kind of liberal and seem to get more liberal with time, preferring to do what’s best for us as individuals as opposed to what most Jews might do. Nonetheless, I was still surprised. I always pictured them being buried in Massachusetts and I always dreaded the idea of attending the funeral because I knew that if certain family members I don’t exactly get along with or care to see just looked at me wrong, I may very well have lost it.

I didn’t know this but I was surprised to learn that Andy was also unable to attend his dad’s funeral because of the distance. He was still in Arizona when he died.

“It’s more common than you think,” Tom told me.

“Surprise” is still the word of the weekend, that’s for sure. Even though he was old and his heart’s been bad ever since he had his first heart attack when I was little, the news of his death still hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve been crying on and off. I try to keep busy and keep my mind occupied, but other times I just sit and stare blindly into space. And of course I’ve had to mourn the loss of my father to the tune of barking or keeping the sound machines running thanks to my wonderfully rude and inconsiderate landlord. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here! I don’t know how many more years, or even months, I can take of this shit! Or just being boxed inside such a tiny old place with its lack of plugs, lack of counter space, lack of everything.

Mom said she would send me pictures and some of Dad’s ashes in a week or two. I told her to take her time and asked if she was going to be staying where she was. She said yes, for a while anyway. I just feel so bad for her. The situation makes me gladder to know Tom and I survived our ordeal last fall since we almost beat my dad to the grave. Imagine the double whammy of losing your daughter, then your husband just months later?! That would’ve been just so horrible for her. So if we were saved only for her sake that’s good enough for me.

I feel like I’ve taken one step away from Tammy, and when mom goes I’ll probably take that second step that will bring me completely away from her. I just never could get used to the idea of her being back in my life. It isn’t just that what she did was too big to forgive, but because she’s too damn vindictive. Even she admits how much she loves to screw over those that piss her off, and it’s in a much colder way than anything I’ve ever done. No, this one doesn’t just get you emotionally, she gets you legally as well if she can. She is always suing or siccing the pigs on someone. Piss her off and you’re so damn screwed. I’m not going to say or do anything mean or try to screw her over in the end or anything like that. I’m just going to silently walk away, though I expect to be sought out at first since she will want to know why.

My memory is so screwed up these days that it didn’t hit me until last night that the talk I had with just my dad about him finishing my book was not only on January 10th instead of early this month, but it wasn’t our last chat. I chatted with both of them on February 2nd. Little did I know Dad would be dead in just 22 days. :(

Tom and my friends have been a wonderful support but I’m not sure what’s up with Maliheh. I emailed her about Dad yesterday and didn’t hear back from her until today. She asked what happened, if I was visiting, how I felt, and said she was sorry, but now I’m left hanging once again. Tom doesn’t think she’s playing with me or trying to keep me at a distance for some reason, but it’s awfully hard to believe it’s “not me” like Maliheh has insisted upon. I think our feelings and attraction for each other either aren’t mutual, or they are but she finds it easier to keep me at bay since I’m married and on the other side of the country. That’s what I think. But I admit I could be totally wrong. She is a loner, after all, so maybe she simply doesn’t feel up to writing much.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2012 They say there is no right or wrong way to grieve the loss of a loved one. For me, it helps to write, talk and just keep busy. If I just sit there or lay around doing nothing my mind goes off on a tangent as reality tries to set itself in on the fact that I will never see my father again. I will never hear his voice again. I will never call him again and hear his chipper, “Jodi Lin!” at the sound of my voice.

The nightmare began with a rather “rude awakening.” Tom woke me up at 10:00 this morning. He said my mother had been trying to reach me and had left a couple of messages on the old phone. Why that one, IDK, but she’s not exactly with it these days.

In a dubious tone of voice, Tom said, “She said it was very important you call her back. I think your father might have died by the sound of her voice. She sounds really disoriented and keeps calling for Tammy before she remembers you’re Jodi, and one of the calls sounds like there are hospital sounds in the background.”

My mind instantly rejected this idea, of course, and I fought to calm my heartbeat down. It felt like it was going to jump out of my chest because Tom’s unexpected wake-up call (though I would’ve woken up within the next hour or so), had scared the shit out of me. “But I just talked to him a few weeks ago,” I said, at first thinking I’d last talked to him earlier this month when in fact it was last month, thanks to the fact that my brain doesn’t work right anymore. “He sounded so much better. He had just finished my book and said it was good and everything was just fine.”

But it wasn’t. His heart had worsened over the last couple of years, and this year was really bad. Yesterday morning, after a two-week stay in the hospital which I wasn’t even aware of, he passed peacefully in his sleep.

Both my brother and sister are with my mom now, and regardless of my feelings towards them in the past or the present, I was glad to know this. I appreciate them helping her out since I’m not only helpless being stuck on the other side of the country, but I would be pretty helpless even if I was right there with her since I can’t drive. There just wouldn’t be much I could do that can’t be done over the phone like me being a shoulder for her to cry on if she needs one. So I don’t have any hard feelings about not being notified sooner, I know it’s what Dad would’ve wanted just as Mom said, and I’m only a phone call away. What’s most important is that she has people who can drive her where she needs to go and do things like fetch groceries.

I don’t know why but she had me speak to both Tammy and Larry. It was only for a minute, but we were “polite” to each other. I’ll admit it’s kind of hard to picture Larry and Tammy in the same room together without killing each other, but what’s most important is that they’re there for Mom and are able to give her the kind of help I couldn’t give her. Tom couldn’t possibly take time off from work and I couldn’t take off by myself and be of any real help to her, mostly since I can’t drive, but she was quick to point out that she knows and understands this. I didn’t even have to say anything. But like I said, I can help in the ways that are within my means of doing so and that’s just by giving my emotional support.

I guess Tammy flew down alone but Larry has a friend with him. I asked Mom if it was Carl and she said, “No, you’re going back too many years.”

For a handful of reasons I probably won’t be attending the funeral which I’m guessing will be in Massachusetts and not Florida, and I can tell you right now, if anyone reading this even thinks of telling me that’s “messed up” or that I’m “wrong” for this, I’ll never talk to you again. I don’t need any judgment or criticism right now. My family and I have discussed this before and it is between us and us only. If I write about my reasons it will simply be because I chose to write about them and not because I feel the need to explain myself to anyone who may feel the need to tell me that my way of doing and handling things is wrong simply because they may be unhappy with their own lives. Just giving you fair warning, is all, but if I’m jumping the gun and no one had any intentions of feeling the need to “correct” me in the first place, then I apologize.

It hasn’t hit me yet. I’m still in shock. The news was so unexpected and totally caught me off guard. I had not one single dream warning me of his death. Not one.

I told Tom that a few years ago I asked Dad to beam back any signs to me if there was any kind of an afterlife, even though I knew it would probably scare the shit out of me. “Maybe there’s absolutely nothing after death,” I told Tom, “and that’s why I haven’t gotten any signs.”

But Tom doesn’t believe that. “Remember last fall when we were pushed to the brink of absolutely nothing with seemingly no way out whatsoever, and then something stepped in at the very last second and saved us? Well, if it wasn’t our loved ones, then who was it? And that’s not the first time it happened.”

That’s a good question and perhaps we’ll never know for sure. I had assumed it was a hateful God of some kind tormenting us with our survival that only saved us in the end right as we were about to fall off the cliff so it could give us a break for a while and then have fun tormenting us all over again.

I don’t have all the answers, but I always did say the timing was 100% miraculous. Just so in the nick of time. We were hanging by less than a thread. To say it’s a coincidence doesn’t seem right, but who/what it was that saved us is beyond me.

I read the online obituary and it mentions him having a great-grandchild. That’s got to be from my brother’s daughter cuz I don’t think my sister’s kids have kids. I’d hope not anyway. They’re still a little young, I think.

Again, I’m just shocked. He was 80 years old and I really thought he had another 3-5 years left in him. A part of me wishes they hadn’t had me so late in life because then I could’ve had them around till I was in my 50s like Tammy and Larry, instead of my 40s. Getting used to the idea of not having him in my life (and probably not even a mother within the next few years if even that), is going to take some time.

“Why didn’t I have any dreams about it?” I wondered to Tom.

“Maybe because it was simply his time.”

Maybe so, but I was right about one thing. When they left after visiting us in Phoenix in the late 90s, I knew I would never see them again. I don’t know if it was due to the geographical distance and because Mom won’t fly, but somehow I just knew it.

I haven’t seen much of my folks since I was 15 years old and so I was used to not seeing much of them. But the news I got this morning was totally unexpected just the same.

Despite our past problems, I feel so bad for my mom. She’s got to be utterly miserable now. I know I would be if I suddenly lost Tom and we haven’t even been married 20 years yet, so I can just imagine how she must feel after 62 years of marriage. I wonder what will become of Mom. Will she stay where she is? Go live with a friend or a relative? In an assisted living program?

It’s taking me forever to write this. I have to stop and lie down and rest my head and my eyes periodically. I can’t focus for long on anything right now. Keeping busy helps and writing helps, but I need to lie down at times, too. The only thing is that every time I lay down my mind drives me crazy. My head feels like it’s under a million pounds of pressure. My vision is so blurry due to crying on and off all day (I was too stunned to cry much at first) but my mind is racing and it just won’t stop! I write several sentences, and then I stop and find myself staring blankly at nothing, slowly rocking back and forth in this chair.

Funny how life works out at times. Just recently I was posting on the wall of one of my VH sisters who had just lost their own dad. Little did I expect to post a link to my own dad’s obit just days later. Another friend’s dad has been so ill that I expected her to mention him passing away any second, but again, life just works out strangely at times. Both of Nane’s parents are still alive yet she’s 5 years older than me. Tom’s mom is still alive at age 88 and while he’ll always feel a sense of connection to her since she’s his mom, she turned out to be a horrible person who did some horrible things to her own son and his wife, thus proving that the nicer people seem to die younger. Okay, so my dad may not have been perfect any more than the rest of us, but he was an overall nice guy and he shouldn’t have died less than two months shy of turning 81. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Alison and I have wondered why she would get cancer after trying to be a good person while things always seem to go well for trolls like Molly even if they’re too ungrateful and unappreciative to see just how good they’ve got it.

I was thinking to myself recently that it was nice that my parents got to live long enough to read one of my current books as opposed to the shit I’d crank out a decade or more ago. I wasn’t always a good writer or singer. I’m glad he got to see me become a published author even if I never make much money at it, but as my husband pointed out, money isn’t always a true measure of success. Either way, it’s sad that he’ll never be able to read another book of mine.

Back again after having to stop yet again. Thanks to those who’ve given their condolences. I may not be around as much for a few days but I appreciate it just the same. And even Alison’s attempt to get me to laugh about the troll who’s still up to her usual crazy shit. I guess she got back online from Josh’s friend’s place and she’s going back and forth as always, one minute saying she misses Alison and wants to be pen pals with her, the next badmouthing her and saying she wants nothing more to do with her. Oh, and she and Loverboy have already had a fight over money but are doing “somewhat” good together even though she “kind of” misses home. I’m surprised she’s applying for jobs within walking distance of the apartment building she’s living in because she’s always seemed so lazy, but then again, Josh isn’t going to support her like her folks did until she’s back home in a few weeks.

Random memories of Dad go through my mind. I would get so excited when he’d take me out to buy new records, and of course vinyl records were the thing back in the 70s.

When I was around 8 he took me to my favorite radio station. I got to meet the DJ who gave me a tour of the place and showed me how he could quickly find any given record I named off, dazzling me with such amazing delight as Dad recorded the little venture with one of those old tape recorders. I felt like a special little princess that day, even though I didn’t know back then that the radio folks were obliged to give these tours to just about anyone, LOL.

And now he’s gone and… ugh… I still can’t believe it. It just hasn’t hit home yet. God, I’ll miss him!

Where are you, daddy? Are you really able to look down upon those you left behind? Have you reunited with your own dad and others? Or is there really just utter and total nothingness? I just hope to hell it’s nothing worse than here. It can only be better, worse or the same, and while we’d like to believe it’s better, no one can really know for sure.

For the longest time, I believed one’s spirit could simply float about the earth anywhere it wanted to go and peek in on anyone it wanted to. Then one day I pulled back and thought about it from a scientific standpoint. We need a brain in order to think and for our senses to work. But if that brain is dead, then how can we have a sense of awareness and knowledge after death in order to “look in” on those we love??? Really, I just don’t know what to think or believe anymore. I just hope that if he’s somehow lived on he is at peace and that he’s in a much better place than he ever was when he was alive.

I’m just glad my siblings are helping Mom in ways I’m unable to, and of course I can’t help but think of when our own time comes. I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever about not having kids, but boy are we so screwed in the end. Unless we’re both killed suddenly someday like in a car accident, there will be no one to take care of us in the end. I worry for Tom when he gets to where he can no longer drive and little Miss Driving Phobia here can’t take over the wheel, but he said that’s nothing and that’s what Dial-a-Ride is for. Man, it sucks either way. I want to be the one to die first so I don’t have to suffer the pain of losing him, but if I suddenly could know that I would indeed die first, then I’d only go on to worry about who will be there for him in the end and I definitely don’t like the idea of him dying alone. But as Tom says, this is many years away, even if I do worry about these things regularly enough.

In the midst of my grief, I messaged Nane about Dad’s death but I don’t expect a reply. She’ll probably think I’m just “messing” with her anyway.

Mom also said something about some package she’s sending, but I don’t know what she’s talking about. Maybe it has to do with a keepsake of sorts. IDK, I’m just so damn drained right now both physically and emotionally. Things had been going so well and I was all psyched to get up, cook spaghetti, pig out on junk, and just enjoy the weekend with my husband. Well, I’ve done some laundry just to keep my mind occupied, but I’m certainly not up to cooking and I don’t have much of an appetite at all.

Nor do I have the tolerance for all-night barking like what we got last night in the state of mind I’m in right now. Therefore I’ve got all the sound machines on to keep from going up there and not just killing those damn mutts, but also waiting for him to return from wherever just so I can break him in half. The last thing I need to do is listen to Jesse and his fucking dogs while mourning the loss of my father.

It just hit me that they’re probably going to bury him in Florida and not Massachusetts. I had always thought, for some reason, that they would be buried up north in the same cemetery as my grandparents, but then I realized a few things. My mom is not only afraid of flying, but they wouldn’t be talking to me on the phone from Florida on a Saturday if they were going to bury him up north on Monday. Also, they not only like Florida better than Massachusetts, but most of their friends and family up north have either died or moved out of the state, so there’s no real reason for them to be buried there. Another reason they may not move my dad up north is because of some of the Jewish traditions such as the fact that he cannot be embalmed, but I was too blown away with shock and grief to ask my mother these nitty-gritty details and I didn’t think it was appropriate at the time either.

My head hurts, my eyes burn, and my nose is stuffed up. I’ve got to go lay down. I’ll post this some other time.

I looked at both Sandy and Jennifer’s profiles. Jen is single and looks nothing like Tammy’s kids. She’s quite lovely - tall, slim - and you would never guess by looking at her that she had a kid. The kid isn’t pictured on her profile in any place I can see it, but Sandy is pictured with what appears to be an 8-10-year-old boy. My first thought was that it was kind of sad (one should live and learn a while before giving up life to kids) that Jen had a kid at what was probably only between 20-22 since she’s now around 30, but from what I remember of her and as young as she was, I think she would make a very good mom, unlike Tammy’s kids. But knowing what Tammy’s kids look like, well, I’d say they’re not going to have an easy time getting anyone. They seem more into the career scene anyway. But… even if Jen won’t be able to go far or do much in life for a while till the kid’s older, I can easily see her being a great mother and she can “catch up on life” later on down the road. She seems like she may be some kind of nurse.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2012 Q10 is an enzyme that when lacking in it a person can feel rundown. Hopefully, that’s all Tom needs and so he’s going to check into Q10 supplements to boost his energy. It’s all-natural and is said to help prevent high cholesterol and diabetes, too.

Just like yesterday, we’re expecting temps in the 70s. I’ve got the windows open. Love bringing in that fresh country air! Today’s been quieter so far whereas yesterday consisted of the usual comings and goings up the hill and scattered barks. Heard some barking today too, of course, but I’m sure it’s nothing compared to the 6-8 hours of barking I’ll be in for either tonight or tomorrow night. For some reason, they bark more when left alone between early November to mid-April. Unless it’s at night. Leave them alone at night and they go crazy no matter what time of year it is.

What’s amazing is that they’ve got rain on the 5-cast for next Monday and Wednesday. Yeah, well we’ll see how long it lasts before they change it to just clouds.

Nothing from the troll since she left that one single-sentence post about being in Iowa and having “fun.” Hopefully, she’s locked in a certain apartment, unable to get to McDonald’s Wi-Fi so she can have even more “fun” harassing and bashing people online.

I sort of played with Nane through Irene by commenting after a comment Irene left in regard to a comment from Nane on Irene’s wall. They exchanged greetings from sunny München and Salzburg, LOL. Then I came in and rubbed in our warm, sunny weather. Then I just had to thank Irene for being such a good friend and standing by me through my good AND bad times and taking me at face value.

One of these days I’m gonna quit defending myself when people insist I’m lying or making excuses about whatever (though fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often) and just give in to them, give them what they want and just be like, uh-huh, you’re right, etc. maybe telling people what they want to hear/believe is sometimes best because you simply can’t argue with ignorance and stupidity. Some people simply don’t want to see things any other way anyway and are so steadfast in their beliefs that they won’t budge no matter what you tell them. It would be like a person telling me that using birth control is a sin, but no matter how many times they tried to tell me this there’s no way I’m going to believe it. We can’t make others believe certain things any more than we can make ourselves believe certain things just because we may want to. If I could I just might tell myself there is a good God, I deserved every bad thing that ever happened to me, prayer and karma isn’t just a bunch of cosmic coincidences, and there really is an afterlife better than this life, and I’d believe every word of it even if I may be kidding myself.

But Irene has simply accepted my friendship without trying to guess “why” I’m so nice to her. She hasn’t accused me of trying to get attention when I tell her about a bad day. She hasn’t accused me of lying, making excuses or playing with her head. She doesn’t ignore me for months on end. Can’t promise she won’t dump me in the future, but I will say it’s hard to imagine.

As for Maliheh, that girl is just so hard to figure! I don’t think she’s doing a “Nane” number on me, but I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. If it isn’t me (and she’s always insisted it’s not and I know how outspoken she is), then why have I been hearing less and less from her? Sometimes I wonder if something else is going on – something that’s got nothing to do with me – but that she doesn’t feel comfortable sharing with me. That still doesn’t explain why I don’t hear much from her, though.

Still have mixed emotions about old Pointy Nose who apparently just returned from another fun romp down in TR. Hey, at least this time her little vacation didn’t have to be “spoiled” by my “plans.”

Sometimes I feel so hurt over the way she so coldly and callously dumped me I want to cry, other times I wanna let my evil side shine and put all kinds of spells on her to make her life unpleasant, and other times I wish we could resume our friendship, while I really wish I could stop caring. Really, I don’t want to give a shit about people like Nane who could do what she did to me. But I’m afraid I’m a little more forgiving than I’d like to be. I wish I could be a cold-hearted bitch. I have the power, know-how and experience to place spells that could really wreak havoc on her life and the people in it, but I just can’t bring myself to be that cold. I’m a prankster, I’m a weirdo, I’m a pest, but I’m not mean. If I saw her bleeding on the street, I’d be quick to stop and help her regardless of what she did to me. I hate being so damn nice and forgiving! But I am who I am and there’s not always much I can do to change that.

But there’s also only so much we can do to change others. How many times can I practically shake Nane by the shoulders and scream in her face, “I was NOT playing with you! I really did want to die and I thought I had no choice and would end up dead anyway!”

But I know Nane knew better. She may blame it on the language differences, but Nane’s English is actually better than half the natives I know, and Nane was/is very smart. You can’t work Wall St. and learn languages without at least somewhat of a brain. Nane knew I wasn’t playing with her head. She was simply trying to turn the tables and accuse me of doing exactly what she was doing to me. She was everything she accused me of being – a head player.

Then why oh why do I miss her at times and wish we could be buds again??? What the hell is wrong with me??? Don’t I have more self-respect than that? What’s wrong with me that I would want people back in my life who clearly aren’t good for me? She may be smart and fluent in English, but Nane was mean. Yet I miss her more than Maliheh – WTF???

Nane posted more pictures, one of which she’s in. She’s standing by the sea and since it’s February she’s in long pants/sleeves. She’s wearing sunglasses and it’s not a close-up, so you really can’t see her face.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2012 Still starting my workouts at 6 MPH, which is basically running like the devil’s chasing you. This time I didn’t wake up just another two-tenths of a pound down, but a pound as well. :) It was probably just water, but maybe I won’t gain after all if I just keep up with my exercise regimen. I won’t count on it since I’ve stopped the dieting part, but we’ll see.

It’s sad watching my furry little guy get old. He’s losing energy and his fur is thinning, though he should still have another half a year left in him.

Oh no. Just oh no. It’s back. The outages are back. I was hoping the last few times it happened was just an isolated incident but I really think they’re messing with us again. Although I’ll admit it took longer than I thought it would for them to start their shit up again, I was really hoping they’d wait till we moved, but I have a feeling it’s going to escalate and get worse. Just like he thinks someone hacks into the weather thing and changes the temp, well I really think it’s someone getting a kick out of messing with the lines. In fact, it just cut out yet again. I am so, so dismayed. And pissed. But it will be just one more reason to hope to move.

Tom still feels a bit achy but not as rundown. He worked a little OT yesterday and was told to bring in his resume to apply for that position I mentioned he might apply for. Hopefully, it will be comparable in pay to what he gets now and he’ll get it. It’ll depend on what he has for competition. It’s still so hard to imagine him ever having a permanent job again since he’s never had one in the 4½ years we’ve been in this state.

As soon as I get a solid connection I’ll post this. Then, since they’re obviously going to play games with our connection again, I’ll go work out and turn the 550 calories I had into 250 calories. Well, that’s how it’s supposed to work anyway.

Later…

We hit 70° today and the only thing dampening the peace, as usual, is the coming and going up the hill, along with the scattered barks. Otherwise, it’s so, so nice. Got all the windows open to bring in some of that fresh country air.

I only managed to motivate myself to write all of one sentence yesterday in the next chapter of my story. I wanted to crank out chapter 8 today, but I doubt I will. I’m just not in the mood for creative writing lately, but I know I will be sooner or later. It comes and goes.

Haven’t given the thought of Tom getting that permanent job much thought. I know I should be sitting here with my fingers crossed hoping and praying he gets the job he’s putting in for, but I’ve become so used to the idea of him being a temp, and hey, this is Cali. Cali and temps go hand in hand. But he did apply for it, so hopefully they’ll focus on qualifications and not who was the last one out of diapers.

Read an article about a couple of teenage girls who got expelled from school for posting a racist video on YouTube, and of course it brought about mixed emotions for me. First of all, since when do you get expelled for something you did off of school grounds??? Secondly, as a writer, I’m a real fanatic for free speech. I believe that no matter how hateful, off the wall or strange something may sound that someone may say or write, it’s only words for God’s sake! If you don’t like it, don’t listen. And so I think that until and if we’re ever forced to read and hear things we don’t want to read and hear by gunpoint, it’d be a lot easier to just not bother going to these sites in the first place rather than complaining. They may’ve sounded very hateful, and no, they don’t have all their facts straight, but they were merely expressing their opinion. They didn’t kill anyone. They didn’t attack anyone. They didn’t burn anyone’s house down. They didn’t steal from anyone. So just because their beliefs may not be in the majority with 95% of the population being for blacks these days as opposed to against them, why expel them for expressing themselves out of school? It just seems a bit extreme. And why all the death threats? If you’re so damn sensitive, then why did you play their video in the first place? It just goes to show how many people are protective and fond of blacks these days. Had these girls done this 30 years ago had there been such a thing as the Internet then, no one would care. A hundred years ago and everyone else would join in. But there is so little hatred for blacks these days. People are too busy lavishing their hatred upon the gays anyway.

I agreed with some of what they said, but not all of it. Yes, despite the world of opportunities blacks are presented with these days from everything to great jobs, getting off easy in court, to being president of the United States, many still choose welfare and crime over success. BUT… as I learned the hard way, anyone can fall into poverty and it doesn’t take much. Just a few things going wrong and not lining up just right and you too, may find yourself on the streets or at least struggling your ass off and you don’t have to be black, lazy or an alkie or a druggie. Bad times and crises have no discrimination.

I agree that they don’t always speak correctly, and yes, it can be annoying at times and hard to understand.

Right or wrong, as a writer, it sucks to be in a country with little to no speech rights. We hear the term “free speech,” but in this country, there are virtually no speech rights as opposed to Norway and some other countries, and what few rights we do have here are often violated. I just don’t get why people can’t simply avoid sites that contain sensitive material that may bother them. But people will continue to bitch about those who express themselves instead of just ignoring them, and the media will continue to get away with printing all kinds of lies about all kinds of people, and America, the “land of the free,” will continue to have virtually no speech rights.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2012 This is the 5th day in a row I awoke two-tenths of a pound down. I don’t expect this trend to last much longer but am going to keep up with my hourly workouts (which don’t include working arms and abs) because I love the way it makes me feel.

I was pretty crampy yesterday so I only worked out for 45 minutes as the more physical we are during periods, the crampier we get. Hopefully, I can do my whole hour today.

I’m still worried about Tom. He still has neck pain and is feeling rundown but is sure it’s not a cold. My biggest fear in life – bigger than the worst thing that could possibly happen to me – is any kind of serious illness or accident happening to Tom. I’d rather a dozen people bust in here and beat the shit out of me than for anything bad to happen to this man I love so damn much, and they would all get away with it, too. Oh, but it wouldn��t be just because God or whatever’s up there loves to protect my perps, but because of how backward our laws are. You know the “action” crimes (violence, theft, etc.) get you off easier than those where you’ve done nothing more than scare or piss someone off. That’s why people like Chris Brown do only probation while Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan do jail. Then again, these days the law is much quicker to come down on white women vs. black men no matter what.

Speaking of laws, when are men going to be banned from being able to vote on abortion? That really bothers me. They shouldn’t be allowed to vote on that at all. Not just because they’re not the ones who carry and have babies, but who do you think does the raping in this world?

They posted a position at work Tom wants to apply for. It’s for a job similar to what he’s been doing so he figures it should be comparable in pay. It sucks they don’t list what the jobs pay. Anyway, I asked what his competition looked like and I guess there’s some other guy and a woman interested, but the woman doesn’t stand much of a chance due to poor attendance. This is good to know because that and qualifications are what they should be focusing on. Not who’s the youngest with the darkest skin, which seems to get most folks first dibs on most jobs in most places these days.

So what’s the scoop with the troll’s Thoughts blog? For over an hour, someone appeared to be online there last evening, but no updates were made. Alison thinks it was her mother since she doubted she’d get online that fast after arriving in Des Moines. She sure spent a long time online just to check the troll’s 4 brief whiny posts.

It’s going to be 73° today but by the weekend we’ll be back in the 50s.

Just when I thought Amber might not return, she peeked in on me early this morning. I haven’t mentioned her, though, so is she coming around just to see if I have or could the rude bitch actually be interested in my blog?

That white pickup has been coming over every day, but this time it stuck around and the dogs didn’t go off, so Jesse must be home.

Later…

Today was gorgeous. Had the windows open and enjoyed the fresh air the breeze carried in. I still wish there was a better mix of rain and sun here, though. I’m still not sure which I like better. The sun keeps the heat off and allows us to air the place out, but the rain keeps things quieter. Always loved the sound of it, too.

Our chainsaw addicts up at the summit were back to buzzing away:( Although it was short-lived, I had hoped to get longer than the week to 10 days off they gave me, but at least we’re not next to them. Whoever is must be very tolerant or ready to smash the damn saw to pieces.

Something’s definitely wrong with the rat’s eyes and head even though his vision seems fine. He’s still super clingy too, always wanting more no matter how much attention I give him. The area around his eyes seems redder and the top of his head seems darker in the area between his eyes. But like it or not, he is old.

The white pickup came again today, but this time it stuck around. I wonder if it’s his brother that’s staying with him. Someone definitely is because I heard voices that I think were from up there when I was doing dishes and the window was open, then he took off on the Harley but there was no barking (suggesting someone was up there). Heard someone rummaging around up there, too. It could be someone else that left on their own motorpsycho that I heard but I doubt it. I’d be willing to bet that he’ll go out this weekend cuz I’ll be up in the evening. He didn’t last weekend when I was asleep at that time.

Someone’s been spending a lot of time on the troll’s Thoughts blog. Alison and I agree it probably wasn’t her mother after all or else she’d have deleted her wonderful “letters” to her and Kathy. The troll used to have Aly manage her KB accounts when she was too lazy to deal with messages and shit like that, so it’s probably a friend of hers, not that it isn’t hard as hell to believe she even has any. Right now I just hope she’s having a horrible time in Iowa and that she’s on the “wrong end of a sword.” On the other hand, if Iowa works out, she doesn’t get to go home to mommy who has Internet service, unlike her wonderful “fiancée.” So unless she went home and straight to a group home or some other place that monitored her activities, maybe she’s better off freezing her ass off in Iowa at least for our sake.

Marie definitely got my friend invite because she’s definitely been on Facebook. She commented on a post of Becky’s earlier. I think she just feels it’d be awkward to add me since she’s now with someone, especially if this woman really is that right for her. At her age, she may not be willing to take risks with any forbidden fruit even if it was harmless online flirting.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2012 I’m waiting for myself to get hungry enough to eat my main meal before I work out, so I thought now would be a good time for an update. Only there’s not much to update on since my last post 15 hours ago.

Been lacking the motivation to work on my story and so I just might drop it and take a break for a while.

It’s going to be in the 70s today which is nice, but it’s also going to be noisy as hell. That’s the one thing dampening me from looking forward to the warm afternoon. The fucking mutts were already going off at 5am when I got up. I was really hoping for a few more hours of peace before the barking and the loud vehicles began. God, I hope to hell those who say that incessant barking isn’t allowed in adult communities are right and that they don’t do anything else in those communities (like have lots of company, mostly consisting of wild kids) to make up for it. Better yet, I hope we’ll get the chance to find all this out. Work has been consistent enough and it doesn’t look like he’ll be laid off anytime soon, but sometimes you just can’t see these things coming.

I’m a little concerned about Tom, though, because he’s been complaining about neck pain and being rundown. He says it’s a strange sort of ache that’s up high, sort of where his head meets his neck.

Andy said he wondered if Tom had any secret issues with sex that he didn’t want to talk about, but I’m 99.9% sure he doesn’t. He’s never said or hinted at being molested as a kid or anything traumatic like that. He’s never said or hinted at having any desires for the same sex either. I wondered about him too at first, and thought I was the weirdest, most abnormal thing I’d ever heard of and I reacted much the way many react to my sleep disorder because it was something I’d never heard of and didn’t “get.” While I can’t imagine preferring not to cum in the end, I researched the subject years ago and found that this is just the way some people are. It’s not as common as preemie squirters or those that can’t get hard, but it’s more common than most people would think.

As I told Andy, it’s sort of like bungee jumping. Most of us couldn’t imagine doing that, but a few can. But I too, questioned his not cumming at first and all kinds of possible scenarios went through my mind – I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t attractive enough, he was afraid of impregnating me… But most of those few times he did cum was at the time of the month it was most likely for a woman to conceive, once which resulted in an early-on miscarriage. Besides, although your chances are lower, one can still conceive from pre-cum and if he was really anti-kid he could’ve simply told me and either I could’ve gone on BC or he could’ve gotten fixed.

Finally, I realized and accepted the fact that he was happy and content, so who was I to knock him and question him? As long as he didn’t show any signs of being uncomfortable and unfulfilled in any way, I wasn’t about to try to change him. I wouldn’t want anyone doing it to me. So if there’s that fraction of a percent chance that something was going on all these years that he didn’t tell me, that’s his fault and that’s his problem for not trusting me enough with whatever it was. I’m pretty confident, though, that there were no “secrets” or “unresolved deep-seated issues.”

With me personally, however, if you don’t get me off it’s because you didn’t excite me enough to begin with unless some crisis like how we were going to pay the rent was playing on my mind to distract me. But that is just me and there was no doubt that Tom had no problem whatsoever getting excited. I may prefer women but I know a rock-hard dick when I see and feel one.

The troll, who already deactivated her latest Facebook account, left some posts on Thoughts last night. It’s flying up to Des Moines today and it confirms that Loverboy doesn’t have internet access, so it’ll have to use McDonald’s Wi-Fi. So, in other words, she’ll live at McDonald’s until she ends up back home in 2-3 weeks when she sees how much he’s “changed.” For now, she’s back to referring to him as her fiancée, LOL. So naïve. Just so, so damn naïve. But it’s her life to trash.

Mommy Dearest was concerned about her not taking her BC, but I wonder if that may also be part of why she’s running to this guy. She’s made it clear many times just how much she loves her nieces and babysitting them and all that. Maybe she feels it’s time to take the attention from big sis and pop one of her own to gloat over and draw more attention to herself with, IDK.

So much for not having much to update on.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2012 Woo-hoo, I can now run at 6 MPH! Can’t sustain it for long but it’s plenty doable. Maybe someday I’ll get up to 7 MPH comfortable enough, though I can’t imagine doing 10 MPH or sustaining anything over 5 MPH for very long. But I’ve learned I don’t have to run that long anyhow. Just enough to get my heart going and keep my joints strong, but then I can walk off the rest of the time at a brisk 3 MPH pace. So I did an hour and felt so good afterward. It even helped my PMS backache and my feet weren’t that sore afterward. I think the only reason they got so sore the last time was that I’d already been on my feet all morning cleaning and shopping. Anyway, I did what I’ve been doing the last week or so and went just over 3 miles and burned 300 calories. I think the calorie burn is more important than time, speed or distance.

For the last 3 days in a row, I’ve woken up down two-tenths of a pound, but it could very well be water loss and not actual weight loss. I have the slowest metabolism in the world and I still think I’ll eventually gain up a storm if I don’t cut calories no matter how much I work out. Andy doesn’t think so, so we’ll have to see who’s right as I continue to get fitter, faster and stronger and build up more endurance.

It was a quiet weekend and a somewhat quiet day so far today. I heard a quick barking fit, then Jesse came and went on the motorcycle, then the brother came and went, setting the dogs off while he was at it when Jesse was out. Does anyone in that family believe in calling first to save on time and gas???

The saws have backed off lately. Can’t complain about that!

I shut my Yahoo account down yesterday and I definitely won’t be missing all the spam and scams that would come into that account and not get filtered out. I laugh at the thought of the hundreds of messages that have already bounced. I could’ve just abandoned it, but that’d be one more account left sitting out there that could possibly be hacked, so I shut it down altogether.

I miss Mary and am curious as to how she’s been, but at the same time, I would rather not be contacted by her. She’ll just be such a pest! The only link I can think of that she has that I still have is MD, though I suppose I could always ignore any unwanted messages. I pulled my last name off of MyOpera cuz MyOpera’s Googlable. I’m also going to disable my name from coming up under FB searches which is an option, but not till it gets closer to her release date which will probably end up being late summer/early fall.

According to the troll’s latest FB account which she created today cuz she “got sick of all her other ones,” this is her “last day online.” She heads for Iowa tomorrow. The others and I give her two weeks tops before she returns home. I guess she went up there before and was supposed to stay for 3 weeks, but ended up returning home sooner because she got sick of having to pay for everything and they would fight a lot. I really have to wonder about this guy’s level of self-esteem to want a GF like Molly.

I’m going to be breaking a record I hope Tom doesn’t break as well, because if he does, that would mean that something went wrong. He lived in the Maricopa house for 4½ years and it was 4 for me, thanks to the haters that stole half a year of my freedom. Well, since we’ll definitely be here past April 12th, this will become the second-longest place I’ve lived as an adult. If we’re here in October, it becomes Tom’s runner-up place, too. I sure hope not, though! If we’re ever in the same place for over 6 years, then we’ll beat the Phoenix house record. He actually only moved into that house just a few months before I did when his brother moved out of it and into his new wife’s much nicer house. Except for maybe Ryan, Pam and Jackie, we were always the family underdogs of both families save for those few years in Maricopa, but that’s okay. We’re used to it. It may not be fair, but it is the way it is.

Wonder if Christiane or Irene read about my latest Nane dream? LOL, it’s a funny thought. Christiane and I were talking about our weather. I forget they do Celsius there, so she was a little confused when I told her it would be 72° here in a few days, LOL. It’s a good thing I’m on days now.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2012 Had a dream that Nane and I were neighbors. I don’t know if we were in closely set houses or an apartment. I think it was an apartment or some kind of attached living structure– ew! It seemed like she was right smack next door and her place ran right alongside ours.

Every night after Tom went to sleep, which would be fairly early since he had to get up early, I would hang out at her place for a few hours. It seems we did everything together. We talked, we ate, we watched movies, and yes, we got it on. Every night we couldn’t wait to throw ourselves at each other. No sooner would I be in the door when she would dive at me. If she didn’t, I’d grab her by the wrist and throw her on her bed or couch even though she was a good 9” taller than me. One night it seemed we were in a race to see who could have the most orgasms in those few fun-filled hours.

Then one day I took a walk by myself to this near-deserted lake. There were only a few people there. Nothing I would do in real life as I’m not a sun worshiper and lakes are kind of gross for swimming in.

After a short while, I saw Nane approach from a clearing of trees with a beach chair in hand and a large canvas bag; the things one would usually bring to a beach or a lake. Someone was behind her, though I was too excited to see her that I didn’t really pay much attention at first.

“Nane!” I exclaimed excitedly as I ran up to her.

But she didn’t seem all that excited to see me.

“I didn’t know you came here,” I said, trying not to notice the almost cold air about her.

“I don’t very often,” she said in a slightly snobbish tone.

Then I noticed she was with a friend from her homeland. She smiled at me, shook my hand, and said it was nice to finally meet me in person.

“Yeah, I recognize you from your online pictures,” I told her (it was Christiane).

Then she started happily chatting away, perhaps to distract me from Nane or to lighten the mood. I couldn’t help but wonder what was up with Nane, though I didn’t want to appear rude to her friend either.

Finally, I slipped away and went back to sit on my own blanket maybe 20 feet away.

A while later Nane got up and headed into the lake. She only went in about knee-deep and bent down to scoop up handfuls of water to splash herself with. Hoping her friend would stay put, I went over to Nane and asked what was wrong.

She looked at me with cold blue eyes, hesitated, then said, “I’ll tell you later on tonight.”

“Okay, but is everything alright?” I asked.

“I do not want to talk about it now,” Nane said not bothering to hide the annoyance in her voice.

“Okay,” I said stepping away, “but can you at least tell me if you’re mad at me? Did I do anything wrong?”

Nane’s voice softened a bit and she told me it wasn’t me, though I sure felt like it was.

Her friend smiled a mixture of friendliness and sympathy as I headed back to my blanket.

That night I knocked on Nane’s door at the usual time. But it wasn’t her that opened it. It was her friend.

“Sorry, Jodi, I know this is gonna hurt,” said her friend, “but your fuck buddy’s gone to live in Turkey and I’m now your new neighbor.”

The dream ended with me just standing there at a loss for words. I was both shocked and saddened by the news from this friend, who stood there grinning at me in the strangest of ways.

I’m glad this didn’t happen for real, though a part of me wishes it did. Sometimes it’s best to just enjoy whatever time we can get with certain people. At the same time, it would’ve been harder to be dumped in person than to be dumped online like I was. What’s kind of funny is that of all the reasons she listed for dumping me, one was because she came to feel too close to me.

“What’s the point, Lady Rainbow?” she had said in the end. “You’re with Tom, I’m with Jim and we’re both half a world apart. Really, what the hell is the point?”

So while one is usually dumped because someone doesn’t like them, I was dumped because she liked me a little too much for her own comfort, LOL. Still wish it hadn’t happened, but I like it when she at least visits me in dreams. Even if the dreams don’t always have a happy ending, it’s like visiting without visiting, if that makes any sense.

Here’s something that definitely doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been losing weight. I really thought I’d gain since I haven’t been dieting at all.

Yesterday was the first day Amber skipped coming to my KB journal. I guess it’s because it was the weekend?

Later…

I feel really bad for Andy with the way he makes dates that end up standing him up. As he says, sex and love is a human desire that needs to be fulfilled and so he probably won’t ever stop seeking them, but sometimes I wonder what the point is of wasting time and energy on things that just don’t seem meant to be. We all have things that are and aren’t meant to be for reasons we’ll probably never fathom, and some of them seem highly unfair. Why am I so meant to have noisy neighbors? A few bad neighbors can be written off as bad luck, but when you have one after another for 20 years, a pattern emerges that’s rather obvious.

I hate to tell a friend – or anyone – to give up on something that matters that much to them. But I have found that giving up is often the key to success. Yeah, some things you gotta work at, but I still don’t think one can make love or even lust happen when they want it to. I think it either happens when it’s meant to happen, or it doesn’t happen if it’s not meant to happen.

This is just me, but everything changed as soon as I gave up on women. I didn’t want to settle, of course, and I didn’t understand why, but after so many years of playing their games and being only able to get the ones I didn’t want, I realized they simply weren’t meant to be. And so while I didn’t expect to not have sex occasionally, I was prepared to spend my life alone by the time I reached my late 20s, thinking that that was what was meant for me. And then I was surprised with Tom. I didn’t know my Miss Right was really meant to be a Mr. Right, but the point is that I stopped looking for love and that’s when it happened. It seems to work that way for me with objects, too. Whenever I can’t find shit around here I don’t bother to look harder because I know I won’t find things that way. I only find them by accident when I’m not looking or am looking for something else.

Anyway, we all gotta do what we gotta do. I prefer to focus and work on what is meant to be than put my time and energy into struggling for something that isn’t meant to be which is part of why I’ve given up dieting and have decided to just let my body go. I don’t just want to stop being so hungry all the time, I want to stop trying to be who I’m not. That skinny person with a flat chest and narrow hips is long gone and she’s never coming back. These days I was meant to be big, and big I shall be. It may not be my #1 choice, but it’s who I was meant to be. Fighting fate will only get me nowhere and when it does it doesn’t seem to last long.

Later…

A few of my friends and I check the crazy troll’s blog regularly enough to make sure there are no threats that Mommy Dearest should know about, though it appears Mommy has Alison blocked even though she told her to let her know if Molly trashes her again or talked shit she shouldn’t be talking.

Lately, the troll goes to the library to whine, complain, stalk and harass people from there because Mommy is keeping the naughty girl offline. I wonder how accessible the Des Moines library will be, assuming Josh still has no Internet service, and we don’t think he does because we would think he’d be involved in at least some of the sites Molly frequents if he did. Well, I hope to hell Josh has no Internet service! Then again, if he did and I decided to say something about them harassing me, it’d make it harder for Mommy to threaten me with bogus lawsuits if she weren’t in the same household with things in her name, wouldn’t it? Maybe so, but I’d rather stay in hiding like I have been because I enjoy the satisfaction of knowing she’s wondering what the hell I’m writing about. Also, until she finds my “secret” account, she can’t create new accounts of her own to badger me.

I will admit that a small part of me misses her loyal dedication to my posts and riling her up a bit with any mention of her. The fact that all 4 of her “former” friends are now on Thoughts has her really wound up big time, LOL. Even she said it makes her anxious, yet all she has to do is just ignore us. But she can’t and she won’t. She still swears one minute she wants nothing to do with Alison, but in the next breath, she is saying things like, “I can’t let go. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t stop looking up my old friends’ accounts.”

I hate to say it but a part of me can relate. I can’t seem to help but look in on her in return. Only difference is I do it to get a good laugh out of her crazy delusions and to see if she’s making threats. I don’t do it to comment, contact and harass her. But…if I could stop peeking in on her then I wouldn’t get so pissed for Aly and the shit she says about her, even though she’s deleting blogs as fast as she writes them these days. Then I would be freer of this person I totally dislike. But the habit does bite the best of us at times.

One minute she swears she’s never going to mention any of us again, the next she’s saying she wants to “end this war” and say how she feels “before it is too late.”

In reality, though, the only “war” going on is the one in her mind. The one in which she alone continues to fight by not leaving those alone who don’t want to be bothered by her.

Aly even had a fan when one girl suggested she back off, leave people alone who don’t want anything to do with her and focus on those who want to talk to her. Then the troll did what she usually does and tried to get her to call her. When the girl said she wouldn’t because she just admitted to being obsessive and stalkerish, I jumped in and warned the girl off in a PM. She thanked me, saying she suspected she was a bit off. But yeah, no matter who you are, first she’ll drive you batty with her constant demands for favors and attention, then she’ll accuse you of things you didn’t do when she gets all delusional, and lastly, she’ll stalk you for years when you try to break away. The less attention you give her, the less tightly she’ll grip you. But since I’m Alison’s friend and that’s the root of her obsession is why she’s had such a tight grip on me for so damn long. Same for Kim and Kat.

Speaking of Kathy I feel bad for her cuz now the troll knows her married name. When she created her thoughts blog through FB, I warned her that was a bad idea because now she’ll know her married name and she and her friends will now be harassed on FB. Sure enough, the troll did find her there and has sent messages to her and her husband pestering them and they’ve had to block her. Kathy will hide her friend list too, if she’s smart.

I can sort of understand the troll’s desperation to run to Josh even though they haven’t seen each other in 3 years, and that’s because, as she puts it, her parents are extremely controlling. They want her in a local group home. But all Molly wants to do is sit at home online harassing people and “crying out” for help and people to call her so she can tell them how horrible we are to her and how horrible her family is, too. As a friend said, when you give her an inch, she’ll demand a mile.

I really think that her visit to Josh is going to end up disastrous. Again, two peas in a pod. Two bad peas in a pod. If Molly can claim it’s “super cold” when it gets into the 50s where she lives, how will she stand Iowa? Is she really going to be happy sitting in Josh’s apartment all day and listening to every bump and bang around her while he works his two million jobs? Is she really going to like trekking through the freezing temps and snow to the library, that is if Josh hasn’t locked her in his apartment?

The best we can hope for is that if Molly doesn’t kill herself or someone else, then she’ll at least end up back home and in a group home soon enough, if not some kind of funny farm or jail if her behavior remains unchanged or even worsens. That’s just the thing right there, though. I have come to realize – well, I think I realized this months ago and that it just gets confirmed with time – that Molly will never change. No amount of time, talk or anything else is going to stop her addiction to stalking not only the people she’s been stalking but whoever she comes to stalk in the future as well. The only way to stop her is to physically prevent her from going online and the only way this will happen is if she ever fucks up bad enough to make it to jail or prison. You would think she’s heading in that direction, but her craziness would probably land her in a funny farm quicker than jail or prison. But I’d be willing to bet just about anything that if she were forced offline for 20 – even 50 years – the first thing she’d do when she gets back online would be to look us up. She’s never going to let us go. Never. It is a combination of this realization that has me tempted to say, “Fuck it,” and just carry on with public blogging as usual and just accept that she’s going to be a lifelong online nuisance that will go with it, but it also makes me want to continue sticking to just Facebook and the so-called secret thoughts.com account. I do blog on KB a bit (Amber’s back today, LOL) but that blog is members-only and her account is blocked. She rarely uses KB so I doubt she’ll discover I blocked her there. The cool thing about KB is that it prevents anyone you block from seeing your blog, unlike on Thoughts and MyOpera. Once she realizes I blocked her there, if she thinks to check, then she’d have to create a new account to see into mine.

I kinda wish I hated blogging! LOL

She’s spending more time on Formspring lately (I know this because she’s asking herself more questions on her own account there), not surprisingly, since there’s no other place she can check up on me as she used to other than Andy’s page there. My Formspring account is deactivated, my Twitter is private, My FB account is private and I’m not currently using MD and MO. Just KB and the Thoughts blog she has yet to discover. I don’t use real names there, but my writing style and subjects might give me away. How many people with rats live in trailers in the woods? How many know so many damn languages? How many write books? I didn’t post the links to them, though. Another thing I like about Thoughts is that you can control when things are posted. I prefer to post entries during hours she’s less likely to stumble upon them in the ‘recent blogs’ section. By the time she gets on Thoughts, they should be several pages from the front page.

My hubby, being the sweetheart that he is, is making me a little LED light to put inside my desk cabinet. It’s a long little compartment underneath that’s hard to see into. Especially at the angle the desk and overhead lights are situated at.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2012 Just sitting here waiting for Tom to wake up so we can head into the city and to Walmart before the crowds gather but after they’ve had time to stock the shelves and get all the damn boxes out of the way.

Last night we traveled somewhere in my dreams. Were we moving? Was it just a vacation? Something else? It seems at one point Tom and I were in a restaurant and I said something about my being multilingual and the United Nations, which might’ve been connected somehow.

Then we were swimming. It wasn’t a pool, but I don’t think it was an ocean either. More like a lake of some kind. The water was very murky and you couldn’t see an inch below the surface.

Lastly, we were in a hotel room. The room was long and large and I got the impression it was pretty high up. Like on the upper floor of a tall building. I didn’t seem distressed or anything and thought to myself how I’d “gotten good” at that sort of thing (traveling and being in hotels). I must not have had a laptop with me, though, because I started to update my journal by hand in a small notebook while Tom went to shower before dinner.

Later…

Today has been a very busy but fun and productive day. Wore my new boots to the store and while the right one felt fine, the left one felt like it was pinching my big toe, which happens to have an ingrown toenail. I am so ready to smash it right off my foot!

Life is great otherwise. We’re healthy, we’re happy, we have money in savings… can’t ask for much more than that other than for things to keep going as well as they have been. It’s hard to believe those miserable people who didn’t seem to have much hope last fall were really us. I just hope to hell we never are those people again!

We spent about $130 in the store because we got a few pricy items. It was $7 just for my bowl of mixed fruits. I rarely get stuff like this and so I like to splurge every so often. It is so, so good! Pineapple, strawberries, grapes, honeydew melon, cantaloupe; the only thing it’s missing is watermelon.

Dieting or not I naturally eat less than most people and healthier, too. So I didn’t load up on a lot of junk. Just a bag of shrimp chips and some honey-oat granola bars. My cappuccino-flavored protein shakes satisfy my sweet tooth enough on their own. I may not be counting calories anymore, but I still like to have my protein. It’s healthier, gives me energy, and prevents random cravings. I hate to suddenly want KFC in the middle of the night or something. We might go for burgers and fries tomorrow, though.

For a while, after I quit smoking I really made a pig of myself big time. I didn’t know or understand as much about fitness and nutrition as I do now. I still expect to become immensely overweight within the next year because I’m tired of the hunger the constant dieting brought, and one doesn’t have to eat like a pig to gain weight at my age.

I’m surprised I could still fit in the size 12 petite jeans my mom sent. Don’t get me wrong, 12 is still pretty big, especially after spending most of my youth running around in sizes 3-5. I just thought I was a size 14 or 16. Well, I will be sooner or later. I really, really like not having to sweat every single goddamn calorie I eat just to stay 40 pounds overweight.

I wonder just how much that scale would suddenly drop if I suddenly had an average amount of muscle mass for my size.

I did a few loads of laundry and cooked us some spaghetti with garlic breadsticks and it came out awesome. Then I worked out for an hour and started off running at 6 MPH, then briskly walked off the rest of the time at 3 MPH. That was one looong hour even with the Kindle reader and my iPod to keep me company. At least I didn’t have to stop midway to empty my bladder.

Had a scratchy throat most of yesterday but woke up just fine, fortunately.

It’s been a mostly cloudy day. The cherry and apple trees are blooming now and looking gorgeous. They don’t last long, though. They don’t usually bloom till early March, but because of the mild winter we’ve been having, they’re getting an early start. We’re on for 71° in a few days.

I just can’t wait to get away from Jesse and all his vehicles and dogs! He and the fucking mutts drove me crazy on and off all day yesterday, coming and going, etc. I saw a white pickup with a white shell go up there and then turn around and leave just seconds later and asked Tom if ever seen such a vehicle up there before. He thinks it’s one of his brothers. I think I’m just sick of all the traffic. I told Tom that I wondered Tom if he could be dealing. Nothing hardcore, but maybe he’s a bit desperate these days and is selling weed. Tom doesn’t think so, though, attributing all his coming and going to a personality thing and not a sign of something shady going on.

“He’s never mentioned sports, he doesn’t seem to be into TV, he doesn’t have a computer, so what else has he got to do?” he said.

Yeah, maybe we’ll have a normal neighbor someday. You know, couch potatoes, computer addicts, loners, etc.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2012 Had to stop running after just 6 minutes and 37 calories due to knee pain right above my left knee. I guess it’s because I worked out so damn long and hard yesterday. I even slept forever, too. Like around 12 hours. I guess PMS could have a hand in it as well. I usually only sleep for the typical 8 hours.

I wanted to work out for an hour till my body reminded me that hey, I’m 46, not 26, so I’ll be taking the next couple of days off. I will work my arms and abs today instead.

When I walked past the mirror and saw my distinct hourglass shape and muscle tone, again I thought it kind of sad to know that these are the last of the days with a body even some of the 20-somethings would kill to have. But I made up my mind that I would stop driving myself crazy with diet and hunger and therefore I can expect to come up about a pound a day for God knows how long. I wasn’t up a pound today, though, because I slept so long.

A cold tried to start in my throat but as soon as I felt the scratchiness I scalded and killed it with hot coffee. No cold for me! :) So long as they don’t get me in my sleep I can kill them before they amount to much.

I had to laugh when I read someone who’s pretty out of shape say they’re going to run 4 or 5 MPH the next day. People often equate speed with cars in their minds, but people aren’t cars. They just don’t realize how fast that is for humans and how hard it is to sustain. Believe me, if you’re just starting out, 4 MPH will damn near have you winded as hell in just 30 seconds, and 5 MPH will kill you. It takes months of training to work up to those speeds. 6 MPH, which is basically running like the devil’s chasing you, was once pretty undoable for me. Some of the pros run at 10-12, something I’ll never even come close to.

Alison’s not doing a very good job at all of hiding her new thoughts.com blog from the troll. I accepted her friend invite on my old account, but doesn’t she realize the troll, who still checks me out regularly and who still confesses in her own blog to still having “urges” to look her up, will find her through me? Sometimes I wonder if she likes playing these cat-and-mouse games, but I know she definitely isn’t liking the idea of the troll arriving in Des Moines in a few days.

As for me, I wouldn’t give a shit if she were in my town and even knew where I lived because most people couldn’t take me due to the combination of me being fit and lighter than most people and therefore able to move quicker. I’d rather a big, tall unfit man come at me than some other fit chick around my size. If I couldn’t kick someone’s ass, though, I could probably outrun them. Once this body falls apart then I guess I’ll have to rely on my temper alone and hope for the best.

I was looking up the symptoms of hypothyroidism and I sure do have a lot of them. Enough to make me wonder. I asked Tom for his opinion. He says he thinks it’s possible but not likely.

Speaking of urges, I had to laugh at the thought of unfriending the drama queen on Facebook. She would notice this in less than a week and ask me about it via email. That’s when I’d deny it and say that I thought she unfriended me, LOL.

I had a million dreams and did not like the one where I was in the kitchen when there was a knock on the door. “Sherriff’s office!” a pig called out. I don’t just worry about them fabricating bullshit, I worry about them fabricating federal bullshit, enabling them to extradite me, and they would come on a Friday and leave me helpless all weekend. If they pick you up on a Friday evening you’d probably have to wait till Monday morning to speak to a lawyer unless someone bailed you out or you had enough money to hire a pay lawyer. I would definitely be stuck in Arizona indefinitely if I were extradited there. I would refuse a public defender since they would only make matters worse for me. I would refuse to waste money buying a lawyer. I wouldn’t want Tom wasting time and money to come fetch me, and no one else would give a shit that could actually help me and get me out of there which meant my only hope would be escaping and hitching a ride back up here.

Tom said they can’t just come and snatch a person up like that and drag them off to another state. There are all kinds of legal steps one has to take first. They’d have to request extradition from California, and even if California may think Arizona has some seriously questionable laws and sentences, why would they say no? Pigs are all one of their own to each other no matter where they are. States like Arizona and Texas will extradite you over a traffic ticket anyway, so I’m going to keep things as quiet as I can in here today even if it means having to hear Jesse’s shit.

I heard that insanely loud vehicle that isn’t any of Jesse’s regular vehicles yesterday and I still can’t figure out what it is. I just wish this one guy who’s over 100’ away wouldn’t always, always have one outdoor project after another going on. I wish he would get himself a computer and get totally addicted to it, but he’s just not the type.

I might even start taking a break myself from going online on weekends. Just like it’s not healthy to be home every single day, day after day, week after week, is it really healthy to be online every single day? Sometimes I just like to take a break from the same old, same old, and weekends are when I’m busiest anyway doing things with my better half. I just wish he wouldn’t spend so much time watching shows and movies when he’s home. I understand he wants to relax and do things he enjoys on his days off, but it not only bogs the connection but also makes it hard for me to run out and tell/ask him things.

The heat woke me up yesterday and I had to get up and blast the fan. The poor guy came home to a sauna and had to open windows. His worthless wife should be up late enough to open windows for him. God, I hate how this little shitbox gets so cold and so hot so easily!

We sure were in a bigger place in my dreams the other night. The dining room alone was twice the size of this entire place. The previous people left tons of tables in it and I decided to “downsize” since we didn’t need 8-10 tables. My idea of downsizing, though, was just pushing them all together and forming one giant table, LOL.

Shit, shit, shit! The scratchiness is back and Tom feels like shit himself. I hope we aren’t coming down with anything! He’s got to work and I’ve still got some laundry and cleaning to do. I also want to work my arms and abs like I said before.

Later…

Couldn’t even make it till noon before I got sick of the loud vehicles and barking and had to turn the sound machine on just so I could concentrate on my story. Well, after I let the rat out for a while who sometimes likes to nap on the futon. What’s his obsession lately for trimming my fingernails and nibbling on my chin? LOL

I shared an article with Andy dealing with the reverse discrimination running rampant in this damn country and am thrilled to see the issue is finally being addressed. Not nearly as much as it should be, but it’s a start. He said it was about time whites got a taste of what blacks go through on a daily basis. Okay, so I won’t try to change his way of thinking - you know me - but I disagree. First of all, when you’re being favored by the law and in the job market and basically everywhere else, I’d say you have it pretty damn easy these days. Hey, if you can’t be charged with a hate crime and you can have pageants and stations all for your own color without being called racists or bigots, you’ve really got it good.

Secondly, do two wrongs really make a right? Should we really be shitting on whites simply because blacks were once treated so horribly and so unfairly, some of which were brought on by their own poor attitude and behavior? My first instinct is to say that we should be striving for equality, and we should, but… why is it I can’t help but laugh at the growing number of cases of violence against men? It’s true, though, that instead of saying that men shouldn’t be abused any more than women should be, I say it’s about fucking time women started fighting back, giving them a taste of their own medicine and showing them what can happen if they either take swings at a woman first or provoke her in some way. It’s especially hard for me to pity the ones who start a fight by striking out first or who have been told by the woman, “Hey back off. I’m in a bad mood, etc.” There are only so many times a woman can tell a man to back off and leave her the fuck alone before she loses her temper. Anyway, right or wrong, it’s about time! But I really only like to see “payback” occur to those who deserve it. If a white person hasn’t done anything wrong to a black person but gets shit on by one or discriminated in the ways they once were, what are they “getting a taste” of? The pigs that beat up on Rodney King; those are the ones needing some serious medication. Not some innocent white person who never did a damn thing wrong to blacks. My old neighbors made it clear to me and had no qualms whatsoever in letting me know they despised whites, so unless I was their slave master in a previous life, I sure as hell didn’t deserve what I got from them.

Speaking of getting things one doesn’t deserve, poor Alison. She has a problem with stuttering and a couple came up and asked her for directions the other day. She stuttered when giving directions, then the woman turned to the man and said, “Forget the retard.”

That is so cruel. She said that even though she knows it’s not her fault, she still feels helpless and bothered by it, and comments like that don’t help at all. I can totally relate. My sleep disorder isn’t my fault yet when I couldn’t be up to open windows yesterday, for example, to keep the place from becoming a sauna in the afternoon like it sometimes does, that “worthless wife” feeling came over me even though I know Tom doesn’t blame me or anything like that.

I’m seriously starting to wonder if Jesse’s having so much trouble getting his disability and or retirement funds started that he’s either dealing drugs or doing something shady up there. Between 7:15 and 10:00 he came and went 3 times. Then a very loud white pickup with a matching shell drove up and left just a second later. Finally, Jesse left on the motorcycle a few minutes ago. So that’s 9 times I had to hear shit up there and it’s not even noon! :( Forget about all the barking I’ve heard, too.

I don’t know if Jesse’s the type to deal drugs, desperate or not, but let’s just say that I wouldn’t say he’d be the last person on earth to do so. I don’t know what’s going on up there. I only know I’m sick of hearing so much shit from this little cock!

Later…

Why is it that sometimes what comes around isn’t always what goes around in the first place? As Andy said, he’s never in his life made a date and then ended up not calling or showing up for it, so then why does it keep happening to him over and over again?

Well, I have a question of my own regarding some undue karma I myself keep getting. I have never been a noisy, rude, disrespectful and obnoxious neighbor to any of my past neighbors. Okay, so I may’ve gotten a little loud a few times and had a hard time being all that quiet for those who didn’t give a damn about me, but in general, I’ve always been a good neighbor. So then why do I get one noisy neighbor after another in every single place I live? This has been going on for 20 years now with some being worse than others. No matter how many people are in the neighboring household, no matter what their ages, color, sex or race, they always drive me crazy. Again, some have been considerably worse than others. It used to be I’d always get the extremes - large Mormon families, welfare bums, college kids… But even single older people find a way to grate on my nerves.

So if Andy’s never stood anyone up and if I’ve always been a decent neighbor, then whose taste of whose medicine have we been getting and why???

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2012 Spent an hour on the treadmill and of course my piss-happy bladder demanded draining halfway along the way. When I was done I was surprised my feet weren’t sore and I wasn’t tired or hungry. There’s no doubt that the stress of pressuring myself to eat only so much so often had a big hand in all the hunger I was experiencing. It felt so good when I finally did get hungry, to eat until I was full. That meant 345 calories in beer-battered fish filets and 80 calories in sweet corn. I had 90-calorie pizza sticks for dessert. It’ll be warm and sunny today, so ice cream will be in order for later.

Walking 1 minute at 3 MPH burns about 5 calories. Running 1 minute at 5 MPH burns about 12. If I run 2 minutes at 5, then walk the rest of the hour at 3 I’ll burn 300 calories. I like to run really fast for at least a few minutes because the impact helps keep the joints, bone fibers, tendons and ligaments strong.

But why doesn’t my body react like most people say theirs does from certain things like drinking water only? Many people say drinking water helps them lose weight but it has never made a difference for me one way or the other, despite the fact that it is certainly healthier for me.

And why can’t exercise alone make me lose weight? Even Teri said it’s reasonable to lose two pounds a week from working out an hour a day. Only in my dreams could I lose weight from that alone! Maybe with 8 hours a day, but not 1. But exercise does help me keep off lost weight and stay fit and strong. Still, I will gain weight even with exercise if I eat 1500-2000 calories a day consistently.

It isn’t that I can’t lose weight. My body could lose weight just fine if I could only stand the hunger of having just 1200 calories a day, but I just can’t. I could deal with and get used to the fatigue, but never the hunger, though I surely did try for many years. At this age, it’s either hungry or huge and after doing hungry for the last 15 years or so I’m now ready to do huge. Still don’t like the idea of gaining 50-100 pounds, but so be it.

I still wonder if something’s wrong with me. I knew it would get harder with age, but this hard??? Then again, there are an awful lot of people out there who say they can’t lose weight no matter what they do. Could they all be liars?

Another thing that seems to have conveniently overlooked me is that most who eat 1500 calories in a day and burn 300 through exercise say it’s like eating only 1200. For me, though, 1500 calories are 1500 calories, period. There are no cutting corners for me. :(

Work has been steady but with no OT. Tom said he’s learned you can’t buy anything anyone says there. One person said March would be super slow while another said it’s their busiest month.

I kept the sound machines on for most of the day yesterday but I did hear a series of bumps and bangs. Car doors? Something else? I don’t know what it was for sure. I only know that it never ceases to amaze me how much noise can come from outside this one guy’s house. I can’t swear that what I heard was coming from his place, though it usually is, and it sounded close enough to be him. If it wasn’t, then whatever it was sure was loud. The sounds reminded me of car doors or movements from within a building where you live attached to others. I also heard a few barks here and there, of course, and I thank God I’ll be asleep through the weekend antics. Then again I’ll bet it’ll be totally quiet since I’ll be asleep. I was never kidding when I said this “noise curse” seems to be aimed at me and not at us.

Later…

Okay, enough is enough is enough where Maliheh’s concerned! Really, does she think I’m that goddamn stupid? Well, she sure is herself if she hasn’t figured that I can see her absences are getting more and more obvious. This has nothing to do with being sick or having aches and pains. This has nothing to do with work. This has nothing to do with stressing over her mother. She knows it and I know it. It’s me. It’s all about me. She wanted to resolve our past issues, to accept me as her friend, to get to know me - and she did. But now that she’s accomplished her mission, she wants to keep me at bay either because she isn’t into me or she is but finds it easier to deal with it by keeping me at arm’s length. After all, I’m a married woman 3000 miles away.

Does she even read my journal anymore? I guess she does, but either way, now it’s time for me to play her game. I will save the parts of my journal I care to share with her as drafts, but they won’t be sent to her until I hear from her. And not right away either. No, I’m going to make her wait a while before responding to her messages just like she does with me.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2012 Andy hits the big five-oh today! Wonder how it feels to turn 50. Well, I’ll be finding out in 4 years.

This rat is driving me crazy. While most rats are attention-lovers like any old cat or dog, this guy’s really gotten to be quite an attention junkie lately, constantly begging for treats, and attention and to be let out to run around loose.

His fur is starting to thin out a bit since he’s around two years old now, and he’s about a pound overweight. Most Fancy rats get to be around a pound but with the way this guy loves to eat, he’s closer to two. I never held back on letting my rats indulge. Their lifespan is simply too short for that.

I’m indulging right along with him. Yeah, it was nice to wake up to the new me today who eats when she’s hungry and doesn’t pressure herself with set amounts of food and times she can eat. Yeah, it’s a little sad to think of how huge I’ll end up but I’m through being hungry for nothing, and believe me when I say I’m quite anorexic now compared to how I’ll probably end up. But there’s really nothing I can do about it at this point. At this age, it’s either starve for nothing or eat and get fat. I am, however, continuing to work out and hopefully slow down the gain process till after we get moved. That way I don’t have to spend money on new clothes that we could use to move with.

I’m not as hungry or eating as much since the pressure’s off, but at this age, it doesn’t take much to gain weight and I still think there could very well be something wrong with my thyroid/metabolism. I’ve wondered this for years, but since doctors are a no-no for me unless I really want to never be able to save money, I can only assume. The only thing obvious enough is my sleep disorder. Everything else is just speculation. But I don’t know if I’ll ever have the insurance to get anything diagnosed. Even the few with permanent jobs these days often don’t get insurance.

Alison told me what she knew of Josh from when she and Molly were still friends. He knows karate, loves swords, and has a temper. I guess he locked her in his apartment once “for her safety” and she couldn’t get out, and he also threatened her with one of his swords once.

Hey, that’s what every woman needs! A man who can threaten her with a sword. How utterly romantic, huh? rolls eyes Two peas in a pod for sure. I guess they’ve been engaged something like 4 times, too. Anyway, when the troll isn’t busy reviewing restaurants and movie theaters in Aly’s area, she’s making Aly nervous with more talk of Iowa. Yeah, much to Aly’s dismay she’s saying she’s going up there for two weeks, then will decide if she wants to move in with her sword-wielding stud. Hopefully, he’ll do more than just threaten next time:) I’ve always been as anti-violence towards women as one can get and I pray for the day a man attacks a woman in front of me (if it’s the other way around I’ll just laugh my ass off), but this one could use a lethal karate chop for damn sure.

I filled Tom in as always, and he said he wouldn’t worry about her tracking her down at work as people aren’t allowed to get anywhere near military bases. Also, if Josh is working 2-3 jobs like he supposedly is, he shouldn’t have much time for Molly let alone drive her to Omaha.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but I went and “poked” Nane on Facebook. I doubt she’ll poke me back or respond in any way.

Later…

Gave the rat a bath. Sometimes I wish we’d gotten him a roommate to help keep him clean. Rat skin sure is a greasy thing - ick! I used Johnson’s Baby shampoo (as recommended) because I figure if it’s gentle enough for babies it should be gentle enough for ratties. As always, though, he tried to jump out of the sink I filled up. I just don’t get that one. Rats are excellent swimmers. I checked the water temp, too. We have a gadget - I don’t know what it’s called - but if you point it at an object it tells you the temp of that object. IDK, maybe it was too cold??? Your standard shower temp is 120°, but I figured that’d be much too hot for a rat, so I stuck him in water that was 90°.

I was reading another journal - very well written, too - about a lesbian who was also dumped by a woman, but she had it worse than me. For one, she was actually with the woman. Secondly, she was madly in love with her. So if I can be hurt and angry over being dumped in cyberspace by a woman I never met, I can just imagine how rough it had to have been for her. People like Nane definitely make me not want to have many friends.

Most people online have treated me just fine. But every now and then I not only get trolled, but various kinds of rudeness and abuse. I’m still a lazy, lying excuse queen who got herself into nothing more than a “bad habit” of being on a crazy schedule and could get right out of it if I’d just “set my alarm and get up the same time every day,” according to those who have never heard of - and certainly don’t get - the 24-hour sleep/wake disorder. Hey, when in doubt, just tell us we’re full of shit. :)

Oh, and of course there are always those who don’t understand how the hell I could possibly have the nerve to be an “old-fashioned” housewife in 2012. Yeah, I got a lot of nerve, don’t I, making Tom do all the “work” himself. It’s really the rat that does the cooking, cleaning, laundry and grocery lists, folks, not me. And I believe it’s Whiskey who does the book writing while Brandy sews on buttons and hems pants. :)

Me? I don’t do shit. I just sit here and dream of moving to Florida. :)

Later…

Although I try not to I still can’t help but think of the pigs at times. And worry. I have strange dreams at times and I’m not sure if they’re merely a reflection of my paranoia or genuine warnings. Have they forgotten about me and moved on to more important things, or are they waiting to jump out at me sometime down the road? If they can’t get me for one thing, can/will they get me for something else? This is hard to know without knowing what it is they wanted to charge me with in the first place. I just know that if they can fabricate whatever that was, they can fabricate something worse. As in something federal. I’m not as worried as I was a month ago, but still a bit concerned. If they go federal on me then I’m not safe anywhere.

I want to wait until April to check again for any warrants. I don’t want to check too often and draw attention to myself. Certainly, they’ve got to be watching who looks for what. It won’t do me any good other than just to know if there is or isn’t a warrant, since I don’t intend to do anything about it unless I’m forced to. It would be just to satisfy my curiosity.

God help anyone who may try to make me do something about it! Really, the black bitch and the pigs have a lot of nerve after all the shit they’ve already put me through in the past. A lot of nerve!

I’m afraid to think of the pigs as if somehow those thoughts will draw them to me, but as pissed off as the thought of them makes me, I still can’t help but wonder what’s up.

Tom doesn’t think so but I’d be willing to bet they went by the Maricopa house to see if by chance I was still there. I doubt they went as far as looking up relatives to see if they could get an address from them, but stranger things have happened. They once pursued me as if I’d killed people, so you never know just how far they’d be willing to go.

I still don’t get why he had to also email the black pig to let him know they were “casing” me, but that goes to prove I was right and Tom was wrong; that was the black pig in the picture I pointed out to him in Oregon. Regardless, that was probably some kind of bait. My guess is the Mexican pig emailed the black pig in hopes of me emailing the black pig with something they could either use against me or at least alter in some way. If that wasn’t it, then maybe the Mexican pig thought it would cause me to panic in a way that would make me more likely to want to call the PD and go on the defensive.

As for the invalid Facebook email, I don’t know what that was about. I just know that as much as I hate winter I wish I could jump to the end of the year. At least we’d be moved by then (hopefully) and if God can look out for me this time, then I’d breathe a lot easier and think that yeah, being out of their jurisdiction saved me. Maybe even having the Internet in Jesse’s name helped, IDK. But it’s only been barely over a month since the pig informed me at 4 of my emails (one long deactivated), the black pig, and God knows who else, that they’re after me.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2012 No soda this week, my ass. sips from Pepsi can I guess not all bad habits were meant to be kicked. burps

Andy got the cash and birthday card I sent him and liked it. He’s treating himself to a delicious dinner, he said, and even got some action twice in one week and has more lined up:)

Okay, I suppose some folks aren’t going to want to hear my take on Whitney Houston because my opinion often differs from the norm and that’s hard for a lot of folks to handle. But tough! I write from the heart whether it’s something most can relate to and agree on or not. :) Really, no offense at all intended, but as I always say, instead of complaining or expecting me to change simply because you may want me to, just don’t read my journal if it bothers you in any way. :) I don’t, however, expect many to complain if anyone at all. I think most folks figured out a long time ago that I’m anything but ordinary.

Anyway, most folks seem to be saddened by the death of Whitney, but I have mixed emotions about it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always sad when someone dies unless they’re some murdering psycho. But if it’s true that she died of drugs, well, it’s a little hard to feel sorry for someone who had more than enough money with which to seek help. But she chose to die instead. To each their own, I say. It’s your life and your body so you should be the one to decide what to do with it. If you want to party till it kills you, go for it. :)

Regardless of whether or not Whitney had a hand in her own death and chose to stay in an abusive relationship, I never cared for her songs, but she sure had a helluva voice.

The troll is supposedly headed for Iowa on the 21st. Ugh, poor Aly! She’s just a state away and is not liking that idea at all and I don’t blame her even though she shouldn’t know her address. If I don’t know it, and we’re damn good friends, she shouldn’t know it. The best thing I’ve learned is that the guy she’s supposedly staying with, her on-and-off BF, has no Internet service so the troll would have to go to the library to pick on people. He does drive, though, and has 2-3 jobs. How are they going to find time for each other if he’s always working? The fucktard will live at the library for God’s sake!

Last night I dreamed that Aly, Kim, Kathy and I all lived in the same town, though I don’t know what state. I don’t think it was California for some reason. In one dream Kathy owned a small coffee shop. She was wiping down the countertops right at closing time and I was the only other one in the shop. I sat on a stool at the counter chatting with her when she said, “I feel more comfortable with you in here since my honey can’t be here now.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a fitness freak who’s strong. You also may have a great sense of humor but you have a fierce temper too when pissed.”

I still wasn’t sure why I, a funny but bad-ass bitch of a little prankster devil, made her feel more comfortable. Then she went on to explain that the night before she’d had a dream that she was closing up and she thought she was in the shop alone when the troll popped up from behind the counter. I assured her I’d “wrap her legs around her own neck” if she came in while I was there, LOL.

Alison was in most of the dreams, one of which she looked nothing like she actually does. There were dreams about us attending a writer’s workshop, trying to pry open a closet door in which Tom was stuck behind, then a disturbing one in particular. I had just gotten out of (a hospital?) when I thanked her for holding onto all my stuff until I could find someplace to go. That’s really sweet of her, but all my stuff? And where the hell was Tom during this one?

Fitness freak or not, strong or not, I really wish there was something I could do about this constant hunger that is so annoying and distracting because I still need to lose fat. I was reading tips online about how to suppress hunger and was like, great. So all I have to do is stare at the color blue all day long and sip hot water spiked with lemon? No thanks!

We got the disk with Word for Mac we bought but haven’t loaded it up yet. We’ll install it when we have more time. I still have plenty of days left on the trial anyway so there’s no hurry.

Later…

You either hate me or you love me. Why? Because I dare to be different. Because I dare to speak my mind. So few have ever just liked me. You’re either drawn to me and you admire my blunt and often controversial way of looking at life, or you run disgusted, determined to never again read another thing I write.

I don’t see the world in black and white like most people. I see the gray areas and when I don’t I tend to be rather extreme with my beliefs and opinions, and it’s often not in the realm of the “norm.”

The odds of pre-squirt knocking you up is like winning the lottery, pregnant teens should be forced to abort or adopt out their kids because kids shouldn’t be having kids. Poor countries should be sent birth control, not money, thus sending the wrong message and saying, “Go ahead. Have babies you know damn well you can’t afford. We’ll foot the bill for them.” Terminally ill people should get the same respect animals get, and gays oughta marry. Quality is what matters in parenting and not quantity. The Middle East should be demolished to make the world a little safer, and criminals should get the exact same dose of their own medicine. Welfare bums need to go to work and foreigners need to stop coming here and stealing what’s ours - jobs, housing, etc. People need to quit trying to control others with their own religious beliefs, often completely false and insane anyway, and mind their own damn business. Reverse discrimination needs to stop and children need to be taught manners and respect like they once were years ago.

I was talking with my friend Teri and telling her how I’m so damn sick of being hungry so much of the time that I’m seriously considering giving up and just eating the 1500-2000 calories a day that my body craves to eat. The 1200-1300 required for me to lose weight simply leaves me too hungry and too sluggish. I don’t know where the hell all this hunger is coming from. Is it pressure? I mean 1200-1300 isn’t that low compared to 1000 or lower. Yet it leaves me famished.

The reasons I had struggled to lose weight weren’t because I worried about what people think but because I really don’t like the idea of getting so big that I can’t trim my own toenails, and I’d hate to not be able to wear all the beautiful clothes my parents sent. We also spent hundreds of dollars on fitness equipment. If I let my weight go I would eventually get too big to run, wouldn’t I? It would be quite expensive to get bigger and bigger clothes, though I could always shop at Goodwill.

But enough is getting to be enough! Is it really worth it to go through life depriving myself so much of the time? Yes, I’d be swapping in one form of misery for another, but it would be a different kind of misery. I would look like utter shit and I would have a harder time getting around, but I wouldn’t be hungry anymore. Not sure how I would even walk once I got really huge since I would have such thunderous thighs, but maybe it’s time to find out.

Tom still insists I wouldn’t gain a pound a day for life saying that one needs more and more calories to continue gaining once they reach a certain point. “But what about those chicks who are over 200 pounds?” I asked him. “How many calories a day do they usually have?” He said about 2500-3000. I could never eat that much! Wouldn’t that be kind of expensive anyway? But how high would I go? How high??? I would think I’d hit at least 180-200 pounds if I had 1500-2000 calories a day even with exercise. Again, not something I want to be, but I also don’t want to spend my life hungry just trying to stay 40 pounds overweight since I’m obviously not going to lose. I’m sick of struggling for what isn’t meant to be anyway. I was meant to be big, so yeah, I think I’m about ready to relax and just eat when I’m hungry. Just don’t be too surprised if you’re one of my friends and we meet up somewhere someday and you find that I didn’t just bring myself but also 10 million pounds along with me. And if I break your couch, don’t say I didn’t warn you!:)

Teri had me laughing my ass off when I said I was ready to give up cuz of the hunger and she said that maybe that’s just what I need to do. Besides, tomorrow may never come anyway. LOL, she’s got a point there. Tomorrow almost never came a few times around for me. The last thing I’d want to do is go belly-up at just a hundred and thirty-something pounds. Might as well piss the pallbearers off anyway by having more of me to have to carry. :)

I know Jesse’s going to be noisy today, so rather than wait for his usual engine gunning routine to start up I just threw on the sound machine.

Google really sucks shit these days. On March 1st they’re going to be giving out everybody’s info. After having our Gmail accounts and my blog hacked (the one that was powered by Google), I think it’s safe to say I’ll never use Google again other than maybe their search engine.

Later…

It’s now been two months since Nane dumped me and I have continued to think about her every day. I wonder when I will ever be able to forget her. I’m trying to move on and push her out of my mind, but I am still so, so hurt over the way she so coldly dumped me during one of the worst times of my life. I go back and forth between being angry and wanting to tell her off (not that it would do me a damn bit of good) to missing her and wishing she would be big enough to apologize, accept that no one’s perfect, including me, and just move on as friends. But according to what I’ve read and heard, the hardest words for a person to say are, “I’m sorry,” “I forgive you,” and “I love you.”

In her reasons for which she claimed she dumped me, although she never did use the word “dump,” she said that a virtual friendship could never work and that I was playing games with her and just trying to get attention. That last part is what hurt and pissed me off the most. I needed all the friends and support I could get last fall. I really thought my husband and I weren’t going to make it as that’s how bad things got. Her saying that is like telling someone, “Oh, you’re just messing with me,” while they’re standing over their mother’s grave at their funeral bawling their eyes out. Why in the world would she even think for a millisecond that I would joke around or mess with her on such a serious issue as fearing Tom and I would be backed into a corner and forced to either starve on the streets or kill ourselves? WHY??? Her English is great and she should’ve known me well enough by then. I would never and have never knowingly and intentionally played with one’s head or made up such an atrocity for attention. I’m not only far from attention-starved, but why would anyone in their right mind do that to someone they care about? That’s shit you do to those you don’t care for. But only if you’re the type.

Now, thanks to her, I am afraid to reach out to people. I fear they’ll only insist I’m just “messing” with them.

She also blamed the language differences on us selling things to try to save our asses and I still don’t get that one. I mean, I don’t get where she was so confused and upset and thinking I was just “messing” with her there, too. We simply sold some collectibles and were fortunate enough to get more for them than we thought we could. I would have thought she’d be thrilled to see us pull through in the end after things looked so incredibly bleak for us, but instead of being a true friend by providing a shoulder to cry on when I needed it and cheering for me when I managed to pull through, I got ignored for two solid months, then hit with all this untrue bullshit.

So this is why I have such mixed emotions about Nane. We were so close in the end. As close as two people who never met could’ve gotten, though she did string me along with the attraction thing along the way, making like she was hot for me one minute, then “not into women” the next even though she did say she’d had a one-nighter years ago and liked it. Even so, I have to wonder just how the hell someone who seemed too sweet could do what she did and just throw me away like yesterday’s trash without a care in the world for my feelings and how it may affect me. And how the hell can I still miss her at times after the kind of person she’s proven to be?

Yet I still see her smiling face in my mind’s eye every day. I still like to look at the pictures of her that I’ve downloaded.

“Come back to me!” I cry to myself. Then I remember how she treated me and I just want to - ugh! - I better not put that in print. I wish I were as unforgiving as most people are. Then I could just stay mad at her. If I were mad and only mad, then I probably wouldn’t miss her, right?

But Nane isn’t coming back. Nane is obviously not capable of the words, “I’m sorry.” Nane cannot move on. Nane cannot see that yes, a virtual friendship can work (I can name several others who are proof of that). Nane cannot forgive me for being a pest like I was at times. Nane can’t, won’t, can’t, won’t, can’t, won’t… all Nane can do is live the “good life.” To hell with whom she may hurt along the way.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2012 I was reading an article about the obese (50 or more lbs. overweight), the common causes of obesity, how they are often discriminated against, and it’s all just so, so sad. Most still seem to believe the most common cause of obesity is growing up with abuse, and while that’s sad enough, the lasting effects of obesity, regardless of cause, are even sadder. The obese (especially women) are often shunned by their coworkers and sometimes even their own families. They are less likely to succeed in business and careers because they are seen as “gross” and “filthy.” They are more likely to spend the better part of their lives alone and lacking friends and lovers. They are more likely to have low self-esteem and to turn to drugs, alcohol and even suicide.

It disgusts me the way people are often treated on account of their appearance! A person’s weight should be their business and their business only and they should be judged by their personality. The fact that so many people still shit on those who are heavy, gay, or maybe because they choose to put a tattoo on their nose, makes me sick. I also don’t get it. Not just for obvious reasons, but why all the discrimination against the obese in a country where obesity is running rampant??? It’s not like seeing an obese person is a rare siting in America.

Yet the obese continue to be one of the most doomed groups in life and I just can’t help but feel bad for them. God help me if I myself am ever obese and I probably will be someday. Why? Because I’m not getting any younger, my metabolism isn’t getting any faster, and sooner or later I’m going to get sick of all this dieting, running and lifting. Yet when I look back on my life, most of which was spent thin and fit, I can’t deny that there are numerous opportunities I might never have had if I’d been heavy. Yes, I admit it. I have used my looks to gain some things in life. And while being a “hottie” may not guarantee you riches, success and everlasting love, there sure continues to be a noticeable difference in how the heavy is treated by society in general as opposed to the “beautiful” people. And this is regardless of the fact that most of those so-called beauties happen to be mean, rude, stuck-up and totally superficial. Many of the sweetest, kindest people I’ve met have been overweight. What happened just a couple of months ago was a stark reminder of this fact when my ex-cyber GF played with my feelings till she’d had enough of the game and then dumped me during one of my worst times in life. This doesn’t mean we should avoid the pretties anymore than we should go running to restaurant A simply because restaurant A is owned by someone thin while restaurant B is owned by someone who’s heavy, but there does seem to be a pattern there even though I don’t get the connection. Why be an ass just because you’re good-looking? That’s like saying I should go piss on someone’s doorstep because I like blueberries.

I was talking about freedom of expression and all that on another site with this lady and boy could I relate to her frustrations of having to be choked back from free expression! I believe in free speech even if it’s a subject most don’t want to hear about. What’s the point in creating a language with which to communicate if it must be so restricted, restrained and censored? Yet America is very word-sensitive and our so-called “rights” to “free speech” are often violated. No one is ever forced to read anything they don’t want to read, so what’s the big deal? I don’t want to hear that Jane Doe may hate gays, but this shouldn’t mean that she shouldn’t have the right to express her own hatred and opinions so long as she’s not trying to cram it down others’ throats. I don’t want to hear about Joe Shmoe’s love of basketball because basketball bores me to tears. But why shouldn’t he have the right to write about it? I don’t have to read it, after all. :)

Later…

I totally do not want to work out today, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do in about 20 minutes. I’m going to get it over with in one shot, though, as breaking it up tends to cause you to laze out of the last few segments. Just not sure if I’ll be on the treadmill for 20 or 30 minutes. Perhaps I’ll run the first 10 minutes, read the next 10, then iPod off the last 10. No easy task! Yeah, it’s much harder than it sounds, especially the running part. Even just a 4 MPH run for just 10 minutes is a serious workout! But seeing that I only came up 1 pound this weekend instead of 3, I’d say it’s worth it. Hopefully, I’ll zigzag my way down the scale even if I can’t get it as low as I’d like. My mind may call for 110, but my body, thanks to its muscle mass, shouts, “Fuck you, bitch! 120 is as low as I’m going.” My goal is to be 137-138 by Friday.

��She’s baaack,” Alison warned me on Facebook. Yeah, we knew the troll would be back sooner or later, though she only made one quick post from the library informing readers that Mommy has taken her phone and laptop away. So she hasn’t been funny farmed after all. Too bad.

Amber was back too, on kiwibox.com, so I saw. Wonder how often she’ll come around. At least she doesn’t bug me. Her blog is private but I can just imagine what she must be saying about that “elderly” nut. grins mischievously

I have always preferred pools to oceans. Pools have no jellyfish, crabs or sharks and are much cleaner. But lately, I’ve been missing the ocean and wondering if I’ll ever see it again. Funny, I grew up going to the beach every summer and now I wonder if I’ll ever step on one again. Despite the jellyfish and all the other creatures I may not care to swim with, I miss feeling the undertow of the waves beneath my feet as I stand on the shore. I miss floating lazily upon the surface and then letting the waves carry me to shore. I miss diving into the waves. Vegging out on the beach all day has never really been my thing, though. I don’t mind going for walks on the beach, but just sitting there is boring. Besides, I don’t tan well. I either burn or end up with sun poisoning.

Florida’s calling to me like the desert once did and like this joke of a state once did. But right now I just have to hope that right as we start to get one foot out the door of this little old trailer that door doesn’t end up being slammed shut on us by circumstances beyond our control before we can get the other foot out of it. Shit likes to happen to us, you know? So we gotta really hope for the best.

I also hope that if we do make it to Florida it’s where we settle down and that all other parts of the country STOP CALLING TO ME! I don’t see why it would, though. I’ve already lived in the Northeast, northwest and Southwest and have no desire to return there, and I would never want to hit the Midwest, so I should be safe. Unless something worse starts calling and that’d be other countries. sighs

Time to slam on the protein, kick ass on the treadmill, then hit the shower. Back in about an hour to finish this entry.

Okay, I’m back. I ran for about 10 minutes and read for another 10, not wanting to work out too long to up my hunger levels. 20 minutes seems to be sufficient enough anyway. Tomorrow’s lifting and crunching day. The time on the treadmill seems to go by the fastest when I read. Only I can’t read when I’m running.

I could afford to take 10” off my waist still. My waist is what my hips should be. :( My hips… you don’t even want to know. I know a lot of women out there would love to have my chest and hip size, but I’m not especially fond of it. Isn’t that how it usually works? If we don’t have it, we want it. If we do have it, we want to get rid of it. I’m a biiiig gurly, fit or not. But the fact that you can see my muscles through so much goddamn fat is a good indication of just how much I’ve built up and how much meaner I could look if I’d just keep my mouth shut to food a little more often.

I had to up my protein amounts again because the random cravings were starting to creep up on me again where I’d crave KFC one minute, Carl’s Jr. the next, then I’d be assaulted by a mental rainstorm of Jelly Belly’s. Wonder why I haven’t craved those Lindt truffles? That’s okay. Jelly Belly’s are bad enough along with shrimp chips and Starbucks coffee ice cream which rocks the world of coffee ice creams. :)

Sometimes I forget how helpful and important it is to start the first hour of my day off with that 30g of protein. I had a shake and some cottage cheese. Another 45 minutes and I’ll toss down some fish and corn. I’m drinking only water and no soda today. I miss soda at times but I hate the way it makes me burp my ass off.

Mary’s release date is now pulled up to October 28th and mean or not I’m kind of glad I stopped hearing from her. She simply asked too many favors of me. Helping a friend is one thing; being taken advantage of is another. I don’t think she saw it that way, though. Meaning, I don’t think she felt, thought or wanted to be taking advantage of me or anything like that. I think she just had a lot of time on her hands, and well, one is kind of helpless in jail, after all.

It’s already started raining and is supposed to go into tomorrow. I’ll enjoy that one precious day off from Jesse’s shit, though I shouldn’t be up past noon and will probably have to hear the truck enough times.

Anyway, besides hoping to write another chapter in my book tonight and maybe catch a movie, I’m as single in cyberspace as I am married in the real world. This is the longest I’ve gone without a GF in the virtual world, something I both like and dislike. I miss having a GF, but I also like it because I don’t miss them either being crazy and clingy or “too good” to bother with me much of the time.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2012 I got snacks that were supposed to be for one day and one day only, but then reality hit me. Like I’m supposed to cram a pint of ice cream and a bag of Chex Mix into my little tummy all in one day? Yeah, right! So I will probably end up putting back on the weight I spent the week working off, as usual. :(

I have always felt - believed actually - that anyone who ever has ever wronged me has gotten away with it and that karma has basically “forgotten” or “skipped” them. Dump me and no one will dump you. Lead me on and no one will play with your head or give you the wrong idea. Get me jailed for something I didn’t do and no one will throw your ass in jail. Steal from me and no one will steal from you. Kill me and you’ll never be caught. This belief is based on what I’ve personally experienced so far in life and it really bothers me. It’s scary to think something up there could feel it’s “okay” to burn me and that my perps will remain protected from any kind of punishment. What goes around may come around for me and probably for most others, but it just doesn’t seem to come around to those who have sent it to me. This has nothing to do with anything that’s going on right now. It’s just a disturbing pattern I’ve noticed.

Got to wake up at 6:30 to barking, so apparently the weekend outings aren’t history after all. I checked an hour later. Still barking. And another hour later. Still barking. So, knowing it’s going to go on till 2am or 3am I’ve got the sound machines cranked up. Again, it’s a real shame we come out to these woods just to still be annoyed by people over 100 feet away, landlord or not. It’s actually more of a shame that it’s our landlord doing this to us. If he could be considerate and understanding when our rent would be late when we were out of work, why can’t he give us the same consideration and understanding with all the racket he and his fucking dogs make?

He once told us to just yell at them and they’ll shut up. Yeah, they do. But what he doesn’t get is that A, it shouldn’t be our responsibility to shut his own dogs up, and B, they’re right back at it 10 minutes later. So fuck this cock! Really, just fuck him. I hope he keeps losing tenant after tenant after we’re gone. The only reason we’ve been here so long is that the economy trapped us here. Yet I doubt the next tenants will mind since barking dogs is a way of life in the west and they’ll probably have their own dogs doing the same thing. Most of the natives don’t mind; it’s those of us from the east who were raised with dogs being household pets and not outdoor nuisances that find it annoying. My family and such friends like Andy, Paula and Kim would agree with me and find it loud, rude and totally obnoxious. But most of the people I’ve met in the West, including Tom, who have lived in the Western states all their lives would be able to tune it out and consider it a way of life same as with chirping birds. I’m sorry I was born on the wrong side of the country!

Meanwhile, maybe someday we’ll get to live in a place that doesn’t allow for this shit. It sure would be nice after, what… isn’t it coming up on something like 20 years now? Ever since I left New England. I can only think of two places where barking was an issue there.

Since I can’t watch a movie in peace tonight I’ll probably spend most of the night writing.

LOL, I noticed Amber checked my KB profile; the one I used to get into it with on the old KB and on another site. Just about everyone hated Amber. She was one seriously rude fuck. But… she was also smart in some ways and a pretty good writer. She found something within just about everyone to pick on them for. With me, it was my age. This was back when we were 21 and 42. I couldn’t resist dropping by her page and saying: Wow, you’re 25 now! Getting old, arncha?

She then blocked me, which is fine. I had no intention of saying anything else anyway. The last thing I need or want to do is to cause trouble online. I just couldn’t resist that one quick jab after all these years, though I doubt it was all that traumatizing for her to have me jump out at her after just a few years. Now Debby Gilman after 20 years, if she’s still alive, would be a whole different story, LMAO!!! “Every time that you walk in the room, Debby!”

I wonder what kind of competition Tom will be up against if he applies for any permanent positions where he works. Youth and non-whiteness usually prevail. If the person is more qualified than Tom then they should get the job no matter what color they are. It’d only be fair. But life isn’t fair and if they’re black they’re gonna get first dibs on the job, period. So what if my husband may have 20 more years of experience? Foreigners are another thing to have to watch out for.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2012 So far today I’ve had one landlord, one rat, one email account, and a few people determined to piss the shit out of me.

The landlord has shut up and I’ve got the people/email thing straightened out, but this rat of mine just won’t leave me alone, LOL. He’s annoying at times, but cute too, in a funny kind of way. I always knew rats are more attention-needy than other rodents, but this guy just doesn’t want to stay home tonight even though I changed his cage and gave him treats. I can’t let him out in the living room because Tom’s asleep on the futon and not at all in need of having his toenails or earlobes trimmed or his hair pulled on. I can’t let him loose in the bedroom because he’s “jealous” of my stereo and will chew the wires. He leaves the computers alone, but for some reason, he’s bound and determined to destroy that stereo every chance he gets. He loves to play in the closet and burrow under sheets, but this rat is a little too destructive to be allowed to indulge in those privileges too often. I make sure to at least scratch his head when I walk by his cage in which the bars are about an inch apart. The cage was originally designed for ferrets but works just as well for rats that get to be almost guinea pig size as Fancy rats do.

We’ve got to move this summer. We’ve got to. Really, I just don’t know how much more I can take before I go up there and destroy every single one of those vehicles Jesse’s got up there. I fear something will come up to trap us here, though. Although I slept till 4pm it’s like he was bound and determined to make up for lost time since he usually starts up around 7am - 9am and then shuts up around 4pm - 5pm. I was waking up with my coffee when he roared in on the Harley. He didn’t even turn it off right away once he got up to his place. For some reason, he left it idling for a few minutes. But the instant he hopped off of that he traded in one vehicle for another and went zipping around on the ATV. It could be his kid, but I would think he’s a little too old now to find that sort of thing much of a thrill.

I’m more convinced he has someone staying with him. The dogs wouldn’t have been quiet while he was out on the motorcycle, since he certainly couldn’t have taken them with him on the damn thing, and the Friday and Saturday night barking fits have stopped. I always pictured him to be out playing pool or watching sports at some bar and I don’t see why he would suddenly stop going out on weekends. Neither would the dogs suddenly stop barking when left alone at night, something that has always terrified them for some reason.

The point is that I’m just so damn sick of hearing from him every single fucking day of my life! Every day I have to hear this cock who’s nearly 200’ away. :( It isn’t just that I have to hear him every day, but several times a day. And these aren’t subtle little sounds that are just enough to let me know he’s there. The ATV isn’t that loud, but the motorcycle, bulldozer and truck are insanely loud. I swear he woke me up gunning something right as I was nodding off at around 9:30 this morning and this is with the sound machine blaring as insanely loud as he is.

Part of the problem is being in a trailer and being elevated. Trailer walls are not only paper-thin, but sound reverberates underneath elevated houses more easily. I miss being on a concrete slab foundation! I always liked the feel of it, too. I’m such a light sleeper Tom has to be extra careful not to walk too hard when I’m asleep so as not to shake the place. The washing machine is nearly 40’ away yet I can feel the room vibrating when it’s spinning. There’s also no attic here so that helps bring on the outside sounds as well.

Even if he were dead quiet, I’m just so sick of being stuffed into tiny little old dives that often smell moldy and musty no matter how much incense I burn.

So anyway, I switched from using my Yahoo email address, though I do still have it, to using my mail.com but it goes through a Mac program that lets me view it offline. We set this up on both our computers cuz mail.com is one of the hardest email providers to log into. It’s just a major pain in the ass with all their forced ads and forced videos and it really slows things down for those of us with DSL lines. What pissed me off is that it marked some of Andy’s messages as spam even though he’s in my contacts. They have this little list of reasons why this can happen and it’s usually based on how something is worded in an email. I’m so damn sick of this country’s lack of speech rights! Wish we were like Norway. They have real freedom of speech laws and real rights protecting their speech. Here we sometimes claim we do but it’s just a joke. Our speech rights are constantly being violated and censored and I’m just sick of various programs, groups, laws and whatever deciding for me not only what I can say/write, but what I can read as well. I’m sorry this country’s so damn word-sensitive, but I’m not! Why should I have to be put out if you’re the one who can’t handle it and may find your feelings hurt? What’s weird was that there wasn’t even anything questionable in one of his messages in particular. The one with the porn picture was probably flagged for the word “stripper” but I think I can handle the word stripper, mail.com, so please, please let ME be the one to decide what I read!

Tom said that if I go into the security settings I can at least decide who’s on my whitelist vs. my blacklist. But shouldn’t he have already been on my whitelist since he’s a contact? Makes me wonder what other messages mail.com decided I just might have my heart broken if I dared read them.

Andy told me he sent a picture he was “so excited to share from my stripping days” with me. Sure enough, though, it’s just another porn picture. You know, the ones I’ve been telling him NOT to send 5 or 6 times already. He claims he only sent it because the girl’s face looked like mine used to, but I don’t think that’s why he sent it. I think that was just an excuse to send it. I not only don’t see that much of a resemblance but I really think he’s got a problem and it’s got me a little worried. It’s like he’s got this porn addiction and he can’t stop not only viewing it himself but trying to force it on me. But as I told him over and over again, there’s nothing wrong with it, whatever turns him on is fine, but I’m not into that stuff. I don’t find it exciting, I don’t find it amusing, and it’s not like I was ever attracted to women for their pussies only. Actually, I think dicks and pussies are quite ugly looking. I like women as a whole, not just for specific body parts. But why is such a simple request too damn hard for him??? Maliheh once asked that I not share any X-rated dreams with her because she’s simply not into that sort of thing. If I could honor such a simple little request, why can’t he? Especially as my friend? It’s not like it’s a request that prevents him from being himself in any way. He can look at porn all he wants. Just not with me. As I told him, this is the kind of shit peds do. Does he want to go around giving people the wrong idea about him? I asked Tom if he thinks he’s got a problem and he said he thinks he’s just set in his ways and that some people simply never change. Yeah, Andy is definitely a lot like his old self. He’s just not broke and smoking pot and cigarettes.

Something must be up with the troll. There’s been no blog activity or views from her in days. If her mother swiped her laptop she’d only go to the library and go online from there. My guess is she’s been funny-farmed again. Now maybe they’ll realize just what a lost cause this nutjob truly is.

What took me a weekend to gain has now been lost in a week. Yeah, I finally lost that third pound. I knew I would as I was going to bed. There are hunger pangs, and then there are hunger pangs that border on hunger “pains.” I suppose everybody’s different, but with me, I can tell when my body’s about to drop a pound because I feel this intense hunger at the very end of my day before waking up the next day to find I’m down a pound. Extreme hunger isn’t just the body saying, Hey, I’m hungry. Feed me! It’s also the actual process of fat being attacked and destroyed much like a dying tooth is really painful. So I knew it went into “attack mode” and was killing off another pound. :) I’m just surprised I’m not hungry today. I usually am the day after making another drop. I just hope I can control myself better this weekend! I’ll be anything but in control tomorrow, though. Coffee ice cream, shrimp chips, very cheesy mac… Then it’ll be time to train and coax my body into making another pound kill. :)

I don’t think I can lose much more than 15-20 pounds, though, with all this muscle. I reached down to scratch an itch on my calves and damn are my legs solid! It’s no wonder I’m so damn heavy. My waist is kind of smallish and I totally have an hourglass shape just like I did in my 20s, but I’m a whopping 139 pounds. I don’t want to be just thin. I want to be fit and even scary-looking. :) Sorry, but I like it when some chick’s jaw drops at the site of my “cut” abs when my tummy is exposed in public. I like it when a guy catches a nice long glimpse of my shoulders and biceps and decides I’d be the wrong one to piss off.

I saw a chick around my height the other day. Had to be around 115. Even though there was hardly much of a difference inch-wise I felt like a giant compared to her, LOL. Like I wouldn’t want to sit on her for I knew I was much heavier.

Andy said some pig told him he’d fine him $100 if he caught him canning again. He goes out and collects cans for deposit money. Just why the hell is something like this illegal, though? He said he’s going to keep doing it, just not in that neighborhood. Good for him. :)

I had to laugh when I read someone say they hoped to marry someday so they’d have less responsibility in life. LOL, there’s way more to do when you’re either married or at least living with someone, even for the growing number of couples opting out of having kids like we did. If you work at home or you do have kids to look out for or you have a sleep disorder like mine or some other disability preventing you from working, your other half must work twice as hard because they need to work for two. Dusting and vacuuming are usually the same no matter what, but it takes me twice as long to do the dishes because two people eat off them. It takes me twice as long to do laundry because I am washing two people’s clothes. It takes me twice as long to clean the bathroom because two people use it, one of which can’t aim worth a shit.

The only thing that’s usually easier is if one of you gets sick the other can usually go get you meds or food or whatever you need. But living with someone, married or not, is not easier. It’s just more fun if you truly love the person. I think marriage and cohabitation, however, should come down to love and not because you think it’ll make things more convenient, and it’s not for the most part. If anything you’ll be inconvenienced. But if you’re not willing to be inconvenienced, then you never truly loved the person to begin with.

Checked out kiwibox.com since it’d been a while. They now let you customize blog backgrounds so I played around on there for kicks.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2012 Heard from Monica again who was quick to remind me that she only bought a Kindle because of me, LOL. Truly flattering and shocking!

Paula left me a message with one of those text-to-landline things thanking me for the package. I was thinking of her, too. She’s got sentencing coming up for whipping her man’s ass. I’m sure she’ll want to whip it even harder when she gets out if she ends up doing jail time. But you know how backward the laws are. You’ll go to jail a lot faster for things you write/say vs. things you actually do.

It’s going to be warm again tomorrow, then drop off into the 50s, and then rain again Monday. I doubt it’ll be much, but since I should be around for at least part of the day I can at least count on Jesse being limited vehicle-wise.

Woke up having to pee in the middle of my usual 8 hours of sleep and happened to step on the scale to find I’d gone down half a pound since I crashed. But when I got back up for good I hadn’t dropped anymore. So I ended up getting up at what I got up at yesterday and haven’t yet got that third pound off I put on last weekend. But… I did say my goal was to lose two pounds a week and I did that much so far. The week also doesn’t technically end till Monday anyway because that’s when I began cutting back.

The hunger has been awful so I thought I’d try a little experiment. Instead of running 30 minutes non-stop, I’m going to break it up into hourly 5-minute segments. That way I should still burn a good amount of calories without aggravating the hunger too much and getting all sweaty.

Saw the movie Shuttle last night and damn was it good. Sad ending but a great thriller that just got more and more suspenseful along the way.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2012 Maliheh said a quick hello and asked how I was doing, making me think we were going to chat, but she disappeared. Again I wonder if she’s playing with me or something. Can she really be that busy? I’m just amazed I heard from her. I thought it’d be weeks before I heard from her again.

Last night Tom downloaded me a 30-day trial of Word for Mac, insisting I would love it and that it does everything I want it to do. In fact, he was so confident I’d like it that he removed not only OpenOffice from my dock but the virtual box I was using to run the old WP as well.

He was right. I do love it. It’s only got a couple of minor annoyances, but I love how I can design each document easier without having to switch to ‘web view’ only. I prefer to work in ‘print layout’ but the other ones wouldn’t let me stay in that layout and give me the freedom to configure the looks of the docs the way I wanted. This program also allowed me to add covers to my story and journal files that look so cool and so professional. I have my 2012 journal set with a rainbow background. Totally me, LOL. My favorite colors are bubble gum, strawberry, carnation, magenta, lavender and grape. I also like the blue ice and bright lemon.

Another neat feature is that it keeps a word count on the bottom so you don’t have to click on ‘word count’ in the menu. So far this year’s journal has 42,384 words, though I don’t share everything with everyone and I certainly don’t put everything in public or on Facebook. I need to learn more about customizing the toolbar. I never insert graphs into my documents and therefore I don’t need to see that option on the toolbar. I would like to see other things, though, that aren’t visible and that I would like to have more readily accessible.

Oh, just heard from Maliheh again. She’s bored but exercising again. She worries that her mother’s going to be just another number. She doesn’t want to be in a nursing home herself, but who does? She hates cleaning but is doing that and laundry now.

This WP costs $100 - $125 on most sites, but we found a reputable site that charges just $78 with free shipping so we jumped at the opportunity since we don’t know that we’d come across such a good deal again anytime soon. Another $100 or so will be spent on the 4-terabyte backup device that’ll automatically back up our entire computers. I will no longer have to back up the laptop or risk backing things up online that could be hacked. I back my music and docs up on the iPod as well so I can take them with me when I go out. That way if God forbid we were ever robbed (the Macs would be the first to be grabbed) I would still have my music and docs. My only real loss would be my photos, though I do have some on the iPod and most on WS and Photobucket.

I slept late after spending something like 6 hours setting up and configuring the new WP last night.

Haven’t spent much time on many of my usual online hangouts today but it’s nice to take a day off every now and then from the same damn sites every single day of my life. It makes them more fun that way. Besides, I have other non-computer-related things to do - laundry, dishes, cleaning, exercising, etc. The rat wanted a lot of attention today for some reason.

Tom said he heard the permanent employees (yeah, they do have some perms) saying they’re going to be posting additional jobs at work. Tom doesn’t know if they’d be worth applying for, though, since they may be just minimum wage.

I was so sure that the third pound I gained over the weekend would be gone when I got up but I held my sleep weight completely. I forget that when I crash at certain times (usually early morning) my body tends to hold its weight for reasons I can’t begin to fathom. How can my body know what time it’s sleeping? Despite waking up at the same weight I crashed at, I was down almost half a pound, but when I got up the hunger was a killer. It took around 800 calories to stop it and I was hungry again in no time. Still don’t know what’s plugging up my metabolism, but today I’m going to take it a little easier. I’m not going to pig out, but I’m not going to deprive myself too much either. Hey, the weight just does not want to come off. If there’s one thing I learned in life it’s that we can either waste time struggling for what’s not meant to be or we can just make do with what is meant to be. Since I’m always hungry anyway, I’d kill to be able to puke up my main meal but I just can’t bring myself to do that. Puking’s gross!

So while I battle the bulge, Marie battles alcoholism. Yeah, that’s what Becky said is going on with her, unfortunately. Obviously, she slipped after we stopped talking because when we were “together” she’d been sober 2 or 3 years. It sucks that she’s so miserable but she is still with her wife, so that’s good. Just like I thought would be the case with me she started to believe she’d be alone forever.

Monica got her new Kindle and downloaded both my books, even though she already read Evil:))) She is definitely my most dedicated fan in Australia! And such a sweet friend, too. :)

After just that one day of rain, the drought was back on. Nothing but sunshine, warmth, saws and Jesse now being open to his entire fleet of vehicles. All I heard today, though, was the truck because I didn’t get up till mid-afternoon. It’s going to be nearly 70° tomorrow so I’ve got to remember to turn the heat off and crack windows before bed.

Just had 500 more cals and am still hungry. beats head Just what is my body doing to work up such an appetite???

Nothing more from Maliheh after that second message. Yep, it’s like she doesn’t want to let go of me but for some reason, she’s being evasive.

Although I’m not as worried as I was before, I still have those pigs playing in the back of my mind. The more time that goes by without them messing with me, the less concerned I am, but that may be what they want is for me to think they’ve forgotten me. It’s a common practice for them to bide their time before jumping out at you. I guess in their mind you’ll be more likely to be caught off guard easier if they think you think they’ve forgotten you.

There are a few things I just don’t get, though.

If the pigs have to serve you in order to go to the court why did they set a court date without serving me in Maricopa? I once heard they can serve you at your last known address even if you’re not there and the summons is still valid. However, Tom said they didn’t yet set a court date, just filed charges. Well, isn’t that what supposedly happened last month when they “made” a case against me?

Once the default warrant was issued in Maricopa why weren’t they quick to run to pick me up? I was in the state after all, and everyone involved was oh-so obsessed with me.

Why don’t the pigs tell people to just not read what they don’t want/don’t like unless they’re forced to read it at gunpoint?

I was thinking back on anything I ever had to go to court for and it was cuz of nothing I’ve done. Only what I’ve said/written. I just don’t get this. If you get up in someone’s face and say something they don’t want to hear, that’s one thing. But people on phones can be hung up on and emails can be ignored.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2012 Stuck to my diet to a T yesterday and already lost 2 of the 3 pounds I put on over the weekend. Next weekend I’m determined to only allow myself to take Saturday off, not the entire weekend which technically starts on Friday night, LOL. I’m only going to run 20 minutes today. I don’t want to do anything to escalate the hunger.

I gave Andy the link to the account which I hope the troll will never find and he said he didn’t want to go to any fake account. The account isn’t fake. I just don’t use real names there. Then he pointed out that I’m going through a lot of trouble to avoid one asshole. Actually, it’s more than just one. One far more sinister and potentially dangerous than Molly, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it right now. First of all, nothing online is ever really “private” and I don’t have all the facts yet anyway. It may be months before I can say anything but my reasons for going off the grid will make more sense then.

Molly is still part of it, though, and believe me when I say I’m enjoying the freedom of being able to be open to anonymous comments without her unwanted comments being thrown in. Without having to deal with her creating one new account after another to pester me. Besides, there were also my friends to consider as she would latch onto them as well. She came at me through Alison.

Some have asked why it bothers me that she can read my journal if I’ve got her blocked from at least making comments. Well, it’s one of those things I don’t expect many folks to understand that haven’t been stalked themselves by this particular kind of nut. It’s that feeling of being “invaded” by someone you don’t like and that knows you don’t like them and that you don’t want them around. It’s sort of like your house. It sits there on the street for anyone to see, but would you want a peeping tom gazing in at you? Maybe if she weren’t so damn crazy and there weren’t my friends to consider it wouldn’t matter as much. But I would prefer her not to know about my secret but public account.

Heard back from Becky. She said Marie’s having a rough time now, is in counseling, and they have a quick chat about once a week. This is a real bummer to hear, too. Marie is still in counseling?! But she was in counseling two years ago and it seems she has been for most of her life. Okay, I know child abuse can have devastating effects on a person, but how many more years of counseling can she possibly need before she’s able to cope on her own and free of “happy” pills??? I really hoped that her new wife would be the key to her finally achieving happiness, but maybe she’s just not meant to be happy any more than we’re meant to have money and Andy’s meant to have love and Alison’s meant to have good health. Marie is also a paranoid nutjob, so I suppose that may have something to do with all the years of counseling. There’s a big difference if say a sane and stable woman is suddenly raped as opposed to a nutjob like Molly.

Later…

Wow! Amazingly Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional here in California, but I don’t know what this means. Is it just all talk or do gays now have the right to marry once again? If they don’t then it’s not much of a victory. Saying something’s wrong and unfair is one thing. Doing something about it is another.

I read that Obama was against gay marriage but his views are “changing.” Well, I should certainly hope so! He’s black, ain’t he? So isn’t he supposed to know what it’s like to be discriminated against? Really, it disgusts me when anyone black does the same exact thing they accuse others of doing when they should know better! Then again, they don’t get a fraction of the discrimination they used to get, and while being a slave is plenty bad enough, they were never starved and thrown in ovens like the Jews were. Yes, there really are some others who have had it much worse and it pisses the shit out of me when I hear a few people insist that racism is “alive and well” even today. As sad as it is there will always be haters of all groups. Some people will always hate whites, Jews, blacks, Hispanics, gays, Muslims, Indians, etc., but blacks receive more rights and favoritism than any other group ever has to date. They are constantly given leniency when facing sentencing for the same crimes whites are going down harder for. They are constantly being favored in the workplace due to a combination of employers fearing being called racists and because of how rough their ancestors had it a century ago. They cannot be charged with a hate crime. They are allowed black TV stations, black pageants, black this, black that. Lastly, it’s automatically your word against theirs should you piss them off and they decide to insist you called them racial slurs when in fact you did not.

So where is racism “alive and well?”

Some say the reason blacks make up the majority of the prison population is that the courts are harder on them. Others say it’s because they’re more prone to crime. I totally agree with the latter. Oh, they used to get harsher sentences, all right, don’t get me wrong. But our often black-and-white society (pardon the pun) has swung the pendulum from one extreme to the other, as usual, skipping those gray areas. Where blacks were once treated so horribly unfairly in court, now they’re getting one break after another, some states being worse than others. Same with child molestation cases. Where nothing was believed 30 years ago, now just about anything is believed. If a kid tells the cops that an alien molested them, that cop will be quick to spearhead a grand manhunt for that so-called alien.

What I don’t understand is why people won’t open their eyes. Instead, they are quick to defend blacks, make excuses for them, and not see the big picture for what it truly is. Such as the real reason they make up for most of the prison population today in 2012. Not 1950, but 2012. Every group of people was picked on at some point, so then why don’t the Jews make up for most of the prison population? Why not the gays? Why not Hispanics? Well, the real reason why has nothing to do with discrimination but because some groups, like it or not, really are more likely to violate the laws just like pit bulls and rotties are more likely to attack as opposed to poodles and collies. Sorry folks, but that’s just the cold hard facts. Racism, slavery… it’s mostly history, folks. That’s why it’s called H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. It’s also the point in Black History Month; to show how far they’ve come in gaining acceptance - and for those of us who see the big picture - favoritism as well.

I’ll be the first to admit it’s totally wrong to shit on someone for their skin color, their height, their weight, their sexual preference or anything like that. It’s totally mean to call someone names and racial slurs. But did people ever stop to think that sometimes it’s not about one’s appearance but about their behavior? Did they ever think that sometimes we make people not like us just by the things we do? People are quick to say they want acceptance, but playing the race card by lying about what others say/do to you and committing crimes against them isn’t the way to do it. Yet despite the many blacks who choose to cry racism where it simply doesn’t exist, who choose to rob and kill us, who are continually given jobs based on their color that those more qualified should’ve gotten, acceptance is exactly what they’re getting these days. The same acceptance, tolerance and treatment gays can only wish they’d get. Funny, though, that gays don’t make up for the majority of the prison population, ain’t it?

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2012 It seems I had several dreams about Nane last night. One was a bit disturbing. I was walking alongside her somewhere (at least I think it was her) when I said, “Don’t ask me to explain, but if you don’t hear from me after this date I didn’t dump you, I’m in prison.”

Once again I jumped back into Word since OpenOffice’s quirks and problems were pissing me off. Sometimes I wish computers had never been invented and life was as simple as it was 20 years ago. Then again, I’ve had so much fun with them, won so much money, “met” so many neat people, reunited with people from the past, learned new languages, etc., that it’s become such a way of life. Can’t imagine life without computers and sometimes I wonder how the hell we ever got by before they became a regular thing.

Did a light workout, but nothing that could make me hungrier and encourage me to slack off on fixing the damage I did over the last few days by pigging out.

Although I didn’t get up till nearly noon, it’s been amazingly quiet so far save for a few barks. I expected the sawing to start up at 1:00 sharp, but haven’t heard any buzzing yet. It’s a bit cloudy today so I don’t know if that’s got anything to do with it or if someone complained or what. We’ve got a few more hours of daylight, though, so anything could happen between now and then.

Later…

It’s only a feeling. It cannot hurt me. It’s annoying and it’s distracting but hunger cannot hurt me. This I keep chanting to myself over and over like a broken record whenever the hunger bites bad enough to make me contemplate pigging out. I may be fit and I may not be that fat, but I still gotta work at it to stay this way. I’m naturally muscular to a degree, but overall I’m just not naturally slim and fit.

I almost dumped Bunny Nose. The lack of sales lately not only doesn’t help motivate me but I’m sick of “translating” for my non-English speaking characters, LOL. So I decided to go back and make “Ingrid” bilingual. This will make the story flow a lot easier for me, and well, I do like to write no matter who is or isn’t paying me to do it. I’m still creeping along with it but I expect to move at a faster pace now that I’ve got plots and characters fleshed out a bit better.

Last night I thought of Marie and I got to missing her. She’s one I could never hate or stay mad at despite how crazy she drove me. Pest or not she really loved and accepted me as I was. She never questioned or challenged a damn thing about me. She even “loved my fire.” The fire that most are put off by. If she’s still with her wife then she should keep her from driving me too crazy, I figured, so I thought it would be nice to give us another chance, only we’d be just friends this time and not a cyber item. So I sent her a friend request before I crashed yesterday in the wee hours of the morning and was later surprised when she didn’t either accept, reject, send a note, or do something. Could something be keeping her from getting online? Could she be thinking about what to do? Hmm… Marie never struck me as the thinking type. She doesn’t think, she just reacts. So unless her wife was standing over her shoulder and ordered her to ignore me (and Marie would happily oblige like an obedient little puppy) it’s hard to believe she’d reject it or just blow me off. Whatever the case may be - glitch, hesitation, lack of access, the invite has been sent. I actually wanted to message her first but I saw no way to do so. I did message Becky, though, to see if she’s heard from her.

We’re supposed to be on for rain tonight and tomorrow (it figures I have to be sleeping half the day away now), then it’s back to the drought we’ve been having. The wind chimes are going off and I thought I heard a little sprinkle on the roof, but nothing major yet.

Last night I ended up studying German for about 3 hours mostly by reading German blogs. I still can’t figure out why I’m so addicted to learning such an ugly language, LOL. I’m dreaming in the damn language. Oh well.

Gute Nacht, freunde. :) Haben schöne Traume!

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2012 Went underground on thoughts.com by creating a whole new account in a bogus name to hopefully avoid detection from the troll, but that will allow me to keep in touch with a couple of friends there. Even they suggested creating a new account, though thoughts.com doesn’t require a real name anyway. I had created my other account through Facebook, but this one I signed up for independently. I missed a couple of friends there that have really nice blogs. They seemed to have missed me too, judging by the “hugs” and the little welcome back party they threw me, LOL.

Anyway, I won’t bother mentioning my username since I’m still going to write as myself on Facebook and for my email recipients. I’ll just say that I’m calling myself Misha there and giving anyone else I mention an alias as well. Along with sticking to a pen name there, I’m making sure not to mention my real name, location, age, DOB or anything else that could give my true identity away.

Still don’t know yet what I’m going to do with my old blogs. I just can’t seem to make up my mind about them. I guess I’ll either pick up where I left off at some point or I’ll just forever leave them sitting there.

I’m using OpenOffice again and it’s taking some getting used to. I configured it the best I could and while a part of me will always miss Windows, safer here or not, they all really do have their pros and cons. I just have to get in the habit of doing things the new way and that’s going to take time after spending nearly 20 years doing things a certain way.

Today was wonderfully quiet and yesterday wasn’t too bad, but weekends tend to be a bit quieter anyway.

I took the last few days off of dieting and have steadily gained a pound a day ever since. Gotta wonder how many days in a row I could do that if I never went back to watching my calorie intake. Oh well. I’ll run it back off over the week.

I forgot to mention yesterday that the night before last I had a dream that Alison died of cancer. I really hope that doesn’t mean anything! I’m not going to tell her about it. Why worry and upset her for what I hope is no reason at all?

I was right in suspecting the library the troll was going to have their cookies turned off as there’s no way she wouldn’t take the time to check for any updates on my Thoughts page when updating her own. According to her blog, which she deleted for the millionth time, she said her mother is now allowing her to go online but only twice a day. Now that she’s peeking in on me from home, she’s showing up on TIP. The sicko will look for me for the rest of her life!

Also, 3 weeks ago she started using her Formspring account for the first time in about 5 months. She’s only answering questions she’s asking herself, but this doesn’t surprise me. It was 4 weeks ago that I stopped public blogging, so of course she’d spend more time there as that’s the only account she knows about that’s currently public, though it’s Andy’s and not mine. She could Google my account on the wallpaper site, but there’s nothing to see there but graphics. But all my other accounts are either not being used, deactivated or set to private, so it wouldn’t surprise me to know she’s spending more time at least following Andy’s account on Formspring where she knows I just might mention her and Alison. Both Andy and I agreed to at least not mention her, though. I don’t want to give her an ounce of encouragement. Her warped sense of reality gives her enough encouragement on its own without any additional help.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2012 Got back a couple of hours ago. What a gorgeous day! Wish I hadn’t worn long sleeves. We now have windows open and fans on. Got the boots I wanted and am glad I didn’t get them last weekend like I almost did because they were half off. So for just $12, I got a pair of black, low-cut boots with a 2” heel. All they had were wide soles so they’re a bit roomy even with thick socks but very comfortable.

I didn’t get any earrings or anything else other than an adorable birthday card for Andy. It’s got a picture of a cat with a mouse sitting on its head and it’s so cute.

When Tom got up yesterday there was no water pressure and the poor guy couldn’t shower. He freshened up with wet wipes instead. By the time I got up at 8:15, though, it was fine.

The daily saw sessions started up not long after we got back. They seem to go from 1:00-4:00 and since it’s been going on since last August, according to my journal, I don’t expect it to stop anytime soon. I wish the people in the West were as quick to complain about noisy people as they are in the East. Then maybe something would be done about our little saw-happy folks and our regular engine gunners. Even if I had to hear the same exact sounds if we moved, I’m ready to do it in a bigger, newer place than this little old dive. But Tom won’t be turning 55 till late June and we want to keep all our options open. Meaning that we’ll be checking rural rentals too, though I don’t think we’ll find anything nice that’s very affordable and not on a shared lot. We’ve been sharing since 2004 and it’s definitely time to be selfish once again! I miss having the lot to ourselves.

They say it’s going to rain on Tuesday. I hope so because it would be wonderful to get a day off from the saws and the motorcycle which Jesse has taken to stopping and starting and stopping and starting over a 15-minute period. But all we’ve had is sunshine, sunshine, and more sunshine and no one wants to be indoors until dark.

If there’s any good it’s that Jesse hasn’t gone out at night on weekends and left us with barking all night long in about a month now. If he has, then he’s got someone staying with him and I’ve wondered this at times. It’s been way noisier up there for the last month or so.

The propane people didn’t get here till 6:30 yesterday, but as always, it’s nice to have a full tank like it is to have a full refrigerator.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2012 Did some laundry, wrote up the grocery list, and now I’m waiting for the propane people to get here. I don’t need to be present when they come, though, and I don’t expect them till later. He likes to save us for last when his tank is emptier because of the steep hill.

OMG, we’ve GOTTA get out of here this year! I can’t take this shit of his anymore. I don’t know if he thinks it’s just a big fat fucking funny joke or if he just doesn’t give a shit, but I give a shit and I’ve had it! Just minutes after I was wondering why it was 11am and still quiet, he buzzes around on the ATV, then roars out on the motorcycle. Just 20 minutes later he roars back in. About 10 minutes after that he guns the fucking thing for 10-15 minutes till I finally have to blast the shit out of the sound machine to drown it out just to concentrate on making the damn grocery list. Really, this is no way to live even if I have seen worse. Certainly NOT what we came here for.

I hope to hell Tom keeps working and that we really do get outa here this year. I really think an adult community is our only hope of escaping the bad neighbor curse since we’ll never be in the middle of 50 or more acres. Even then, it’s like whatever’s up there would just have to find a way to intrude upon the peace and so I’m sure it would use sonic booms or other flying objects to get at me.

You watch, now that I’ll be up this evening the cock will go out and no one else will be there. I still think someone’s staying with him most of the time, though. The dogs are too quiet when he leaves.

Andy had me cracking up on Formspring saying he too, hopes we move cuz that damn cock up the hill is annoying him too, even though he’s on the other side of the mirror (country). The Other Side of the Mirror is a Stevie album just like there are two Girls in the Mirror. Of course if I’d known this a couple of years ago I just might’ve been the Girl in Your Imagination or something.

I know this is a boring entry; me bitching about my noisy landlord and the saw addicts in back, but not much else is going on at the moment. The rest of the day and night should be pretty laid back till the busy weekend arrives once again.

Well, there are a couple more things I could bitch about, actually, since I seem to be really good at it. I’m not only sick of basically being called a liar, however nicely some may put it when they don’t get/believe something I tell them, but I’m also sick as shit of having my motives questioned. Okay, so I know there are a lot of assholes out there and some of us aren’t used to kindness. But it really gets old when people “wonder” why I’m so nice to them. Why can’t they just be grateful, appreciate me as I am, accept my friendship for what it is and leave it at that? And if one more person insists I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about or am making excuses or lying about something I damn well DO know what the hell I’m talking about and that’s not an excuse or a lie, I just might be tempted to go along with them and be like yeah, yeah, whatever. Really, I just get so sick of explaining and defending myself that I think it just may be easier to be like yeah, you’re right. I’m just fucking with you. Just making excuses and making up stories cuz the truth hurts too damn much to face, etc. Then I would be lying but sometimes it’s easier to just let people have their way and believe whatever they believe. Some say God works in mysterious ways. I say it’s in cruel and unfair ways. But who am I to say they don’t have a right to their beliefs, right?

Here’s another truth to face - it’s 80 degrees in here. Perfect time to open windows and air the place out:)

I guess that’s it. No, wait! One more thing to bitch about - why the hell can’t I satisfy my hunger today no matter what I eat??? I started with a 190-calorie protein shake. Still hungry. Then it was off to have a 350-calorie TV dinner. Still hungry. Then I slammed on a 180-calorie protein bar. Still hungry. Lastly, I tossed down a sandwich that was probably over 400 calories and guess what, folks? I’m still hungry. What the fuck’s the matter with me??? What is making me so damn hungry so often? I only worked out 15 minutes today. I’ve got to get up the nerve to start puking at least some of this food up or else I’m never going to lose weight regardless of the fact that Special K says I’m not “fat enough” for their diet plan.

Okay, that concludes my daily bitchfest:) I’m going to eat the place down till I throw up.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2012 Talked to my folks today and they sound much better. Dad sounded chipper and coherent. We mostly talked about work, weather, and things like that. He also dropped another hint; one that only his daughter or anyone else who knows him well enough could pick up on. When we hit upon the subject of our hoping to live in a real house someday and the possibility of moving to Florida he said, “A few years and you’ll have enough money to go wherever you want.” He didn’t just say it with confidence but in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. No, this was a statement of fact, much like how he assured me on a Friday back in the hospital in CT that something would be worked out by the following Monday. That’s because he knew he was going to surprise me with the ticket to Arizona.

But “wherever” I want? That’d take quite a bit of money. Yet even though I know they’re far from poor, it’s hard to believe they’d leave me that much. The economy has affected their store, and like it or not, it costs a lot of money to get old, need tons of medication/doctor visits, then die. I just would’ve thought all this, even if they haven’t yet gotten to the dying part, would clean out most of their savings. Then again, if they’re talking about leaving us enough money to get to where we want to live, vs. enough to get there and also to buy a place, that’d be different. 10-15 grand would comfortably get us across. But if they’re thinking houses as well as transport money, then we’re talking around 50K. No way. Just no way. I simply can’t see them having that much to leave. If I’d been an only child, then the sale of their condo, store and vehicles may be close to that but not with two other mistakes of theirs in the picture. BIG mistakes.

Come on, big bro, you can have a nice big fat deadly heart attack, can’t you? Come on, big sis, see all those pills you have to take? Why don’t you be a good girl and swallow the whole damn bottle? ALL of them.

I was glad to hear from Maliheh last night who’s alive but not well. She’s been having problems with her knee and shoulder, but at least she’s not homeless. She definitely doesn’t seem like herself these days, though. It’s like she’s losing more and more of her energy. Even she said she’s crashing early and getting up late. She used to be so full of spunk but now it’s like the life is drained out of her and as she herself put it, she doesn’t care if the world ends at the end of the year like some people believe it will. It’s kind of sad seeing her go downhill like this. Who knows if it’s a permanent thing that’s just going to get worse or if she’ll perk up and feel better at some point? I mean, she’s only coming up on 55. Well, 55 isn’t exactly over the hill. She used to love to chat for hours with me night after night. She said she misses that, too.

The propane people are coming tomorrow. Propane’s only down a dime a gallon. It won’t drop significantly till the spring. So the 100 gallons we’ll be getting will cost $260. As warm as the winter’s been so far and since it’s now February, it should easily last well into the spring unless it starts raining on us like crazy like I sometimes wish it would. But I also like sunshine, saving propane by not having to run heat during the daytime, and being able to open windows and air the place out.

In less than two hours I heard Jesse come and go twice. Still can’t figure out if someone’s staying with him or if this one guy just has that many places to go. The vehicles and chainsaws are putting the dogs to shame lately. Really, the mutts are quite comatose in comparison. Now, though, he’s really driving me crazy with that fucking bulldozer of his. How can the drive possibly need bulldozing when it’s barely rained half a dozen times in months??? I swear if this guy has nothing to do he makes something up and finds something to do just to be outside and annoying. Why can’t he sit on his ass indoors in front of the TV or something like that like most guys would love to do? I’m just so sick of having to hear from this one guy every single day of the week! I really hope we do get to move this summer but that’s what we thought last summer, so I don’t want to get my hopes up. For now, I have the music blasting. That bulldozer is so thunderously loud that not even earplugs could block the sound. I suppose the motorcycle is next, followed by either the dirt bike or ATV. Maybe even both. Really, what’s the point of being out here if I’ve got to listen to all this shit???

I just looked and it says it’s going to rain again on Tuesday. So what’s the point of doing all this today? I know we’ve been having a drought but it isn’t May either. May is when the rain stops for 4-5 months so why can’t he wait till then? And why can’t it just rain and rain and rain?! I’d still have to hear the truck come and go a lot, but that would eliminate the Harley and the bullshitter for a while.

Later…

I hope tomorrow won’t be as noisy as it was today. Today was as noisy as it would be back when Jesse was still working and the dogs would bark 10 hours a day. First Jesse was going in and out with the damn truck, then bulldozing for a couple of hours. Then just when I thought I might catch some peace around here, our little chainsaw fanatic starts up for a few more hours in back.

Obviously, it’s not trees they’re sawing. Not only are the other parcels of land adjacent to this one smaller than this one, but even if the property was as big, by now they should’ve run out of trees to cut for as long as this has been going on! They’ve been doing this nearly every day for months now. It’s got to be some sort of outdoor workshop or project they’re building.

The rat’s cuteness helped make up for some of the annoyances and frustrations. I threw my sneakers on so that pulling on the resistance bands when working out wouldn’t hurt my feet, and since I was only doing a few exercises I didn’t bother to tie the laces. I was doing a side raise with one leg and the rat was jumping up and down like a kitten trying to catch the dangling laces, LOL. His little paws were flailing as he attempted to catch them and it was so funny:)

I’m amazed at how well these decorative nail stickers hold up. It’s been nearly a week since I stuck one on my thumb and it’s still holding on strong even with no topcoat or sealer of any kind.

Still don’t know what the future holds for me as far as what blogging sites I may use and under what name. I kind of like it on Facebook. I don’t get the fun of tracking or surprising visitors/comments since I can’t post publicly cuz of the troll, but I like how I can decide who sees what entries I post. On other sites, it’s either private, friends only or public. But sometimes I just don’t want to share certain posts with everyone on my friend list. Besides, I’m really loving the break I get from the sicko in Texas. So I don’t know if I’ll ever pick up with my old blogs on my-diary and MyOpera as myself, or start anew on some site like thoughts.com under a pen name and use aliases for friends and family. Everybody’s names would have to be changed if I did that. Even if I didn’t identify myself, she’d know it was me just by the names of the people I mentioned. I might even have to keep my location secret as well.

sighs Damn trolls!

Later…

Maliheh got a good laugh from the funny pictures I sent her last night but that still doesn’t explain why I never got notice of her picking up postcards. Then again, there can only be two reasons why. She either didn’t pick them up or I wasn’t notified.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2012 We got a little rain that hopefully won’t clear up too much by the afternoon. That’s when Jesse prefers to gun his Harley, turn it off, gun it again a few minutes later, roar off on it, then return just a few minutes later and make me wonder once again if someone else who also has a motorcycle and a loud vehicle lives there now.

I’m hearing these mysterious thumps like slamming car doors. Jesse would be like most people too, and slam the shit out of doors. He did when I was up at his place and he was coming and going from here when he was working on the heater/pipes.

I’m going from thinking Maliheh’s “Naning” me to wondering if something could seriously be wrong. As in her being homeless. I sent another “test” card to her yesterday and it too, wasn’t picked up. I can’t believe the notifier would fail to alert me that many times if they had been picked up. Her student count was really dropping and I know she was in some sort of dispute with her landlord about her lease, so I’m worried she could be on the streets. She’s not just a loner, but everyone hates her cuz she’s such a bitch and so she wouldn’t have anyone to help her.

I cleaned the living room and bedroom today so I have nothing left to do for the rest of the week but the bathroom and laundry. Of course, I’m always busier on weekends.

I noticed that Nane switched her posts to friends of friends, then public, then back to friends of friends since she dumped me. It’s like she’s keeping in touch without keeping in touch. Well, it’s hard to believe it’s got nothing to do with me, anyway.

So I decided why not return the favor? I changed my posts to friends of friends as well, careful to customize our “iChats” and filter most people out of visibility range. I didn’t realize at first that friends could also see what their friends can see. Furthermore, I made a point of casually mentioning this on Irene and Christiane’s walls, hoping she’ll see at least one of them.

I went into hiding again after being dumb enough to idle on FB while doing other things. That’s when the drama queen jumped out and me. So did Jessie, though it was nice touching base with her since it’d been a while. It’s just that I’m sick of how either no one wants to chat or they all want to chat at once. I’ve never been a fan of live chats anyway as opposed to email and messages.

I’ve received many compliments in life, but few have brought tears to my eyes like my good friend Monica did last night when she told me I was the reason she was saving for a Kindle reader. What a compliment that was! This was after I offered to email her some older stories that I have no plans to publish until she gets a Kindle which she had mentioned wanting to get. She had to buy the PDF format of my first book, but I’m not going to be publishing through Smashwords anymore because the lack of sales there makes the effort simply not worth it. Amazon is much more popular.

Tom and Andy said the same thing she told me about not giving up, and Andy pointed out that Fleetwood Mac didn’t make it big till their 10th album. The only problem is that I want the fortune, not the fame. But the two tend to go hand in hand, I’m afraid, though I don’t even need a fortune. Just enough to live on would be nice:) Probably just a dream, but nice.

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