#and i have a real life too which is always my number one priority

[m1ckeyb3rry]

I really don't want to be annoying but when is the next glass princess update coming?

Have a nice day btw 💕💓

it’ll come once i write it

[hyewka]

soobin + humiliation kink + hes such a perv

priorities, you perv | c.sb ࿐

⭑ synopsis. a blind date? oh thats immediately pushed aside just for the addictive high you get off messing with your roommate, who seems to be more pouty than usual tonight for whatever reason.

⭑ warnings. sub perv soobin, panty sniffing, underwear used as ball gag kinda, handjob, fuck buddy roommate au, humiliation kink sortaa, dacryphilia, vibrator, bunny/pup petname, not proofread, use of goddess

Soobin’s been intent on following you around like a puppy this evening, all around the house, but the longer he keeps it up, the less it becomes cute and funny and the more it crosses into the ‘overbearing jealous boyfriend who isn’t actually your boyfriend’ territory. Because really, why the hell has he been acting like a pet with abandonment anxiety the day you have your blind date scheduled?

“You can’t come in my bedroom with me.” you finally say, flashing him a superficial wide smile, behind your door.

He abruptly stops, stumbling back like his mind really was on autopilot following you—then his face falls, brows knitting together. “What, why?”

“Because I don’t want your cooties all over my bed.” He isn’t amused, clearly, with a brow raised. You groan, it could be life or death and your roommate would still not choose to humor you. “I’m going to change idiot.”

“It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before?”

You click your tongue at him—he might have an amazing track record with academics, but sometimes it really is rocks for brains in there. “You’re not coming in Soobin, tough luck!”

In lightning speed he sticks his arm between the crack before you shut your door. “Wait, no, I wanna—I wanna help you pick something out!”

Now its your turn to raise a brow. Soobin? Help you get ready? He’d rather die of boredom.

You knew you weren’t crazy.

All day, hes been acting extremely out of character. Throwing you pouts during the one lecture you shared, feeling his eyes bore into you like he’s trying to burn a hole in your face, yet still spending money to buy you your favorite tiramisu even when he’s been sulking like you’ve wronged his entire bloodline.

The craziest thing is that you truly do not know a bigger cheapskate than Soobin. He’d chase a quarter in a crowd of people even if it took him all the way to Japan. So the tiramisu was a mind boggling investment. For you, let alone. It’s like he was bribing you.

He couldn’t have magically fell head over heels, it has to have something to do with the one thing different today. Your blind date.

You reach out to pat his head, mock pouting. He takes the bait anyway, lowering his head a little, looking so cute confused. It’s adorable actually, how quick he is to go with whatever you do.

“Aww Soobie, it’s okay, I promise you’ll always be my number one good boy. You really don’t have to be jealous and act out.” you tease, intentionally using baby talk to agitate him a lot more than it would’ve.

He scoffs loudly snapping his head to the side, bewildered this is the direction you decided to take things. “What? Jealous? Jealous? Jealous of what? I’m not jealous.” You stand there wearing a skeptic look on your face and a cross of your arms over your chest.

He wags his finger at your face like he can’t believe your audacity, dryly laughing (which really just sounds like a bunch of scoffs stringed together). “You’re funny, I—I gotta give it to you Y/N, you should really try your luck with Hueningkai’s comedy group again. Is it a crime to want to support your roommate after being all too aware of her notorious losing streak with the dating world? I don’t think so!”

Ouch, the all too real call out. “Damn, okay asshole you can help.” you faux hurt, not missing the chance to flip him off before walking inside and leaving your bedroom door wide open behind you. Maybe his input will have you get to your date earlier. “By the way, I do not have a losing streak.”

————-

There are outfits you just think you’d never wear to a first date—your black bodycon with cuts at the waist was an absolute no-go, especially with it’s length. Then there was the crimson red shoulder-off that had your tits looking too full—that was a big no. You don’t even know how your blind date looks, you wouldn’t want to have a man you find sexually unappealing to find you sexually appealing. That’s always a cause for a migraine.

But the problem you’re facing right now is far greater than any migraine you’ll experience. Soobin seems to think every outfit you wound up coming out with is, in his own words, “too much”.

This one’s the worst of all. “It’s literally just ripped jeans and a crop top!”

“That’s the problem! It doesn’t even look pretty!” he splutters, eyes wide and a large pout on his lips.

“You want me to wear something pretty?”

He looks to the side, mumbling, “Whatever.”

It’s raining, you hear it pouring and you’re like, fifteen minutes late already. All for Soobin’s useless input. It’s not worth it, and you’re proven even more correct when you come out the bathroom with the outfit you picked out. White, tight, but flowy at the ends of the dress. Girly and especially tight at the chest, just like you know he likes it.

Soobins eyes don’t fail to shamelessly rake over your body, stunned, looking like a deer in headlights. He clears his throat, snapping out of it. “No, absolutely not.”

You feign innocence, tilting your head. “Why not? It’s pretty.” You make it more of a point when you turn around, acting like you’re just checking your outfit through your wall mirror, knowing damn well the horndogs probably salivating at your ass barely being covered.

“It’s too much.” he parrots again lamely, chewing slightly on his lips. “Change, you can’t go out like this.”

Okay, that sort of pisses you off, turning around with your arms crossed again to the boy sitting at the edge of your bed. He doesn’t have the right to order you around. “Yes I can, I very much can.”

Suddenly, there’s a switch—he cowers like a kicked dog. “You can wear whatever you want I didn’t mean to-”

You break into a grin all of a sudden walking towards him, shutting him up.

He gulps, sitting there, avoiding eye contact when you’re close. You prop his chin up, and he just lets you, forcing him to look you in the eye. God, he already looks stupidly entranced. “You’d hate for me to wear this, huh?”

“Yeah..” he admits way too easily, a little whine in his voice, brows knitting up. Cute.

“But you love the dress, don’t you?” you purr, caressing his face with your thumb.

Your phone suddenly rings and you’re pulled out of the moment for a second, glaring at it then back to your roommate who looks like he’s under some love spell. Yeah no, this is much more fun.

You ignore the call, letting it ring as you drag your thumb down his bottom lip and god how obedient he is just sitting there and looking up like you’re his deity.

“What?” you giggle at the way his breath hitches the further you trail your finger down his body. The switch right before your eyes, oh that transformation’s worth more than anything else in the world. Bunny’s horny.

“You’d love to take this off me, right? You’d love me tease you bit by bit, have my tits bouncing in the restrictions of them, just struggling to keep your hands from ripping it apart...” you trail off, finally getting your hand on his half erect clothed dick.

You can see him holding back, holding back from humping your hand, the one you just purposefully let rest on his growing boner. “Your date.” he reminds.

You quirk a brow, taken aback. “Want me to go?”

Suddenly, he vigorously shakes his head, “No, no, don’t. I want you, please.” The strain of his voice when he pleads—god it’s the sexiest, most sinful thing ever.

Shameless. Just the way you like him.

“Hm? You do? Don’t you always?” you tease, walking away to get something out of your drawer.

“What are you looking for?” he mumbles skeptically.

You gleam, pulling out the vibrator and turning it on, showing it to your unsuspecting roommate. “Let’s play with this.”

He frowns. “You know I can make you feel ten times better than that toy, you don’t need it.”

“Who says its for me?”

You enjoy the blush that trickles his cheeks, and how easily the tips of his ear turn red as he blinks rapidly to collect himself. His adam apple bobs up and down again, stumbling over his words. “God, you’re such a himbo.”

“W-wait!” he shrieks, suddenly covering the tent in his pants.

You halt, the vibrator only a few inches from his crotch. “Can—can you…” he sighs frustratedly, looking away from you, the steam coming his red ears has you curious, what’s he so hesitant for? “Can you take off your underwear?” Oh.

Of course.

Your lips form into a smirk, knowing exactly what he wants to do with them. Slowly, with one hand you pull down your panties and let them drop to the floor. His eyes are, despite having a hard time telling you what he wants, eagerly fixed on the black lace, you could see the bead of sweat that breaks from his forehead. Pervert.

You bend down to grab it, purposefully making a show of it and he just huffs. “Get with it already.”

You laugh, “You’re being so bratty today. Think you’re owed a fuck?”

He whimpers dejectedly, shaking his head. Mockingly, you wave your panties in front of his face like an owner wagging a bone in front of their dog. He’s so indecent he has the audacity to take a whiff when the garment is close enough. God, he really is absolutely shameless.

And you really need to relieve yourself. You’re trying to not rub your thighs too much.

You crumble the underwear in your hand, and coo. “Open your mouth wide baby.”

Soobin’s mouth falls open almost immediately, tongue lolling out, looking up at you expectantly so much so it would be endearing if not for the situation you’re currently in. You shove it in his mouth, cringing at the saliva that wets your fingers.

“This is how it started huh?” you near the vibrator on his inner thighs enjoying the way he sighs through his nose, shuddering. “Fooling your roommate into thinking you were a studious, innocent good boy but in reality you just snuck in the laundry room every night to jerk off with her panties. Disgusting.”

He moans wantonly around the fabric, his hair brushing over his eyes as you near the vibrator to where he actually wants it. His dick. Poor him, its probably weeping in his pants.

“Violating me like that without my knowledge— you’ll always be a bad boy.”

Again, he shakes his head hard, to the point your panties fall out of his mouth already. “No, good boy. I’m your good boy.” he pants, face flushed. How’s he so easily worked up?

You giggle, pressing the vibrator against his cock, having Soobin’s jaw fall slack. “Couldn’t even keep the underwear in your mouth for more than two seconds. You’d make a really good camboy, always wanting people to hear you moan and whine like a slut.”

“No, no, just want you. Just want you to hear me.”

That affects you more than you’d like, and you try to fight the blush that warms your cheeks. God damn Soobin.

But he isn’t even aware, if his babbles were any indication. He dips his head back, big hands digging onto your sheets as you run the vibrator up and down. “Fuck.” he groans, still keeping his eyes open to watch your chest. You know he’s trying hard to keep up the good boy act for you, so you throw him a bone.

He gasps when your hand goes down his pants to wrap around his cock, and it’s the cutest thing ever how he immediately melts. You’re sitting next to him, twisting and jerking off his dick with his head leaning on your shoulder when you’re supposed to be under an umbrella with a future dating prospect instead.

Who cares, that man you’re sure wouldn’t give you what he’s giving you.

“Don’t wanna cum yet, wanna fuck you f-first.” he breathes into your neck. “Please goddess, please. Want your pussy.” he begs dumbly, starting to lay wet kisses to your neck— hes just not leaving room for you to really hold back.

“Holy shit, you’re good.” you realize in awe, probably wetting your bed with how aroused you are right now.

“Then take me baby, take me how you want. You’ve been good, so good.” you slur, and he practically jumps onto you like an oversized bunny, having your back on the mattress and him hovering, pulling you into an open mouth kiss almost immedietely.

“You’re so hot, fuck, you drive me crazy.” he says rushed, kissing you again, melting his mewls and pants into it.

You feel the roughness of his hands playing with your tits already, kneading so desperately you think he must’ve been itching to do just that this entire time. You like it with him, how it’s so dirty and quick, but still passionate enough to keep you wanting more.

“Fuck, wanna see them, please, please.” he whines as he salivates even more, playing with your nipples through the fabric, cheeks red and flushed, pathetically humping your cunt with his boner. “No, be a good bunny and fuck me good.”

He’s sniffling and tears stain his lashes, yet he still nods obediently, humping your cunt like he’s just restless enough to not pull out his dick and put it in—it’s the hottest thing ever.

But eventually the fabric feels rough against your skin, and you hiss, taking it upon yourself to pull out his cock from his pants.

God, his tip is red, leaky— it’s gross, a testament to how he gets with you and you love it. “Come on baby—bunny, fuck me.” you look up at him with wide, doe eyes and it immediately has him nodding frantically, missing your entrance once before he completely bottoms out, suffocatingly filling you up in one push—you’ll just never get used to his size.

“Always so mean, you’re always so mean to me.” he dumbly babbles, tongue out as he fucks into you maniacally, getting lost in your pussy.

“But you’re in my cunt right now aren’t you?” you mock, knowing that’s always his end goal with you, his end prize.

You’re breathless, curling your toes the harder he snaps his hips. You’re used to how it is with Soobin, he’s always animalistic and unrhythmic, rubbing your clit like he has no idea what he’s doing. But that’s the fun in it, how inexperienced and pathetic he is.

“Gonna cum, gonna cum, are you? Are you?” he’s out of it, kissing your neck, biting, panicky as he nears his orgasm, that before you could respond, you’re already feeling his seed fill your cunt.

He can tell, he can tell when you didn’t get there so he’s already pulling your dress up over your tits, attaching his mouth on one of your nipples, pulling the other through his hands, playing with them till they become puffy and have you withering under him. “Fuck, fuck Soobie…just like that,” you moan, feeling his long fingers squeeze into your pussy, speeding up, trying to rip an orgasm out of you.

The tense of his arms, veins showing, cease once you arch your back and cum at getting a good look of his face— lips raw and red as he bit onto them for majority of the time, eyes wet and big, just silently begging you to cum on his fingers, you let yourself go, the tightening band finally snapping.

—————-

note. lol im not super duper confident but let me know how you guys feel about this one, feedback keeps me going

[malusokay]

How to be like Jang Wonyoung

As many of you requested, part 2 of my it girls series is all about Jang Wonyeong, who's not only absolutely STUNNING, but also incredibly talented, hardworking, and of course successful. Let's get right into it!! <33

Wonyoungs Energy:

Wonyoung is incredibly charismatic, which makes her stand out without even trying!!

She has a bubbly and likeable Personality, Wonyoung appears happy and welcoming, she easily lights up a room with just her presence.

Aside from being cute and cheerful, Wonyoung is also known for being extremely hardworking!!

Confident and Unbothered. Despite receiving quite a bit of unnecessary hate, Wonyoung stays indifferent and true to herself!!

Elegant and feminine. No one does the ‘Elegant feminine self-love girly’ aesthetic like her, she is THE girly girl!! <3

Mindset:

Learn to deal with jealousy, Wonyoung gets plenty of hate, but let's be real for a second… we all know that is because of jealousy. Pretty, successful, smart, and popular? Of course, people will be jealous!!

“While practising self-love, you see good and pretty things about yourself. If I focus only on those things, I don't need to pay much attention to the criticism.”

Don't compare yourself to others “You are you, I am me”.

Keep to yourself. Stop telling people your ideas, your dreams and how you plan to archive them, your goals etc. Let your actions speak for themself!! <3

No more negative self-talk!!

Be your number 1 priority!! Take care of yourself, do what's good for you, eat well, care for your body, skincare, haircare, and your education!! PRIORITIES

Skincare

Skincare. Wonyoung has Flawless skin, finding a skincare routine that works for you can help you archive similar results!!

Wonyoungs skincare routine:

According to Google, Wonyoung only uses Innisfree products and starts by double cleansing her face, for that, she uses the Green Tea Cleansing Oil ($24), and the Green Tea Amino Acid Face Cleanser ($12)

To get the dewy class skin effect, hydration is key!! In the morning, Wonyoung likes using the Green Tea Hyaluronic Acid Serum ($30) and the Dewy Glow Tone-up Cream ($26)

Of course, you can't forget SPF. Wonyoung uses the Mild Cica Sunscreen Tone-Up SPF 50+ PA ++++, which is also great for acne-prone and sensitive skin types!! :)

For her night routine, she likes the Retinol Cica Moisture Recovery Serum ($37) and the Dewy Glow Jelly Cream ($26).

Elevate your daily life:

Healthy diet. Eating nutritious and healthy food is the first and most important step to clear skin and an overall good feeling!! Make sure to eat enough protein (ex. yoghurt, chicken, tofu or eggs), lots of fruits and veggies, and healthy fats (ex. Avocados, fish, nuts, olive oil)!!

Exercise daily. Besides dancing, Wonyoung loves pilates!! You can find lots of great Pilates videos on YouTube!!

Work on your posture!! Having good posture will not only make you feel better but also lets you appear more confident, elegant and put together. Try daily stretching and exercises to improve it <3

Try establishing a proper morning and night routine, this can help you stay structured and relaxed even on more messy and busy days.

Content that makes you feel better!! Start watching channels like thewizardliz, vogue beauty secrets, and read motivating blogs. (like mine lol <3)

Makeup:

Wonyoung is known for her iconic glittery and feminine make-up!!

Light pink blush, plump lips, glowy skin and a glittery but not too heavy eye look.

Foundation on the centre of your face and blend outwards for a naturally contoured look.

Always apply your matt products before your shimmers, that way, your makeup looks cleaner!! Also, apply your glitters from finest to chunkiest. :)

Don't apply your shimmers/glitters past the middle of your eyelid to avoid looking puffy.

If you have warm-toned skin, go for peachy glitters, for cool-toned skin, choose a champagne-coloured one.

If your struggle with dark under eyes, blend your concealer with your fingers!! This will give it a lot more coverage.

You can find lots of tutorials on Wonyoung-inspired make-up on YouTube, this one is my favourite.

I hope this little guide was helpful, I wasn't too familiar with Wonyoung, but I did some research since she was the number 1 most requested person for this!! :)

As always, please feel free to share your own suggestions in the comments and let me know who you want me to write about next! <3

✩‧₊*:・love ya ･:*₊‧✩

[waitmyturtles]

I stopped writing about Kidnap the Series about a quarter into the series because it was clearly designed to deliver the memeable romantic moments that GMMTV prioritizes these days for its number one goal, social media engagement. [And the series did this so well that many Kidnap-related social media accounts on Twitter got either banned or shadowbanned for explicit (??? get outta here, Elon) content, so the series actually did its damn thing.]

There wasn't enough plot material to actually criticize, which is my priority on this blog, so I gave my writing a rest. But: I did give the series a full watch out of deference to my insatiable stanning of the Series Y king, Ohm Pawat, and...

I'm here to say that I am not complaining about that final episode at all. I'm actually, surprisingly, happy with it!

Before I get into this, let me just first say that Kidnap didn't do something that many of the very big GMMTV series have done lately: it did not tread into disingenuous narrative waters. It didn't make thematic contradictions or leave open plot holes (Wandee Goodday), it didn't punish characters for real-life moral or ethical slips (Only Friends), it didn't jump story beats to design questionable moments without prior established emotional context (Last Twilight, 23.5).

Kidnap was sappy, very often repetitive and boring, but it wasn't offensively disingenuous, and it didn't ask its audience to hold back its understanding and expectations of how humanity generally functions. (Expect for the fact that the series had a very loose grip on the exact definition of "kidnapping," BUT ANYWAY.)

But anyway: I didn't expect the final episode to be rooted in Q's and Mhen's recoveries. And I loved that. The show didn't forget the framework in which it set up its main romance. Min is and was always a caretaker. He allowed that caretaking to obstruct his progress forward in life, whether vis à vis Nong Mhen or his Q. Both Mhen and Q asked Min to move forward from them, by the both of them taking accountability for their health, in part to allow Min to loosen his shackles (heh) on his perceived responsibilities to them.

I liked that! That was a responsible move by the show to not tilt the emotional scales in a direction that would have Min continue to take on a burden of taking care of people who, with a little help, could learn to take care of themselves.

And I'm a sucker for a therapeutic process. I'll take a quibble at the suggestion that Q "throw away" memories (since, cough cough, it could be about re-contextualizing the literal time spent and the value that an individual places on certain memories cough cough, but different strokes for different therapists), but honestly, having the entire episode framed on Q's mental health progress warmed my cockles. More mental health discussions in dramas!

I was baseline hoping for a potentially more campy or comedic take on crime and kidnapping when this show started, a kind of ironic approach that I know the acting of Ohm Pawat could take on, but that's asking a lot from a studio that's pumping out quantity over quality at the moment. I'm just very glad this show didn't end with me tilting my head to the side with question marks flying out in a thought cloud. It was, overall, a pleasant and warm watch, something worth fast-forwarding through during the holidays for the smoochy moments after one too many glasses of wine (heh heh).

And it looks like the branded pair of OhmLeng is permanent now, so I hope for a better script for these guys in the near future. Leng needs a LOT more acting classes -- but these two have chemistry in spades, and that chemistry could be used well in a better script.

[saintsenara]

Ooh more about the subtext around James/Sirius? I’ve always read the text this way too!

thank you for the ask anon!

this question could have been prompted by any number of posts i’ve made, because i am a great proponent of the idea that...

unrequited prongsfoot is canon. 

why?

i’m so glad you asked!

let’s begin with a small caveat which - regrettably - involves some engagement with discourse.

the things created within fandom aren’t real - an individual fic can’t cause actual, material harm to a reader, even if it contains tropes that would be harmful or distressing if they happened in that reader’s real life; an author’s use of certain tropes or interest in certain characters is not indicative of their actual morals and values in real life; thought crimes are not real crimes - but fanfiction is produced by human beings who are themselves products of the societies and communities in which we all live, and these societies and communities all have flaws and failings.

which is to say, those of us who prefer to read male friendships like james and sirius’ as romantic do need to be aware that, no matter how enlightened on gender and its foibles we think ourselves to be, we are nonetheless influenced as modern humans by a modern tendency to discourage platonic physical and emotional closeness between men - especially straight men - on the grounds that two men having this sort of relationship is inherently queer and, in being queer, implicitly sexual [an understanding of queerness which is another powerful societal influence on our thought, even if we know we don’t agree with it].

we should also be aware that reading a friendship as defining and life-altering as james and sirius’ as romantic gives weight to a modern tendency to prioritise romantic love - and one of its expected outcomes, the love of parents for their biological children - over platonic love, and to regard people for whom romantic love is not a priority as not properly having achieved the milestones of adulthood, nor as properly fulfilled, adored, or satisfied.

everything which follows here, then, can be taken to refer just as validly to a purely platonic relationship between james and sirius if the reader prefers. and, indeed, my view is that this is how the canon narrative wants the reader to understand james saw the relationship... 

but i also think that the canonical text wants us to infer that, for sirius, his relationship with james was one of unrequited romantic love.

it must be said, however, that the narrative doesn’t show this explicitly. of course, it emphasises sirius and james’ compatibility, their similar personalities, their shared affection for each other, and a certain element of codependency [the thought of these two boys, unable to be apart even for a detention without talking through their mirrors! my heart breaks!], but it also sets up these shared elements as - broadly - fraternal: sirius is quasi-adopted by the potters; harry thinks of him and james as like fred and george, at least until he sees snape’s memories in order of the phoenix. when sirius speaks to harry about james, the profundity of his love for him is obvious, and on the two occasions when we see them physically together [snape’s worst memory and the prince’s tale] it’s clear that each is the primary driving force behind the other’s decisions. but we have nothing which indicates unambiguously that sirius’ feelings for james were romantic.

until we dive into a bit of narratology. because the text does do something to suggest that its intention is for sirius’ relationship with james to be read as non-platonic.

and that something is its use of narrative mirrors.

the harry potter series loves assigning its characters to narrative pairs - harry and voldemort are the obvious one; ron and draco malfoy are the one which deserves more attention - and it assigns to sirius a narrative mirror whose own story is one of unrequited romantic love...

severus snape.

sirius and snape are incredibly similar, personality-wise. they also serve identical narrative roles, in that they function as the guides who lead harry through an emotional arc which begins in earnest in prisoner of azkaban and concludes in deathly hallows, in which he sheds his childish, black-and-white view of his parents and comes to regard them as real, flawed, and complex people. harry does this with james in order of the phoenix - after the realisation that he was a bully stops the hero-worshipping which defines his earlier attitude towards his father - with sirius as his guide [sirius is then killed off the second this narrative sub-arc is complete]. he then does it with lily - who spends the earlier books as secondary in importance to james in her son’s mind - in half-blood prince and deathly hallows, in which snape [via the proxies of slughorn, the discipline of potions, his textbook, his patronus, and his memories] serves as his guide, until the fact that lily is the key to the whole mystery is revealed just before harry sacrifices himself to save the world.

in the course of this, it comes to be revealed that each of them considers their life to be defined by their relationship with and love for one half of the pair of james and lily [although the series hides this in snape’s case - making it look as though he is also motivated purely by his antagonistic relationship with james - right up until the last moment]. their mirrored relationships with harry - while the idea that sirius is incapable of distinguishing him from his father is an invention of the films - is also driven fundamentally by their relationship with one of the two halves of his parents.

sirius and snape’s mirrored motivation-by-love is shown most clearly in their identical approach to guilt and grief, the two things which overarchingly drive their individual character arcs across the seven-book canon [or three, if you’re sirius - rip king].

both sirius and snape indirectly trigger the death of the person they love - and, let’s be frank, if we’re going to excoriate snape for reporting the prophecy to voldemort, exactly the same level of ire needs to be reserved for sirius and his plan to switch secret keepers [what we could do instead, of course, is recognise the life-altering tragedy of making this kind of mistake, which we all have to hope we never experience ourselves, and treat the lads with compassion] - but it’s clear in canon that neither accepts the idea that their involvement was, in fact, indirect. sirius openly tells harry that he considers himself to have "as good as" cast the killing curse on james and lily; snape rejects dumbledore’s [back-handed] comfort that james and lily’s deaths were caused by "putting their trust in the wrong person" by wishing to die himself.

wracked by guilt and hollowed out by grief, both of them then decide to punish themselves in an effort - one which, i think, they both consider futile, since they clearly regard their sins as too great to be redeemed - to atone for causing james and lily’s deaths. both of them do this by subjecting themselves to the pain and humiliation of imprisonment.

in sirius’ case, obviously, this is literal. we know from canon that he refuses to profess his innocence at any point during his show trial - and why would he, when he considers himself to be guilty? - and that he remains in azkaban for twelve years, despite possessing the means to escape before then. he leaves the prison only to attempt the one action which he thinks will redeem him in james’ eyes: murdering peter pettigrew.

in snape’s case, the prison is a metaphor [foucault just sat up]. snape entombs himself both at hogwarts - not a place he seems to have been particularly happy - and in spinner’s end, allows dumbledore to repeatedly humiliate him, and risks his life as a spy as a means of self-flagellation. like sirius, he fails to profess his innocence - through ordering dumbledore to tell nobody of his true allegiance - because he considers himself to be guilty. he leaves the self-constructed cell in which he is skulking only when dead - when harry, who takes on the burden of fulfilling snape’s atonement himself by preparing to kill voldemort, starts screaming his true motivations in the dark lord’s face - although there's some implication in canon that dumbledore’s intention was for snape to end the series by attempting himself the one action which he thinks will redeem him in lily’s eyes: murdering voldemort.

[after all, why does dumbledore say to harry at king’s cross that his aim was for snape to control the elder wand if he wasn’t hoping he’d use it to give the dark lord his death blow?]

snape and sirius mirror each other exactly in their response to the death of the person they love. we can justifiably assume, then, that we are intended by the text to read that love as identical in type. 

jkr has been very clear that snape’s relationship with lily is one of unrequited romantic love. we obviously don’t have to accept this in our own readings or in the way we write the characters in our own work - i love a queer snape sacrificing everything for his platonic best friend as much as the next girl - but we do have to acknowledge it as the doylist text’s stated intention. it stands to reason, then, that the text’s intention is for us to regard the mirror-image of snape’s love for lily - sirius’ love for james - as romantic as well.

or, unrequited prongsfoot is canon.

[ilikekidsshows]

Thoughts on Marinette being empathetic? i saw someone saying that she was super empathetic but I can't really get behind that idea cause I see her as more sympathetic instead. Like she can feel sorry for someone but I don't think she's all that good at putting herself in their shoes and actually realizing the situation beyond "this person I know/care about is sad"

---

I myself have actually analyzed Marinette’s method of relating to others as empathetic rather than sympathetic, because Marinette is completely incapable of figuring out what someone is thinking or feeling from context clues. Neither can she anticipate how someone might react to something. She can only project her own emotions or fears onto others. This is actually a skill Gabriel is incredibly good at, which I once noted as the number one difference between the two.

But, I also think that Marinette's empathy is highly situational. Marinette can't understand logically or emotionally how someone is feeling, unless it's a situation she herself is or has been in. However, if she can recognize someone's situation in her own life, she's suddenly so empathetic she can't contain herself. Notice how she was totally fine with bullying and sabotaging Kagami, until she found out Kagami was desperately yearning for a boy she has no relationship with, just like her. Then suddenly Marinette “My Adrien Problems Are The Number One Priority Always” Dupain-Cheng is so empathetic that she actually feels conflicted about getting in the way of their romance.

Still, when the situation someone is in is something she hasn't experienced, Marinette just can't relate or understand at all. She has seen a parent abusing their child in three different contexts, yet she insists all these parents are good parents because her parents are good to her. She completely ignores Cat Noir trying to tell her that he’s not emotionally fine, projecting her idea of Cat Noir onto the real Cat Noir, until his problems directly affect her, and then she proceeds to project her own thoughts and feelings on what's going on, like assuming that, just because her biggest problem is unrequited love, that's all that's bothering Cat Noir as well when he has been telling her otherwise for weeks if not months.

Marinette's main problem is projection. She acts like she's the center of the universe and the main character. Like, she is both of these things, but a fictional character isn't supposed to know that unless the writers are trying to be too meta. So, Marinette doesn't know she's the universe's creator's daughter, but she acts like she does and that makes her act entitled and selfish. She can't be bothered to take basic manners or decency into account when she needs to score a date with a hot guy. She will humiliate a classmate and supposed friend and deny him something he was really looking forward to if it means she gets to do something she could also do any other day of the week if she wasn't a coward, like asking the guy she likes to play video games with her. Marinette is absolutely convinced that her crush problems are the most important thing going on at any given moment and everyone else are just supportive characters in the drama that is her life.

While Marinette doesn't seem to live in a fantasy world entirely, she certainly goes around one foot in one. She doesn't go around outright calling her classmates extras and bit parts, but she certainly doesn't treat them as real humans with real feelings either. Even when she helps them she does it like a video game protagonist trying to max out a relationship value. She acts like she already knows what to do, like she's reading a guide, but she gets it wrong so many times so the guide is faulty, but she still gets a free pass every time because “she had good intentions”. I’ve never seen a 14-year-old get granted this much slack for such blatant disregard of others’ opinions.

Whether it's empathy or sympathy, whatever method Marinette is using to relate to others, she is bad at it.

[fushiglow]

Then I guess you're a better person than me, Gojo!!

Because I hate Gege Akutami and I'm *very* angry on your behalf 😃 I’m (sort of) kidding but damn... thoughts on 236 below the cut!!

I held off posting earlier because I felt like going scorched earth on everything jjk. I took some time to clear up some of the translations I wasn't sure about and let the reality sink in, and now I'm ready to talk about this chapter rationally lol.

Firstly, I wanna say that my issue with this chapter isn’t Gojo dying or even the way that he died. I always knew that Gojo dying was likely, but here?? Now???? I've spent all day turning it over in my mind and trying to make it work, but it just won't.

I think Gojo's 'delusion' (daydream? afterlife?) is really beautiful in isolation. Some of the dialogue is really touching and I think it'll benefit from the emotional impact delivered by the full translations. The problem is what follows.

After 235, people were nervous that Gojo hadn't actually won yet. I waited to see what some trusted translators thought of the editor's comment before deciding it was a conclusive win for Gojo, and what I read reassured me that the win would remain intact even if he died at some point over the course of December 24.

In the past couple of chapters, we were told that Sukuna was 'nervous' for the first time in 1000 years and he thought Hollow Purple at close range would be fatal. At the end of 235, Sukuna is looking pretty terrible while Gojo looks fresh as a daisy after fighting in inspiring, inventive ways throughout.

So to find out that, actually, he *hasn't* won and he's been killed by getting cut in half offscreen feels like shock value for the sake of shock value. There have been a few 'shock factor' moments during this fight and they've always bothered me a little, but I could excuse them for the sake of hype building in a weekly manga. However, I never anticipated anything on this level and I'm genuinely so disappointed.

I think this long-awaited fight ending this way cheapens Gojo's character *and* Sukuna's character (and Kashimo's character for that matter!), and ultimately makes the entire thing feel meaningless. 'Meaning' is the thread that has run through Gojo's entire arc, tying him back to Suguru as he sought to build a better world. I always felt certain that Gojo's life and death would have meaning, even if it ended tragically, but I just can't find the meaning in this. I think I understand what Gege was trying to do, but he really didn't sell it for me.

There’s nothing worse than when a story makes you feel stupid for getting invested, and that’s how I’m feeling right now. I find myself wondering, what was the point in bringing Gojo back at all??? Keep him in the box and very little changes in the story, unless it transpires that Gojo 'weakening' Sukuna for the students was his grand purpose after all which... really??

Even worse, I *always* said if it was between Gojo and the students, I wanted Gojo to die. Since 212, getting Megumi back has been my number one priority, but 236 has achieved what I previously thought impossible. I literally don't even want Megumi to come back anymore, because I just can't imagine how he could live with himself after 'killing' Tsumiki and Gojo. It seems kinder for him to die with Sukuna and I *never* thought I would say that.

I'm feeling like a real clown for the meta I posted after 235. I want to take it down because I was so certain that Gojo had won, but I won't because I don't believe my reading of Gojo's character was wrong. I just think my expectations were too high, even though I tried hard to temper them. Even so, telling Megumi about Toji being left to Shoko? Gojo losing and leaving his students to clean up the mess again?? Gojo not even *mentioning* his students in his dying daydream???

It all just feels wrong. Gojo has been turned into nothing more than a plot device at the absolute last second, and maybe it's on me for ever expecting that he would be anything more than that in a series where he isn't the main character, but why bother writing Hidden Inventory then? Why bother getting us invested in this man's story at all?

Right now, I'm feeling like I don't even want to watch tomorrow's episode, but I am interested to see whether Gege can pull this arc off in the long term. I've seen people talking about resurrection theories because of the enlightenment hints and, while I do see the vision, I think Gojo's acceptance of his death and letting go of his regrets can also be read as enlightenment as he escapes the mortal coil once and for all.

Gojo's dying bloody smile shows he's at least happy in his final moments, so my feeling is that Gojo is truly dead and gone. I really want to trust that Gege will make this work, but damn. This is a tragedy.

(Although, if Gojo actually is at peace in death, maybe that's the reason Gege will bring him back. He'll *never* let that man be happy, I swear.)

To end on a positive note, the SatoSugu crumbs were beautiful and teenage Gojo's facial expressions were wonderful. I'm crying again just thinking about the contrast of that last adorable smile with his blank expression on the next page.

I'm dropping all my canonverse WIPs and working exclusively on AU fics for the foreseeable future 😤 I'm gonna give Gojo all the happy endings he deserves!!!

(fuck. poor poor shoko.)

[pallastrology]

striking a balance: when, why and how often to get readings

artwork by august malmström

disclaimer: i'm writing mostly from the perspective of astrological readings, some of this may apply to other forms of reading too. as always, read with an open mind, take what works and leave what doesn't. <3

firstly, nobody can tell you when a reading is right for you, myself included. you are ultimately in control of when and how often you have a reading done. so, to start with, what are some reasons you might want a reading? to gain clarity and perspective on a situation or relationship, to gain awareness and insight to yourself, to work out how good of an idea something is and feel more prepared, to validate your feelings on a situation or relationship... the list goes on, deciding to have a reading done is a very personal thing, and your reason for doing so will be personal too, and that's exactly how it should be!

having a reading done can be a really useful tool, for lots of reasons; while i can read my own charts perfectly well, sometimes having another person - especially someone who is at a 'professional distance' - to go through it with can lead to new insights and angles that i didn't pick up on, a different skill set to draw from and even just someone to talk it through with you and offer some support. it can leave you feeling stronger in yourself and your decisions, energised and ready to make a move towards your dreams, validated and supported and armed with more information and awareness, which are all very useful when you're thinking of making a big change...

but there does come a point when it just isn't helpful anymore to have a reading done, for whatever reason, and it can be hard to find where the line is. when might you need to take a break from having readings? if you're feeling reliant on readings or the reader to direct you in life, if you're asking for validation on toxic or abusive situations, if you keep asking the same question over and over without accepting the answer, or if you get the feeling that you're being taken advantage of by the reader, it might be time to look into other options. most importantly, if you are in an abusive or toxic situation, while validation and emotional support are useful, please make your safety the priority. you unfortunately cannot be read out of a shitty life situation, and this is something that will need real, concrete help. please invest your resources into getting out of the situation first.

i mentioned earlier it can be hard to strike a balance when it comes to getting readings, and because it's a deeply personal thing, there is no number anyone can pull out. instead, i would recommend working on your intuition and self-belief. learn to listen to your emotions and feelings, and analyse them. it can be hard to do this, especially if you struggle with mental health issues; i have my own struggles in this area and i'm still learning to trust my intuition. but it can be done, it just takes time, patience and compassion. being curious about your emotions and recording them somehow is a great place to start. over time, you'll see patterns start to emerge and become less wary of your feelings, which will in turn let you tune in to yourself more comfortably.

my own perspective on readings: i utilise astrology a lot as a tool in my life, because it's what i study and click with. i have also had three readings from a trusted clairvoyant over the years, and will probably be having one this year too. my guideline for myself is that i don't go into readings expecting to come out with a clear answer and strategy, unless i already have my mind made up and just want to finalise the plan; instead i aim to go in with an open mind and leave feeling ready to make my decision with a fresh outlook and some new points to consider.

best of luck to anybody considering a reading, and i hope this post was helpful :-) if you enjoyed this post, please consider checking out more of my work! thank you xo

[nobossinc]

Stop Overthinking: DONE is Better Than PERFECT

Being a new entrepreneur isn't just about not knowing what to do—it's also about not knowing how to get things done. And if you don’t already know, your personal life and your business life - they're two completely different worlds.

The tasks are different, the priorities are different, and when you're building a business, you have to approach those priorities with a whole new mindset. Sure, you may have personal tools or tricks that work at home or even on the job, but those don’t always translate when you’re the one steering the ship. That's why I like to tackle these issues head-on, no sugar-coating.

I am an organized person; very much a planner; and have overcome procrastination. Even though I worked my butt off, I wasn’t getting results. How is this possible?

I took a step back to figure out what I was doing wrong and I started to see a pattern of behavior for something called Analysis Paralysis.

WHAT IT IS:

Analysis paralysis occurs when you spend so much time thinking through ideas, strategies, and plans that you never actually take action or execute them. This can happen because you're trying to perfect the plan, considering every possible angle, or simply getting stuck in the ideation phase.

HOW TO IDENTIFY:

1.      Lack of Execution

What It Is: Spending too much time planning and not enough time doing. Even if you come up with great ideas and strategies, without consistent action and follow-through, those ideas won't translate into results.

Symptoms: Creating a strategy but not implementing it consistently. Sporadically posting on social media or launching campaigns without a long-term plan.

2.      The Cycle of Starting Over

What It Is: This is where you come up with a new idea, think through the strategy, but instead of executing, you move on to the next idea. This creates a cycle where you're always starting from scratch rather than building momentum with consistent efforts.

Symptoms: Feeling like you're always in the planning stage, with nothing substantial getting completed. A lack of measurable progress in your marketing and sales efforts.

WHAT NEEDS CORRECTION:

There's more going on here than just 'overthinking.' This is something deeper, and we need to get real about why you’re doing it and how to knock it off so you can start getting results.

FOCUS: You’re spreading your energy across too many ideas without fully committing to one and seeing it through, which dilutes your efforts. I often tell my entrepreneur community: Stop trying to do 100 tasks at 1%. It’s way more effective to focus on one task and give it 100% of your energy. You’ll see better results when you fully commit to completing one thing at a time.

FOLLOW-THROUGH: Ideas are great, but they only matter if they lead to action. Without execution, your ideas don’t have the opportunity to generate sales or results.

CONSISTENCY: Your audience needs to see regular content and engagement to build trust and interest in your offerings. Consistency is key for any marketing or sales strategy to be effective over time.

To overcome analysis paralysis, the key is shifting from overthinking to taking action.

Steps to Solving the Problem:

Here are some steps to help you break free. Let’s dive in and break things down into simple, actionable steps you can implement right now.

COMMIT TO A SINGLE IDEA: Choose one idea that you believe has the most potential and commit to it. Focus on developing and executing a full strategy around this idea.

SET CLEAR PRIORITIES: Define the one or two most important tasks. Focus on those first instead of trying to do everything at once.

SET MEASURABLE GOALS: Instead of just thinking through strategies, set clear, measurable goals for what you want to achieve. This could be the number of leads, sales, or website visits.

BREAK TASKS INTO SMALLER STEPS: Overwhelm comes from looking at the big picture. Break projects into bite-sized, actionable steps and tackle them one at a time.

CREATE DEADLINES: Give yourself a specific timeframe to make decisions or complete tasks. Deadlines create urgency and limit overthinking. Break down your strategy into actionable steps with deadlines. For example, instead of just planning a social media campaign, schedule the specific days you'll create content, post it, and engage with your audience.

LIMIT INFORMATION GATHERING: Research enough to make an informed decision, but don’t get stuck in endless data collection. Set boundaries for how much info you need before moving forward.

LIMIT NEW IDEAS: To avoid the cycle of constantly starting over, limit yourself to one new idea per quarter. This gives you time to fully explore and execute each idea before moving on to the next.

EMBRACE IMPERFECTION: Done is better than perfect. Perfectionism fuels analysis paralysis, so accept that things may not be flawless, and that’s okay.

MAKE QUICK DECISIONS: Train yourself to make faster decisions by trusting your gut and learning from outcomes. The more decisions you make, the easier it becomes.

CREATE AN EXECUTION PLAN: By focusing on execution, consistency, and measurable results, you’ll break the cycle and start seeing real progress in your marketing and sales efforts. Consistency is Key: Establish a routine for your marketing efforts. This could mean posting on social media three times a week, sending out a weekly newsletter, or running monthly promotions.

TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY: Once you've made a decision, take a small step right away. Action builds momentum and reduces doubt.

MEASURE AND ADJUST: Regularly measure the results of your actions. If something isn’t working, adjust your strategy, but don’t abandon it altogether unless it's clearly not viable.

These steps can help you push past the hesitation and get things moving!

Execution! Execution! Execution! It is imperative to breathe life into your ideas, business, and your success. T

BY INVITATION ONLY:

If you prefer Live Interaction & Assistance, get on the waitlist for the onDemand: Master Your Mindset. Together we will break those big dreams down into smaller, actionable steps! Once you register, get the Master Your Mindset Toolkit. we will be using it to help you avoid being overwhelmed, take action, and achieve consistent results.

[brazenskald]

Flight Risk

Ever been on the edge of a highrise, staring down a thousand-metre vertical that could leave you flatter than a burnt crepe on the sidewalk? If your stomach just jumps at the thought, good for you. You have a healthy sense of vertigo. Me? Never felt anything other than a skin-tingling urge to see if I could make it up that high and live to kiss the ground far below. Yeah, you could say my priorities were a little screwed-up. But then again, I was also staring down the barrel of a gun. Not a metaphorical one either. Pretty sure this was a Glock, or maybe a Smith & Wesson. I wasn’t paying too much attention, since the hand holding the gun was attached to my very beautiful, very angry ex.

Henry’s never been one to mince words, even when we were on better terms. Kissing terms, I liked to say. Straight to the point, Henry was. It didn’t surprise me that even with the wind buffeting our clothes, he held my gaze in the way that a python might, as it contemplated the best way to squeeze life from its prey.

“Ray,” He shouted, to be heard over the wind. “Hand over the loci!” You’d be forgiven for asking yourself what the fuck a locus, plural loci, is or are. I myself had the faintest clue, but we don’t need to get into that now. The relevant point was in my eloquent reply.

“Henry, if I had the loci, I’d have to let go of this ledge to hand it to you, and we both know that could end in the very swift and very sudden demise neither of us wants!” Henry was the laconic one. My gifts lay elsewhere.

“Give them here or I’ll push you off this tower myself!” Henry, bless his heart, couldn’t make a threat heavier than the gun he still held leveled on me, and nothing made that clearer than his reliance on gravity rather than good old fashioned lead. I reached down into my breast pocket to feel the cold edges of the loci, still secreted away right where I’d stashed them.

“Counter-offer, why not let me go and we can discuss all of this business in the relative comfort of a steamy bubble bath? You’ve still got the keys to my place, right?” I’d never asked for them back. He’d never offered to return them. I took it for what it was. A tacit admission that he wasn’t willing to break things off. He just needed a break. Promotion from beat cop to lead investigator hadn’t improved his patience, and I was used to his pattern of slinking back after a hard case. We had our rhythms, and we made it work. These bizarro stones weren’t going to change that.

“Ray…” Henry growled, a fire lit behind his eyes that signaled we were inching close to a breaking point. It was the same tone he fell into after I walked in with a few too many bags from a boutique, or if he spotted me liberating articles from some yuppie’s waistcoat while they ogled my tits.

“Henry, I’ll give them back, once I’ve had a chance to take a good look at them. You know I always do.” This was a lie. Henry usually snuck out with any number of pilfered goods when he thought I was sleeping, which I never was. He kicked like a mule while asleep, and I was an early riser. “Besides Hen, when have I ever lied to-”

In the movies, badasses fire off gunshots that knock bad guys clean off their feet. No such thing in real life. Small calibre rounds in particular hit you like angry prods of a finger, only they sting a hell of a lot more, and you bleed all over yourself. The shock of being hit, along with my bewilderment that Henry had actually shot me, the prick, caused me to forget the precarious situation I was in. That all-important sense of vertigo that is supposed to keep you alive? It rushed back with a vengeance right in time for me to tumble out of reach of any possible handholds. I plunged into the void, watching Henry’s face morph into horror at what he’d done. Should I have felt grim acceptance? Maybe. Somebody else might’ve. I flipped him off, and twisted to face the rapidly approaching street below.

Everything moves slower when you’re in moments of tremendous stress or peril, another truism which smartass psychologists swear is post-hoc neuro-processing, some such gobbledygook that amounts to the brain casting off the usual filters to take in all possible details. The gist? Your brain doesn’t speed up, it actually slows down, or at least the amount of information you absorb at the same constant rate increases, leading to that change in perception. What that tells me, a college drop-out with a passing interest in neurocognitive processes where they interact with biocybernetics, is that my fall lasted about the usual amount of time, but my reflexes were firing in response to far more stimuli than normal.

My hand reached into my breast pocket and seized the loci, those blighted jewels that had indirectly caused my current predicament. I can’t say what I consciously expected, other than that I wanted to have the cause of my untimely demise in hand at the moment it all came crashing down. I must have gripped them more tightly than before, the edges digging into my palms and drawing blood. What happened next was difficult to process, even afterward.

I felt the skin of my hand peeling off, like I’d dipped my hand into boiling oil. I watched the sidewalk rush toward me at about the speed of the typical maglev train, and despite my smugness of seconds past, I closed my eyes. My chest lurched like I’d suddenly started falling upwards. The wind rushing past my ears fell silent. That seemed a lot less… violent than I had anticipated. Is death usually so anticlimactic?

I opened my eyes. A cackle tore free of my throat, lurched out right ahead of a wave of bile. I spat when my stomach was empty. The pool of vomit had splattered to the sidewalk beneath me, while I hovered several feet overhead.

“Eat your heart out Henry,” I rasped, throat hoarse from puking. “I am going to steal so much shit, you’ll never be able to give it all back.”

[doctorhelena]

Oh accidental Howard marriage sounds like great fun!

(In reference to this WIP ask game)

This story takes place shortly after the end of Agent Carter S2 (in a universe where Peggy and Daniel's romance was quite short), and is pretty much just what it sounds like (although it also has a Steggy wraparound, in which post-Endgame Steve learns about it 😂).

Peggy and Howard very drunkenly get married during a night out in Vegas (where they are staying for work-related reasons), after which, to Peggy's mortification, Mr. Jarvis gets called to the rescue. 😂(Thankfully, both parties being intoxicated was sufficient grounds for an annulment in Nevada in 1947.)

Here's an excerpt:

---

“You’re too good for him, Peg.” Howard gestured in the general direction of Los Angeles, and more specifically of Daniel Sousa.

Peggy sighed, swirling her whiskey around in her glass. “Oh, I don’t know. He’s a good man, he just has a tendency to be a little too protective for my taste. Perhaps I simply didn’t give him enough of a chance.”

Howard shook his head. “He’s a nice enough guy, but we all know you two never would have worked out in the long run. He isn’t in love with the real you. Not like Rogers was.” He shrugged. “Sousa’s top priority is always knowing you’re safe. And you’re just not the kind of bird who does well in a gilded cage.” He grinned. “Kind of like Bernard.”

Peggy snorted, pulled away just in time from the brink of wallowing in Steve Rogers-related wistfulness. “Good God, Howard, how many of those have you had?”

“Flamingos? Or drinks?”

“I certainly hope, for poor Mr. Jarvis’s sake, that the answer to the second is a considerably larger number than the first.”

Howard grinned and clinked his glass against hers. “Just the one flamingo so far. Although that might change, I’ve been thinking of putting him out to stud.”

Peggy lolled back in her chair, feeling suddenly more relaxed than she had in months, warm and loose-limbed and alarmingly near giggling at the thought of Bernard with a harem of female flamingos. “Howard, don’t you dare do that to Mr. Jarvis. You don’t appreciate the man nearly enough. How many times has he saved your bacon?”

“More than once, that’s for sure. Maybe even more times than you have,” Howard admitted, then swung himself abruptly up into a standing position, reaching for Peggy’s hand to pull her up too. “Here, finish that drink and I’ll take you out to dinner and to a show. Take your mind off things.”

“We have to work in the morning,” she reminded him. They were in Las Vegas to evaluate the suitability of the old Groom Lake auxiliary airfield site as a remote test site for some of the SSR’s more volatile scientific and technological research, at Phillips’ behest - a part of the plan she, Phillips, and Howard had to fold the SSR into a new, replacement agency, better suited for the cold war in which the word currently found itself.

That Peggy had just ended things with Daniel, less than a month after they’d started, was simply a happy coincidence - although, she supposed, happy only in that she found she actually rather fancied a night on the town in Las Vegas to take her mind off things before evaluating the site and then flying back to New York. Alone. Not alone, she reminded herself. Angie was there, and her work. It just - it wasn’t quite the post-war life she’d always imagined she'd have, before Steve Rogers had sacrificed himself to save millions of lives on the Eastern Seaboard.

Good God, she was getting maudlin. Perhaps she did need to eat.  “All right, Howard,” she said, tossing back the rest of her drink. “Take me out and show me Las Vegas.”

[paranasloc]

My mom is one of those people who watch things just for fun and she usually finds long or in-depth discussions about fictional stories or characters boring so I always try to find a balance between the fun and the discussions which is not easy cause when she’s bored she just leaves or gets irritated lmao

Anyway I’m going to build it up bit by bit through the rewatch so she gets to form her own ideas slowly and steadily but after we finished the series the first time I asked her so who are your favorite characters now, and with some nudging she finally arrived at the conclusion that her favorites are eren mikasa Levi erwin and hange. From the start she’s always liked eren and mikasa but what was surprising to me was that she still liked him after finishing the series. So I asked her, why? Don’t you think that committing genocide was wrong? My mom being my mom, for her this was just another anime series and she has other more practical things to worry about, she said, I’m not talking about who’s right and who’s wrong I’m just another viewer who has seen their story and that’s all there is to it. Me being me I refused to give up 😂 so, very carefully, I asked, but from your own perspective, did eren do the right thing? And she said, well he didn’t really have much of a choice. I could sense she was getting a bit annoyed so I stopped there lmao at least I got something out of her. And I managed to get this out of her only by asking her roughly the same question a number of times already. Another time I asked her, but if you had been in his shoes, what would you have done? She said, hypothetically, I wouldn’t have done any of these things because I wouldn’t be eren or any of the other major characters, a person like me can only be a minor character in that universe. Just last night she said lightheartedly that they really wronged eren for putting him behind bars after he just saved the cadets albeit unknowingly while they were trying to get some gas at the headquarters, and I took the chance and said, well if that’s what you call being wronged then what about the 80% of humanity that he killed? What about all of the children who never even got to experience growing up? And she kind of shrugged and said, yeah that was wrong too. Sometimes talking to my mom about certain things really feels like trying to get the stereotypical cat to like you lmao 😂 you try to reel her in by asking simplified questions of importance casually but it doesn’t always work. On the other hand I feel that I should clarify and it’s that I’m pretty sure my mom does NOT support genocide, or any of the other selfish things that eren has done, in the real world. It’s just that my parents are very practical, very no nonsense kind of people who are busy with matters in the real life which leaves little room for much else. I’m very lucky that she even indulges my shenanigans at this point really because she 100% would not have watched snk or any other anime had I not begged her to lmao so this is really just her being kind of slow and not always 100% ‘there’ when we’re watching or talking about it because to her this simply isn’t very important and frankly isn’t worth ‘wasting’ too much time and energy for, but this doesn’t mean she dislikes it or whatever watching and thinking about anime just aren’t a priority for her. Anyway to provide an example I believe snk is banned in China? And I told her this and asked her if she understood why and if she could see the parallels, and she said yeah she did. She also said that the Japanese military at the time were really really cruel. So yeah, I just don’t want anyone misunderstanding

Other than this I always knew she liked Levi and hange, way before she even realized it herself cause she’s always had only good things to say about them. And then I also finally told her my top ten favorite characters and she was really surprised that my favorite was sasha? 😂 she asked me why, and I said, because she’s had remarkable character development. Because sasha used to be a selfish, stingy, and cowardly brat back when she was even younger, and then all on her own she eventually became a splendid soldier and an extraordinary person. Brave, generous, principled, and kindhearted, not to mention her battle skills, and she’s so funny and charming too. What’s not to love? My mom just kind of smiled and nodded. What was funny to me was when I mentioned that I found connie to be the most good looking male character in the series and she looked at me with wide eyes and basically said that my preference was odd 😂 um??? Am I the only one who finds Connie very handsome? I don’t often look at a lot of posts on here or wherever but I bet not? He’s really good looking though??? 😂 I told her I really liked Connie’s eyes and she found it funny lmao??? Anyway the conversation ended there but I plan to clarify sometime soon. The only thing I’ve ever heard her say about this on her own is that she found eren pretty, especially younger eren. She’s also answered before that historia and Annie were very pretty, and that hange was pretty too even with an eyepatch. She’s also mentioned a few times that she felt mikasa looked a bit too mature for her age in season 4 and that she was prettier in the previous seasons. Armin on the other hand she felt looked very young. For me personally I find connie Levi and hange to be the most good looking characters, and eren armin mikasa and falco aren’t bad either but they’re a bit hit or miss for me lmao

[hilarychuff]

for the ask game :)

i carry it in mine + 3, 13, 14

howl + 9, 15

the ask game

ty for the questions!!

i carry it in mine - tag, ao3

3. what’s your favorite line of narration?

hmm it currently stands at 45k words so hard to pick just one but i'm p sure this was the line that i was like first working towards when i started writing it

He means to make me queen, she thinks, her legs turning to jelly as she sinks to the floor.

like the scenes in chapter 6 and 7 at the wall where he shows her his mark/she realizes the full implications of it all were for sure like one of THEEEE inciting visuals i had

13. what music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

i actually write mostly in silence 😭 i can plot and write notes etc with the tv on or with music on but honestly i usually find it too distracting!!! i'm a big singer alonger and i really need to like. concentrate for the most part when i'm writing for real. nooooo clue what would be a good soundtrack for reading bc i would want vibes to be similar to like medieval period piece stuff so maybe something sort of instrumental???? or like a softly crooning female singer songwriter type of vibe. something a lil folksy perhaps???

actually wait i lied sometimes i listen to asmr videos on youtube!!! not that i recommend that per se lmao. but just a lil something to provide a bit of sensory stimulation so that i don't get like. bored.

14. is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

hmmmm. i don't think i went into this fic with the intention of like "this is what i want readers to learn" so much as i was like wouldn't if be interesting if... and then if their places were switched....

but i will say that something i didn't expect while writing was how many people would be upset with jon in the beginning for not making sansa his priority number one. which i GET like it's a soulmate fic that's sort of the expectation and it's an uneven expectation because he knows something here that sansa doesn't. but i always kind of felt like.... sure sansa is something different to him here than in canon but at least in the beginning the love is very much the same and exists and always existed???? and i could have done a better job writing TO that if i wanted it to be clear but i think it never occurred to me that it wouldn't be. it's so clear to me in canon how much jon loves his family, including sansa, even though we never actually see them interact for ourselves. but the way he thinks about her is so sweet. and the memories he has of her are very tender.

i think probably for the most part anyone who stuck around found a way to move past that if it felt wrong/unfair to them but i guess if i had one thing i wanted people to learn it would be sometimes that your ability to help someone or be there for them is not always a reflection of the love that you have for them. sometimes circumstances are just complicated. sometimes there's nothing you can do. but that doesn't mean you don't love someone and have love for them and hurt for them and think about them etcetcetc.

i am very much a problem solver in my own life/relationships which i think frustrates people sometimes and also sometimes leaves me feeling useless if someone is upset about something and there's nothing i can do but sometimes just loving someone and making sure they know that is enough !!! not that jon does that either in the beginning i guess lol woops but he's very much a sad boy ok maybe cut him some slack 😭

howl - tag, ao3

9. were there any alternate versions of this fic?

WELL the first howl i banged out in literally a 72 hour period cribbing heavily from an old scream script i found online that wasn't quiiteeee screen accurate and there was only ever one version of that. BUT in the larger grand scheme sense of this i do have notes for a howl 3 and howl 4 so like. not alt versions but additional installments in theory!!

i think there in the initial like "casting" phase if you will i had different notions for what howl 2 would be. bc joffrey was an obvious billy but i was like then who is stu.... and then finagling howl 1 meant some changes for howl 2 but honestly those felt really right to me when i settled on them!!!!!

as for howl 3 that casting has also taken a LOT of finagling that probably still needs some ironing out so that has probably gone through a couple different mental makeovers about how exactly to handle the roman/john milton of it all but rest assured i have lots of thoughts!!!!!!

15. what did you learn from writing this fic?

WELL!!!! actually!!!!! one thing that always bugged me about scream 2 was sidney being an actress and doing theater when it felt so like antithetical to her character to put herself in the spotlight in any capacity. but it's so like baked into the movie that doing howl 2 i was like ok how do i keep it??? and in thinking about that for sansa i considered a lot about the interiority of the character and how like. sure it's putting yourself in the spotlight. but it's also an opportunity to step out of yourself and be somebody different which i think both sidney and sansa are really craving, especially when stab/knifed is putting them on a national stage in a lot of ways. so that was something i hadn't really thought about before!!

i also think there are lots of times watching a horror movie where you see a character doing something and you're like "NO WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT WHY AREN'T YOU DOING XYZ INSTEAD" and then when you're making it like prose narrative as opposed to a script and you're in their head you really have to make it make sense to yourself a lot more (like not just running away after the police car crash scene in scream 2/howl 2) and so that was something i felt like i learned more about too like. yes sometimes you are making a decision because it serves the plot. but also how can you reconcile that action with your character's needs/wants/turmoils/experience etc.

[idealisticrealism]

TCL 2x12 recap

Yo look who’s back, literally like 6 months after the finale lol. So annoying when Real Life gets in the way of fangirling, but I’ve finally managed to get my priorities straight, so here it is.

For anyone who actually remembers anything about the finale, enjoy lol

Ah what very fortunate timing that Garrett just happens to be coming to see Luca at the hospital (with a teddy bear! Awww. He may be 80% asshole but he's 20% heart lol) riiight as Thony and Fi are led out in handcuffs. But ugh I do love Garrett and Thony's relationship and the fact that despite the way they often antagonise each other, they do always help each other out when they can. But lol at his long-suffering “What the hell did you do, Thony?” because lbr this is just another in a long line of ‘Thony Pulling Shit He Then Has To Fix’ kind of situations haha. And ugh he even tries to help Fiona too, because after learning the truth about Chris and spending a bit of time with them I don’t think he can dismiss them as easily as he used to be able to (because he's finally started to see them as people, instead of just law-breakers– the growth sure is sloooow with this boy, but it's there). But ughhhhhhhh Fiona’s pleading as they load her into the car?? Just crush my heart why don’t you??? (like seriously Martha Millan is a freakin’ powerhouse and we are so lucky to have her). And seeing Thony’s panic, though??? She’s definitely having yet another one of those ‘well shit if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions’ moments lol. She’s been through a few of those in the show– a significant number of which were literally within the last 24hrs lol– and lbr this probably isn’t going to be the last either. Oh Thony. Everything always has to catch up to you eventually….

Oh thank god RK backed out of drowning Nadia. He looks all bewildered and contrite now, like he doesn’t understand how that just happened…. Tbh this dude is legit unhinged, but I mean that’s not exactly breaking news considering some of the shit we’ve seen him do this season lol.  But ugh poor Nadia running for her life through the penthouse and begging Joseph to let her go, but still being trapped– talk about a gilded cage ughhh 

Ngl I got distracted for like 15 mins finding the filming location of the 'hospital', narrowing it down using the fast food signs that you can only just see in the background of one shot haha. But success, now there's another location added to the list. But anyhow ugh it makes me sad seeing Thony holding onto the teddy bear :(  She's still deep in her 'I fucked up' mode, and tbh though it hurts me to see her hurting, it's also kind of satisfying?? Bc she really has just been running around this whole time thinking she knows best– and to be fair, a lot of the time she does, like with trying to stop the ridiculous poisoning attempt– but that just means she fools herself into thinking she’s right all the time, and not listening to others or reaching out for help when she actually should. It's definitely a well-established character flaw, but it has been cool seeing her slowly starting to rely on and trust others more (even if she falls back into bad habits repeatedly lol). But at least she looks contrite here for not telling Garrett about going to Manila to bring drugs back for RK–  and tbh I'm on Garrett’s side here because if she’d told him, they could have busted RK for it, and this all could have been over.  But she was too focused on protecting Luca's medicine to think about the consequences. I mean I can't blame her for not reporting the Fentanyl, because she only found out about that like a few hours ago and she was a little too busy running for her life and then saving Luca to be thinking about calling Garrett to snitch lol.  But ughhhh Garrett’s offer that if they get the drugs and she testifies, she can get new, legal identities for her family– god, it’s everything she’s wanted. Like ok yes, testifying will absolutely mean risking her life; but to protect her family? To have a chance at a normal life without fear? To allow Luca to grow up with every advantage that he is currently denied? She'd do it.  (Though argh Garrett you don't have the best track record of keeping your CIs safe from RK! Maybe he's so determined bc needs this as like a do-over,  to get it right this time)

Ooooooohhhh Thony having to explain to Chris and Jazz and JD about how she got Fi arrested and that she's been working with the FBI. Chris is understandably more forgiving because of everything she did to protect him when Marco died, but Jazz is justifiably upset (She's like 13 and her mom might be about to be deported, of course she’s not taking it well) and ooohhh JD is pissed. I kind of love that he doesn't hold back the truth bombs from Thony–  in particular, that her blind mission to save Luca at any cost is tearing the rest of her family apart. Again, it hurts to see her copping it from all sides, but at the same time she needs it. I adore Thony but she needs to remember she's not alone anymore and that it's okay to trust others rather than try to do everything herself- especially when trying to do it herself and failing can cause a lot of pain for others 

Speaking of trusting others, I am very much here for the little mobster/FBI alliance happening rn with the two opposing power couples (Russo and Garrett, Thony and Arman) teaming up.  Ah, remember the early days when Arman was like the FBI's biggest baddest target? Now they're practically coworkers lol, like he even practically admits to the attempted murder of RK and the feebs are just like 'well that was dumb but whatevs' lol. And I just love this little meeting bc as ever, their priorities are all different– Thony wants to save her family (and absolve her own guilt). Arman wants to protect the two women he loves, including saving Thony from herself. Garrett wants to take RK down for Maya. Russo just wants Kamdar behind bars so she can finally be done with this shit haha. They may all have the same end goal (getting RK the hell out of the picture) but man they are not at all on the same page lol. I also love that literally the moment the feds leave, Thony is immediately back on her bullshit, ready to run straight back into the minefield that is RK’s immediate vicinity, so completely sure that she can manipulate him into giving her the info she wants and then let her walk away unharmed. Aaaand well I guess we can agree she did NOT learn her lesson earlier haha. Oh Thony, you're going to regret this, and lbr as always it's not going to be you paying the ultimate price for your actions. Of course Arman is all like *deep sigh* at this haha. You know that meme with the two kinda cartoony stick figures and one of them is holding the other's leash while the leashed one is on all fours going absolutely feral?? Somehow these two seem to take turns as to whether they're the one holding the leash or the one needing to be restrained lol. To prove my point, Arman is now trying to keep her from going ahead with her terrible idea by offering a terrible idea of his own–  killing Kamdar. Tbh I’m in love with the continued theme of these two of both wanting pretty much the same thing: to protect each other (and their families), yet trying to go about it in completely different and often conflicting ways. And ugh even though Thony's a Buddhist and hates the idea of killing RK (especially when there has already been more than enough killing/death in their lives lately), her biggest objection to the plan is that it could mean losing both Arman and Fiona (via jail and deportation, respectively). Whereas Arman sees it as the only way to definitively ensure that his loved ones are safe. He doesn't intend to be caught and jailed for it, of course, but if it happened, he'd be able to live with that, knowing that they'll be free from RK. (TRUE LOVE,  Y'ALL). And speaking of true love, I'm obsessed with the fact that literally as soon as the feds leave, Armony go from standing several yards apart to having practically zero personal space between them as they argue. Oh you two, please never change lol. And ughhhh the way they look at each other as he says "Do you really trust the FBI to protect you?" bc it carries such an undercurrent of I'm the one that you're supposed to trust. I'm the one who's  supposed to protect you. And ugh his "You don't understand, Thony. As long as Kamdar's breathing, none of us are safe" before he turns and walks away–  he's telling her that he's already made his choice, that keeping them (her) alive is worth any other cost. And hmmmm who does that remind me of? Perhaps a certain mother of a sick son, who is willing to do absolutely anything to keep him safe??? Ngl I love that she's being forced to realise what it's like to be on the other side of the equation… and now the question (as ever) is will she actually learn anything from it haha

Nope nope no seeing Fi in jail is awful. I appreciate that Thony immediately acknowledges that JD is right, and that Fi being in there is completely her fault. Though I do respect that Fi refused to blame her and was like 'we did it for Luca'-- because she loves him too, she'd do anything for him, and now she needs Thony to do the same for her kids.  And heck yeah that she calls Thony out on believing that she can manipulate BOTH Kamdar and the FBI, and that by trying she's likely going to get herself killed. Seriously there’s already so many voices in this ep that are trying to show her reason, but Thony is too far gone down the rabbit hole–  she can't see any way out except forward, so she's plowing ahead despite the warning signs. And despite that it's hard to watch, I love it, because it's so true to her character, and also so true of someone who is cornered in a situation and is completely panicking. Also yeah clearly the lessons of the past 24hrs remain unlearned lol

Ok I love that as soon as the feds get eyes on RK's apartment, Garrett immediately asks if Nadia's okay. Partly because he would hate the thought of another innocent woman being completely at RK's mercy, but also because he knows how important Nadia is to Arman and he doesn't want to see him lose someone he loves. Ngl I love that they're starting to develop a bit of a respect and understanding of one another… (aaaand now I’m gonna ignore the Russo/Garrett flirting in the rest of the scene bc ewww lol)

Okay okay okay I might be about to go on a bit of a spiral here BUT. Hear me out. This whole scene with Jazz being upset that JD didn’t marry Fi, and JD explaining to Chris about the requirements of getting a green card through marriage?? What is the point??? Like honestly what is its narrative purpose in the show– what made the writers decide to include it? Bc like okay it could be just to show how deportation rips families apart, and that the path to becoming a legal citizen is extremely challenging even in very worthy/legit cases. BUT I DON'T THINK SO. As JD explains, he and Fi no longer meet the criteria because she's been arrested, plus she's just been there illegally for far too long. But you know what pair WOULD meet the criteria??? A widow who is only a few months over her visa– which she overstayed due to EXTREME HARDSHIP (the exact reason that JD says can qualify someone for a waiver)-- and a never-actually-married American citizen, THAT'S WHO. Like ok maybe I’m way off base here but I seriously think that the entire purpose of this scene was to a) lay the foundation for us as viewers to know the marriage-for-citizenship idea is actually a possibility, and b) give Chris the knowledge that he can then pass on to Thony, planting the idea in her head that if she and Arman were to marry, she and Luca would be safe from deportation…. I mean c’mon there’s got to be something there, right? I'm absolutely convinced that if Thony doesn't already know about Arman's marriage being void (which tbh I don't think she does; she naturally assumes Nadia got divorced from RK) she's going to learn about it next season, and the marriage-for-citizenship plotline will follow shortly after.  And I mean okay I know I've been wrong in my predictions before, but I've also been right at times, and I feel this one in my bones lol. Watching this scene the first time was like being a kettle slowly boiling until by the end I was mentally screeching ARMONYMARRIAGEFORESHADOWING!!! ARMONYMARRIAGEFORESHADOWING!!!ARMONYMARRIAGEFORESHADOWING!!!!!!! lol

Phew. Anyway. Ugh my precious boy Chris offering to leave his home and everything he's known to go with Fi. But of course she refuses with 'everything I did, I did for you' and ughhh don’t talk to me about the parallels between Thony and Fi and the things these amazing mothers would do for their children. "The best thing you can do for me is to live the life I always wanted you to have" ugghhh why do Fi and Chris always insist on making me cryyyy

Oh Thony. Yet again walking straight into the lion's den… tbh for someone so smart she really does so many dumb things haha. But then again she is damn impressive with the way she can go toe to toe with some incredibly dangerous people and not only be fearless, but can talk them into doing what she wants. And now with RK she selectively uses the truth (the "everything I've done, I've done for my son"/"Arman helped me in the past but you're the one that can help me now, and I need this deal more than anybody"/"I didn't steal from you, Arman did"/"with all the corruption in the Philippines, people don't trust easily") to conceal her motivations and evade his questions. She never outright lies, which means he can't catch her telling one and turn on her. It's very clever (as is Nadia's subtle hint regarding RK's plans for the Caymans) but unfortunately, a man like RK doesn't get to where he is without also being very clever– and very paranoid.  

Lol Garrett you really should have put a tail on Thony to prevent her from pulling this kind of shit, but too late now! Guess you also never learn lol. Also hi there Miranda Kwok having a little cameo like she did in 1x01–  the woman sure likes her luxury vehicles haha

Yassss I loooove Garrett calling Arman because he might be the only one with the information to save Thony.  And ugh even the way Arman answers the phone– there was a time when he would have answered with annoyance or disdain, but now he sounds uncertain, like he knows something is wrong. Probably because Thony is usually the one who does the communicating between them, so the fact that Garrett is calling him directly proves that something bad has happened. And ugh the way he springs into action immediately, probably kicking himself because he should have known that Thony would put herself directly in Kamdar's crosshairs rather than let him go ahead with a plan that was almost certainly doomed to end with him spending a lifetime in prison. They're both martyrs for each other– both clinging to the hope they can walk through fire and come out the other side to where the other will be waiting– and ngl I'm SO HERE FOR IT.  Lol at Garrett trying to tell Arman to stay away though; like did he ever for a second really believe that he could tell Arman–  Arman who became a rat for Thony, who went to jail for Thony, who murdered an innocent woman for Thony– that Thony was in danger and that he WOULDN'T immediately go after her???? Like okay to give him credit I'm sure the likelihood occurred to him before he made the call but he knew that whatever information Arman could give him was worth the risk. And ugh when Arman pulls the caddy up beside him he basically immediately hands him a vest (after making an annoyed comment about Arman not listening to him, of course) and then his "Come on. Let's go pretend to be on the same side" and uggghhhh I love themmmmm. But lbr they have been on the same side for quite a while now, which is the "Protect Thony at all costs" team and I’m obsessed with it 

Oh Thony. Thony ‘The risk I took was calculated, but man am I bad at math’ De La Rosa. You've been incredibly lucky til now to be able to find your way out of some of the worst situations, but I think now the alarm bells (or are they funeral bells?) are finally starting to ring in your head. And suddenly you're thinking Arman was right. Fi was right. Garrett and Russo were right. I should have listened. But it’s too late now and uggghhhhhh RK calls her out on lying to him about the drug interaction that nearly killed him and tbh I wish we could hear more of her trying to explain herself (but the camera is focused instead on my new favourite pair of enemies-turned-allies haha). But ugh then we see her make the mistake, not that there's really any way she can avoid it: she lies.  She lies and he knows it. He’d suspected it before, when she was weaving her story purely with carefully targeted truths, but now he knows, and she has to die. (We've seen repeatedly this season how paranoid he is and how much he hates and fears being lied to). I appreciate that he's not without honour, though; he'd be dead without her, so he grants her her family's lives in return. Joseph too seems to have enough honour that he hesitates before pulling the trigger, and that hesitation is what saves her life and costs him his own– which ngl I'm a little sad about, because I liked him and I always hoped he was going to end up choosing to help Armony take out RK. Anyway I love that it's a team effort that saves Thony's life; not only the two men who care about her, but also she herself, when she knocks Joseph's gun away. The writers could have had Garrett or Arman shoot Joseph the moment he lifted his gun, but they didn't; they had her fight for herself first. This whole show they've shown us time and again that Thony is a fighter, and that she’ll never give up. (The only time she ever refused to fight for herself was when Arman was forced to choose between saving her and Maya, but tbh I think she knew from the start what his decision would be, regardless of what she said or did).

But aaaahh anyway there are so many bullets flying and ugh Arman and Garrett are working so well as a team (my boys!) and then it happens.  One little stumble is all it takes, and it hurts that it's Thony who makes the mistake. It was her fault that they were all there in the first place, and now it's her fault that she and Garrett are stuck in the open, exposed and vulnerable and under fire. And he makes the split second decision– if he crouches to pull her up, all the fire will be directed at them both, making her more likely to be hit. So instead he stands over her and fires back, making himself the target, knowing that Arman will swoop in and get her out of there. And it works! Except there’s just ooooone small problem ugh. Honestly, it’s been what, like 6 months since I first watched this? and I still have trouble believing that a) they really killed him off and b) that I’m actually so sad about it?? I know I’ve said it many times before, but: he was a jackass, but he was our jackass. And though he caused plenty of problems of his own, he was there for Thony when it really counted, especially once they got to know each other a bit more.  And ugh having to watch Thony watch him die, and then to go straight from his death scene to watching Thony walking into the hospital, carrying the bear he got for Luca? Like damn why must this show insist on hurting me. (Ngl though I wish we’d gotten to see more of the aftermath of his death– I would have been very down to see Arman pulling Thony into his arms and comforting her while the body was being carted away lol).

Wait is that the same kindly Filipina nurse who spoke to Fi in the waiting room? If she was an ER nurse she would definitely not be up on the wards with an admitted patient. But whatevs, it's irrelevant. The social services lady barely reacted to Thony coming in, so I guess Garrett must have got in touch with them earlier to clear her. Does this mean that– in regards to her at least– all is basically forgiven and she can just take him home when he’s better?? Or does she just have visitation rights?? This show can be very unclear lol. But ugh all is obviously not forgiven for Fi :( seeing her in jail with the kids is rouuughhh. Her line “Sometimes you need to do what you know is right in your heart, even though other people say it’s wrong” has a similar ring to “Not the right way or the wrong way, but any way you can”; it’s a sentiment we’ve heard from pretty much all the main characters (Arman, Thony, Fi, Garrett) in some form or other, and is definitely one of the major underpinnings of the show. God her teary eyes though and the way that JD is so quick to reassure her that he’ll look after the kids and ughhh why does this show insist on making me cry????

And the trauma isn’t over because now Thony is going to meet with Russo at the FBI, finding her in Garrett’s office which is filled with all his clutter and his photos of his kids and his collection of brightly coloured stress balls and novelty pens, and ugh I love the subtle character details here because now I think about it, he was often tossing around a ball or something in his scenes at the office. Tbh as much as it hurts, I love that Russo calls Thony out on her role in Garrett’s death. She basically says he was a slippery bastard that could weasel his way out of anything before Thony came along and dragged him down with her, and lbr it’s not inaccurate?? I mean he did take stupid risks anyway, and the bad guys probably would have caught up to him eventually, but still.  Maybe Russo is especially angry because she still wonders if Garrett did have secret feelings for Thony, and whether Thony might have taken advantage of that, despite her clearly having eyes only for Arman (Russo isn’t blind; she’s seen them together, seen the risks they’ve taken for each other). Or maybe just having someone to blame helps with her own grief. But even as she calls Thony out for everything she’s done (again, deservedly, because Thony has pulled a lot of shit and has mostly managed to avoid the consequences until recently) she agrees to help her and Fi, because that’s what Garrett would have wanted. Just in case anyone forgot that this is a show about love, and about the lengths people will go to for the people they love (even after they’re gone), here’s a little reminder ugh.  But of course nothing can just go smoothly in this show, so the moment Thony starts to record the statement that will help free Fiona, they discover RK has posted bail and is about to jet off to the Caymans…. and now the race is on.

Lol Nadia is pissed about basically being kidnapped to go live a life of luxury in the Caymans, but like… girl, go with him and then smother him in his sleep and take all his money?? It’s the perfect crime haha. Ngl I do find it funny that he’s all like, ‘you tried to kill me, I tried to kill you, now we’re all good’ lol– lbr the man has never been particularly stable. But oh daaaamn the plot twist of the airport ground crew suddenly turning on them and shooting his guards– I had a brief moment of thinking the FBI had gone completely off the rails with this one before the roar of the motorbike engine made it all very suddenly and very sexily clear. And oh how I love to see my boy winning again, kicking the shit out of the man who has spent weeks tormenting him while he pleads on the ground. The gun coming out was a mix between ‘yessss do it’ and ‘noooo you’ll get caught, leave him to the FBI’ but then he turns and offers it to Nadia and I’m??????  Like at first I was like ‘dude wtf why the hell would she want to do that and have his blood on her hands, that's not a gift'', thinking there was no way she’d want to risk any involvement in his murder– but then I got schooled haha, because clearly a) Arman knows her true nature far better than me, and b) she is still REALLY pissed about the almost-drowning thing. And suddenly I’m remembering the story about her as a teenager, holding a corkscrew to a guy’s neck for stealing her tips, and being reminded that Nadia’s vicious streak runs deep. The look of pure satisfaction on her face is hot intense; Arman may do violent things but as far as I remember we’ve never seen him take pleasure in it, whereas Nadia…. I could see this awakening something in her, a greater ruthlessness in her pursuit of power, but I guess we’ll see…......

Omg the FBI chopper touches down literally only moments after Nadia and Arman ride off, and it seems impossible for them not to have been seen and recognised, but apparently not?? Wow the feds really need to get their eyes checked haha. Though from the look that Russo and Thony exchange, they know exactly who did it anyway– well, not exactly, because they’re definitely both picturing Arman being the one pulling the trigger, but still, they've got a Morales in mind

Damn okay Queen Nadia of La Habana here in her red lipstick and red dress with the shoulder pads looking like she should be sitting on a throne next to Satan himself. Tbh I think I was right about killing RK awakening something in her; this woman looks ready to destroy anything and anyone that stands in between her and her kingdom. And as Arman asks, “So how does it feel, walking in here now, being your own boss? Not having to answer to anybody– not Hayak, not Kamdar…” you can practically hear her addition: Not you. Especially when he uses the words ‘all ours’ to refer to La Habana, and she answers “You mean, it’s all mine.” and the look on her face…. Like boyyyy you created a monster, and heaven help you when you try to walk away from her to be with the woman you love, because she is going to rip you limb from limb. But anyway, all of that aside, literally what are they doing there anyway?? I mean I’m not an estate lawyer, but even I know that there is legit NO WAY that she would be allowed to just take over all of RK’s holdings. He died in suspicious circumstances, which means all his assets would be frozen while the investigation was ongoing– and they would certainly not just be handed over to his estranged wife, particularly one whose current partner is known to have had an extremely hostile relationship with RK and even made a previous attempt on his life. Like in what universe would they not be at the very top of the suspect list here????????

“You said you’d fix this. You promised.” Ughhhhhh this ep is definitely giving me so many satisfyingly painful scenes of Thony facing consequences lol; this time it’s Chris getting rightly furious with her when she fails in her promise to save Fi, blaming her for Fi’s deportation and even implying that Garrett’s death is her fault too. And as much as I wanna hug Thony and make it better, I also feel kind of like a parent who is watching their child learning an important lesson haha. It may hurt, but it’s necessary. I am glad though that JD didn’t join in on the attack this time– lbr he’s already made his feelings very clear to Thony, so now is the time for him to hold the family together, rather than throwing blame. Chris choosing to stay with Thony and Luca despite his anger at Thony is interesting; his argument is that Luca needs him and ‘he can’t keep losing everyone’ which is fair I guess, but lbr I feel like the writers just wanted Chris there at the house with Luca so next season Thony can be off running around with Arman without the audience worrying about her committing child neglect lol.  But ughhhh then Luca wakes and sees them all and asks where Fi is and they all look away and great now I’m crying again

Oh no no no you can’t have this mournful song playing over Fi getting led out of her cell and taken onto the plane, and Thony at Garrett’s funeral watching his son cry and Russo having to hand over Garrett’s folded flag to his widow/ex-wife??? And then Fi crying on the plane and Thony sitting on Fi’s empty bed??  No?? No thank you???????????

Honestly I thought that was going to be the end of it right there, but of course it’s not. Because it always comes back to this; to Thony and Arman and their connection. I love that she marches straight past the long line for entry (clearly business is booming once again, looks like Nadia works fast) and she barely spares a glance for the girl at the front desk, who probably saw her and just thought ‘oh the other boss is here’ lol. And ugh the way he’s mid conversation yet basically senses her there in the doorway and turns, just like he did way back in 1x02 when she brought Luca to him. And she doesn’t bother to come closer, or to say anything at all– just meets his eyes for a second and then turns and walks away, already knowing he’ll follow. And ugh follow he does, without a moment’s hesitation, entering the office only a couple of steps behind her even though it’s clear he’s not looking forward to what he’s about to hear– judging by the thunder in her expression, it’s not going to be fun lol. Ngl I love that she yells at him, bc partly she’s calling him out for his role in Fi’s deportation, which is fair, but bc I feel like she’s also using him as an outlet for her anger at herself (“Fiona’s gone because of you”/”You need to fix this”). It’s the things she feels towards herself as well as towards him, and tbh her coming to him is her fixing it, because she knows she can’t do it without him. She needs him, needs his help not only in regards to his resources and connections, but also just his support, because she can’t handle this burden alone. I love that the first thing he says, the only defense he uses, is that his actions kept them all safe– because that’s what he needs her to understand. Yes, Fiona was taken, but in his mind, her being sent back to her homeland and her parents, alive and well, was not such a terrible price to pay when the rest of them got to walk away knowing they were safe from RK once and for all. Tbh though, I actually think he had been expecting and even hoping for this visit, had anticipated Thony coming to him and making this very demand, because it only takes him a moment before he offers up the solution– like he’s already thought it all through, like he came up with it even before he went to kill RK– and it’s now only a question of whether she’ll agree to it. His “Nadia can’t find out about this” is such a telling statement too, because it shows he knows how precarious his position is; it’s now Nadia who holds the power, and if he crosses her in some way, she’ll shut him out. And then what use would he be to Thony, with no money or resources? There’d be nothing he could do to help get Fi back and make this right, and he’d fear that that helplessness would cause Thony to turn away from him and look elsewhere for solutions, abandoning him now that he had nothing to offer. Of course that’s not at all what would happen– Thony is absolutely just as gone for him as he is for her– but the poor boy still can’t see it, and so he's scrambling desperately for anything that will be able to get her to stay. 

And speaking of how gone she is for him, oh god her reaction to keeping it all a secret from Nadia– you can tell she hates this, hates feeling like the dirty mistress being snuck out the back door to avoid being seen by the jealous wife. It’s another reminder that Arman belongs to someone else, not her, just like the night when he showed up with the keycard after ‘reconciling’ with Nadia, when he broke her heart at her own damn suggestion. And because he’s just as clueless about the depth of her feelings as she is about his, he misinterprets her pain as disagreement with the plan, which prompts this blessed line: “Thony, unless you trust me (…) in how I do this, I can’t help you” and god I am NEVER getting over that tiny pause after ‘trust me’, because it’s not just about trusting his plan. It’s about the fact that he feels she lost faith in him, that somewhere along the line she stopped trusting him and looking to him as her protector. She’d trusted him 100% though the heist they’d pulled on Hayak and Noah, enough for her to stay around even when he’d been in jail. She’d trusted him at the motel when they’d dealt with the manager. She’d trusted him when she’d agreed to help him move the drugs, and trusted him after Cortes' death when he’d said they would find a way together to trap RK with the drug deal and satisfy the FBI. She’d still trusted him even after he’d had to murder Maya. But then he’d been left with no choice but to follow her suggestion and go back to Nadia, and suddenly the distance between them seemed to keep widening, with her need to protect her family and his need to protect Nadia putting them repeatedly at odds, and then Luca got sick again and she turned to Kamdar for help instead of him. In Arman’s mind, Thony had pulled away from him after he’d gone back to Nadia, even though he had only been following her direction and he’d only done it because there was no other way. And so now he practically pleads for her to trust him again, and she pauses for a split second, staring at him, before giving the answer that nearly knocks him off his feet: “I never stopped trusting you.” And damn, with the intense way these two are looking at each other, it’s easy to wonder if this conversation is really only about trust... because right now ‘trust’ sounds a hell of a lot like it’s just a placeholder for another very strong emotion, and the way he stares at her when she tells him she never stopped? The tone in which she says it, like he’s a fool for thinking she ever could have stopped? Like ok look I may be waaaay down the rabbit hole here but I simply can’t watch this scene without feeling like the subtext is being screamed so loud that it’s drowning out everything else

And don’t even get me started on how she says she knows he did this to protect her. Her. Not ‘us all’. Just her. Because it’s the truth, isn’t it? He might have said things about ‘none of them’ being safe until RK was dead, but we know who his real concern was; the woman he had never even wanted RK to know about in the first place, and definitely never wanted him to meet.  And honestly, look at the timing– it was only after she drew RK’s attention (back when she delivered the money, she was easily dismissed as a nobody, but when he learned that she was causing division between Nadia and Arman, she very much became somebody of great interest) that Arman became determined that RK needed to die, especially after RK showed he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her, and after she’d had to send her whole family away to protect them while she stayed behind (“Kamdar’s watching me, I can’t run”). He’d wanted RK dead for a long time, but would have never risked attempting it, not until RK threatened the one thing that Arman would go to absolutely any lengths to protect. And ugh the way she holds his gaze so directly as she tells him she knows he did it to protect her, and then: “You have to understand. I need my family back.” like she’s telling him she can’t focus on anything else, or anyone else, until her family is reunited and she’s been absolved of the guilt she currently bears. I know lots of people were disappointed with this scene because there’s no physical contact and no outward declaration of feelings, and as much as I would have died over that, I still love this scene because of its intensity, and how it feels like a conversation within a conversation, showing how well these two know and understand each other that so much can be said while actually saying not much at all. 

But okay excuse me I was not prepared for my dream of Mob Boss Thony to suddenly become a reality already??? Like god the way she carries herself is so different, her voice so cool and unaffected as she stands in front of these two uniformed men– these IMMIGRATION OFFICERS, literally the very people that she as an illegal immigrant has been hardwired to fear– and basically tells them that they work for her now. And then she tells them that she’ll be bringing someone back into the US with her??? And then just walks right on out of there, absolutely rocking her power outfit (what’s the bet that she was thinking of Fi’s advice from back when she had to go meet with Cortes, about looking the part so she could feel the part) and oh god Arman is there by the caddy waiting for her; her partner and her protector, keeping the promise he made: that they would see this through, together. Don’t mind me I will just be over here making dying whale noises into eternity

Anyway okay like I said, I really do get why some fans were disappointed with this finale, because sure, I also would have loved to have seen some kind of physical Armony interaction (ngl, the lack of a kiss this season did catch me by surprise, but tbh it also makes sense given the circumstances). But man, what we did get in terms of Armony interaction was intense and layered and sets us up for such an amazing payoff for next season. And that was something that really struck me, all through this episode– the entire thing feels like a second act. I hadn’t realised how used I was to each individual season of a show kind of having its own little self contained feel to it, because this??? Watching this, I became utterly convinced that after S1, the showrunners actually wrote and pitched the plot of S2 and S3 to the studios together, and right now we are just halfway through that story. Like yes S2 had its own arc, with Armony being caught between Kamdar and the FBI, and if needed the ending could stand on its own with the two of them literally driving off into the sunset together with a plan to make everything right, but tbh the whole thing also has the feeling like we just watched a chessboard being set up with all the pieces being put into place, and now the game can start. Honestly the writing and planning in this show blows me away and I can’t wait to see what S3 brings us ugh

Okay anyhow that’s more than enough rambling from me, so if any of you made it through this after several months of hiatus: cheers and I’ll see you in September haha

[todayimgonnaplay]

Today I'm Gonna Play: Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

I've seen Ys pop up often as people's top JRPGs. I've never played them before, so I jumped into the latest entry blind to what this series offers.

Talking of combat first, the first thing this game reminded me of was Tales of Arise; having skills by pressing button combinations, dodging, on screen encounters, and having a party based system where you could switch characters. It felt extremely snappy and satisfying, and I loved unlocking new skills be it from getting them as I fight, or from shops. It's an easy system that's fast-paced which is also great when you want to play something simple and shut your brain off for a bit.

There are also raids included, which have a tower defense mechanism to ensure you survive hordes of enemies while protecting a crystal, or to collect X number of item in a time limit. It gets quite chaotic but is manageable with the use of upgrades. This adds a nice variety to combat so that it does not get monotonous. Aside from that, the game seems to have a superpower motif going on, allowing you to traverse in different ways such as parkouring or gliding, or accessing hard to get places, as well as some combat abilities. It was an unexpected but fun touch.

The best qualities I've seen in this game are more finer details that add to the overall Quality of Life. One being how the map system functions. You're able to get a view of your current area AND look at the region map, in which you can look at other area maps because why not, all with the press of a button or two. . The game really encourages exploration in a great way by rewarding you with fast travel unlocks, and new shops or quests. What surprised me the most was that the minimap leaves a decently sized trail as you move around, making backtracking easy as well as marking where you've already been in case the dungeons or areas look the same-ish (or if you're feeling a bit forgetful at the time of playing). It's spoiled the way I see maps for JRPGs in a good way, and I'd love to see more games like this. The second detail I loved was the amount of customization in settings, ranging from gameplay to HUDs, giving the player freedom to truly explore or to be guided. And lastly, being able to save at anytime is quite a game-changer. It's not always easy to find time to game, and priorities are there to handle in real life, so having this feature came in super handy.

The story seems somewhat simple and straightforward. It's quite innocent and doesn't get too deep until the latter half of the game. I'm actually quite surprised how deep the game gets into its lore and politics, and it was simple enough to understand without playing the previous games. There's a nice variety in cast, and side quests actually add lore to them rather than being usual fetch or escort quests.

I also find the character designs to be a plus, most of them are designed quite well without the reliance of fanservice. It was a breath of fresh air! However I did find Renegade's design to be underwhelming with such a muted colour palette. It does fit his personality a bit, perhaps.

Some negatives are the graphical quality of this game. It's the latest entry released just a few years ago, yet it looks much older, and very bland in terms of colour. I had fun exploring the city of Balduq and was amazed at the size and depth of the place, but it definitely lacked some colour or variety that made the place truly interesting. Midway I stopped to look at previous entries' graphics and felt that Ys 8 somehow looked better, but I also read a bit about the developer and didn't realize their impact towards the genre, and that they seem to make more budgeted titles, so I can give this a pass.

Another negative is the music, most songs fit, but only about 2 tracks truly caught my ears, while the rest sound quite generic and akin to typical melodies I would hear in budget JRPGs.

Overall, the game was truly an enjoyable adventure to experience, and I even felt a little sad as I reached the end, bonding with the cast and the city. I'm looking forward to future titles and may check out 8!

[jodilin65]

FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2003 Finally, the last day of January has arrived. I don’t know why, but for some reason, it’s felt like this month has been dragging on forever.

My bangs are now to the point where they reach if I put my hair in a ponytail on the crown of my head, but if I lower it towards my neck, they can’t quite make it yet. It hasn’t even been a year yet, though, since I began growing them out.

Still haven’t heard from Mary. I won’t be sending her any more mail till I hear from her, wherever she may be.

In Webshot’s email to me, they said that until they change their system, they recommended something called a canvas, which they gave me numbers for, in Photoshop, to get around the centering issue. I guess this would put the picture towards the handle if it’s uploaded that way, though they say it’s time-consuming. I’ll let Tom check it out and let me know what he thinks. If we can’t get around the centered picture issue, I may forget about getting more mugs as I really don’t like the centered pictures. What kind of company would make mugs like that anyway, unless someone requested it? I’m really shocked that this is the only option they have, though they claim it may not always be that way. Let’s hope not.

When I expressed my worries about going back to getting too many things through the PO, Tom said priority mail shouldn’t be the problem regular mail can be.

I may not have heard from my Mary, but I heard from Tom’s Mary. My letter prompted her message. No, she never was offended by the pictures, she’s just been sick since right after Christmas with bronchitis, pleurisy, a sinus infection, and an ear infection. All one hell of a coincidence too, since I put a “sick spell” on her as soon as I pulled out my so-called present from her. During the first day or two that I was really fuming over the stunt she pulled on me, I didn’t wish she’d drop dead or anything too serious, but I did wish her ill. I closed my eyes tight and concentrated real hard on her being all sneezy and feverish and just plain old miserable. So to read what I read was quite numbing, seeing that there’s a 50/50 chance I did this to her. Do I feel guilty, if I did? Maybe just a little, but more so I’m curious. It’s definitely worth testing, but on whom? I wonder if I could put a sick spell on someone I never met like maybe someone at the bank Tom dislikes. I don’t know about that, though. I have a feeling that if this isn’t just a coincidence, it has to be someone I know and that I’m really pissed off at. I don’t see how I could place a spell like that on someone without being furious with them. Just how do I go about testing this thing, I wonder? Stand on a street corner and ask people to piss me off so I can see if I can get even by making them sick? Then again, I don’t need to ask anyone to piss me off. That will happen on its own. It always does. I just hope it’ll be someone I know. It’s hard, for example, to tune in to people I’ve never met that are fucking us over like the bank is with this mortgage bullshit. I don’t know who they are or what they look like, so I can’t imagine being able to inflict any kind of suffering upon them, and if my rather ill thoughts had any effect on Steven or Dan, I’ll never know it.

Anyway, whether or not this is something I’ve done or that just happened, since Mary has been damned in the health department pretty much all her life, I still would’ve preferred the pictures to have given her a taste of her own medicine. Instead, she thinks they’re oh-so-cool. Well, of course. The woman loves to have her picture taken and played with, so why wouldn’t she? In fact, I should’ve known she’d just love it. At least I didn’t give her the reaction I still think she wanted/expected from me for giving her a piece of my mind about her attitude and mouth at the casino.

Just like God’s compensating me after how sickly I was throughout most of my 20s with great health, he’s also compensating for my being skinny throughout most of my 20s with being fat now. Last night when I stepped on the scale only to find I’d gained 3 pounds since I woke up from nothing but 1,200 calories and a 20-minute pedaling session, I was so bummed and so frustrated and even pissed! I thought God was supposed to help those who help themselves. Another general rule that doesn’t apply to me or what? When I saw what I saw, part of me wanted to starve forever and another part wanted to say, Ok, you want me big? As big as I can be? I’ll just run to the grocery store then and eat everything in sight! It is so discouraging and frustrating to work as hard as I have all for nothing. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have lost at least 10 pounds by now, and to know that I’ll eventually gain a ton of weight whether I eat 1000 calories a day or 2000 a day isn’t very comforting either. Yet it’s getting more and more obvious that that’s where I’m headed; to end up between 150-200 pounds no matter what. It’s like it’s an inevitable fate I can’t avoid. God wants me to be big. I’m drinking lots of water, having 1,200 calories a day, working out, eating a low-carb, high-protein diet, so what’s wrong? What more can I do if doing the “right” thing isn’t working? And why should I deprive myself of weekly treats if I’m only gonna get bigger anyway? I’d literally have to starve myself to keep my weight even right where it’s at right now. I have no rights to my own life and now no rights to my own body. And I’m supposed to think he’ll let me do dolls? It’s all about what God wants me to be and to hell with what I may want. Why don’t I just be a good girl, give him what he wants, up my calories to 1,500 a day and just let myself get as heavy as he sees fit? If I’m not meant to be thin again, then there’s nothing I can do to change that. If I’m meant to be heavy, then it’d be as much of a waste of time crying over it as it’d be to cry over my being short. No one can say I didn’t at least try. If people like Roseanne Barr can get through life on the heavy side, then so can I. There really isn’t anything I do now that I couldn’t do as a heavy person anyway, short of rocking out. I could work on the computer, I could read, I could watch TV, etc. I could even keep my muscles strong with the Bowflex and the pedaling. I’m tired of trying to be something I can never be. From now on, if I’m going to work really hard, I’d prefer it to be for something a little more achievable.

Later…

Those fucking dogs! It’s a good thing there wasn’t any garbage in the burn bin cuz they got into it again. I went and picked up the few pieces of tin foil they tore out and replaced the lid. A couple of dogs were barking by the pipes this morning till I shooed them off, too. One was a huge poodle!

Once we get to around noontime, it’s so beautiful out. Makes me glad I am in Arizona between then and sundown.

I was thinking more about this odd coincidence here with Mary getting sick. She’d probably be quicker to believe I did it than I would be. She’s the one who believes attitude affects things (yeah, that’s why I lost the weight I was so sure I was going to lose) and that it’s a mind-over-matter kind of life we live, unlike me who believes more in fate. There have been too many things I was negative about only to achieve positive results, and too many things I was positive about only to achieve negative results to say that attitude’s connected, though perhaps it’s different for everyone.

Anyway, I thought of a few test subjects with a wide variety, though I highly doubt it’ll work only because I still think I have to be pissed when I do it and pissed at the person I’m trying to curse if I can really do it at all. In other words, while I’m pissed at one person, I don’t think I can curse another. Also, although I am pissed at the people who are fucking with our house payments, I don’t think I can blindly place curses on people I don’t know. If that were the case, I just might send the whole damn world to hell! That’d surely keep them off my ass.

The test subjects, since I certainly don’t want to test someone I care about (although most people are like milk. Eventually they sour), are going to be whoever’s fucking with our house payments, the cheeks (we don’t hate him, but hey, we don’t like him either), and this warped lady rat that’s just sitting around wasting space and money cuz Tom just has to disagree with me and insist we keep her cuz I don’t want to.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2003 I remembered yesterday that I wanted more mugs from Webshots to replace my old, chipped cat/dog collection. I decided on a few more rat pictures and a mouse shot. Actually, it’ll be two different pictures side by side on a screen-sized background that I’ll upload when the time comes. Their mugs are $10 each for their 12 oz. mugs and I think I’ll get 4 of them. I’ll probably order them all at once too, which means I’ll get them in mid-March or sooner. Then that will be one more thing out of the way and I can concentrate on saving for dolls and clothes.

A nurse left a message yesterday with advice that wasn’t very helpful. Most of it is stuff I already know and do. She said the doc said to have 1,200 calories a day, drink more water, have low-carbs, try an over-the-counter stool softener he recommends (I didn’t bother writing down the name of it), and try Weight Watchers, too. Not a word about fiber.

I think I’ll just stay like I am for a while. My body wouldn’t be hanging onto its extra weight like this if it didn’t think it needed it. Besides, I could be a lot worse than I am, but like I said before, I’m pretty small and fit for a woman my age.

Later…

Tom’s in the shower now and I asked his opinion as far as what the doctor said. He says he thinks I should try the shit softener they recommend, and that maybe we can both join Weight Watchers. I wouldn’t mind the extra help of a program like WW, I had just thought it’d be even more appointments and a lot of money. However, they’re saying they’re not too expensive these days since you don’t have to buy their food, and you can do it online, so that’s the good point right there since not everyone can attend the meetings or wants to.

I also question just how complicated and or effective it may be and for how long. I mean, if things like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig really work, then why aren’t we all skinny?

I finally had a full flow today along with major cramps.

I also asked Tom’s opinion on the mugs. I’ve got 4 mugs picked out, and I asked him if he thought I should get one at a time, two at a time, or all at a time, and he says one at a time, so I guess that’s the way I’ll do it. After all, they don’t have any shipping deals the more you order.

These damn rats, particularly Little Fella, have been rather leaky lately. I never had such territory markers before! It’s gotten to be rather bad. Every time I pick up Little Fella, especially after he’s been in the closet, he’s wet. He even marked Tom’s bed! He thinks he owns the whole house.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2003 I’m up a pound from last week to 127. Yeah, the diet’s going pitifully slow, and lately, I’ve barely been able to make any progress at all. Something up there does not want me to lose weight. It’s just too obvious. I can’t think of any reason other than to spite me that it would get in my way, but whatever it is, it’s definitely in my way.

I know slow progress is better than no progress, but I’d prefer the faster route. Especially since the general rule of slower weight loss not returning as easily doesn’t apply to me. I can gain it back just as quickly and as easily if I lose 1 pound a week, and having lost just 6 pounds in 4 weeks, I’m pretty close to that as it is.

What do you do when you’re doing everything right, but it still doesn’t seem to bring much in the way of results? I left a message at the doctor’s office, letting them know I’ve got my calories cut to 1000-1200 a day, I’m exercising regularly, I’m avoiding sugar and having very little starch, yet I’m stuck a lot and when I do go, it’s not much. I asked them if they could recommend something that wouldn’t add a substantial amount of calories to my diet, and Tom and I figured they’d probably tell me to take fiber supplements. The question is, will they work? Because if they don’t, nothing will.

On the flip side, I know I could look a lot worse than I do and that I don’t look like I weigh as much as I do. Today I wore the shorts I grew out of at 120 pounds over a year ago. If I weren’t working out like I am, I’d never be this size at 127 pounds. I’d be way bigger. So maybe I can keep getting fewer inches for the weight like I have been if I can’t ultimately lose any more weight. At this point, I’d settle for getting down to 110-115, which is what the doctor recommended in light of my muscle weight, but I don’t even know if that’s possible. Tom says that on a scale of 1 to 10, omitting my age, I’m about a 6 or 7 as far as my overall fitness level/appearance goes, and an 8 or 9 for my age.

I forgot to say that I got a kick out of Mary’s answer to Suzanne when she asked if she thought the experiences she’s been through have made her stronger and she said, “Yeah, ain’t that funny?”

And the experiences I’ve gone through have only made me want to isolate myself even more. Ain’t that funny too? If I never had neighbors again in my life it’d be too soon!

I checked on a map to see where Fort Myers is and it’s way down there on the Gulf side. Great location for hurricanes! I wonder just how much longer after the 7th she’ll be here?

Anyway, back to the diet thing; I really hope it is just a case of my needing fiber supplements. Somehow I doubt it’ll be that easy for me. Especially if I’m right in my belief about something up there trying to block me from doing what I’m trying to do. Even my periods are fouled up. I never got the period I was supposed to get, just spots. I’m not that late yet, though, so we’ll see.

The question is, is it cuz of something up there, or is it simply a lack of fiber? I guess it all depends on how you look at it. Some would say God and or evil sources prevented me from being the singer I once wanted to be, and others would say, “No they didn’t. It wasn’t that you couldn’t sing or that something was out to get you. You just didn’t have the connections.” Same as the old baby dream. Some would say, “God and the devil didn’t stop you from conceiving, your husband did. After all, your fertility tests were fine. It was his infrequent cumming and his lack of desire to do anything about it that prevented you from conceiving.”

Anything’s possible, but I just don’t think so. I think God has his plans for all of us and that he sometimes uses others to control us, punish us, and achieve those plans. In other words, a normal sex life wouldn’t have changed destiny. It’s just that I can see it not being in my destiny to be a singer, to be a mom, and maybe not even a dollmaker, but not to lose weight? How can it not be in anyone’s “destiny” not to lose weight? If that’s the case with me then that just goes to show the extremes to which I’m controlled.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2003 Paula left a message saying she has to return to court on February 11th but didn’t say what for or anything else about it.

If this month finishes up without the cheeks stopping by, I’d say we’re looking at a 70% probability that he’ll never be back to bug me here. After I got the piss test out of the way I really felt like I’d finally reached the beginning of the end. I only hope I’m not kidding myself. You just never know when it comes to the law. They’re famous for throwing all kinds of curveballs at you.

His not showing up lately, though, does make sense. Tom thinks the main reason they do house calls is to see if you’re doing anything wrong, and while that may certainly be a factor, I think the main reason is to see if you’ve run. Any normal, reasonable PO would figure, well, she’s only got 9 months left out of a 30-month sentence, so why would she come this far just to run now?

I already made an order from Ashton-Drake with the first of my budget money, plus silver change I had saved up. Yesterday I was browsing through their site to see what was new and there I found a $20 bronze figurine of a gorgeous ballerina named Lily. It’s 10½ high and posed unlike any of my porcelain ballerinas.

Unfortunately, it has to go through the PO, but we might get a tracking link for it. Tom will check later. We had a choice of waiting 6-10 weeks for it, or for just $4 more, we could have it shipped within 6 business days, so we opted for that which would put it here on the 5th. As with any doll coming to the PO, though, I worry it’ll make it to me without a problem.

I actually got a little color on my chest the day I sat out while he worked on the trucks, and I tried to today, only I kept getting assaulted by flies.

I cannot believe how many dogs we’ve got running loose in this town! Especially where there are so few houses. If this 10-acre lot were in Phoenix, there’d be 60 houses on it. Most of the lots within a 10-mile radius of our house are 10-acre lots, so where are all these damn dogs coming from and why won’t anybody in this state other than Mary allow their dogs indoors? There were 4 of them yesterday that cut through a corner of the land, then Tom said a little dog strode on over the other day. Yesterday I saw a dog I’d never seen before, and today I spotted a little puppy!

Because it’s been a while, I decided to send Mom a quick note, thanking her for the Christmas money, telling her about the pedals we got, and other trivial things. I also told her that if the reason Mary hasn’t answered my email is that I may’ve offended her with the superimposed pictures of her I sent, then I’m sorry, though at the same time, I’m not. I’m sure she’ll understand that I wanted to teach her a lesson by giving her a taste of her own medicine because I’m sick of her offending me with my own pictures. I explained to Mom that in light of how often she’s used other people’s pictures for this or for that, I assumed it’d be okay to do the same with her pictures. On the other hand, one can only spend so much time trying to please others or else it’ll drive them crazy, as I’m sure she’ll also understand. If Mary’s decided she doesn’t want anything to do with me, so be it. I simply can’t spend my time worrying that the things I say/do might upset others, and this is the truth. My days of trying to please others are over within reason. I don’t normally set out to deliberately be a mean, compassionless person, as I told her, but I’m not going to sit and cry over someone’s hurt feelings either if they don’t like something I do. As I’d tell anyone, if you don’t like me, don’t have anything to do with me, cuz if I don’t like you, you bet I’m going to do all I can to do the same. With my husband the rules are different, and as I told Tom, as long as he loves me, the rest of the world can hate me for all I care. I can’t deal with fragile assholes like Mary. She’s just gotten to be way too moody, sensitive, and non-tolerant for my taste. I don’t know if this has to do with the freeloaders or not, but either way, I don’t care anymore! Nor will I care if Mom doesn’t understand my letter and decides to brush me off too, though I think she’ll understand just fine. I have a strong feeling Tom and I aren’t the only ones Mary’s driven crazy with the photo sessions. I mean, this is no hobby of Mary’s. This is literally a full-scale obsession. Just one look at her walls will tell you that as they’re literally covered with pictures, mostly of herself and her nieces. There’s barely any wall space free of pictures. I’m surprised the bitch hasn’t plastered her ceiling with them yet! Meanwhile, I spoke my mind and all I can continue to do is my best with people. That’s all anyone can do.

Later…

Okay, it’s definitely, definitely next door’s dogs that have been doing the bulk of the barking, and as I just proved to Tom, they do come barking onto the land, so there’s no defending, playing down or making excuses for them. He kept insisting he’s never seen the dogs on the land, but as I told him, just cuz he hasn’t seen them doesn’t mean I haven’t and that they don’t come over here cuz they do.

It appears that while they still have the small black dog, they now have a medium tan dog instead of a medium black dog unless I just haven’t seen the bigger black one. The tan one was just standing there a little beyond where the car is parked barking at us as we stood on the front steps. I first heard it barking from my office. The kid was out there too, at the edge of their property. He was just standing there dumbly, not even calling the dogs or anything.

Tom said he wondered if it was barking at the cat, though I didn’t see the cat that usually hangs out here, and like I told him, they seem to do it just to do it. They bark on and off from sunset to sunrise. It’s been horrible lately. They used to keep their dogs on their land, but those days are well in the past now. The dog was barking like it wanted to get someone’s attention over here too, looking expectantly at the front door, wagging its tail. Yesterday when I shooed it and the black one away from the front of the house, it was wagging its tail playfully, happy to see someone and to get attention. It’s obviously like most dogs out here, been cast outdoors as if it were old furniture, ignored and neglected.

I just wish we could get that fucking truck running and the place fenced! We’d still hear them, but not nearly as much.

MONDAY, JANUARY 27, 2003 Woke up at 125½. So I’m averaging about a two-pound drop each week. Still kind of slow, but at least the weight’s going.

The weather’s been gorgeous. I sat outside for a while yesterday. Today we’re supposed to have a record high of 82˚. I don’t know if I’ll bother sitting out, though, as white as I am.

Now I’m not sure if the nighttime or early morning barking I’ve been hearing is the renter’s dogs or next door’s. When I poked my head out the side door at 8:00 this morning, it sounded like they could be coming from Dan’s place. It’s been bad lately, that’s for sure. Hopefully, it’ll get better as the weather warms back up. We still may have a little ways to go, but I doubt we’ll have any more freezes.

Tom ordered a new cylinder head, but now, who knows how long it’ll be before the truck’s running, licensed and registered? We may not have to choose between fences and the kiln in the end. I mean, the choice may be made for us, cuz if the truck’s not running we can’t get the fences unless we have Dave haul them.

Tom has a cold for sure this time around, but as usual, I’ve escaped catching anything. However, I slept rather poorly last night as my allergies kept waking me up. That’s been happening a lot lately where I wake up unable to breathe out of my nose. Tom says I shouldn’t open the windows so much. It’s hard, though, not to want to take advantage of letting fresh air in here when it doesn’t smell like shit. You spend so much of the year being shut up cuz of the heat, that it’s nice when you can open windows.

Tom gave me the first of my allowance money, as I call it, so that way I can keep track of what I’ve got.

I had Tom pick me up white paper at the grocery store. It’s thinner, but not much of a bleeder because I’m using a laserjet. Ink tends to bleed through it more than powder does. I should be able to print Mary’s stuff back to back without a problem.

I went and printed out the ’98 and ’99 journals just because I’m so sick of the fine-tuning job. Besides, who cares how I wrote what 5 years ago? The sick freeloaders and the courts might care, but I don’t. I wrote what I wrote, how I wrote it, and so be it. Those days are over with.

I reorganized my radio stations, knocking off the rap station I had on my list. I’m just so sick of hearing about gangs and violence. They are what they’ve made themselves. That’s all I can say.

Last night I could’ve sworn I heard this soft knocking sound while Tom was in the shower and I was in bed reading, but neither of us saw anything suspicious.

Tom got a couple of toner cartridges from work that were leftover, so that’s good, although I shouldn’t be printing nearly as much stuff now. I’ll actually be printing more for Mary than myself. For myself, I’ll only be printing out my current and future journals. I’ll probably do printouts every 3 months.

Midge, one of Barbie’s friends, has a “pregnant” version of herself. I thought it was cool and different, but understandably, it turned out to be a controversial doll. The idea was to promote family, and that’s fine. But what about being single? What about being gay? What about being straight and childless? There are other lifestyles to consider and it’s just too stereotypical. If you’re going to promote one lifestyle, you should promote others as well.

I was kind of surprised to spot it online in the first place. After all, we’re living in a time when work is in and family is out.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 26, 2003 Tom and I sat down and discussed our new budget plans. We decided we should each get $15 every payday, which is twice a month, for spending money. We decided on $85 a week for groceries and that we’d split any leftover money. We’re also going to be setting aside money to save. We want to ultimately get $5,000 or so saved. His mom isn’t going to live forever, and should we need thousands of dollars like we did for the well, there’d be no one to run to for help once she’s gone.

So, we decided how much to set aside for various things. Maybe this can be an added incentive to lose more weight (I’m back to 126) as the more I save on food, the quicker I can get something.

I may not get any more colored paper for a while because white paper is so much cheaper. It’s $10 for 500 sheets of colored paper, yet for just $5 more I can get 1,500 sheets of white paper.

I was thinking I’d start with those $30 fairies from Ashton, then get a few fashion dolls, then probably save for some more Ashton dolls, since the HSC doesn’t have their dolls for nearly as long. For example, I know it’s no use to save for a $200 doll they may have that I like as it’d only be gone by the time I got the money saved. It’d take just about 7 months to save that much if I didn’t save on groceries along the way.

I finished the 1997 file.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 2003 Yesterday turned out to be a gorgeous day so I couldn’t resist strolling around the land. It was one of those days where it was rather warm in a T-shirt but too chilly for halters and things like that.

Since barbed wire is cheaper than grids, we talked about a barbed wire fence with closer gaps at the lower part of it to keep smaller dogs from getting through. We talked about having the bottom strand 6” off the ground, then an 8” gap between the first and second strands, then a 10” gap between the second and third, and a foot between the rest. If this doesn’t work, we’ll run a low-voltage wire around the base that will zap them away. Meanwhile, the big dogs, which are mostly what we’ve got running around loose here, couldn’t get in for sure.

I’m still not sure what I want first, that or the kiln.

Later…

The renters are making us feel anything but secluded today. Why must the most crowded rental be closest to us, huh? There are a ton of people out there right now. There’s got to be at least half a dozen adults and half a dozen kids. At least they’re quiet, though you can hear voices outside. Not surprisingly, the main attraction is the horse I still would’ve preferred them not to have gotten. They live their whole lives out front and at the right side of their place, the two sides exposed to us. Those in the other rentals probably can’t see them, though they no doubt can hear them. I appreciate the fact that they don’t play music for us, but still, why couldn’t a couple move in there who were out all day?

Right now someone’s running the horse round and round in circles again. I hope they don’t tame the horse so they can ride it. I don’t want them stealing even more of our privacy by cruising by the side and front of our house, even if they would be a couple of hundred feet away. I have a feeling, though, that if they really do end up being unhappy with this horse, they’ll just get one they can ride and be content with. They’re not going to just give up and waste the little corral they put up.

Tom says we’ll have oleanders and bougainvilleas blocking them out by the fall, but I don’t believe it.

He says that right now he’s going to see about getting the white truck running. I don’t believe that either, but if he’s able to, he’s going to begin making our new circular driveway we want in front and get the damn pipes covered for once and for all so no dogs can play with them as if they were these giant dog bones. Then, whenever we get the damn fences, which probably will be barbed wire, he’ll secure them with a cement covering so the monsoon’s hard rains can’t do what they did before and wash the dirt off of them.

Anyway, it’s another gorgeous, clean-smelling day out there so I’ve got the windows open.

I don’t think I can flip my schedule around in time for my dentist appointment on the 3rd, so I’ll be staying on days till after the 5th (the next freeloader day). I got up at 6 AM today and won’t let myself sleep later than 10:00 till then.

I just finished typing up a draft where Mary talks to one of Justin’s lawyers, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why the hell Mary would bother. He’s her enemy. The shit cock appeared all sympathetic towards Mary, only to tell Suzanne he was going to basically turn right around and stab her in the back by saying that she did it as Justin’s defense. Yet he himself admitted Justin was crazy and guilty as hell. How can he do that and then go home and sleep at night? I just don’t get it. I mean, there are some very warped human beings in this world, that’s for sure, and I don’t see why Suzanne would even think of having Mary talk to any of Justin’s defense attorneys or pigs. None of them are on her side.

I feel almost as bad for Mary for the way she’s been treated since losing Gretchen, as I do for her for losing her in the first place.

And another crazy thing is that the judge won’t allow Mary to mention Gretchen’s name or Justin’s lunacy, saying the jury would automatically convict him of Gretchen’s murder out of prejudice if she did.

But that’s what they should do. He is crazy and he did kill her, so why should anything be done to hinder them from doing the right thing?

I always said judges were fucked up for a reason, didn’t I? They’re just as bad!

Anyway, the wind’s now blowing easterly, which means that standing by the open kitchen window, I can hear voices here and there, but with my office on the other side of the house, I can’t hear them in there. It’ll really suck when there’s a house across the way, cuz I know it’ll just have to be a big family, they’ll just have to live outdoors and in front, and someone will just have to be home 24/7.

Later…

I just shut all the windows to keep the smoke out of here. Yeah, they’re barbecuing back there now, and I swear there’s got to be half a dozen cars there. They’re about the rowdiest I’ve ever seen them, but fortunately, I still have yet to hear music from them. I wonder if it’s a special occasion or if this is going to be a regular occurrence, particularly on weekends? And are they going to be this active in the summer heat? They’re going to have to be out at least a little more often than they were last summer to feed and water the horse, which Tom said he saw someone riding. I didn’t see anyone on it yet myself, though.

Again, nothing could ever be as annoying as city noise out here, but if we did have a pool and a porch in back or towards the side where the master bedroom is, it would not be very peaceful, and we’d sure as shit have no privacy. Not without those hedges.

Anyway, there’s no music and they’re not just a few feet away, so I may as well get used to their presence cuz they’re not going away. Not anytime soon from what I can tell and vibe.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 2003 I gained 4 pounds in just two days of eating. Although I haven’t had sugar yet this year, the bulk of what I ate was starch, so that’s almost as bad. If I’d eaten the same quantity/calorie amount, but in meat or veggies, I may not have gained so much back.

I realize now that no, the bike doesn’t have anything to do with the weight loss. After all, I always said that only a good old-fashioned diet can cause weight loss. The water pills do help, though.

Once again I’m asking myself if I want to continue on only to achieve something that can be so easily lost. It’s just that I could end up gaining hundreds of pounds if I eat whenever I’m hungry. Most people reach a maximum weight and settle into whatever they’re going to be as long as they won’t diet, but with me, there is no max. I’d just keep gaining and gaining. I wouldn’t gain 30, 40, 50 pounds like most people, then just stop.

Maybe, with the aid of the water pills, I’ll get down to 105 as originally planned and bounce between that and 110. Meaning, I’ll take two days a week off, then spend the rest of the week working off whatever I gained from my days off. I can’t just get down to 105 and expect to stay there unless I diet every single day for the rest of my life and never take a day off which is simply not going to happen.

The truck’s both better and not better. It’s running much more smoothly now, but it’s smoking way too much. Tom’s not only worried it’ll flunk inspection, but that a pig will pull him over before he could even get there, and you know you can’t even go a block without running into a cruiser. It’s going to cost us another $300 for the parts needed to make it run more clearly. Tom insists it won’t keep costing us a few hundred every few weeks/months, saying that the thing has only so many parts anyway. He says we can probably use it for hauling things for many years to come.

I forgot to mention that Scot won the Probation Officer of 2001 award. When I saw the plaque on his office wall, I nearly laughed out loud. I mean, what did he win it for? For being so serious most of the time? For being overly by the book? For going bald and covering it with a baseball cap every day of his life?

I wonder if the black bitch ever fears me (for real) and wonders if I’m going to do anything after October, or if jail really got me off her ass for good? Then again, it doesn’t matter what she thinks. There’ll never be any justice in this case and we all know it. She and her cronies fucked me over, they got away with it, and so be it. They won, I lost, and there’s not a damn thing I can ever do about it. All I can do is use what I’ve learned and apply it to the batch of sickos that may move in and fuck with us from properties closest to us in the future, which means we’d move. There’d be nothing to say or do but move anyway, cuz nothing we said or did would help us or change anything.

The things that we went through in Phoenix versus out here tells me that although we were cursed in both places, we were cursed for different reasons. With the freeloaders, it was simply to punish us in a place we were stuck in. There was no way out at the time. We couldn’t simply up and move from there anytime we wanted to or else we’d have moved much sooner than we did. It wanted us to stay right where we were and to have to sit and listen to next door’s shit.

Here, though, it wants us out. It’s pissed we came here and the troubles we’ve had here seem to be mainly punishment for moving. Especially the part where I’m forced to leave here for half a year.

Our latest punishment for moving here is that the bank that deals with our loan/mortgage is demanding we pay a couple hundred more bucks each month. That puts it from $850 to $1,050. Although Tom says we could afford to pay as much as $1,100 a month, he’s fighting it because one, it’s not fair, and two, they’re breaking a legally binding contract.

To back up a bit, Tom had told me he was trying to get extra money from the bank and that they were ripping us off with the payments, and not to bother answering out-of-area calls, which I normally don’t anyway as 9 out of 10 times they’re sales calls.

Then, after Tom left for work yesterday afternoon, I went out to feed the prairie dogs (which really are ground squirrels, even though I still call them prairie dogs). When I turned around to go back in the house, I found a 2-page legal document taped to the door.

The document looked a little scary to me what with the paragraph that talked about auctioning off our house on March 26th. I paged Tom immediately, and he assured me that he’d have it all worked out in a couple of weeks and that there was no chance of us losing the house, not that I don’t have mixed emotions about moving anyway. Meaning, it wouldn’t be the end of the world as long as we stayed out of the city and never again lived in a 50-year-old 1400-square-foot dive.

When he got in this morning, he explained it to me in full, telling me of all the different options we have. As he said, he initiated this because he knew we were getting ripped off, and all they’re trying to do is bully him around a bit in hopes that he’ll cave in and just allow them to keep ripping us off, but he says he won’t, and that if it came down to it, we’ll take them to court. However, the reason he doubts it’ll come to that is that the bank wouldn’t want the bad publicity it’d bring over a couple of hundred bucks a month. As it is there’s a class-action suit against the bank for not paying their employees overtime like they did with Tom. He thinks they’ll be willing to settle out of court, though, and while they may not back the payments back to the $850 they’re legally supposed to be, he thinks he can get it down $100.

It all makes us all the more wish we could strike it rich, dump society altogether and just go live on the ocean for the rest of our lives, only docking every few months for supplies and to shop for fun stuff. Since that’s not likely, I find myself thinking more of a house in the woods somewhere. It’s not that I’m unhappy here. Not by a long shot. This isn’t Phoenix, we don’t have freeloading assholes next to us who can’t sit still and shut up, I do love this house; it’s just that the freeloaders know we live here, even if that probably doesn’t mean anything, and I don’t like the openness. As I told Tom, though, no place we could live could ever be as bad as Doe and Art’s, Brattleboro, Valleyhead or Estrella, and we’d always have each other. Also, I know each place we could live would have its pros and cons, so it kind of balances things out anyway.

Tom told me that on his way to work, before I discovered the papers on the door, some guy was outside with court papers, claiming it was about a foreclosure on someone else’s house.

“Then what would he be doing here?” I asked Tom this morning. “See, I think he was shitting you because he didn’t want to have to deal with handing you the papers personally and then have to deal with your reaction. Besides, I never heard a knock on the door. That alone tells me he saw you were leaving, watched the house from wherever then came back in when you were gone.”

I wonder if the old guy looking for this other guy was connected to this but at that hour?

Why, oh why, though, are we such a magnet for rip-offs?! I mean, I know everyone gets taken advantage of, but it seems we really are one of the extremes. When it comes to being ripped off, leaks, and things breaking, we’re way ahead of most people.

The question we’ve been asking ourselves is, should we get the fence or the kiln first? If I still had two or more years of probation, I’d definitely opt to do the fence first, but now I don’t know. Yes, I’d like to keep dogs off our property and make it a real nuisance for people to bug us, but I really want to get on with the dollmaking once and for all, too.

Mary sent me some book drafts and some sexual fantasies to type up, along with a quick note saying her book looks great, she’ll be sending stamps soon and that Suzanne secured an order for her to be allowed to be at Justin’s sentencing hearing. Then after that, there’ll be an extradition hearing. Why she needs to be at the sentencing hearing when someone can always tell her what the sentence was, and why there needs to be an extradition hearing, beats me.

Since putting air fresheners in the car doesn’t last long, I think I’ll take the remaining two Vanillaroma fresheners and stick one in here and one in the master bath.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2003 We were in and out of Scot’s in a flash, then it was off to a rather fun day.

Instead of going to the dollar store and the grocery store, we went to Office Max and Walmart, though we did stop for lunch as planned. He got a burger and fries and I got the Chinese I’d been craving for eons. I probably shouldn’t get it again too soon as their portions are huge. I only ordered a side of pork fried rice and some shrimp egg foo young, yet I’ve got enough food here to last a few days!

The food bumped me back up a pound. I thought it’d be two pounds, but see how easy it would be to undo all I’ve done? It’s just that I couldn’t undo it as quickly as I could if I weren’t pedaling.

We went to Office Max so Tom could check out chairs, but he didn’t find any he really liked.

At Walmart, we got a lot of stuff for the car, including fuzzy leopard car seat covers and carpet for the floor.

For me, I got a few bushels of flowers each for a buck (a couple with pink roses and one with irises). I got raspberry-scented bubble bath with Rapunzel Barbie’s picture on it (I guess she’s a really popular Barbie right now). I got a 3-pack of flavored lip gloss, a sports bra, and some really cool gold glittery lip gloss. It’s the most glittery I’ve had yet.

Lastly, for just a few bucks I got a Barbie nightgown for Chris that ended up on Jade. It wouldn’t quite cover the soft part of Chris’ legs because the gown was cut higher at the sides. Jade’s jacket fits Chris just fine, but her pants were too short, so I took an old jumpsuit of mine (a combination of t-shirt/shorts) and cut it above the waistband. These made the perfect shorts for Chris, only I had to pin them in back as they were a bit large on her. It looks like she’s got culottes on, actually, and the jacket covers the pinned waist, though it’d be hard to see anyway with the way she’s sitting on the loveseat.

For now, Jade’s pants will wait for someone new to wear them.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2003 I was surprised when Tom came home without any mail from Mary. It makes me wonder if she moved already.

We were also surprised to receive the new carburetor in the mail. Tom thought he was going to have to pick it up in person.

Today’s a freeloader day. Gotta go report, hope I’m in and out without incident, then it’s off to the dollar store, the grocery store, and for some Chinese take-out. Today will be a good test to see just how easily I gain the weight back using the bike (I call it a bike, even though it’s not literally a bike). I woke up at 126 even. I have a feeling that had I not taken water pills yesterday and a couple of days ago, I would still be struggling to get under 128.

I can’t believe how easy the bike is, yet so effective! I can very easily do 30-60 minutes a day. Never again will I use that boring, clanky, back-breaking rower or that boring treadmill. The bike’s definitely the best. I can watch TV while I use it and actually hear it or I can read. And all without straining my back, killing my feet, or jarring my knees and ankles like jogging. Also, I get a good workout that’s not too kick-ass. You should have an elevated heartbeat that’s comfortable and not feel like your heart’s going to explode.

I decorated my inhalers yesterday by printing out a few floral pictures I taped around them.

Tom suggested I just go ahead and print journals on one side of each page, and I think that’s what I’ll do.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2003 Woke up again at 126½. Looks like I’m going to be stuck today too, so I’ll probably take a water pill. I’m close enough to my period to do so anyway. It’s just that the shit makes me a little drowsy.

Tomorrow I’ll be pigging out on Chinese so I may end up putting back most of what I lost. That’s how easily set back I can be.

Thanks to the freeloaders, Tom had to go to work last night. He got in a short while ago and crashed. He’s got to be back at work earlier today. Like at 4 PM. Then he’ll sleep from about 2 AM – 8 AM, then we’ll leave for Casa Grande at 9:00.

I just hope things will be okay from here on out, but again, 9 months seems a bit long for something not to come up. Wouldn’t it just be oh so wonderful, though, if I could know that from here on out my only burden was to make sure I was on schedule for reporting every other week and that was it? Well, I don’t know if it’ll be that simple from here on out, but at least I don’t have to report at a set time as that would only make it much harder and more stressful. To think that I might only have to see Scot’s face just 18 more times after tomorrow is just wonderful! Nothing against Scot. It’s just that he’s connected to the freeloaders, so naturally, he makes me think of them. Anytime I see or think of Scot, I remember the freeloaders. They go hand in hand just like with the K and even Teddy Bear. Thinking of and remembering the freeloaders is something I do well enough on my own without any connection reminders for help.

The freeloaders also put a hold on Mary’s mail which I almost dread getting. It’s like, how many favors you got for me this time around?

At least the freeloaders gave me a day off from the cheeks. Then again, it’s hardly a “day off” when you don’t expect him in the first place. If he doesn’t come by March, then I’ll start to seriously think that the home visits were truly over as of last August. If only I’d know it, if that’s really the case, as that would’ve eased a lot of the stress. On the other hand, like God would do anything to help ease my freeloader-related stress? Yeah, right!

Tom said he was working on dealing with the bank, cuz he suspects they’ve been ripping us off by having us pay more per month than we’re supposed to.

Why must everyone use us at will and rip us off? Huh? Why do people love to take advantage of us so damn much? Are we that easy? Do we look like these vulnerable, gullible suckers or something or does this happen to everybody? I don’t know about that. I mean, it really seems like we’re the extremes in this case.

The Dead Zone’s gotten to be rather boring and predictable. And of course, what’s a series after 1990 without childbirth in it? It’s just so old! Besides, I may not have wanted a kid for about 5 years now, but still, I don’t need to see this shit and risk rekindling old desires. Wanting a kid you can’t have is the ultimate torture, the worst thing God can do to a woman. He may have a lot of people fooled as to what he really stands for, but I see right through him. I don’t care how crazy it sounds; I know he’s a mean and vengeful God. I don’t see him punishing me with that all over again once the freeloaders are out of my life, but how convenient that’d be since there’d be no one too close to sic on me. It’s a scary thought too, and as the end of this 7-year nightmare gets closer, the more I wonder – what’ll it be next? What will he whip my ass with next, other people, financial problems, health problems, or will I fall into a deep depression of some kind for reasons I can’t even begin to imagine at this time?

Actually, for me the absolute worst thing he could do, if he ever decided to hate me that much, and luckily I don’t think he does, would be to have Tom killed, be it in a car wreck, an illness, etc. If he really knows all, though, then he would know that killing him meant killing me as I’d be right up to join my husband in a heartbeat!

Oh, I have more shitty news to add to the list too, and that’s that they’re no longer going to make stock options available to employees at the bank. That really sucks big time. Next January, we might be able to make one last sell-out, but that will be it.

Lisa turned 20 yesterday. I couldn’t care less about everyone else, but I’ll always wonder about Lisa. At this point, she’s still probably quite naïve, with still many years ahead of misery, loneliness and cigarettes. I wonder, though, did she get out of the house? And if so, how did she get out, where did she go and what’s she doing?

Guess I’ll go proofread now. I’m less than a month away from quitting smoking and I don’t even know it. Not a clue! About two more years to go too, before the freeloaders switch from being a visual/audio part of my life to a financial/steal-my-freedom part of my life.

Later…

Oh, that damn laser jet! It’s all well and good and all that, but I get so many paper jams. Particularly when doing flipsides of pages. It makes me wonder if when printing journals I should print on only one side of the paper, do the flipside with the inkjet, or quit printing journals altogether.

I just had an idea. I’ll go and print ’03 at the end of the year on one side of the paper, then I’ll flip the pages upside down and over and do ’04 on that side. During the year, the paper will have time to settle out flat.

MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 2003 God help the freeloaders’ neighbors today, whoever they may be. The shit I went through with them makes me wonder if they’re just as rude as they were to us, or if this has caused them to settle down a bit, but I doubt it. I don’t think they’re capable of getting along with others and being considerate of those around them. I think they live in their own little obnoxious world and to hell with who may have to deal with it. Besides, why should they worry about neighbors who complain about them when they know they can get them thrown in jail?

I was thinking about that and their pig pal. Both Tom and I agree that judging by the way they were carrying on in court, they are friends. However, there are a few things that just don’t add up. If they’re really buddy-buddies, then why didn’t the pig come after me when the default warrant was issued? And why didn’t he book me the day he dragged me to the station? And why, when asked something about sending forms pertaining to me to the DA or filing them, did he say to file them? These are the only things that don’t make sense to me.

I’m just so sick of blacks, Mexicans, and all the problems they add to our already fucked up society. If they’re really “just like us,” then why are the bulk of them the jobless criminals that they are? I don’t buy it when they claim they can’t get decent jobs cuz of discrimination. Some might really get discriminated against, but for the most part, they use that and the past as a crutch, an excuse to just sit on their lazy asses. They are what they make themselves to be.

And when are we ever going to have equal rights? When can we have our white TV channels and our white beauty pageants like they can have their black this and black that without being called racists?

I really think we should go back to segregation. I mean, the idea of mixing used to be wonderful to me, but now that I see all the controversy and turmoil it causes, I think we’d be asking for less trouble if we segregated ourselves. You simply can’t order everyone to get along with each other. There are always going to be groups who hate other groups. The Arabs hate the Jews who hate the blacks who hate the Hispanics who hate the Indians, etc., and like it or not, this is the way it’s always going to be. Fortunately, though, you don’t have too many states pushing so hard at deseg like Arizona does. Tom says it’s just the opposite and that this state’s got one of the highest prejudice rates there is, but if that’s the case, then why is everyone running around kissing their asses out here, which of course, is sending the wrong message? All it’s doing is saying to minorities is, “It’s okay to pick on whites or to do this or to do that cuz this state will let you get away with it due to your color.”

I woke up at 126.5 and I was stuck yesterday, too. The question is, how much of it is real weight-loss, versus water loss? I did take a water pill yesterday. Nonetheless, maybe I really can lose a decent amount of weight. I’ll just be doing it in slow motion and could still be dieting in June at the rate I’m going, but I guess I don’t mind the wait. Slower is better than never at all.

Tom says that for my age I look fine, but if I were 17, I’d be chunky.

And if I’d had kids I’d be considered anorexic, since pregnancy leaves 90% of women much heavier than they were beforehand, and they almost never lose the weight, either. I guess that’s another reason to be glad kids weren’t meant to be or else I probably would be stuck in the 140s, 150s or maybe even higher. You usually gain 50-60 pounds during pregnancy and you only lose about 20 upon delivery. What’s left over is yours to keep.

Anyway, I started at 133 and my goal is to get to 105. When I get to 118, which will be right around the halfway mark, I’ll have Tom take another picture. 118 still seems worlds away!

I asked Tom if he thought I’d still be skinny if I were still alone, broke and smoking, and he said no. I don’t know, though. It’s just that upon reading back, the weight gain does seem to be more connected to quitting smoking than to age. I quit smoking at about 108. Just 4 months later I was 125 and ever since then, nothing’s been the same. Losing weight hasn’t been nearly as easy as it used to be. I doubt I’d have remained around 100 pounds all my life had I been able to keep on smoking, but I don’t think I’d be nearly as big as I am today.

If only I didn’t have asthma and if only a pack of cigarettes were the 75¢ they used to be when I started smoking in – what year was it – 1979?

Anyway, technically I’m down nearly 10 pounds since I did peak at 136. It’s just that by the time the actual diet began, I had slipped down a few pounds.

It must’ve been colder today cuz the heat came on before midnight. Usually, it doesn’t come on till between midnight - 1 AM. It took almost till 2 AM to kick on the other day.

I wish the AC was temperature-sensitive like the heat is, but it’s not. In order to have it comfortable in the daytime, it’d be a freezer in here at night if I didn’t adjust it, and in order to have it comfy at night, it’d be an oven in here during the daytime. It has a mind of its own. In the summer I set it to not come on till it gets up to 82°, yet it goes and kicks in 78°.

Although lots of fun, neither rat goes into the kitchen, making it easier to let them play unsupervised. Those that traveled down to the den and up onto the couch were the ones I had to really watch to keep them from tearing up the couch like Houdini and Little Buddy did.

I’ll be watching Charlie’s Angels in a few hours. What a show that was! Back in those days you rarely had blacks in the picture, and the subject matter wasn’t nearly as depressing as it is now. Back then it was petty crooks, swindlers, scammers, blackmailers, extortionists and murderers (usually amongst business partners). Today it’s all about race, poverty, gangs, child abuse, child molestation, domestic violence and crack whores having crack babies.

I guess they felt that addressing these sickening issues would help curb them, but they obviously thought wrong. People felt that doing this and making stiffer penalties would curb crime but people just don’t understand how invincible criminals think they are. Most criminals are as sure that they’ll never get caught as they are that the sun will rise and set, so no amount of threat of stiff punishment’s gonna stop them.

Earlier I heard the faint traces of bass, and the nighttime dog-barking is still worse than ever.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 19, 2003 Paula called again this morning, and although I heard the phone ring, I didn’t feel like gabbing with her. Being the weekend, she’d want to prattle on for hours. Besides, we just spoke and God knows I can stand to talk to that flake only so often! She sure is funny, though.

I wonder how much of a pest Mary will be when she’s free. If she can be a demanding pest at times locked up, I’d hate to see how she’ll be on the outs. I’m afraid she’ll want to be here constantly to use the computer/printer, but if I have to put my foot down about that, I will. Hopefully, us living where we live won’t make it all that convenient for her to bug us too often anyhow.

I’m slowly rolling back around to days, so if Scot is anywhere near, I’ll be ready for him. Let’s see, so far there’s been 11 visits which took place on 6/18/2001, 7/25/2001, 8/15/2001, 9/13/2001, 1/7/2002, 1/24/2002, 2/13/2002, 3/14/2002, 5/13/2002, 6/24/2002 and 8/8/2002.

I was surprised to weigh 128, two pounds lighter than I woke up at, towards the end of my day and with being stuck again, but then I remembered I took a water pill earlier.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 2003 Up to 2,701 album views, half of which are of my pictures. Another doll shot download, too.

Paula called too, and left a message saying they moved her court date up to May, though she’s still going in on the 23rd. Sounds like the 23rd is a pretrial hearing or something, and May will be her actual sentencing day.

Guess I’ll go do some proofreading now. I’m up to mid-’97. I’m right at the point where the black bums start slamming car doors like crazy and when they got the dog to torment me with after I hauled off at them for basing me out at 6:30 in the morning. Just a couple months away from when they took it out of the back yard one night and tied it to the Jeep’s fender in the carport so it’d be right smack outside our windows, and when she came screaming at our door. Oh, why didn’t I beat the shit out of her then?!?! She had a lot of nerve too, coming to our door and telling me to shut up. Then even more nerve to tell me she was sick of my shit when she and her sick associates were the ones dishing it.

Anyway, it was too obvious that they got the dog just to use it against me, and I remember that I not only felt sorry for the dog but how grateful I was the day the housing people caught her with it and made her get rid of it. That must’ve pissed her the fuck off big time, too.

The question is, how is she gonna feel in a little over 9 months from now when she no longer has any kind of a hold on me?

This time period was also when I began to realize that it takes a lot more than shared blood to make a family. All the years of abuse I took from my family began to have an accumulative effect on me, causing years of simmering emotions to boil over.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2003 Tom went back to bed shortly after the knocker left. Especially since he has to leave for work at 4 PM today for a meeting.

I hope Paula gets the doll’s dress before the 23rd in case she really does go to jail.

The freeloaders are giving us Monday off. Yeah, it’s MLK Day, so no cheeks that day.

I’m feeling once again like the dollmaking thing is just another joke on me, like it’s never going to happen. Too many things keep coming up to prevent it which tells me something right there. Well, I’ll just do what I said before and forget about it if we still don’t have the kiln come summertime. I’m not going to make the same mistake I made in the past by struggling for things that aren’t meant to be.

Although at only 100 DPI, I went and scanned every picture of Mary’s I have. She has a total of 40 pictures which I’ll burn onto a CD for her once she’s out. I hope she gets her own PC and printer! She certainly could use it. As soon as my PC is upgraded and equipped with a burner of its own, I’ll be making Paula a CD of pictures and journals. That is, after I edit the hell out of them, of course.

Later…

Yesterday, Tom slept longer than I’ve ever known him to in the near-decade we’ve been together. He says the diet’s making him tired. I was tired too, when I first started dieting. I’m now 128 and amazingly regular. Funny thing is, though, I’ve been eating more. Like 1,200 cals. Maybe it really does take twice as long and is twice as hard to diet alone, and maybe the diet and exercise combined really are helping, so I guess I’ll keep plugging away at it a little while longer. I still don’t think I’ll get to 105-110, and I still want a Chinese buffet break on Wednesday when we go to see the cheeks like we planned (he’ll make his own stop for American food).

Think I’ll go download some nature sound MP3s, like rainstorms, birds, wind chimes, oceans, brooks, waterfalls, etc. The wind sounds suck. They sound too much like a swarm of bees.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 2003 Wow, I just got a letter from Mary dated the 24th and postmarked the 27th! Don’t know why it took nearly 3 weeks to get to me. That happens sometimes, I guess.

At this time she thought she was going to be there till the summer and asked for two copies of her drafts along with her astrology, saying she’d mail them to herself in Florida the day before she left Estrella, but I take it that she wants me to just wait and send the stuff to Florida, seeing that she’s leaving next month (unless there are more delays).

She still expects to be released in 2004 or 2005 at the max. I hope so! And I hope she really isn’t on intense probation for too long, but like I’ve said before, you can’t count on or trust the law to come through for you. I’m sure she knows this by now, though. She’s not stupid.

She says Virginia, who killed her drug dealers, is worse than Hope, but at least gets her own commissary.

She doesn’t yet know why José is in jail.

I sent her a couple of pictures of Chris, one face shot, one full body shot, and a few drawings I did years ago. She asked to see them which was nice. I sent her a person, dogs, and a colored drawing of a cat surrounded by flowers and butterflies.

I’m back to 129, but since I doubt I’ll shit for 2-3 days, I’m sure I’ll gain a pound or two back. I felt so teased earlier. I felt like I had to take a dump, but as soon as I sat on the toilet, the feeling was gone as quickly as it had come. All I can do is just eat sensibly and exercise regularly. It all goes to prove, though, that no, attitude is not always connected to the outcome. I was sure I’d lose the weight, yet I couldn’t, just like I was sure I could never quit smoking, yet I did.

I’m in mid-1997 with the proofreading, and right before the folks visited, I wrote that I had a feeling it was to be our final meeting. I sure got that one right!

I also wrote that I was struggling between being angry at his mom for using him and feeling guilty about complaining about it, but now I don’t feel an ounce of guilt for how I felt, and I shouldn’t have felt guilty back then, either. She did a terrible thing. She stole my husband from me, ran him ragged, and milked us of a lot of money. Why shouldn’t I have felt any hard feelings just because she might have done us a favor or two in return? She still used the shit out of my husband and took his attention away from me when I needed it more. I also think Tom should’ve realized what was going on a lot sooner than he did and put an end to it sooner, but he could never be nearly to blame as much as his mother. She knew that because he was so kind and generous, he’d have a hard time saying no.

The last mouse died today, so no more mice for a while. Next time, though, they’ll have all new cages and accessories.

In better news, the stock did sell yesterday, after all, for just under $1,500. I still don’t know what I’ll get for my next doll order or when, since we still have to get the damn carburetor so the truck can be up and running, then get the fences. We don’t know for sure how much the fences will cost, but I vibed $450.

There are a couple of really nice HSC dolls I’d like, but one of them is a 750-piece limited edition, and the other’s 750-piece closed edition, so by the time we get the extra money, they’ll probably be gone. In that case, I’ll just get the fashion dolls I want, but I’m pretty sure at this point that I won’t be bothering with Ashton-Drake.

I looked, and there is a fourth Playboy doll that will soon be available (I don’t know why they have her listed as the third in the series) named Ava Fabian. She’s a brunette and is going to be wearing Playboy’s original bunny suit.

I can’t believe that of the first four dolls, they’re all white. Especially what with the way everything’s so mixed. I mean, you can’t even find one TV series, one movie, or one commercial without a black in it these days, and Asians too, of course.

I finally spoke with Paula. Of course, she had to call when Charlie’s Angels was on, but oh well. She called at 5:30 her time, saying it was 10° and that there were two feet of snow. Naturally, I rubbed in our beautiful weather, although it is quite cold at night. Especially out here where there’s not nearly as much concrete to hold the heat in. While it can get up to 70° during the daytime, it can get down to the high 20s at night.

Paula says she goes to bed at 9 PM and gets up at 5 AM every day, and is her same old self. The conversation was the usual; about the losers she hangs with. If ever there was a woman attracted to abusive men, it’s got to be Paula B. She’s worse than my sister was. It’s sick. It really is. But more so, it’s sad. I can see a guy being attracted to an aggressive woman only because most guys, unlike most women, don’t have much self-respect. This is crazy, though. Totally crazy. She talks of how Miguel, her current PR of choice, put stitches in her head and about how she’s going to trial (she pled not guilty) on the 23rd for slugging him, yet says they’re still the best of buddies. She said she doesn’t want to dump him because he and Justin grew close, but that’s crazy. Any man that can beat a woman can beat a child too, and they should not be allowed near either one. Especially a child who cannot fight back.

Maybe he could, though, because according to Paula, my predictions for Justin getting into all kinds of trouble are already ringing true. He pulled a knife on a fellow student, so she says, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Any kid who grows up with an aggressive mother whose millions of boyfriends are abusive is almost guaranteed to end up violent and in trouble with the law constantly. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Justin ultimately ended up in prison for years. I hate to say it, but it’s what I see plain as day.

She asked me if I saw her having to do 90 days, which is what she says she’ll get if she loses the trial, and at the time I didn’t see anything, but afterward, once we’d hung up and I’d had a chance to concentrate on it in silence, I did feel a slight vibe saying that she is going to jail. Sorry girl!

Then she says she may have to do an additional 30 days for getting caught driving without a license, something she never bothered to get, for reasons I can’t fathom.

Every other time we talk she says it cracks her up that Tom and I don’t sleep together.

Now, how can that crack someone up? I mean, what’s so funny about it? It may be odd, but funny?

She’s one funny lady, though, that’s for sure. Let’s see… she wants to send Tom a carburetor cuz they’re cheaper there and claims that the FBI hung up her phone when we were accidentally disconnected. She reminds me of Ellie!

I finally, after 6 months, found out what she thinks of the dolls. She says she likes and kept them all, though she hasn’t got them set up cuz she needs shelves.

Meanwhile, I’m sending her an extra dress that will fit a couple of the tall dolls which I can’t imagine ever having a use for. I told her that after that, though, I wouldn’t send anything else to her unless she contacted me saying she wasn’t in jail. I don’t want to be sending stuff her ditzy associates may not remember to give to her once she’s out.

Anyway, she’s at the end of the year’s probation she got for slugging that pig. I still can’t believe she got a year of probation for slugging a pig while I got half a year in jail, plus 2½ years of probation over a fucking letter! But then again I can because life’s so unfair.

What’s sad is that Paula’s the kind who’ll never get anyone decent, not that that’s an excuse to take just anything she can get. It’s just that the more stable people are going to see Paula as not good enough for them. I’ve walked in her shoes before. Back when I was young, naïve, mixed up and too nice, all I’d get were assholes. Those who had their shit together and who were more mature basically looked down on me, knowing they were too good for me at the time.

Later…

That was scary. Really utterly terrifying! I was playing with the rats. Tom was still in bed. Suddenly, there was a knock on the utility door. Whenever I hear a knock at the door I think – black bitch! Especially when 90% of the knocks have been connected to them.

I ran and opened Tom’s bedroom door, flipped on the light, and woke him up with the news. He asked me what my vibes were and I said I didn’t have any bad ones. Nonetheless, against my better judgment, he went out and checked after the third knock to find an old white guy looking for some guy.

Later he went out to look around and came back saying that it sounded like he was going door to door, judging by the way the dogs were going off, but dogs go off around here a lot lately, so I don’t know. I guess he was harmless.

I should’ve figured it wasn’t black-related, though, since the pigs have always preferred to come to the front door and only in the daylight. The cheeks, who also uses the front door, wouldn’t come at this hour to a client on standard probation.

“You also shouldn’t have turned on the light or walked as noisily,” Tom said, which is true.

Although few and far between, I can’t wait for the fences that will stop these casual visitors, or at least make it a bitch for them to bother us.

Fortunately, I still don’t have any bad vibes, but if there’s going to be any more trouble, I still say it won’t be till before or after 10/30. It’ll depend on how the freeloaders feel. Not being in the same county helps, but will they feel they “got me” and so be it? Or will their little victory of 2000 go to their heads, making them feel invincible and like they can do anything to me and get away with it (not that there wouldn’t be a grain of truth to that)? Sometimes abusing others can be a real addiction for some people.

The so-called easy diet hasn’t been so easy lately. For the last few days, I’ve felt as if nothing could fill me up. Like I could eat a ton of food and still be hungry. I can’t lose weight anyway, so I may as well eat when I’m hungry. I’m not going to make a pig of myself and eat for the hell of it, but I see no sense in going hungry anymore for no reason at all.

Mary was right when she said the clip I received today would be painful. The sick fuck I’d love just 5 minutes with, broke James’ arm when he was around two. As I told her, I know all too well the agony of a broken arm, and where the hell was God throughout all of it? Nowhere! He just didn’t give a damn, did he? I still can’t understand how she can worship something that allowed all this and so much more to happen! After considering all she and her kids have been through, doesn’t it ever make her wonder if perhaps she’s kidding herself by telling herself that God wants her to be happy and that he doesn’t want her to suffer? I mean, if he never wanted her to suffer, then who did and why didn’t he intervene?

And how the hell could she stay with Justin one second longer? I mean, what was she thinking?! Of all the dumb things I’ve done, not even my dumbest of all judgment calls comes close to how dumb she was to have put up with his shit for as long as she did. She had people she could’ve gone to. Some people may be truly stranded with no place else to go, but she had people she could’ve run to, and if she didn’t, I’d rather be homeless on the streets than live with such abuse!

Just what was she thinking? That he’d one day be a prince who treated her and her kids with the utmost love and respect? Please! How could it take one abused kid and one dead one to realize just what she was dealing with??? I’m sure Murphy and Andrew were abused, too. I don’t know who’s worse, her or Paula.

The woman prosecuting Justin in the James case asked Mary the same thing most people have undoubtedly wondered – why didn’t she leave? Mary’s answer to that was that she was too scared to because he threatened to kill her, her family, and her friends, but I don’t buy it. Oh, I don’t doubt she was scared. It’s just that as I’ve said a million times over, actions speak louder than words. Most people don’t act on their threats, and it just seems to me that it’d be a worthy gamble to take by breaking away despite the threats, rather than stick around and risk getting killed. I’d take my chances and leave as you’re a lot more likely to get killed by an abusive person than without them. If you break away from an abusive person, things can only get better, but if you stick around, there’s no hope for any change.

Anyway, in case I haven’t yet said so, Andrew and James were adopted and Murphy lives with her aunt Carolyn.

Another thing is that there is a huge difference between Mary and Paula, and that’s that Mary realizes she fucked up and has learned from it. Paula’s 35 years old and she still doesn’t get it. To quote from Mary’s own words; she lives in torment and regrets the fact that she let her fear of a man get in the way of doing right by her kids.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2003 Tom left a message that I got when I woke up this afternoon saying he messed up his diet by stopping at Whataburger, he has a bad belly, never wants to eat again, and will be getting up late.

He didn’t go to bed till early afternoon as he was keeping an eye on the stock. Guess we didn’t sell any today or else he’d have added that to his message.

After browsing through the HSC’s extensive doll section, I find myself leaning more and more toward forgetting about the Ashton dolls. They’re nice, but at the HSC I can get dolls that are much bigger at a more reasonable price. We’ll see, though.

I wasn’t surprised I was able to shit yesterday, seeing that the day before I had something like 1600 calories, but since I had about 850 yesterday, I was surprised to shit today, but I did.

I’m 130 pounds. To lose 3 pounds in two weeks is pitiful. I know some say it’s better to go the slow way, but I think losing 3-5 a week would’ve been more reasonable. That’s just not going to happen, though, slow or fast. I’m heavy and that’s that. This is the way I’m meant to be or else I wouldn’t be this way. Rather than drive myself crazy by trying to be something I can’t be, I may as well accept it and learn to live with it.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2003 Chris came a half-hour ago. She’s just so-so. Not bad, not great. Her eyes do look realistic enough, and the doll itself is lovely, but her head’s a bit droopy, she’s got a wire armature which is harder to pose than lock-tites, and she had black ink all over her legs that we had to scrub off. Because she has no breastplate, I’ll have to buy her an outfit with a tight neck. It’s hard to stuff certain dolls just right, cuz if you stuff them too little they’ll sag and if you stuff them too much they’re too rigid to sit. The hands, feet and face are molded wonderfully and makes for the best doll yet for holding Barbie as she was made to hold things. She cups Barbie well in her right hand and holds Barbie’s hairbrush in the other between her thumb, index and middle fingers. The other two fingers on that hand are curled toward her hand, making me wonder how the hell I’m going to polish those nails! Her wrists are just about the exact same size as mine. Because she’s a girl doll, she’s fatter than Ciara, who’s a woman doll, even though she’s a couple of inches shorter. She’s got apple cheeks of her own, but it looks cute on her.

The ink splotches obviously happened in transit. As the UPS driver pointed out, the box was dented at one end, but fortunately, it was at her feet. If it had been the other end, the ink would’ve gotten on her face and it’d be impossible to get it all off. We got it to fade, but not disappear. I guess it’s just part of my doll curse, though it could’ve been worse.

It’s now been 22 weeks since Scot was last here. If he doesn’t come sometime in February, I’ll start to wonder if maybe he really is done with the home visits, and of course, I’ll be almost sure that he is if he still hasn’t shown up come March.

Ever since I got the test out of the way, I’ve had a sense of being “home-free,” so to speak. I only hope I’m not kidding myself with some false sense of finally, after all these years, seeing the first shimmer of light at the end of what’s been a very long tunnel. It’s just that every time I thought I’d detangled myself from these sickos’ grip for good, they managed to grasp hold of me yet again and strangle me with their shit all over again, making me wonder if they’re not a permanent part of my life.

If they don’t pull any new stunts and if there really are no more tests or being woke up by home visits, and if all that’s left to deal with is setting my schedule to be available to see him 19 more times and make the monthly payments, then all I have to do is hope there are no new changes along the way that aren’t good. There were a couple of other changes I forgot to add to my list too, making it a total of 5 changes over the last 20 months. At the start of last year, Maricopa residents were told to report on the 1st and 3rd Friday of each month, rather than the 1st and 2nd. At the start of this year, the report day was changed to Wednesdays.

I don’t know. It’s too soon to go getting my hopes up, thinking I’m on my way to being forever done with this shit, but we’ll see. Besides, there’s just going to be something new as soon as it really is done and over with.

Later…

So far I worked out with the pedals for 40 minutes. Did 20 with the legs and 20 with the arms.

I haven’t received any email from Mary, and Dave, although he’s still sending jokes, has ignored my question asking what they thought of the pictures I superimposed so that tells me that I just may be able to “fight back” after all and that Mary really didn’t like them. That’s good, though. I didn’t want her to like them. That was the idea; to show her what it’s like to be embarrassed and put on the spot. That way, maybe she won’t be doing it to others.

I can’t believe how much I’ve come to dislike that woman! I don’t hate her, but I don’t like her. She does have some good in her, but as I’m finding out she can really be a non-tolerant hypocrite!

I don’t think the pictures are the only things that have got her pissed off. I think another thing that bothers her is that she didn’t get the reaction from me she wanted.

Anyway, so much for getting Mandy cuz she’s sold out. That’s okay, though. There are other dolls I want.

MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2003 Mary and her damn favors! This really is starting to get old. Even Andy never asked for as many favors during the 11 years we were friends. I already put my foot down as far as serving her friends go, and if I have to do the same with multiple story copies, I will. At least she’s footing most of the postage.

In her letter today she asked for a copy of her book so she could have it during the remainder of her time at Estrella. At first I was like, there’s no way I’m going to waste the paper and stamps when she’ll be out of there in just 3 weeks, but because she did send stamps, I went ahead and printed a copy. I pulled the margins wide and made the print really small, though, and used plain white paper. Some of it was faded a bit since I’m low on toner. Tom’s going to pick me up a new cartridge tomorrow, he says. Meanwhile, when she gets to Florida, I really hope she hangs onto the copy I’ll send her there. I don’t want to be printing multiple copies any more than I want to play organizer.

Chris hasn’t arrived yet, but the pedals are here and I absolutely love them! They’re the best thing I’ve used yet as far as cardiovascular training goes. It’s the quietest and most comfortable too, yet still effective. I can feel it in my legs, my heartbeat and my raised body temp. I can read or watch TV with it easily and I can even put it on the counter or a table and do my arms if I want to as well.

I shit today, but I’m sure that will be it for 2-3 days. I know something’s obviously blocking me from losing the fat, but oh well. I tried. I can live with being heavy. I wouldn’t be this big in the first place if it weren’t meant to be. At least I can keep strong and fit. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to work on maintaining my current weight or if I’ll let myself gain all the weight my body wants. It’s just that to me, overweight is overweight. What difference does it make if I’m 30 pounds overweight or 60 pounds overweight? So, if I’m going to remain overweight since I really don’t have much of a choice, I see no sense in worrying about how overweight I am or may become.

Meanwhile, I may live like a hermit, but no one can ever say I’m too lazy or inactive!

SUNDAY, JANUARY 12, 2003 I am so, so pissed right now. I’ve been stuck since Friday and no, I’m not stuck at 129, I’m up a pound! It’s totally obvious that something up there does not want me losing weight.

But why??? There is no logical reason why dieting like this should plug me up. Nothing’s changed but my calorie intake. I’m still eating the same things, just less of them.

How I wish I could make myself throw up! If it won’t come out the end it’s supposed to, I wish I could make it come out the other end, but throwing up has always disgusted me so much that I could never do it. I’ve tried numerous times, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Losing 3 pounds in 12 days isn’t much at all, and I know losing weight slowly may be better than not at all, but I don’t know about that. Especially if that means having to do this damn diet for 3-4 months. Perhaps it’s time to tell myself that there are worse things in life than being fat. You’re working so hard for so little. If something up there wants you to keep the weight then it must be for a reason. Which would you prefer; being fat or being back in jail? You want the freeloaders back living with you? You want to be paralyzed instead? Blind? You tried your best, now just drop it and move on.

But still, it bothers me. It really bothers me that I have no control over my life or my body. No, we do not control our own destinies. Not for the most part, anyway. We really are puppets in a script written by God in which we’re forced to act out, like it or not.

This reinforces my fear that if it won’t let me lose weight, how’s it going to let me do dolls?

Anyway, I’ll probably hang up the dieting. I thought I’d be ok if I’d just play catch up regularly enough, and only be slowed down a little bit, but that’s obviously not going to be the case. So there’s no sense in sticking to the diet as well as I have been, for next to nothing in return. I’ll just use the bike and Bowflex for strength and stamina, keep the fat and just work with what I’ve got.

Last night I happened to catch the doll show on the HSC and saw a wonderful $110 doll named Mandy in quite a unique pose. She kneels on one knee with her arms sort of wrapped around her other leg. She’s almost all porcelain. All of her arms are porcelain, anyway, and she wears a print sundress that’s tied at her shoulders. I thought she was Indian, but they have her down as black. I don’t care, though. I like the doll. As posed she’s 22”, but would stand up to 34” if she could stand. I hope to get this doll as soon as we have the money, but I won’t count on it. If I do, I do, if I don’t, I don’t. No doll collector gets every doll they want, and if I miss out on her, I’ll get the other dolls I’ve been wanting that I know will be around for a while. Still, I’m going to try and will put the other dolls on hold to get her first if I have to.

Anyway, I’m taking the time to work on my neglected proofreading project until more work from Mary comes in.

Later…

Maybe the best cure for being stuck is to simply bitch about it in this journal, cuz I just went. When I first felt it coming on, I was like, No, it’s simply wishful thinking, a tease.

The question now is whether or not to continue with the diet and just lose weight the slow way.

I noticed earlier that I’m smaller in the upper abs and at the sides where my ribs are. It would take a massive amount of weight loss to deflate this face, though, and pick up this neck.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 2003 Still 129 pounds. I’ve been stuck again for a couple of days as I figured I would be, but as long as I keep playing catch-up in the end, I’ll be ok. I still have till Wednesday to get to 127 and still make my limit of 3 pounds per week. Tom thinks my pedaling a half hour a day will speed up the process, but I doubt it. Not at my age and height. But it will help keep the lost weight off and will give me increased strength and stamina. It’s good for the heart too, and as you know, heart disease runs rampant in my family.

Tom said that in light of our lovely PO who likes to send half of our packages back, he emailed the HSC and asked them to please not give our pedals away should they be returned for any reason. They replied saying they wouldn’t give them away, and in fact, their records show it was delivered to our PO this morning, but since it’s Saturday, we won’t be able to get them till Monday. You can’t get packages on weekends at this place. You can’t even get into your PO Box before 6 AM. In Tempe, we have 24-hour access, though we’re not going to renew that box once it expires in March.

So, the Tempe PO throws packages on their shelves and forgets about them, and this one returns them. At least they’re right on with regular mail.

I can’t believe how well we’ve both been sticking to our diets! It’s almost been too easy. He’s lost more, though. Like 7 pounds. He says it’s because he has more fat and that he has more fat in his belly alone than I have in my entire body.

Since he hasn’t done so in ages, he played hooky the last two nights, claiming to get the cold he never did end up getting like he thought he would. He’d still be getting 3-4 colds a year for real if I hadn’t insisted he take vitamin C tablets every day.

He’s taken the time off to work on the truck and install new faucets in the bathroom sinks. The single-lever faucets I told the deaf, dumb, and illiterate Mexican to install in the first place.

They look like the one we got in Phoenix with the clear round handle. It’s not perfectly round, though. I don’t know how you’d describe it. It’s sort of angled all around.

When he installed the one in the master bath it really stunk like hell! That’s because of that one’s closer to the septic tank with fewer turns and kinks.

In my bathroom, he also installed a really cool toilet paper holder. It’s just a bar with a catch at the end that’s angled slightly upwards. It makes changing toilet paper a cinch.

He also got a ready-keyed new handle/lock for the side door. Yeah, all 3 doors in this house were definitely damned from the get-go. It was getting stuck and to the point where it couldn’t be locked from the inside.

To my surprise, I finally caught the mouse in the late afternoon yesterday, and rather than killing it, we opted to walk it on down just past our property to the north. How amazing it is, I thought as I watched Tom walk down there, to have been here just over 3 years and still, there’s no one towards the north or the east. Not close, anyway, although there might be a couple of properties away in those directions.

We never did receive a tracking link from UPS which leads us to believe that the doll people never gave them our email address, but I think it’s safe to assume she’ll be here Monday or Tuesday.

Got 4 letters from Mary yesterday which were obviously sent right before I spoke with her aunt. She says she’ll be there another 30 days. Guess that means that by February 7th she’ll be gone.

She enclosed a book of stamps which was very nice of her and which will help a lot since she’s got a ton of stuff for me to send to her, and there’s even more on its way, too. She asked if I could give Michelle my email address so Todd could send me pictures he has that she wants. She answered my question of “Why me?” by saying that if she sent them to her family they wouldn’t mail them to her, and come to think of it, I think she told me that before. I asked for more pictures of her shortly after I got out and she said something about having a hard time getting any from her family.

Anyway, I emailed her note and my address to Michelle, wrote her another letter since she’s going to be sticking around a while longer, and enclosed her friend Brandi’s copy of that psychologist’s and philosopher’s words. I wonder if this is the same Brandi who’s in for killing this guy she was going to get it on with in some hotel. According to her, though, she only ripped the guy off and it was her boyfriend that killed him, so who knows for sure what really happened? I wasn’t there and I don’t know them. Guess I just don’t care, either.

I had to scan the astrology pages she tore out of a book cuz that’s the only way they’ll accept them unless they come straight from the publisher themselves, which was the case when I tried to send Bob word find puzzles. It was a huge job, too. There were about 30 pages and each one took about 4 minutes just to queue up. It took hours to do and I hope it’ll be a long, long time before I have another scanning job that big.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 2003 Tom got a message saying Chris was shipped today, so we should get a tracking link from UPS sometime today, too.

Oreo makes his own schedule and Little Fella makes his schedule mine. Oreo only gets up in the daytime if food is coming into the cage, for the most part. Little Fella went to bed a few hours before I did last night, then was up and waiting for me when I got up today at noon. I hope I’m up when Chris comes, which could be as early as Monday. I’ll make sure I don’t sleep too late. Fortunately, UPS doesn’t come early around here.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2003 It’s over! Yes, I had the test and it was a piece of cake. That’s because, by the time we got there, I had to go so bad I probably would’ve peed my pants had he not been able to flag down a female PO as soon as he did, and once we entered the bathroom, I started peeing as soon as my ass hit the toilet.

She seemed pretty cool and I didn’t feel dirty or like I was being molested or anything like that. I was a bit surprised when she asked me why I was on probation. Usually, they’re pretty impersonal.

Afterward, I got a kick out of how the cheeks said, “So you saw her go?” to the lady. I was thinking, Well, she wasn’t looking in the mirror and picking her nose!

Anyway, as of 10:00 last night, an unusual calm came over me and I slept just fine. I thought I’d wake up a zillion times, but I slept right through.

What was funny was that as Tom pointed out, he may not have been planning to test me, since he wasn’t prepared. Whenever he’s tested me before, he’s had things set up, labels on cups, etc. But as soon as I saw him I told him I had to pee real bad either way, and that’s when he commented on it being a while since my last test and got the stuff he needed, along with the PO. All I know is that whether or not he was ready to test me, I was ready to get it over with, and it’s nice to be able to call the shots for once pertaining to what goes on with me.

Anyway, I’m just so glad it’s done and over with. It takes a lot of the stress off me, and I’m going to be really pissed if he surprises me with any other tests. He said the tests, as long as they were clean, would get further and further apart, and I’d like him to keep his word, something people in law enforcement seem to have a hard time doing.

He didn’t mention stopping by, but he reminded me of how much time I have left.

He’s got a lot of stuff in his office. Pins, pictures, matchbox cars of cruisers, patches, and even a rattlesnake skin from a rattler he killed.

After the cheeks, we went to a dollar store where I got a clump of red roses and a clump of maroon roses. I put them on the refrigerator.

I also got a pink plastic toddler chair that I thought would be cool for dolls between the 25”-35” range.

Lastly, I got 3 ballerina figurines. They’re not great, but for a buck each, they sure are nice.

On the way to and fro, we passed a dozen pig cars and got hung up by more creeps than usual.

I woke up today at 129 like I hoped and expected to. What I didn’t expect to do today, though, was take a dump, but I did.

I think I may’ve forgotten to mention this, but a few days ago I discovered both the two remaining crabs dead. That didn’t last long. I guess this climate is just too dry for them, although it was far from dry today. We got lots of clouds and some good steady rain for most of the day. Not the kind that fills the washes, makes running water, and gets cars stuck, but enough to saturate the ground. No leaky doors, either!

Since we’re finally having a normal winter as far as rainfall goes, I wonder if we’ll have a normal monsoon, too?

I almost caught the mouse this morning, but it managed to escape before the trap door shut all the way. This is one major clever mouse! Of course, every time I let the rats out, Little Fella, who loves to come out way more than Oreo does, triggers the damn thing. Oreo sleeps through most of the day like most rats, but my fella never sleeps, so it seems. Oreo’s venturing further away from the cage, but only if I’m there, and if I move back towards the cage, he follows.

Unfortunately, the bike’s not coming via UPS, after all. It’s coming by regular mail. They claim it’ll only take 10 days, but I know that’s bullshit. The HSC dolls never arrived on time, and as the Handi-Stitch taught me, dolls aren’t the only packages that we have problems getting. Half the packages coming to this PO have been returned, so I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s 50/50 as to whether or not we get it. That will really suck if they return it cuz then the same thing will happen that happened with Tasha. They only had so many, so if this gets returned, they won’t keep it for long. They’ll assume we changed our minds and give it to someone else.

As for Chris, Tom says he expects her to be shipped by Friday. I hope so!

Since the Humane Society ripped us off, we’ll have to order labels from the catalog we usually use. I emailed the HS about the stuff they never sent us, but I won’t expect an answer.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2003 I sent my last letter to Mary at Estrella last night. I checked to see if there was any new mention of Monster since his trial was supposed to be yesterday. Naturally, there wasn’t. Baby killers just don’t pique the public’s interest in this state the way supposed threatening racists do.

I was typing up a heart-wrenching yet beautiful poem Mary wrote about the pain she feels in losing Gretchen, and she is so totally right when she says that the more you love someone, the harder it is to lose them. I love Tom more than anyone I’ve ever loved or will love and I can’t imagine not killing myself if he were to die. I’d have nothing to live for. He is my life. All else is just an addition to it, some good, some bad, some neither.

She has been so cursed throughout her life. In a sense, much more so than I have. I hope something up there will give her a break with age as it has with me (with the exception of the freeloaders, of course).

Since I last mentioned spotting it, I’ve seen this untrappable mouse we’ve got living with us 3 more times. I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that it won’t allow itself to be trapped. It’s just an unusually smart mouse. It’s not hurting anything that I know of, though, so I don’t mind it residing with us. I just wish I knew if it’s been in the house all along, or if it’s coming and going through any vent openings we may’ve missed. If there are any openings, and if that diamondback returns to living under and by the house once they’re active again, I doubt many mice will be going through there. I think that’s why we went so long without any coming up in here; because the rattler was scaring them off.

Anyway, I guess I just hadn’t been putting enough cheese in the trap to entice the mouse, but this time around I put a healthy pinch of cheese in it.

Just when I woke up and decided it’d be best not to take the laxatives we got in case it reacts on me while I’m suffering on account of the freeloaders tomorrow, I ended up shitting up a storm on my own. Perhaps tomorrow I will finally be back in the 120s and won’t wake up at 130 for the fifth day in a row. I’m still glad I got the laxative, cuz I know something’s going to fight me along the way and that I’m just going to turn right around and be stuck all over again. That’s how it worked the last time. When the Gods do give in to my wishes, they don’t necessarily make it easy for me. If I were regular, on the other hand, I’d have this weight off in no time. Guess later is still better than never.

The Dead Zone has returned, and I also have another new show I’ve been glued to ever since I first saw its premiere. It’s called Cirque du Soleil (circus of sun), the coolest circus I ever did see. That’s because it mainly consists of acrobatics. Things like trapeze artists and dancing gymnasts with astonishing flexibility. It’s incredible!

Although anything’s still possible over the next 4½ hours, I’m beginning to doubt the cheeks will show up due to the weather, along with the fact that he hasn’t said he’d “try to catch me at the house” like he used to almost always say, and the fact that he was talking as if he knew he wouldn’t see me till tomorrow. It’s both cloudy and windy, and I’ve never known him to come on days that weren’t clear and calm. If he doesn’t show up today, that still doesn’t mean he won’t show up at some point during this month. Like I said, if we got down to the last 6 months without visits/tests, then I’d think that was over, but it still seems pretty damn unlikely, no matter how much he may think testing or the whole probation thing, in general, is unnecessary.

Later…

The weather has improved since I last wrote. In fact, it’s gorgeous out. There are still some clouds, but not as many. It’s also gone from windy to breezy too, and I have the windows open to let some fresh air in which, fortunately, doesn’t smell like shit today. The wind’s blowing westerly, so if there was any shit in the air, I couldn’t blame it on the renter’s horse.

Heard a sonic boom earlier. We’re still fortunate enough not to hear them as often as we did the first few months of living in this house. I hope it stays that way, too. Particularly while the freeloaders still own me.

Anyway, I still don’t know what to make of the cheeks. Just maybe he will stick to the basics of just having me report and make payments, something he has no say over (although he could cut the reports in half) and skip the home visits and tests altogether, but I doubt it. He’s too all or nothing, like most people. His unwillingness to cut my reports in half just because the courts won’t do the right thing by letting me go, and the things he said when he first informed us of Casa Grande, tells me that. The way he mentioned not being able to always test people in Maricopa, and for me to “be prepared” is a dead giveaway. He’s had the opportunity to test me the last few times I saw him in Maricopa yet he didn’t. There were no trials or cases of any kind going on and the bathroom, which is off of the judge’s office, was perfectly free and available, so this tells me he’s not going to be “nice,” so to speak and do me any favors. He’s simply been waiting till he can test me with eyes on me. This doesn’t surprise me, either. I knew all along that it’d be this way. I knew that if God was going to allow the jail time to be played up to the max, he’d do the same for the probation part of it. He’s been whipping my ass good with these freeloaders from day one and he’s not about to give me any breaks till it’s over. It’s like he’s all or nothing too, by making me suffer on account of them to the extremes which I have. I just hope that if I’m right about being tested that he gets it’s the fuck over with. I’ve had it hanging over my head for 2½ months now. Enough torture! As soon as I can get that out of the way I think I’ll finally be able to breathe a lot easier and that it’ll ease a lot of my stress. But will the remainder of the time be smooth sailing? Or will something else come up? Nine months is an awfully long time to be on probation without some change or new demand of some kind. First there was the demanding of payment receipts, then the anxiety of the classes hanging over me, then the PG switchover. When you think about it, 3 things in 20 months isn’t that bad, but that’s approximately one new issue every 8 months and I’ve got 9 left. Well, closer to 9.5. I just figured that I may be blessed with not having to have any connection with the black bitch the final two weeks, so I consider it to be 9 months and a week. Not long when you consider what I started with, but long enough in itself.

I look out the window and I think wow, such a beautiful day. Such a beautiful day spoiled by the stress of what could happen tomorrow. Always the freeloaders taint anything that’s good in my life. It never fucking ends. It’s a way of life for me now. It’s been that way for years. Always with me, always with them.

Amazingly, I haven’t seen the renters today. Maybe that’s because it’s warmer today, whereas yesterday was cooler. Too cool for opening windows. You know it’s cold out when the heat comes on in the afternoon! Especially in a dual-paned windowed house with 6” walls.

Later…

I might’ve just seen the cheeks go by, though I can’t swear to it because he was going in the opposite direction in which he usually goes and because he drove on the property across the way. I’ve only seen him drive on the road, plus, the lovely weather’s clouding up and cooling down once again.

Anyway, we’re going to go in the afternoon tomorrow so I don’t have the pressure on me of trying to be up early. Especially when I know I’m going to have a hell of a time sleeping tonight. I need time to wake up and psych myself up for this shit, so to speak, and to get my bladder full. It’s gonna take a half hour to get there, so if I leave with my bladder too full, I could piss my pants along the way! I have to get it just right.

God, what did I do to deserve this shit?! Why does he hate me so? Is it because I’m supposedly Jewish? Short? Cuz of my forefathers? Why???

God doesn’t have to love me. In fact, he doesn’t even have to like me. All I want is for him to leave me alone and just ignore me if he hates me that much and stop using me as a punching bag with those he does love and worship!

I try to tell myself to just relax, that they can’t hurt me, that I didn’t do anything wrong, but I didn’t do anything wrong nearly 2½ years ago, either, so if that’s the case, then how come I got thrown in jail for 6 outrageous months, then ordered to report twice a month to a PO, and to pay $40 a month, and to do 100 hours of community service, and to see a therapist, plus all the other humiliating shit for 30 more months?

There is another possibility and that’s that he may trust me enough to let me pee unobserved, but I doubt that, too. Again, he’s just too all or nothing. I mean, why should he when he has plenty of eyes available? Just to be nice and considerate of my feelings? I don’t think so!

As special as Little Buddy was, these rats really are just as friendly, playful and loving. Oreo’s like an “outside Sneezy.” Meaning, where Sneezy wouldn’t leave the inside of the cage when the cage door’s open, Oreo won’t leave the few feet surrounding the outside of the cage. They sure do like to get attention, climb all over me, and get treats from me.

I’ve got all the betas in the kitchen now to make for easier cleaning/feeding. I have two side-by-side on the counter and one on the island.

Later…

Tom and I just got done playing with the rats.

He also listened sympathetically and patiently to my bitching about the stress over tomorrow. A part of me was like, Don’t let yourself be subjected to this shit anymore and just run. Go! Get out of here!

Then I was like, Uh-uh. I got forced out of this house once. Next time I go willingly, but not until I’m ready to do so.

Meanwhile, I got a call from Mary’s aunt. She left a message asking me not to email Terri Morganthal, the prosecutor in the Florida case, a copy of Mary’s book if I haven’t already done so, till after the trial. She was obviously worried that it could hurt Mary since the defense would have to see it, too.

I called her back and told her I already sent it, but since there was nothing incriminating in it, I see no reason why it should make a difference. Carolyn, who said she was going to see Mary tomorrow, said she’d tell her this. She also said she’d call me if she learned anything that I might not know (I told her I rarely see the news and never read the paper).

Speaking of the news, well, it did make the news after all. The sick twist pleaded guilty to the James case! Everyone’s ecstatic about it and I can see why. This will help Mary a lot. Hopefully, it will, anyway, but as Carolyn says, I don’t know about her being released in ’04. I told her the same thing I told Mary, that speaking from personal experience, I wouldn’t put much faith in the system. You just can’t always buy what pigs or lawyers tell you. The presentencing guy told me to hope for the best, but expect the worst, and I think that’s what Mary should do. Life simply isn’t fair and you can’t always count on people to do the right thing, so as far as the pardon she expects to get within 2-3 years of her release – I don’t know. Even if I knew that’s all I’d have to do, I’d still run cuz I didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t kill anyone, so she shouldn’t have to do 5 minutes. Even if I was guilty of being a mass murderer, though, there’s no way I’d stick around for even just a year of intense probation, though that’s just me. She got to do what she’s got to do. I just hate to see her get her hopes up for nothing, then end up heartbroken. All I can do is hope things go as she hopes/expects them to.

Anyway, Mary was supposed to go to court today, but it was canceled. Also, I’m not sure when she’s going to Florida. Carolyn says they might not take her there till Justin’s sentenced (Mary is doing Florida time right now, too). They’ll both ultimately end up in Florida, but as Carolyn says, they’d probably send her back here to do her probation time cuz here’s where her family is. Well, I didn’t get into it with her, but they won’t send her anywhere, nor will they care where her family is. However, they do transfers, so she should easily be able to get a courtesy transfer from Florida to Arizona, but they’re not going to pay to move her back here.

I asked Carolyn if she had a computer and an email account and she says she hardly ever turns her computer on and doesn’t know how to use it. I’m just hoping Mary will have access to a computer in Phoenix once she’s out so she can work on her book more easily, but by then, I think it’ll all be written and proofread. Then, the only thing to do will be to organize it, print it out, send it to a publisher and hope for the best.

I was rather dismayed to hear Mary may get a place in Phoenix with her mother. This is the same mother that beat her and told her she was a worthless this and a worthless that. Why oh why would she want to live with anyone that’s done that to her? I just don’t get it. She writes a letter of inspiration to this abused woman, and that’s all well and good, but wouldn’t her living with her mother be regressing herself in a sense? I really think she needs to wipe people like her mother and Derek out of her life for good. She needs people in her life who haven’t/won’t verbally, mentally or physically abuse her. No, I just don’t always understand Mary’s way of thinking or her beliefs, but I still love her dearly. She has to make her own mistakes as well as her own successes just like the rest of us. Back when I was a single, naïve, poor 24-year-old, people told me it would be a mistake for me to have a kid. Yes, it would’ve been a mistake, but had I made that mistake, it would’ve been mine to make.

Anyway, I guess Mary could be here as late as February because that’s when the sicko’s to be sentenced, but we’ll see. Like I told both her aunt and Mary herself, her stuff’s ready to be sent to Florida as soon as she tells me she’s there. Meanwhile, I don’t want to be sending any more mail to Estrella. They could be moving her right now for all I know. Whatever happens, whenever it happens, all I can do is hope things go as well as possible. The poor girl’s been through enough as it is.

There’s a line from one of the poems that goes, “If you don’t like the cast of characters you’re involved with, get rid of them and start a new bunch,” and when I first read that I was like, yeah right! Like I could just dump the cheeks and the whole damn thing? On the other hand, that’s exactly what I did with my family. They were a problem and I disengaged myself from them one by one. At least I got to have some say with them and believe me, it’s a lot easier to detach yourself from those not living within a few feet of your house.

Both of us still aren’t sure what to think as far as what the future may hold for me in Casa Grande. As he pointed out, Scot has proven to pull surprises. We never expected him to write that note of recommendation to the courts to let me go, but he did.

Another thing Tom pointed out that never crossed my mind, was that another reason he may be hesitant to cut my visits is that it could cause the courts to give him more clients if they see he’s gone and cut people. Cutting people would only give him more time and less to do, which I know the courts would gladly fill in. Like I always said, as soon as someone’s let go, a new person comes in. They keep things running as consistently as they can. Even Gina commented on how as soon as one’s done with community service, in comes someone new. Plus, Scot has complained about his caseload before. A lady mentioned his having 25 people, and that was when he came out and said he wished he had 25, but that he had 70.

I don’t think that was the cheeks I saw earlier. That same SUV with the same loud engine that also drove on the property across the way went by again, and I could clearly make out the profile of a woman driver this time around.

The ear doctor called back to say they never got my referral. Despite the incompetent people in this world, I don’t buy it. I think they’re just swamped with too many patients, so they figure they’ll give some of them the runaround to discourage them from making appointments. Well, it worked because Tom and I decided he’d look around for a very small pair of tweezers. Once he finds them, I’ll oil the canal for a few days before he goes picking out dead skin.

Something just hit me. Carolyn said, “Here’s my number, in case it didn’t show up on your Caller ID.”

Well, how’d she know we have Caller ID?

Tomorrow’s the day I return to the 120s for sure! It’s the end of my day and I’m 130, exactly what I woke up as. In the past few days, I’d be 132-133 at the end of the day, so I’d wake up back at 130 the next day. Not tomorrow!

MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 2003 And so it was 10 years ago that I got hired as a dancer, and 3 years ago that the freeloaders came back into our lives in a whole different way that’d be a million times worse than when we all lived together.

Tom’s still working on the truck. In fact, he’s doing that right now. After 3 years, we finally got the doors fixed. I wish Tom had thought of this clever idea sooner, though he shouldn’t have had to. The Mexicans should’ve done the job right back in the factory in the first place, which was what we paid for. They look great, nonetheless. No leaks, no gaps. One less thing to have to worry about and to have to do.

To my utter shock and dismay, again I woke up at 130 and I’m still stuck, too. I get stuck every time I try to diet. Especially in the last year or two. It’s like something up there doesn’t want me to lose weight, and if it is an outer source controlling me, then that’s really scary. It’s really scary to think that something I can’t see or touch or control could have so much power over me. I’m hoping it’s just a case of my system simply needing time to adjust to the extreme cut in food intake, but I don’t know. I just have one of my bad feelings. If I’m right, the question is, why? Why would something not want me to lose weight? Just to punish me and piss me off? Why is it so important to whatever’s up there that I remain big? There are much worse things in life than not being able to lose weight, something I didn’t use to have so much trouble doing, but I’m not ready to give up just yet. I’m going to add laxatives to my diet as well as a daily Slim-Fast meal bar to keep me from feeling sluggish. It’d bring my calorie intake up to about 1100, plus whatever I have in gum and coffee, but it may help regulate me. I just don’t want to be doing all this hard work and going through all this hunger for nothing! I’ve got to start shitting out what I eat or else it really will be all for nothing. If this plan doesn’t work, then I’ll have to decide whether or not to let fate have its way with me yet again and not worry if I end up at 200 pounds, or do I want to maintain the 130? I highly doubt anything’s wrong with my thyroid as it was checked not too long ago. Besides, if there was, God wouldn’t let the doctors find out if he really is doing something to keep the weight on me besides plugging up my system.

I was out gathering trash earlier. Things like empty boxes and packages of car-related stuff. I didn’t want it to blow around in the wind cuz our shit wouldn’t end up on someone else’s land for them to have to deal with. Our stuff would stay right here on our land.

Still no cheeks, though tomorrow’s quite possible since he’s come a few times the day before I was to see him. If he doesn’t come by March or April, then I’ll start to believe he’ll never be back, but I think he will be. I’d be quite shocked if he never showed up again, but not as shocked as I would be if I were never tested again. I just hope he gets the damn test done and over with on Wednesday so I don’t have to deal with the anxiety of it hanging over my head, but I don’t know. God’s never dealt me any breaks yet when it comes to this shit, except for the work/class issue, so why should he start now? Oh, the hell I go through for these freeloaders!

I still have the feeling, and oh, how I hope I’m right, that once we get to somewhere in March, I’ll feel a lot less anxiety. Like I’ll finally be able to see the shimmer of light at the end of this very, excruciatingly long tunnel. Words can never describe the hell I’ve gone through for these freeloaders. Where my parents definitely have first place in causing me pain and suffering be it directly or not, the freeloaders definitely have the runner-up spot, and I’m sure they always will. Upon going out on my own, I never would’ve believed it if I had been told that such stress, anger, depression, anxiety, frustration, lack of freedom, and loss of money could be caused by neighbors. Family, ex-lovers, old friends, yes, but I never would’ve guessed I’d be made to suffer so severely by neighbors. And those things I mentioned above are just the major things. That doesn’t cover the little things like the cold showers, the inhumane food, the cellies that were crazy, loud, rude and obnoxious, the being controlled and treated like a child, etc.

Four adults (two women, two men) were out playing horsy for much of the afternoon, In fact, one guy got thrown as the horse went down. I guess it didn’t like the idea of being ridden. I had wondered why I hadn’t seen them riding the thing up and down Meadow Green and Ralston. Whoever was on the horse when it went down was lucky they weren’t hurt.

Anyway, one of the women took the horse in back and while on the ground, she steered it round and round in circles by its reins. I don’t know what the point of that was, but anyway, the horse is cool to look out the window and see, when you consider what my view on Oswego St. was, but it’s stealing more of our privacy. They’re always, always home and outside. I don’t know how all those people can afford to be home all the time, but I hope they’ll at least be indoors more often when it gets hot like they were last summer. It’s just that when it’s hot, I won’t have the blinds open in the kitchen which faces west, so it wouldn’t matter if they were or not. Now’s when I can comfortably have it open, let more light in, and enjoy the view of the mountains, but now is also when they’re out and about to spoil my view of nature. At least they’re white and quiet.

Tom said Mary will probably be unhappy about the pictures I played with and sent. Oh, poor, poor thing. She can dish it, but she can’t take it, huh? That’d be typical of her, but I don’t know. With the way she loves posing for the camera, she still might get quite a kick out of it. Tom’s so sure, though, that now she won’t call him to make extra money by working on her house when she needs it, but that’d make no sense. Why not call him just cuz she may be mad at me? She never liked me anyway. This is nothing new. Ignoring Tom cuz of me would be like me not talking to my friend Mary simply because Paula said something I didn’t like. What’s one got to do with the other?

Anyway, if she really was offended by the pictures, maybe she’ll finally learn from this. Maybe she’ll realize that as long as she’s willing to embarrass others and put them on the spot by constantly taking their pictures, others are likely to do the same to her. If she can make Christmas tree ornaments out of other people’s pictures, why can’t we superimpose pictures of her?

SUNDAY, JANUARY 5, 2003 The anxiety over this Casa Grande shit’s starting to settle in. Is God ever going to find it in his cold merciless heart to set me free of these freeloaders and not replace them with a new long-term problem?

I tell myself all I have to do is sit down on a toilet and pee in a cup, but that’s not all I have to do. I have to do it with eyes boring into me for reasons I shouldn’t have to. What the fuck do letters and journals have to do with drugs and alcohol? I’m sick of the general mistrust of us so-called criminals and all the automatic assumptions. They assume I very well could be a druggie cuz I supposedly wrote a threatening letter, and they don’t trust me to give them my own piss so they have someone watch me. It isn’t just about punishment, power, control and money, but the lack of trust and personal security of those within the system. When they lock someone in a cell, they’re saying, “We don’t trust you.” When they feel the need to carry mace and stun guns, they’re saying, “We don’t trust you.” When they feel the need to show up at your house unannounced, they’re saying, “We don’t trust you.” Well, this is all the more reason I don’t trust them! It’s hard to love someone who doesn’t love you, it’s hard not to dislike someone who dislikes you, and it’s hard to trust people that don’t trust you, and I sure as shit can’t trust anyone within this demented system! Attitudes and emotions really are as contagious as they say. That’s why a lot of people can’t stand to hang with those who are depressed as it brings them down, too.

Tom listened patiently as I bitched about it and for that, I am truly grateful. The poor guy’s had to put up with so much himself on account of these sickos.

I’m 37 years old and my 30s have been nothing but freeloaders! They’ll forever be the highlights of my 30s just like loneliness, depression, hopelessness, and struggling to make ends meet were the highlights of my 20s.

Tom thinks it’s possible that the cheeks will never be here again and that he won’t test me because he doesn’t think it’s necessary, but I doubt it. Especially the testing part of it and especially if he doesn’t have any say in the matter. It’s just that the tests cost them money, Tom pointed out, but with all the money this state takes people for, they can well afford it. Controlling me would be worth the few bucks it’d cost them. Besides, I could never cost them a microscopic fraction of what the freeloaders have cost us, trust me.

The diet, which started off well, isn’t going too well anymore. Not that I haven’t stuck to it, cuz I have. I woke up down 2 pounds after the first day, down another pound after the second day, then nothing at all today and yesterday. I’ve been stuck for a day and a half so I hope that’s all it is. I’d hate to end up working so hard for so little. Stuck or not, and that is a common problem with dieting, no one should have 1000 calories or less in 3 days and still weigh the same, so if I wake up at 130 again tomorrow, I’m going to be a bit worried and a lot discouraged.

In other news, my hair’s an inch shy of the middle of my ass when pulled straight. I still wish I had thin straight hair for the most part. Instead of damaging it with the straightening iron, I let it get to where it’s nearly dry after washing it, then I gather it into one or two ponytails and put elastics down the ponytails a couple of inches apart. It dries up straighter that way.

Tom said he’s 95% done with the truck and that he’s still confident we’ll have an AC running in it before it gets hot. I hope so! There’s still always the chance, though, that he runs into other problems as he puts the engine back together.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 2003 Just 4 more days till I’m humiliated beyond imagination. I’m surprised my heart isn’t pounding with dread, though I’m sure it will be once it gets close. I still don’t understand how he can agree that my being on probation is pointless, yet not cut my visits down. That’s rather hypocritical when you think about it. He’s such an all-or-nothing kind of guy, but so are most people, unfortunately. Everything has to be one way or another. There’s no happy medium. No grays between the whites and blacks.

At least the freeloaders tripled my music collection. Thanks to them and their hate and vengeance, I’m not stuck listening to the same old, same old music forever, though I’ll always love the music of the 70s and 80s.

The purple glass fish died. See, this is why we shouldn’t have wasted our time and money on fish. They die left and right. I’m going to let them die off and just keep frogs and betas. At least the beautiful angelfish are doing well. The algae eater has grown since we got it. It’s one of those that grows for as long as it lives.

In other animal news, the prairie dogs are back! That sure was fast. I was wondering if they’d come out as late as March like they did in ’00, or January like last year. I’m glad they’re back. The only thing I don’t like about them is their squeaking. It’s so loud that it’s woken me up a few times. Until I realized what it was, I thought it was the rat’s or mice’s wheels squeaking. The prairie dog I saw appeared to remember me and that there was food here because it gathered up what I put out rather quickly and didn’t run down into its hole when I opened the door.

Of course, we see rabbits hanging out all year long.

Just 12 views of our land album and over 1000 of one of the albums with me in it! Two more downloads this week too, which makes it a total of 18. I think they were from my Wildlife album.

We checked and found that the reason Chris hasn’t been sent yet was that they’re to be closed till the 6th, so it’ll probably be a week and a half before the doll gets here. They haven’t even taken the money yet.

The ear doctor’s secretaries have been giving me the runaround. I can’t get them to tell me a simple little thing – that they did get the referral that was posted on the 17th of last month so I can make an appointment. Instead, they’re costing us a fortune in long-distance calls and making empty promises of getting back to me. If they don’t want to see me for whatever reason, can’t they just say so? I wanted to just forget it and clean it myself with oil, but after Tom checked it out, he said it really looks like it needs to be done and says he’ll play phone with them and get the appointment made.

I miss the days when you could just call a doctor and make a damn appointment! Now you have to fight with a maze of answering machines only to usually end up nowhere. It seems only dentists have real people still answering their phones.

Instead of getting the bike, we might be getting something different which Tom saw on the HSC. They had 1,200 left and he ordered one online after verifying it was what they said it was. It’s just pedals instead of a bike, but there’s something about it that makes it quiet so we can hear the TV while we’re using it, and it only costs $70. He says they usually run for $140. We haven’t received a tracking link for it yet, so we don’t know for sure if we’re going to get it. At least they use UPS if we do.

Yesterday, after just two days of dieting, I was down 3 pounds, but today I woke up the same at 130. I still don’t think it’ll take me the 8-10 weeks I thought it’d take me. It should be more like 4 weeks at the earliest and 6 at the latest. It depends on how badly my weekly snacks set me back. This week I may get a bigger snack than originally planned because I’ve already lost a week’s worth of weight in just a few days. As long as I lose at least 3 pounds a week, I’ll be ok.

Tom went to the hardware store yesterday and got the strips of wood we’ll need for the doors, plus a plain white soft toilet seat for my bath.

Oh, and he also got a spray gun for the front hose so I can take the rat’s cage out and clean it. It’s just too big for the shower stalls.

Now for a quick Mary update before I go work out and do some cleaning. I put my foot down as far as the favors for others go unless it’s something as simple as email. Even she said she knew I’d want to kill her for this and to let her know if she was overwhelming me, but could I please print a copy of a certain set of poems some doctor wrote for her friend Brandi? I said I would, but no more favors of this kind after this. I don’t know these people. They’re her friends, not mine. Besides, I work for her.

She offered to send stamps which I thought was really nice. It’d help. Especially when I send all the stuff she wants sent to Florida, but why must it always be me? Can’t her aunt send some of this stuff? She mailed me some photos as well as some cards, and I told her to let me know how many pictures I can send at once when she gets to Florida. I don’t want to be getting a bunch of stuff returned to me.

I emailed a copy of her book to someone named Terri for her as she asked. I forget how she knows Terri. I think she’s a social worker of some kind.

She says Monster’s trial begins on the 6th, she has court on the 7th, will probably be at Estrella till around the 15th, and life with Virginia still sucks, but she’s surviving. I guess she just tries to ignore the cracks she makes.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2003 Looks like Michelle hasn’t dumped Mary after all, and no, I’m not embarrassed or upset over the fact that I sent the earlier journals. This is a stranger whose opinions are meaningless to me. If she mentions it to Mary, and I’m sure she will, all I have to say is that I sent it to her by accident.

Anyway, Michelle says she’s just been busy and hasn’t been on her computer. She has over 200 emails. I’ll have Tom mail her message I enclosed with a letter to Mary tonight, and hope she gets it before she leaves.

Hopefully, Mary will be able to let me know soon if she is leaving for sure or if she’s going to be sticking around a while longer. I’d like to know and understand more about the outcome of the AZ case and what’s to be happening with the FL case, but for reasons I can’t fathom, Mary’s rather secretive about this. I can’t imagine why, though, since she’s got nothing to hide. She’s not the one who did the abusing.

I really do hope she moves soon. Not just so no one could possibly recognize my name on my mail to her and get nosy, but I don’t want to have to visit her at Estrella at the end of the year. It isn’t because I don’t want to see her, but I just don’t want to return to that jail! I don’t want to have to wait forever to see her, either.

I wish there was a way of letting Teddy Bear know just how much I ended up falling in love with her and how much I miss her and wonder about her, not that it’d necessarily do me any good. Yes, I still miss her and long to be in her arms. I can close my eyes and feel exactly what it’d be like, too. I can still see her face and hear her voice as clearly as I did nearly two years ago.

I’m still also sorry she never cared enough, in the end, to follow through with her word about seeing me. I believe her feelings at the time were sincere, but I know that today, she probably hardly remembers me and barely ever thinks of me.

Or, as I theorized before, maybe she cared more for me than I thought and maybe that’s why she never contacted me. I’d like to think that the reason she blew me off was just that she fell too hard for a married, long-distance woman. Not that someone talked her out of seeing me, that Ida may’ve said something, that she may’ve got wind about my mail pertaining to her, or simply because someone else stole her heart (although I wouldn’t want her to be alone and lonely). Of course, there’s still always the slim chance she never got the letter, lost my number, or was simply too shy to call.

I think of all the possibilities that could’ve happened had we gotten together and wonder if I should be glad I never got the chance to find out for sure just what would’ve happened. Would I simply have seen her a few times a year? How long would she have been in my life? Would we have become intimate? Would we have both fallen so deeply in love that I’d be willing to risk giving up my home/security to go live with her (though I can’t see myself dumping on Tom like that or being able to live with never seeing him again) and if so, how long would it have lasted? What would a relationship with her be like? As good as I think it’d be? Would we have gotten sick of each other at some point?

Well, I guess I’ll never know what might’ve been, just like she’ll never know just how much I came to love her. I was hot with lust for her, but I was also in love with her. I’m sure I always will be, too.

This isn’t good; starting off a new year still teary-eyed over Teddy Bear. Damn you girl for doing this to me! God, a simple little phone call would’ve been nice. Just a quick little explanation would’ve been better than to be completely ignored. I don’t know, perhaps she felt it was best for both of us.

Although hungry as expected, the diet’s going well so far. I feel I’ve already lost a pound or two. I may actually be able to lose more like 5-10 pounds a week on this diet, and at first I worried that’d cause the cheeks to want to test me more than just one more time, but I’m not going to stop or slow down my dieting for the freeloaders. They’ve had enough control over my body as it is. I also have a voice that can say “no” to any more testing and be the one to call the shots, for once, as far as what I do. One more test. Period. He can have all the non-observed tests he wants, he can even have me strip-searched, but just one more test with eyes upon me.

Anyway, after I’ve been up for 5 hours is when I have my popcorn, and once I’ve been up for 10, I have my meal. At least I have that to look forward to. That’s the one time I get to eat till I’m full, though I’ll be so hungry by then that I don’t know if that meal will exactly fill me up.

We took pre-diet pictures of each other and although mine came out dark, it serves its purpose. I am one big girl! It’s ok, though, it’s all going away. All this fat shall be melted away. I’m totally determined this time around. Perhaps they are right when they say you can’t lose weight for others and that if you try, you’ll most certainly fail. I failed to lose weight for Teddy Bear when I thought she was a person of her word and that I’d surely be seeing her, but this time around will be different. I’ll make sure of it.

The only one I’m skeptical about is Tom. He, like most guys, doesn’t do a very good job at sticking to diets. He only lost a substantial amount of weight once since I knew him. That was back around the mid-90s and he packed the weight right back on. It seems it’s harder for him to stick to exercise than dieting, and exercise is the key to keeping the lost weight off.

We’re hoping to hit the hardware store and get the bike tomorrow.

If I don’t see a link real soon telling me that Chris is on her way, I’m going to be worried. Especially now that the holidays are over. If we don’t, Tom will go to their site and read more about what they say about shipping time. We know UPS takes 3-4 days, but they might not ship the doll out for 4-6 weeks. Hopefully, we’ll find something out soon. It’d really suck if they did send her and UPS misdelivered her. I’ve never known them to be like that, though. That’s why we made it a point to order from those who use UPS and not the post office.

So when I’m between 100-110, I’m skinny, between 110-120, I’m so-so, I’m chunky in the 120s, and fat once I hit 130.

I wonder what’s going on with Webshots. They still haven’t updated the daily pic section.

Tom still insists he wants to get it on, but hasn’t initiated sex only because of my lack of interest, and I still don’t know what to think. I guess I mostly think he’s as uninterested as I am, just by his actions, but what if he’s telling the truth? Then I’d feel guilty. But what would I do about it? Should I lie and say I suddenly want to get it on?

But I don’t. It was Teddy Bear I wanted sex with, but since that will never be, I’m just not interested in doing it with anyone at all. At least not now I’m not. Maybe things will change in time, though I don’t know when. I have a feeling that since I’ve settled into this mode for the last two years, I’m going to stay this way for a very long time, but anything beats being horny all the time and wanting a kid. It was hell on me, totally depressing, to constantly want sex with someone with such a low appetite, and to want a kid I couldn’t have. Besides, sex for the most part with Tom was boring. It was ok in the beginning when it was new, save for the fact that he rarely came, but then in time, with or without his cumming, it just got old. As I said before, the same thing would’ve eventually happened with Teddy Bear.

Later…

Well, now I know what they were working on in back. Yes, that horse is theirs, and they did put up a little corral of some type. Naturally, it had to be in front and towards the side of their house that’s closest to ours. Time will tell if this horse thing is a good thing or not. I wonder if it’ll smell more, but perhaps not with just one horse that’s 400 and something feet away. I guess besides making Maricopa a little smellier, the only real harm it could do would bring more outside activity. Activity that could get close to the house. If the worst they could do, though, is take away a little more of our privacy by riding by the house, then I’ll take it cuz there’s worse shit they could do. They don’t play music that can be heard inside the house and that’s the main thing right there. I’d rather them trash our land, stink the air up, and be outside screaming and barking non-stop than hear shit, particularly the thump of bass or drums, in this house. This might be a good sign. They have been quiet and I’ve always said that it’s the quiet people who move too soon. Well, you wouldn’t normally go out and get a horse, then up and move. I’d say they’ll be here for at least 5 years.

I’m just surprised George would allow it, although if you allow section 8, you’ll pretty much allow anything. Maybe he sold the land and a new owner took over. After all, I haven’t seen his truck in a while.

There’s still house number 4 to be brought in, though, and who’s to say what’ll end up living in that? At least the one closest to us has turned out to be ok. It’s a bitch, but all we have to do is move as soon as God sics us with problem neighbors again. I’m not about to stick around and take the same old shit all over again, believe me! At least they can’t torture us from closer than about 400’!

Well, I guess I’ll go play phone with the doctor’s office and try to set up an ear-cleaning appointment.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2003 Maricopa, AZ Age 37

My starting weight is 133. Ridiculous. Absolutely sickening to weigh that much at this height! But that’s all the more motivation it’ll give me. I’ll have Tom disgust me further when he gets in by taking my pre-diet picture.

Meanwhile, just one more year, freeloaders, just one more year! Almost, anyway, though I know I can’t stop God from picking someone else to sic on me to replace the blacks. All I know is that in about 300 days from now, nothing I do, nothing I say, no place I go, no check or money order we write out, nor my schedule, will ever again be connected to these blacks.

This is the year I rid my life of the bitch forever, the year I get thin again and stay that way for a while, not allowing freeloaders or any other people/circumstances to cause me to regain the weight till I’m ready to do so. The year I, Jodi Lin S, AKA Mystery, Dawn, whatever…shall begin a career in doll making. There are 3 steps to that. One, I get the equipment/supplies and learn to make dolls. Two, I make the dolls I want to make for myself. Three, I sell dolls.

Mary was doing well there for a while with better punctuation, but it was short-lived. Some of the stuff had nothing but commas and I’d have to stop, go back, and decide whether or not that comma should be a period. Sometimes there were even commas where they shouldn’t be. I don’t understand this. Could it be a particular way of teaching at the convent? I doubt it. I can’t imagine any teacher teaching their students to write without punctuation or caps. Especially without punctuation. Anyway, it gets frustrating at times, but I know she’s trying and I understand that habits take time to change. As long as she’s working on it, though. Especially when I’m busier making dolls. That way I can type stuff twice as fast. One step at a time, though. She need not bother with caps yet, just give me periods along with the commas so I know where the ends of sentences are!

It’s a good thing we got only one Flovent inhaler cuz I may have to stop it cuz it’s making my voice hoarse. Once I suspected the Flovent was to blame for this, I checked the list of adverse reactions listed with it and hoarseness was one of them.

The other day Tom came to me and said it just hit him as far as how to fix the doors go. We’ve been going about it all wrong, he told me, and I agreed. Putting barely stickable weather stripping up just to have it fall down was a waste. Anyway, he told me that all we have to do is get some strips of wood the next time he’s at a hardware store and put it in the gap up top. The damn door’s too low and doesn’t quite meet up with the frame up top. We can do the same with the back door.

As for the front door’s leak, Tom caulked the sill from outside the other day, and when the sun comes up I’ll test it by hosing water on it, but somehow I doubt it’s fixed. It’s like we’re doomed to have something that we can’t stop from leaking no matter where we go. We could live in 100 more houses yet each one would have its share of leaks, some of which were unstoppable.

We took the rat guard out of Tom’s office doorway (the curtain rod we screwed in between the floor and underside of the door) and we’ll take the one out in the retreat door just as soon as we get wood for it to make an extension that the rats can’t get through.

Our last mollie died yesterday, and the mouse is still in the house, so I discovered yesterday while I was reading in bed. I saw it run from the bathroom and go behind the nightstand. I set up the trap by it, but just like I thought after I dropped it when I had it trapped in the utility area, I didn’t catch it. I just don’t think I’m going to catch this one. It’s too clever for some reason. Most mice are dumb, but this one remembers the trauma associated with it and avoids it. The big question is, has the mouse been in the house all along? Or is it coming and going through openings we missed? Nonetheless, it hasn’t hurt anything so it can live with us till the next time we bomb, although all it has to do is run down in the vents to escape the fumes, even if we did seal it up so it can’t get outside. I just hope it doesn’t have babies in the house. I love mice, but we don’t need a bunch of them living loose in the house or down in the vents. I miss ceiling vents!

I’m sorry to say that there might be a horse living at the renters. Tom said he heard them trying to teach a kid to ride a bike the other day when he was out working, and I was like, on dirt? What a way to learn! Not that I don’t like horses, but I hope I’m wrong. We have enough horse shit stench in the air as it is, and that’d be just one more thing to drag these people outside. They’re outside so much of the time as it is. They’re always home and always outside unless it’s hot. That’s the pattern I’ve noticed in the year that they’ve been here anyway. If the horse is theirs, that means our land has to be ridden on (till we get fences) and it’d be a wonderful way to bring loud, shrilly kids closer to the house. Besides, what are they going to do? Keep it tethered to their front tree? That’s ridiculous. Shouldn’t they have fences if they’re going to have horses? I’ll check it out when the sun comes up, but hopefully it’s just a case of them knowing someone who came to visit via their horse and it was just waiting for them.

Then again, I don’t remember seeing any saddle or ropes attached to it, so maybe it got loose. But it was there for quite a while and they’d had to have seen it, though I didn’t see any people out when I spotted the horse. Hmm… guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Later…

Oh, my God, I absolutely don’t believe it! I was right about the leak. It was seeping in under the sill. I just tested it and all is as dry as can be.

No horses in back that I can see of either.