#in which case i am thinking i will be taking saturdays off every week going forward

[roaringroa]

they should make a life where you don't have appointments, work, school and scheduled events every single day for months on end

[digirainebow]

GUYS i completely forgot i will have to drive like halfway across LA to see a movie tonight so i think i will have to postpone stream #agony #pain #ache #suffering

[verinarin]

𝙃𝙞𝙨 𝙢𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨; 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬

in which he lets her measure his body for a new set suit for him, riddling him with her innocent touches; his view meaning the fic is written in his point of view

fluff with a lot of tension, like drenched with it. Gallagher lowkey being obsessive and loves to tease and spoil his little lady; 2K words!!

It’s Saturday.

She said she wouldn’t be home until later tonight, so I’m alone for the rest of the day. I’ve been sharing my roof with her for around 3 months now. Funny, I seem to forget how quiet this place is without her. At this hour she would be on the couch with the television on, her favorite shows would air around this time.

Am I being a creep for knowing her daily schedule like this?

Hope not, I mean that brat has been stickin’ beside me ever since day one.

Ah shit, it’s supposed to be the other around. She’s my secretary, but here I am acting like I’m some sort of personal assistant of hers, ah that little minx had me all wrapped around her pretty little manicured fingers huh?

Can’t complain though, not when she does her job perfectly.

It’s just that I rarely wanted her to work, to begin with. Her day consists of following me around like an assistant yet she treats me like I’m her assistant instead. Ahahaha I ain’t setting up a good example as her boss, but then again no one could blame me.

I mean with those fucking doe eyes and pouty lips, she’s the type of woman people wrote on their poetry. At this point, It’s clear as day that I miss that little brat. Y’know I’ll just take a quick shower before she comes home, I don’t want her to drag me to the bathroom again like yesterday.

Stepping into the shower made me realize that every single thing here smells like her. Her vanilla-scented shampoo bottle sits next to mine, her body scrubs, her soap. Damn, I never realized how much product she used, no wonder she cooped up in her for a good hour or more, being a pretty lady like her looks like hard work, perhaps harder than my line of work.

She smells like heaven afterward though, so I won’t complain.

Never mind, I would actually complain about one thing.

The fact that her scent drives me crazy sometimes, not to mention the fact that while working she often clings to me like a second skin. The amount of questions I get asking about why my clothes smell like vanilla and roses is crazy. The other hounds, hell even Siobhan tease me for smelling like a lady.

Well, as long as I don’t reek of smoke and alcohol like I used to I guess it’s a good change. As the cold water rinses through my body, I start to worry about her. She’s an adult, she would be fine traveling around Penacony, but why am I worried about her like I’m her old man? Probably because she didn’t tell me where she was going, this girl goes on a shopping spree almost every week and the one thing she never forgets to bring is her walking ATM, which is me.

Should I go look for her?

Nah, she must’ve needed some time alone. She’s probably sick of an old geezer like me, all I could entertain her with is my crappy dad jokes and a little mixology classes here and there. She seems to like my cringe dad jokes though weirdly enough and she also learns quickly on mixing beverages.

Once I finished rinsing my worries away, I put on a pair of sweatpants. I sigh as I brush my damp hair back remembering that I forgot to bring my shirt inside, my age is starting to catch up on me. Oh well, it’s not like she’s coming home soon. I let out a small chuckle as I looped the small towel I used for my hair around my neck.

The mirror in front of me reflects my rugged face, my fingertips graze upon my stubble feeling the sharp little hairs protruding from my cheek. I’ve been thinking of shaving it clean off for a while, but I remember her weird fondness for my stubble. That girl loves rubbing the back of her hand across my face like I’m some sort of a dog, which in this case relates to my line of work funnily enough.

I figured I’d let it be for now, can’t have her whine about my appearance now like she did last month when I talked to her about cutting my hair short. Her argument was if I did cut my hair she wouldn't be able to play with it anymore, such a silly girl that one.

I should fix myself a cup of coffee before cleaning around the house, it ain’t like I have anything better to do other than waiting for her like a lost puppy. I let out a hefty yawn as I walked towards the kitchen. It's easier for me to find things these days since she arranges it in a specific way. Before her, it took me around 5 minutes to search for the coffee bean, but now I can see the labeled jar from far away.

I couldn't help but let my lips curve into a small smile as I twisted the jar open, the charming scent of the coffee beans she picked emanated through the air, that little lady has good taste I must admit. Heh, she must’ve learned it from me. She used to be a tea gal before she met me, but now it seems she quite enjoys a little more caffeine here and there.

Can’t help to let out a small smirk as I brew myself a cup of coffee. She utterly consumes me at this point, every single damn thing reminds me of her it ain’t funny. I never thought I could still feel this giddy like a teenage kid at my current age, but then again she had always said that I still have my child-like wonder.

I rest my body against the counter, the cold marble hits my bare waist making me wince at the sudden temperature difference. After this, I’ll do laundry and then afterward I should start preparing for dinner.

As I lost myself in my thoughts I could hear the sound of a key twisting inside the keyhole, ah she’s home. “I’m back. Miss me, old man?” she muses as she turns her head towards me.

“Nah, I’m starting to miss my short-lived tranquility though,” I smile, pressing the rim of my glass against my lips to hide my smirk. She on the other hand has her eyes wide open, her mouth wide agape.

She stares at me a little too long before I finally break the silence between us, “Why'd ya look at me that way kid ?” I ask as I gaze toward her small face, analyzing her expression.

“You’re practically half naked, but wait that’s good actually,” shit, I forgot about that. She starts to walk towards me with a nasty smile, oh she’s scheming something alright.

“What? why is it a good thing? you've never seen a man’s body before ?” I snicker, masking away my flustered interior.

“Oh because I could clearly measure it now,” she smiles. Now hold on, measure what ??!!! The seemingly ambiguous sentence drives my mind toward possibilities that would definitely put me behind bars.

“Measure what huh ?” I let out a small chuckle, I put my cup down and leaned towards her eye level.

“You definitely won’t fit a size XL,” she sighs. Well ouch! cut me some slack little lady. I might be slacking off on my training, but I’m still in good shape. “What a way to break this old man’s heart you little brat, fyi I’ll definitely fit a size L,”

“Said that to your shirt. The poor thing needed its button to be stitched back up yesterday,” okay maybe she’s right but it still stings, my lips curve downward as I look at her, she’s out here breaking my heart to pieces.

“I’m not saying you’re putting on weight, what I’m saying is I want to measure your measurements so that I can buy you something custom-made,” she caresses my chest as her eyes lock towards mine.

I could feel my heartbeat drumming against my eardrum as her touch burned against my skin, marking it as hers. Fuck, feels so fucking good to feel her touch. Is it greedy for me to want more of her?

Her pink ‘nd soft lips curve into this delicate smile.

Fuck, she looks so pretty like that.

“Oh, what’s the occasion for dressing up this old hound ?” I smile as I lean forward to close the gap between us, trying to take control of my not-so-innocent thoughts about her lips.

I can’t recall anything worth celebrating between us, maybe the fact that I’m cutting down on smoking, but that’ll be worth something when I fully ditch it.

She merely chuckles before lightly hitting my chest like I’m telling her a funny joke, “You are an old man after all, how can you forget that three months from now is going to be the annual family?”

Ah right….

I was never the person who enjoyed those fancy parties, but hey I have her by my side so maybe I might change my stance.

“Those types of events were never my thing,” I avert my gaze, my finger drums against my nape.

“Well those types of events are my thing, so you’ll come right?” I mean with those puppy eyes, of course I’ll come.

“Fine, I guess this year’s gala could be bearable with you by my side,” I could only sigh as I stroked her hair, truly she dictates the same way as an old friend of mine.

With a smile that rivals the sun curving on her lips, she pulls out a measuring tape from her purse. Ah, so this is the ‘measuring’ part she talked about.

“Since when you’re a tailor,” I snicker as her fingers trace the long tape to find the zero mark.

“Oww hush, you’ll be the first person I’ll measure so be kind,” she mutters as she unravels the tape, “Alright lady,”

She leans closer to me as her finger holds one side of the tape beside my bare ribcage, “Stay still,” she mumbles, easier said than done.

How can I stand still when her fingertips press against my skin? It’s my damn Achilles heel. She’s too close, way too close. I don’t know how to act nor what to think when she’s soo damn close to me, the air feels stuffy and the atmosphere feels way too intimate and somehow sexual?

Kill me now.

She almost has her small face pressing against my chest, my bare chest to be exact which made this seemingly harmless interaction so dangerous.

Her other hand still struggles to find the tape behind my back. “Your chest is too broad,” she complains, I just let out a snicker at her statement which made her lose her focus.

“M’sorry anything I could do to help ?” I couldn’t do anything though, I could only extend my arms to the side to let her in, closer to me.

“Just stay still,” she huffs. Alright then, I’m cool as a cucumber. Without any warning, her cheek presses against my chest as she hugs me.

The warmth of her skin seeps through my cold chest, now this warmth burns inside me. “Ah! This works,” well I’m happy for her but there’s practically no distance between us, not even an inch.

“Stay still ol’ hound,” I must’ve been moving too much. I look down at her, her fingers skillfully bring the other side of the tape in front of my chest.

Now her forehead rests against my chest as she struggles to read the number that transpires, “Uhhh how do I read this again ?” she huffs.

“Can’t read a simple measurement now ?” my hand finds its way back toward her head, brushing a loose strand back behind her ear.

“Don’t tease,” well of course I’m going to tease as if I’m not the one who's secretly flustered as hell.

“Alright got it, now I’m going to drag this down to your waist,” she smiles as she drags both of her hands down and tightens the tape around my waist.

I never thought of myself to be a squeamish person, but I am now. “Oh wow, your chest and waist ratio are quite something….”

“What d’ya mean by that ?” I ask as she looks up towards me, “Your waist is quite slim and also your shoulders are broad so you do have that hourglass silhouette…” she muses to herself.

Well, ain’t that interesting…..

“Oh yeah your shoulders and back !” she naps herself back from her trance, cute.

With that, she took a couple of minutes to measure my upper body to the best of her abilities. Albeit the fact that I need to crouch down a bit for her to be able to measure my shoulders and back.

She takes a couple of steps back with newfound determination exuding her. I guess it’s from the fact that she’s getting the hand of measuring me.

“Are we done now ?” I ask, rather impatiently. Her fingers still linger in any direction she wants. Mapping every single inch of me into her memory.

“Still a long way to go,” she huffs. I see that she wants me to be as still as a mannequin, the things I do for her…

She hums a familiar tune, a song I like to hum. She crouches down bringing the tape around my hips, then she circles back in front of me, “Pardon my intrusion,”

Well the sentiment is rather too late now, she had been breaching my personal space since the very beginning. She couldn’t help but rest her forehead against my lower stomach as she looked down, reading the tape.

“Take your time, s’not like I could go anywhere,” I sigh as I stroke her hair, letting her silky smooth locks stream through my fingers. “I thank you for your coordination,” she snickers as she looks up at me, pretty little thing she is.

So stinkin’ cute. I smile as I cup her cheeks, letting my thumb graze against his lower lip, “Anytime, Lady,” I reply, before casually folding my arms back against each other.

Why the fuck did I just do that?

“I’m going to go lower now, I need to get some measurements for your pants,” she continued her current action without any signs of discomfort, thank god. “Oh wow even a pair of pants, you spoil this ol’ hound too much,” I feel as though my chest cavities were filled with cotton, making my heart all warm and soft.

“We both know you spoiled me rotten, Gallagher,” she cuts me, the tape now encircling around my thighs.

“Have I now?” Honestly, she deserves more than I could afford.

“You have you silly hound. Now let me repay your kindness,” her face now rests against my thighs as the tape travels slightly lower.

“Heh is this your way into getting to my pockets again,” I snicker, knowing that it’s one of her best manipulation tactics. Acting all cute and then stealing my money.

“Hey! I’m spending my own paycheck on this mister,” she protests as she stands up. “Oh, she’s a big girl now. She doesn’t need my money anymore right ?”

“Well technically no,” she looks away to the side, biting her lips in annoyance.

“She doesn’t need my money, but I’ll give it to her anyway because she has me wrapped around her little fingers,” I cup her cheeks, guiding her face to see me. “Cuz she’s my lil lady,” I smile as I press our forehead together, I can feel a thin imaginary veil between us.

“Of course I am and you’re my old hound,” she wraps her arms around my neck as my hand rests on her waist.

The thin barrier that puts a blur in our relationship, but somehow it just feels right, whatever we are it’s perfect. I don’t need more or less, just her warmth against mine.

[keelt9]

Chapter 1

Hide And Run 

Masterlist

“Ghost rider 1, ghost rider 1.” No matter how hard I tried still my hands seemed to hold a fucking popsicle slipping between them, it supposed I know what to do, but with the sounds inside of the plane combine with the bellowed voice of Riley make all my actions a complet mess. 

“Y/N! EJECT.” 

“Miss? Are you alright?” The taxi driver asks me as he moves my arm, I open my eyes and realize we are parking in front of my parents house; 19 months and the same nightmare come from time to time.

“Sorry, I’m ok, thanks…” I opened the door not before paying the 15 dollars from the airport to home. I walk through the little garden which my mom built along all these years. She starts it like some kind of stress reliever. She says every deployment or mission from me or my father it’s a new plant in the garden; in my father's case only he and God knows how many missions he had and for me 17 seems a nice number.

“My little butterfly.” My mom said, hugging me in the main door and dad appeared behind her. 

“Sky.” The short name for <Skyhook> I get that call sign in the navy, when she splits away, she puts her hand on my cheek, and I smile with my lips pressed. 

“It’s nice to have you here.” She says and pulls me inside of the house.

As the rest of the day passed without any uncomfortable talks or strange looks, until we finished the dinner and dad and I were doing the dishes. 

“Maybe it is too soon.” The last month was the hardest since the accident and my dad knows that better than anyone; I left the plate in the cabinet, holding it a little bit more than normal. 

“Someone returns in less than a month.” I stop but I force myself to continue. “It’s just a simple test, dad, let’s be honest, with the background I have, maybe I'll fail.” He grabs me by the shoulders and looks straight to my eyes. 

“Y/N think it a little bit more, ok? Just a couple of weeks more.” I take a deep breath, and nod with my head, honestly that idea has been surrounding my head since the big week was scheduled.

-

3:46 hours and counting, is the time my watch the same I’ve been pushing my legs to the limit, but my mind is working at 100 per hour, tomorrow my first test begins, the navy just gave me a one more week, quote <We need you in the air, not in the ground.> I shake my head and continue running.

I was so immersed in my own thoughts when the F-18 dived off along with a little scream for the kids in the park that made my heart stop and flashbacks straight like gunshots in my mind. 

“Mayday!” My fast breathing, the drops of sweat on my face. “I can’t stabilize…” My hands trying to hold the control, the sounds of the overworking in both engines. 

I cover my ears trying to deafen the sounds and when I get to control myself, my watch marks a high rhythm in my heart, the beep helps me to recover, I blink and I see a little girl coming close to me. “Miss, are you alright?” She doesn’t stop liking her ice cream, making me laugh. 

“Yeah, don’t worry, go somewhere fresh or your ice cream will melt faster.” My voice just murmured. It’s a hot Saturday and the summer has just begun, she nods and runs to sit on a bench covered by a tree.

I stop the timer and walk to my father’s car parking in front the main gate of the park, from time to time I lift my sight to the sky, I remember the first time I was in a plane, not a commercial plane, not a light aircraft, but a navy plane, the freedom I felt and the power I thought I had.

For the first time in almost 2 years, I realized that this week would change all I’ve work for more than 8 years, what terrifies me it’s know, in this moment I don’t even sure if continue it’s the right choice. 

The next morning, I woke up around 5 am; the test begins at 08:00 hours at least I have to be in the base around 07:00, I get ready, and at the moment I get down I see my parents getting ready for breakfast. 

“No, it’s not for you.” Dad says before I even complain, they stand up for my test just like they did when I was 6 years old and it was the first day of school. 

“I have an important meeting; I must be ready.” He didn’t even lift his eyes from the newspaper, my mother shakes her head and offers me a cup of tea. 

“Good morning by the way.” I greeted them, my mother giggled when I subtly pointed out his lack of greeting combined with the awful way of hiding his real intentions.

-

“SKY! Hi!” Jill screams when I enter the building. I have known Jill Green (Panther) since we entered the training at Top Gun, something you must know about Jill, she is a cheerful girl, in all the extension of the word.

“Hi, Jill. How are you?” She ran so she could walk along with me. 

“Missing you, it’s not the same since you’re not here, but I heard you have already scheduled a test, isn't it amazing?” I smile, she always makes me smile. 

“Well, let’s find out.” 

My feet were tapping intensely when the vice admiral Beau Simpson opened the door and made me enter his office. 

“Lieutenant, good to see you, please take a seat.” I obey and sit from time to time I apart my sight from him. 

“Well, it’s time, like we already inform you, 1 month of constantly test on the ground and, of course, in the air, after the month, we evaluate you, if you pass, you’ll be deploy in a blink of an eye, if you’re not, well, we have a big problem.” I gulp, he put his hands over the desk. “Sky, you were born to be in the air, one of a kind, just focus…what happened years ago, you must let it go.” I turn my face. “It’s not easy but you’re a strong girl.” With my lack of answer, he stands and takes me to another room.

“The first proof it’s really treating, a psychological one, following for multiple physical ones, strategic, mechanicals and logical.” He stops at the front door and looks straight into my eyes. “Lieutenant, you have been out for more than a year, some tests will pull out the worst and the best from you, what you need to know is, nothing you’ll be going through it’s impossible and you always prove to us that.”

At the end of the first day, all seems to be go a little bit better than expect, with a good mood I was walking to the parking lot where my mother’s car is waiting; she insist at least I should take it for going to the base, she felt more comfortable if she knew I have to be focus to the road instead of the memories been here could bring me back; my steps froze in just a few meter of distance of the entrance, when I see all Dagger Team enter to the building, I meet some of them years ago, with someone I’m really close, but met them right now make my heart beating fast and be really nervous.

I resolve it with the most childish choice, I hide behind the car waiting for them to enter inside the building. 

Great star Sky, hide and run.

[ghostlychief]

Falling into Place

Pairing: Simon “Ghost” Riley x reader

wc: 1,600+

warnings: mentions and depictions of bruises from fighting; hurt/comfort; fluff

Summary: dancing with your big boyfie Ghost

AN: HELLO!! Ok, so i am a sucker for a slow dance scene, and i just had to write one with Ghost. This was inspired by @alienisticxo ‘s fic Before the Fever, and the last chapter was first of all, AMAZING, but secondly, it had a lovely dance scene between the Master Chief and oc (reader), and it inspired me to write a dance scene with Ghost. If you’re a fan of Halo or the Halo world/lore, I highly recommend checking out their fic!!

Also, I’ve decided that this is the Pockets of Peace couple, so do with that what you will lmao (but this doesn’t contribute to the main story line, just think of it as an extra drabble) You honestly could read it as a oneshot though, if you like. Ok, so yeah i think that’s about it and i hope you enjoy if you stumble across it.

-Lee <3

--

To say that this past week was brutal was an understatement. You were swamped at work in the beginning of the week with tasks, mainly completing an endless amount of workpapers, only to be thrown into a mission mid-week. Usually, you had more notice before you had to go on a mission, but every once in while, they would be sprung on you without warning. Definitely one of the downsides of the job.

If by some miraculous chance, you and Simon would get assigned to the same mission. This time, that wasn’t the case. Now, this mission wasn’t anything too serious nor dangerous, however, you did find yourself in countless hand-to-hand fights throughout, which left you with a series of bruises painting your body. The most noticeable, and unfortunately the worst ones, were found on your upper arm and shoulder, dotting your skin from your elbow to the beginning of your neck.

To the untrained eye, they look concerning -as in, “why aren’t you in a hospital right now?”- concerning. Nothing a little ice and TLC couldn’t fix. You were a seasoned professional after all, and part of the expertise that comes with the job is being able to mend your own wounds; you knew all the tricks.

The mission finished late Friday night, so when you were finally able to get back home, Simon was already asleep. Trying to be as quiet as you could, you took a shower and started icing your body, hoping that by tomorrow, the stains the bruises left wouldn’t be too gruesome.

You instantly felt the pain when you woke on Saturday, and you tried your hardest not to cry out. Luckily, Simon was on his morning jog, and you knew Saturday was his long route; he wouldn’t be back for a couple hours.

The events of the week seemed to have finally caught up with you. You were exhausted, sore, and heavily bruised. The bruises fully came to fruition, and they left a mess of red, green and purple hues, masking the true color of your skin beneath them.

A bath was needed, you decided. You drew yourself an elaborate bath, putting in all the bath salts and bombs you felt were necessary to help calm your nerves that sprouted from the week. You poured yourself a glass of wine, and put on a dewy face mask, the coolness of it felt amazing on your dry skin.

You don’t recall how long you soaked in the tub, all you know is that when you came out your fingers were as pruned as can be, and you didn’t feel your anxiety weighing down your chest, and you finally felt like you could breathe properly.

When you step out of the tub, you quickly dry off and do your lotion and skin care routine, taking extra caution around your injuries. You put on your favorite crop tank top, it’s sage green with a bow in the middle, and matching shorts. To cover your injuries, you slip on a darker, royal blue silk robe. You found this color always makes your complexion shine.

--

In the early evening, you find yourself sitting on the couch with Simon. It’s already dark out since it’s January, and there’s a steady rainfall outside, creating a calming atmosphere within your shared apartment.

Your legs are resting in his lap, and you both are reading, with soft sounds of music playing in the background, accompanying the raindrops. You’re still decked out in your pajamas and robe; Simon is in his signature black joggers and black t-shirt and you’re both snuggled under a warm, fleece blanket.

Suddenly, one of your favorite songs starts to play over the speakers; your ears perk and you close your book.

When you lift your legs from Simon’s lap, he glances over at you, but then proceeds to read his book. He feels you standing in front of him so he looks up from his book again, and there you are, just like he thought. Though, your hand is reaching out towards him, and you wear a sloppy smile on your face with your brows quirked.

“Wanna dance?”

Your question surprises him, and he just stares at you for a moment before responding, “Right now?”

You fight the urge to roll your eyes, and you shake your hand in front of him, “No. I meant when we go to my cousins wedding in March. Yes, right now.”

He actually rolls his eyes, but a shadow of a smile threatens to coat his lips and his warm hand engulfs yours as you drag him up from the couch. He’s now towering over you, and a familiar warmth spreads through your face, onto your cheeks. You never really grew used to the size difference between you and Simon.

“Do you even know how to dance?” He lets you lead him to the center of the living room, to give you both optimal space for dancing. His tone is curious, not at all mean or impatient, he was genuinely asking if you knew how to.

Shrugging you quip, “Not really, I was planning on just swaying, you know?”

He laughs at your indifference to the honed the skill that is dancing, and then he pulls you close to him, now taking the lead. One of his hands gently grasps your waist, and the other is still holding yours.

Smiling, he says, “Perfect, neither do I.”

You start dancing to the music, he’s leading you in a swift back and forth, side to side motion and to be honest, you guys aren’t doing too bad - for not really knowing how to waltz. Every one in awhile though, you accidentally step on his toes, but he pays no mind to it and just enjoys seeing you like this, content and happy in his arms.

Simon impresses you further when he spins you a few times, and you laugh each time you come crashing back into his chest on your return. While you guys were twirling around the room with little to no mind, the sleeve of your robe started to fall off your shoulder. It’s then, when your bruises start to show and you remember that Simon hasn’t seen them yet.

He knew about your mission and that you got in to a few fights, but this is the first time he’s seeing the aftermath it left on your body and he tries not to let his heart break too much at the sight. Regrettably, he can’t help it, and feels a pinch right in the center of his heart as he continues to look at your body, but he continues to lead you in your small dance around the living room.

Although the mood hasn’t turned somber, it certainly shifted into something more quiet, tender, and he slows down his movements.

The tenderness expands and is expressed explicitly when Simon leans down to kiss your shoulder where the bruises begins, he then trails his kisses down the expanse of your arm, and his lips trace over the bruises that have sprouted, and left a pattern of purple and red. As he’s kissing down your arm, you feel his hand that is still holding yours squeeze three times, a signal to you that he’s sorry this happened to you, and that he’s here for you now, to comfort you, protect you.

He leaves one last kiss on the top of your shoulder, then gently brings your robe back up to cover you.

When the song crests into its beautiful epiphany, you feel Simon’s eyes searching for yours. You glance up to find his already on you, intently studying your entire being. In that moment, you feel the same crest develop in your lower chest, making its way to your heart and you find it hard to express how you’re feeling in this delicate pocket of time you find yourself in with your lover.

The music continues to swell around you, seemingly sewing you shut into this small pocket of space you’ve both created, that just exists between the two of you. No one can find you hear, touch you, hear you. All that exists is what you and Simon have created in this moment.

He hums out an “I love you,” and you repeat it back.

You wrap your arms around his neck and lay your head on his chest. His head comes down to rest against yours, and every once in awhile, you feel a ghost of a kiss pressed to the crown of your head.

Now, both of his hands are holding your waist, as you both sway to the beat of the music.

You step on his toes again, and you lightly giggle out a sorry. You can’t see his small grin as he observes you because you’re looking down at your feet, trying your hardest not to step on him again.

His response to your apology is picking you up and placing you back down so that your feet are on top of his. It’s quite a silly position, but he continues to dance like this, swaying you back and forth, occasionally moving both of your legs with the movement of his feet.

It's a bit clumsy, but you love it. Even though you’re perched on top of Simon’s feet, he’s still astronomically taller than you, and you find yourself getting lost in him even more. Sounds of laughter fill your living room, occasionally drowning out the music.

You pick your head up from his chest to grin up at him, “We’re pretty good dancers, huh?”

He kisses your nose, “The best.”

--

Hope you enjoyed! <3

[popcornforone]

MARCH

From the Marcus Pike Fan Fic Diary

Masterlist

February

How are we already in March? Must be time for another diary entry from our writer about her exploits with Marcus.

Synopsis:- Marcus is working away on a case & you just want to chat to him on a Saturday night.

Word count:-1900

Warnings:- DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE UNDER 18! Phone sex,masturbating, innuendo, talk of piv & oral, sexual video, swearing, drinking, pining. remember this is a diary so from the readers point of view.

Thanks as always for the read peoples. All feedback is always welcome. I hope you enjoy.

I hate it when Marcus is away. It not that I don’t like doing my own thing, but I miss the cuddles. I love that I can watch what I want, can eat what I like at a time that’s good for me & not have to worry if he’s going to randomly message going he needs dinner, or planning something & then him last minute saying actually. But I miss his little smile. I miss little suggestive winks. I miss the way he makes me cum. I miss the taste of him spilling down my throat. I just am missing him so bad.

I know it’s only 10 days & it’s important for his job & career but it’s just a huge hole in the bed next to me. I can starfish all I want, but I’d much prefer to be sinking into the mattress with my feet on his shoulders as he asks me if I can take more. Don’t tell Marcus this, I mean you’re a diary so you won’t, but I use his pillow to sleep on when he’s not here. I always make sure the bedding is fresh for when he is back but no I want to smell my man. I have needs & his scent helps me with some of them.

It’s not like we don���t see each other though. We face time & text & send photos to each other, but he’s often tired & a little grumpy. Works stressful when he’s home let alone working on something else where.

I knew he had Sunday off last week so I asked him to have a chill Saturday night & get ready for a phone call. I wanted his soothing voice to send me asleep. But I also wanted to see if he was up for something.

First call he doesn’t answer at 10pm. Maybe he had already fallen asleep. But the second call he answers.

“Hey sorry was in the middle of cleaning my teeth baby”

“I hope you didn’t swallow”

“No swallowing toothpaste isn’t that good for you” I am glad it’s not face time. I rolled my eyes. I wanted to see if things could get spicy. But clearly he was being practical. Yep that was my man there, not taking a hint unless it’s bleeding obvious to him.

“How was today?”

“Good, we think we might be on the red eye on Tuesday if we’re lucky. Latest is still Thursday night which is meant to happen” I can hear a tap turn off in the back ground & the bathroom light button click. I know he’s got ready for bed. I am already in bed. I need to clean my own teeth once the call is over but it won’t take me long. I’ve got a glass of wine on the bed side table which I’m sipping. I’m also in just my dressing gown, & I know I have something to pleasure myself with after hearing my man’s delicious voice.

“What about you beautiful, what did you do today?”

“Saw my mum took her shopping, she wanted a new handbag, she treated me to lunch & then I decided to start sorting out junk in the study”

“junk?”

“Yes junk” I giggle”you know all the stuff we said we’d sort out when we moved i together nearly 18 months ago that we didn’t need or were duplicates”

“Please tell…”

“Don’t worry don’t worry” I hear the panic in his voice “I didn’t touch the comics or anything that wasn’t mine, that’s still for you to sort”

“Oooh thank god…” I hear a sigh of relief down the phone & hear him sit on the bed “because”

We then say in unison “some of those comics are limited print”

“I know Marcus I know, you need to have them valued for insurance purposes” we talk about this every now & then. I have a couple of original art pieces that I got insured last year, after they had just sat in a corner & told Marcus he could do his comics & collectibles at the same time but he said he’d need to go to a specialist. He’s never been.

“So what are you going to do on your day off?” I ask as I sip more wine.

“I want to go to that new art exhibition that’s here…” Marcus has always loved weird art & he knows I appreciate it but not to his tastes it’s a bit to gloomy what he likes, not what you should put up in the house, not that we could even afford it. I let him talk about a few other things too.

“Well on Sunday im going to write in my journal & then I’m going to get on with building those Lego flowers you got me for Christmas, I can’t kill them can I” he giggles down the phone at me.

“Oooh no you can’t murder those. Thank god. I recon you could try tho”

“Would you have to investigate & come home if I did?”

“100%”

“Then I’ll go commit some crime” we both laugh & then sigh. The silence between us on the phone for a few seconds is just perfect. Hearing him breathe is a joy.

“Marcus…”

“Yes baby” I smirk as his voice seems deeper for some reason. I’m going to try something.

“What are you wearing?” I lick my lips as I say it.

“My jammies… you know the blue & black striped ones…I’ve also…” he then goes on to talk about if it’s okay to wear socks in bed or not as his feet feel cold. I’m a little bit gutted. I know he takes things literally but I wanted more or maybe something sexy. Also Marcus only wear his Jammies when he’s away incase he’s woken up at 3am to go look at something. He’s shy at times & doesn’t want any work colleagues to walk in on him hanging out, or with his naked arse in the air. What a peach they would see. I sigh a little which he picks up on.

“Was that the wrong answer?”

“No I just… I wanted something more adventurous.” I’m always honest with Marcus.

“Okay so then what are you wearing baby”

“Well…”I then untie my robe “say the words baby & I’ll start to moan for your listening pleasure”

“Why are you hurt?”

“Marcus!”

“What”

“Is your line tapped?”

“No”

“Well I’m just taking my robe off & am going to enjoy myself in bed” I slip the robe off. “Imagine if we were face timing baby” I whisper “you wouldn’t be seeing my face”

“Well erm…” I can tell he’s flustered & trying to work out how to say some spicy stuff. “Ermmmm… I”

“It really is a good thing we aren’t looking at each other” I smile trying to reassure him that it’s okay if he doesn’t want to.

“No I… I’m just having a moment” the phone line falls silent for a second before Marcus speaks. “Does the bed still smell of me”

“Yea baby”

“Then sleep on that side when you have fun later, I want my side to be a little damp” he’s getting into it even if shyly.

“Do you think of me?”

“Yes baby” he’s dropped his voice it’s getting sexier.

“In the shower?”

“Why do you think I’m always so clean when I come back from a job?”

“It’s not as good as me though…”

“Oooh fuck no!” Is his abrupt response “I might moan & fist harder but it’s not like your bending over in the shower is it”

“I always like to wash your chest, lather you up, caress those broad shoulders…”

“& then drop to your knees like the naughty little slut you are”

“I…” I was not expecting Marcus to get into this so quickly. All it had taken was a few back & forth & he was now calling me a slut down the phone. “Do you like me on my knees?”

“I like you in any position, begging for me”

“The way you face fuck me…”

“…oooh when I can’t tell if it’s spit or my cum or shower water…”

“Getting clean is always such a dirty task”

“Oooh baby” I hear him moan.

“Yes baby, my fingers in my cunt, my lips at your base, in your pubes, steam building up in a hot shower, you gripping my chin thrusting away”

“Down your throat, good thing you had your tonsils taken out, they’d be so swollen” as this conversation goes on, I’ve starting pleasuring my clit, I’ve not used my vibrator yet I think I will need that when the call ends.

“Marcus, tell me I’m a good girl”

“No…” he���s panting”you so naughty, good girls wouldn’t be masturbating on the phone”

“& what does that make you…?” I gasp, arousal is seeping.

“A very bad boy, a bad boy who wants to get on the next flight & wishing his penis was satisfying you instead.”

We moan down the phone at each other getting off to each others seduction.

“I need your mouth”

“So do I”

“69?”

“Oooh baby i’ll get on a plane to you”

“Naked?”

“If it meant quicker pleasure yes”

Eventually we both finish out sexual discussion. For a man who was shy to start with Marcus got into it. He screamed my name as he obviously climaxed & spilled into his hand.

“I think I need a shower” he says breathily “I’ve made a right mess”

“Hmmm” I reply back, I’m contemplating do I clean my teeth now or do I hang up & use the vibrator. “I’m so glad you got into that Marcus”

“I am too, we should try that again sometime”

“Maybe next time we do face time in”

“& me see your pussy gushing without me being able to taste it?” He scoffs “that’s not playing fair.”

“Well finish this case quickly & you can come home for all the shower sex in the world.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that sexy” I know the face he’s pulling even without seeing it it’s a soft but sexy smirk.

“I’m gonna go clean my teeth & actually go to bed now Marcus” I say “thank you for everything baby”

“For once I’m gonna ask you to spit not swallow, it’s not my cum that will be foaming at your lips” I gasp. Marcus finally got my line from earlier.

“I only swallow what’s good for me”

“Oooh you’re so good being bad”

“Night Marcus I love you”

“Not as much as I love you”

Yea that was a fabulous time on the phone to my Marcus. Someone so shy then got so into being so naughty. & I think I unlocked a sexual beast, because once my teeth were clean there was a text on my phone. An encrypted video. With a message underneath.

“Because your vibrator won’t be enough” & the video in question was Marcus handling his throbbing penis, angry & wanting to be buried somewhere soft & warm. It gets me off on both Saturday night & Sunday morning.

April

[melodygatesauthor]

Weekly Update

8/20/2023

Announcements

- A Bit Dodgy is almost finished -

The chapter coming out this week is the second to last chapter for the series. It’s such a bitter sweet thing, ending a series, especially one that I’ve built such a community around. I’ve written 5 novel-length fics over the course of the last year, and A Bit Dodgy will be number 6. On 09/04/2023 it will be my one-year anniversary of writing fanfiction since coming back after not writing for about a decade and l can’t believe it. Holy CRAP. I’ll take the time to reminisce about my numbers and statistics on my one-year mark, don’t you worry lol. There will definitely be a celebration.

That being said, ending a series never gets easier. Even though I write for these characters all the time, Steven, Marc and Jake in this case, I’m still closing the book on this version of them. It’s sad, but I’m also very ready to move on to other stories and other versions of these characters. I also think I’ll write some headcanons and one-shots as I feel the desire to just to take the edge off when I’m missing them. I’ll talk more about this when I finish A Bit Dodgy. <3

- Requests are officially closed -

I’m not sure if I’ll ever be in a position to take requests again or not. My WIP list is a mile long, and right now (summer) is a VERY busy time for both of my jobs. I’m lucky if I get one day off a week. All this to say, it’s not feasible for me to continue taking requests when I can’t even handle the fics I have currently in the works.

I’m not saying I’ll never do requests again, it’s just not realistic right now. There will still be follower celebrations and birthday events and things like that in which I may take limited requests, but as far as the regular ones go, I gotta stop taking them for now. - THIS IS THE LAST TIME I'M MAKING THIS ANNOUNCEMENT. PLEASE READ IT.

Fic Updates

Disclaimer - I never know which way the winds of inspiration will blow. Timeframes aren’t a promise/guarantee, they’re a goal.

Fic Updates Legend:

Blue - Update this week

Pink - Update in progress

Red - Backburner Fic (not currently working on. See WIP list for status)

You can find my current WIP list here

Chaptered Fic Updates

A Bit Dodgy - Chapter 17 is coming this week, but I need more time. So it won't come out tomorrow, it will be out Tuesday or Wednesday instead! Thank you for understanding!

Always Yours, Never Mine - Chapter 3 is done! Just need to finish editing! I'll be putting it out Saturday bbs <3

The Fractured Moon - My primary focus this past week has been getting A Bit Dodgy finished, and also working on getting the requests and stuff for my 2k celebration done. I'll be working on part 4 of TFM this week to hopefully post next week!

Mini-series Updates

Feeling You Can’t Fight - Chapter 3 is done! I just need to finish editing and posting hehe.

All on the backburner for now but will get additional chapters soon:

Not a Doctor - Part 2

Worth the Risk - Part 3

AI Character Bot Updates

I currently have the following bots on my list that I’m working on. If you have any suggestions or additions you’d like, please feel free to ask! I won’t make every single one I get asked for but I’ll make some of them as I get time!

DBF Jake and Steven (I already did Marc...did I ever post him? I thought I did but maybe not)

Patient Steven and Marc

Moon Knight Rescue scenario

Miguel AI Assistant Scenario (inspired by @missdictatorme's Halo fic).

Am I missing any? Don't see one on the list that you want to add? Send me an inbox or private message! No promises, but if I like the idea I'll make an AI bot.

Requests

I'm finishing up all the inboxes from my 2k Follower Celebration! I'm almost through those so please bear with me.

There are 2 regular requests I have that will both be released this week! Exciting! - Those are the last 2 I have. Starting next week, the "request" category of my weekly update will be gone!

I think that's all for now! Much love!

Don't forget to follow my other blogs:

@melodymakesart - My art blog

@lockandkeynovel - The blog for my original fiction novel, Lock & Key

@melodyreadsfanfiction - The blog where I reblog works I intend to read, a good place for fanfic readers to follow!

@melodygatesupdates - This is where I'll reblog any chapter updates for my fics and whatnot. This is what I use instead of a tag list!

[thisisegregiouuuus]

GENE!! HEEL!!

i love THE SHINING!!!!!!!!!! literally all week since saturday all ive been thinking abt is watching it again but since school started i made this little tradition that every saturday night id watch the shining on the tv while everyones asleep (im so cool) bc i love watching the shining on the tv (i only watch stuff on my laptop so getting to watch smth i love on the tv is rlly cool to me 😼)

ive come to a point where i dont mind watching the shining every day. like in the beginning it was all just 'oh, i havent watched the shining in a while, i feel like watching it now so im going to' that was like a month and a half ago or smth...ive never rlly had the shining as an actual interest before, but this one by far has lasted the longest, and its kind of different to any other interest i have in a way i cant explain!!!!

anyway, that little 'i wanna watch the shining tonight!" like 2 months ago sent me down a rabbit hole of youtube videos talking abt the making of the shining, theories abt the shining, and a bunch of other stuff, plus reading the actual book (which i love as much as the movie) and now here i am! when this silly little interest first started i was like 'oh i wanna pace myself, i dont want to watch the shining every night' bc i jsut didnt feel like it, but now i dont mind watching it every night or so, but i gotta wait until saturday now. at least it keeps me looking forward to smth!

dude i dont wanna sound crazy or anything, and i dont mean it in a crazy way, like i think im pretty normal abt my interest in the shining, but most of the time in my mind im just thinking abt the shining and waiting for someone to ask me if i know the shining or for someone to merely mention it bc the second they do i can just explode and finally tell SOMEONE how much i love the shining. like i kid u not i was having dinner today and while i was eating i was begging for my family to just ask me 'so are u watching any movies rn?' bc YES. YES I AM!!! and i have a lot to say abt it.... also at dinner i was thinking of all the lines from the shining i knew off by heart, reciting them to myself, i wanna quote them to someone so bad </3 so idk who to talk to abt the shining. thats why im on here writing abt it!

anyway thats all! im gonna post this publicly, just to try it out--i never post anything publicly but i wanna see what its like, ive been on tumblr for like a year or smth but i still dont rlly know it too well lol, so im still learning. if i like posting publicly i might post more, or ill just take this down. anyway sorry if theres any spelling mistakes or anything, this isnt proofread! :3

(also the title is a quote from the movie evan almighty in case u dont get it 😻)

[alwaysahiccupandastrid]

It would happen to me that I spend a month and a half job hunting only to then get two jobs in the same week, both of them full time and highly demanding.

So basically I interviewed for a bakery retail assistant role and an unqualified nursery position, and after trial shifts for both I got them both, which I was shocked by. The timing of it all is so unfortunate; the nursery interviewed me last Friday and then invited me to a trial on Tuesday afternoon; the bakery then wanted me to come in for an interview and trial shift on Monday morning and so I agreed in case the nursery one fell through. The bakery offered me the position first on Monday, literally five minutes after my trial ended (god knows why since I felt awkward and didn’t know shit), and so I - rather stupidly - accepted it over the phone and started on Wednesday so I could still do the trial; I thought that I would get an answer about the nursery on Tuesday so I could have the chance to take it while still having the back up choice. Lo and behold, the nursery has accepted me and wants me to start next week, meanwhile the bakery has already put me on the rota for the next week and a half.

And now I’m stuck.

The nursery was my first choice, to be honest, and while I had been hoping to step away from childcare after working in schools and at daycare camp for the past few years, it would be with babies through to pre-school, which is a group I’ve not worked that much with (though I am good with babies it turns out). I have experience in this field already which helps.

The bakery job is selling bread/cakes/coffee as well as prepping sandwiches, cleaning etc. As I’ve discovered over my last two shifts there, I’m fucking abysmal at making sandwiches, keep forgetting things etc., but because it’s only my second shift I figured it’s just a matter of learning.

Hours wise, the bakery is 40 hours over five days, the nursery is 38 hours over five days (3 10 hour days + 2 half days of four hours); the bakery job means doing 6am-2:30pm/6:30am-3pm or 7:30-4pm, and while Sundays are off it means working Saturday with a day off during the week, which is a problem because in November I have a Saturday filled with pantomime performances (three of them!). Meanwhile the nursery is Monday-Friday, and the hours would for a full day would probably be something like 8-6:30 or something(?), meaning if I have a rehearsal at either 7:30-9:30 or 8-10 (evenings), I’ll have very little to no time to prepare or get my stuff ready etc, let alone eat anything, plus it doesn’t fit with performance days where I have to be in by 6pm.

I’m having to get up at 4:45am to every morning, so doing that and then having to stay awake until 10-11pm on days with rehearsals is AWFUL.

The benefits at the nursery (free gym membership, 40% off food/drink, discount at the salon/spa facilities on site) outweighs those at the bakery (free coffee/lunch), and the nursery pays 40p more per hour than the bakery.

The bakery at the staff are just, to my knowledge, so fucking nice most of the time despite me being useless and older than them, the manager is nice, and if I leave them it leaves them in the lurch and understaffed, which is so unfair on them. I don’t really know the staff at the nursery that well but I don’t think they’re horrible tbh, though they seemed absolutely exhausted and done by the time I went in for my trial shift on Tuesday afternoon.

The nursery wants me to start next Monday, but the bakery has a two week notice period so I would have to talk to both places and apologise profusely to work something out. If I don’t work the notice period then I could end up not being paid for the 34 hours I’ll have worked by Saturday evening.

I don’t want to go into childcare for the rest of my life, quite frankly, but the nursery has offered to pay for me to earn a qualification in childcare so long as I work a year afterwards (if I left before a year I’d have to pay them, which I suppose is reasonable), which would then mean I could be paid more in the future as I’d be a qualified childcare worker and not just an unqualified glorified babysitter.

They have a ball pit, a bunny and two Guinea pigs at the nursery - which I know aren’t for ME necessarily but I would get to go in the ball pit with the kids and see the bunny/animals so that’s a bonus

Travel to either isn’t really an issue as they’re both close, though the bakery DOES mean walking 40 minutes at 5am to get there while it’s dark in the winter

So… yeah. I’m feeling quite torn and lost right now, and I have no idea what to do.

[droptoeholdyourhorses]

An idea that's been kicking around in my head the past couple of weeks is trying to work out which former WWE Champion has faced the most other former WWE Champions. To date, there have been 54 recognised WWE Champions and out of those 54, one must have faced more of the remaining 53 than anyone else.

On paper, it's simple enough. Use a site like Cagematch or ProFightDB. Cross reference every WWE Champion with every other WWE Champion. See who has the highest tally at the end. However, there are some points I am getting caught up on as to what counts and what doesn't count.

Multi-man matches such as triple threat, fatal four ways, Royal Rumbles etc.

It feels like these shouldn't count, especially Rumbles but there does appear to be the odd case here and there. For example, Triple H and Rey Mysterio. The two have never had a one on one match together but in 2006, they did start that year's Royal Rumble. Both lasted over an hour, and in the final three, Rey eliminated Hunter before going on to eliminate Randy Orton to win the whole thing. Later in March of the same year, HHH and Rey were on opposite sides of a handicap match on Saturday Night's Main Event. Still, for sake of argument, it feels better to stick to singles matches overall.

2. House show matches.

Triple H vs. Jinder Mahal took place at an India house show in December 2017 in their only one-on-one match together. Both men are former WWE Champions so it should seemingly count but it does feel odd to count a Triple H match not many people will have seen, yet not count his interactions with Rey which many more will have seen.

3. Matches pre-WWE title reigns.

This one feels like it's splitting hairs admittedly. The most recent first-time WWE Champion is Big E defeating Bobby Lashley in September 2021. It would feel rather pedantic to say only matches after that count for Big E and matches before it don't.

4. Non WWE-matches between two WWE Champions.

I don't think there would be many cases of this either but let's take Rob Van Dam vs. AJ Styles as an example. They never faced off in WWE but they did have numerous matches against each other in TNA in 2010. It feels like those should count.

Will anything come of this? Eh, maybe, but I wanted to at least get the initial idea out of my head.

[jodilin65]

TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2010 I sometimes wish the planet weren’t so big and that it was as easy to meet cyber friends in person as they are online. How nice it would be to run over to Wales and meet Mitch, then hop on over to Germany and maybe meet my new friend Nane and practice our German/English, then drop down to Italy to meet Marilena, though that one just might happen someday. And of course I’d run to my folks in Florida every so often, and meet Alison and Kim right here in the good ole United States of Screw-Ups.

Tom went to bed and if it ever gets below 80º out there I’ll go out for my run. It might not make it down there before it gets dark, so I’ll just have to deal with it. It’s better than being cold. It got down to 71º in here this morning and it was freezing to me! I don’t know why I’m so damn sensitive to cold yet can take the heat very well. I’m so glad it’s to be close to 100º all week.

Tom’s first day of work went well. He’s in the testing area for now. He said it was kind of weird that they have no security or anything in the building, but Grass Valley isn’t like Rocklin either. He also thought it odd that they don’t have any kind of quality assurance department.

We called my folks and gave them the good news. They were thrilled for us as were Eileen and Mitch. Dad joked at first and asked if he was going to be governor of California, LOL. I told them I started my 7th language and asked Dad to guess what it was after telling him it began with an e. He guessed Egyptian, LOL. He pointed out that good things happen in threes. He got the job, so next, he’ll be hired on and then the Beanie Babies will sell which he said he thinks we were doing wrong. He said we should have listed one for $1.99 + $4.99 shipping instead of 99¢ + $5.99 shipping. Actually, we’re going to try some large lots.

I agree with him, though, that Tom will get hired on. Where most people either hate or love me, everybody likes Tom, LOL.

Tom also called Jesse to let him know we’ll pay the rent in full on Saturday and about the job.

I will be in training tonight and will try to get some work done on the book as well. I was just buzzing with so much excitement last night that I was too keyed up to do much writing. Seriously, I was like a little kid on Chanukah! Some people have been asking me about my work, but sorry, I’m not allowed to discuss it.

I am really stupid at times! Nane said she tried to add me on Facebook, but that I didn’t accept friends. I had totally forgotten about turning that off – duh! Spambots were after me, so I turned it off. I let her know I turned it back on, but haven’t heard from her yet. I’d say this pretty much wipes out any lingering thoughts of deactivating my account, though. :)

It hit me that my disabling the friend invite thing may’ve prevented Maliheh from accepting my invite. If that’s the case, well, it’s off now.

She oughta get a kick out of how I accidentally capitalized the word boy on one of my Esperanto lessons, as I told Nane. Since she caps all the nouns in her language, and since I’ve had that on my mind so much, I accidentally went noun-capping in the wrong language, LOL. I’ve put the German on hold for now until I study more of the grammar aspect of it.

Why is it that I set up my microphone specifically for German and Esperanto speaking exercises just to have no one review them? Instead, all anyone’s done is tell me my Italian sounds great, LOL.

My logic still doesn’t think so, but my dreams keep suggesting we may be moving to another rental, in which case I told Tom to be prepared as it’s getting to be too many dreams at this point. I had a two-in-one last night. We’d just moved to some old dumpy rental which didn’t exactly seem very remote. I went to tell Tom something from another room and he told me he was on the phone. Before he hung up, I heard him say, “Sure. A thousand dollars will do it.”

I will finish the dream after my run. It’s not cooling down, but the sun is setting and I’d rather not wait for the skunks and other nocturnal goodies that rule these woods to come out and join me, even if these woods are a lot safer than the ones in Oregon.

catches breath Ok, I got my run out of the way. It’s gorgeous out now. I checked the weather back up in Oregon and was reminded of just how much colder they are than New England. Them poor Klammers nearly froze last night, LOL.

And now on with the dream. After he hung up the phone and told me we had a grand on the way, I asked what for, and he said the company he works for wants us to move closer to them and would be willing to pay us to do so.

In reality, Tom laughed at that one, saying that’s not how it usually works, but as I reminded him, it’s not so much the details of the dream that matters as the overall message. And the more repetitious the dreams, the more likely they are to be telling me something. If Jesse were to lose this place, as much as I doubt it, then we’d have no choice but to move. For now, we’re preparing for the possibility and are going to start saving as fast as we can. I would feel much more secure with a month of rent saved, plus enough for a backup vehicle should this one crap out in a way we couldn’t afford to fix. If we had engine failure right now, we’d be positively screwed.

Later…

Maliheh’s back to visiting me through Facebook instead of through a bookmark, and I still have yet to hear from Nane. Starting to think I’m not going to either. Let me guess – she’s not crazy enough, right? And God had those spam botters bug me so I would turn off the friend invite, forget about it, and lose any chance of being buddies with her, right?

Hmm… should I just move on and forget her? Or should I spill the beans and let her know I’m attracted to her if I don’t hear from her for a couple more weeks, knowing I’d have nothing to lose anyway? I admit I do like surprising people at times, so just maybe I will. I’m curious as to what her reaction might be, though I doubt I’ll get any at all. Ok, Nane, you’ll hear from me one last time in a couple of weeks, LOL.

I realize that she could just be a very busy person, but IDK. Marie was pretty busy a lot of the time too, yet she sure found time to keep in touch.

And of course I still wonder if Maliheh will ever accept the friend invite or contact me, though I’d say it’s safe to assume she won’t. She may be a mean bitch, but she’s not crazy.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 29, 2010 Those in Istanbul-Shit, Ghana-rea and India really seem to like me, LOL, based on all the friend requests I’ve been getting from there lately. I might look for a way to turn off the photo comments, though, as I get tired of the same old, same old. I don’t mean to seem rude or unappreciative, but yes, I know the desert is hot, I know I was cute at 4 years old, and I know I usually have insanely long hair!

Nane only corrected my written submission and not my spoken one. In other words, I probably sounded so horrible she didn’t know what to say about it, LOL. I just can’t seem to get some of the tenses straight (rot, rote, roten, ein, eine) and so I sent her a message asking if there was some tip she could give me that would simplify things for me.

I was going to remove any reference to my finding her attractive in case she makes it over to my blog (the link is on my profile page) and doesn’t like the idea of it, but what’s she gonna do – fly over here and shoot me for it?

No one’s reviewed my Esperanto yet, but my Italian-speaking reviews were very good. I’m currently 38% through Esperanto 101 with a score of 99%, and 95% through German 101 but with a score of just 82%. My last lesson was a killer! The speaking part was easier, though. Still, how is it that I’ve made Student of the Week in German every week since enrolling in the course a couple of months ago? Esperanto I can see kicking ass in because it’s so easy. But German is not.

Tom got another scratch ticket and I did my thing and concentrated really hard on “zapping” it with happy, positive winning energy. This one was a crossword ticket. I ended up one letter short of a HUGE winner! How frustrating yet encouraging!

Tom said that maybe he actually has to be working before I’m in a good enough frame of mind to “rig” tickets. Yeah, let’s just hope he will be real soon too, when he calls the office tomorrow.

A few days before he went on the interview I had a dream where I told him that a major change was on the way. I wonder if that was a job premonition I didn’t see at the time. I wrote the dream off as meaningless. I’ve occasionally had dream premonitions without knowing right away that they were actual premonitions.

Mitch finished his book The Changeling! Next, he’s going to go over my last book and read the start of my current book to give me an idea of what he thinks so far.

Other than me and two of my cyberbuds being stalked and annoyed by a crazy woman in Texas, all is fine. I went out running, and soon I shall be transporting myself to the whacky world of Maliheh and Joni. Speaking of Maliheh she didn’t show up in Dreamland last night. Amazing, huh? I kind of missed her, even if it means being chased by her at times, because I know I can always wake up if she catches me. :) Then again, I don’t always mind being captured, depending on whoever’s doing the capturing. :)

She was looking for me on MyOpera this evening and into the evening, but all she got to see were my fake comments, along with a few from Alison and Kim. She’s jumping in from Facebook again too, now that I mentioned I would stick around there for those that have no other means of getting ahold of me if they want to. I also like to post blogs and language lesson scores there.

Paula sent a message that was both sweet and funny despite how unbelievably poorly written it was, LOL. “You’re my best friend, I love you, I miss you, I’m dating a sexy guy, I’m moving to a 1-bedroom, here’s my new number, call me.”

Something like that anyway. She changes numbers faster than I change undies, but as I told her, I’ll call her when I get a chance. Probably next week.

Okay, time to head to class and then Never Never Land!

Later…

My latest exchange with Nane has got me thinking about this influencing thing again, alright. :) I told Nane that the grammar had me so confused that I was ready to beat my head in the wall despite having a knack for languages, and she said don’t do that, LOL! LM isn’t the way to go in her opinion because it doesn’t teach any grammar, and I so totally agree. I’ve always been an anti-full immersion method.

Nane was not only kind enough to give me half a dozen or so links to sites that may help with the grammar part of the German but accepted my email addy after I told her I was a “liberal” person who liked learning about different languages and cultures (at least that was half-true). She replied saying, “Ok, ratgirl. :) it will be a chance to brush up on my English as well. :). :)

This put a grin on my face. Yes, Nane, I’ll be happy to brush your English up for you anytime. Anytime! One does tend to learn faster when they’ve got a crush on their teacher, and so I’m sure my German will start advancing rather quickly.

I sent her picture to Mitch. He agrees she looks fortyish and that she’s a hottie.

Anyway, the links provide a whole lot of helpful info, and so as not to seem pushy, and because I’m getting tired anyway, I’ll wait a day or so after I go through them some more and then message her on LM if she doesn’t beat me to an email first.

Then again, would I really have much influence on her if I was single and she lived nearby? Hmm… I don’t know about that one.

Later…

“No, no, no, don’t wake up!” I started to tell myself this afternoon as I slowly started coming awake. “If you do, you may find that this morning was just a dream. Play it safe. Stay asleep.” But that wasn’t possible, of course, and I quickly realized that no, that morning was no dream. I smiled widely as I replayed it through my mind, stretched and yawned. Then I remembered Nane and her links and I smiled even wider as I got up out of bed.

It was just before 9am this morning. He came in from being outside on the cell phone. Then he told me about it and I walked into the bedroom intending to do something on the computer but instead of doing that I collapsed in a heap of relief and tears on the bed and cried steadily for a good 10 minutes or so knowing that 22 long, miserable, stressful, depressing – and sometimes scary – months have finally come screeching to a halt! It’s over. Just like that, it’s over.

The sense of relief that comes with stepping out of the gloom we were in for so long and into the light to return to the land of the living is both amazing and wonderful. I have been crying tears of joy on and off and zipping up and down the place grinning like a mad idiot. We have survived the storm! I’m so ecstatic that if I were a drinker I’d be getting totally smashed right now! Wish I had tons of scratch tickets now. I know I’d win most of them for sure with the way I’m flying! I have been laughing and crying, laughing and crying, back and forth and back and forth, and right now the screen is blurring up on me. But it’s so nice to cry tears of joy and relief instead of stress and depression!

Now that it’s official I can give some details. He’ll be working days. The pay is much more than we expected at $12/hr.! We thought he’d get $8 - $10, and anything would have been fine, but to get what we’ll be getting which is plenty adequate for us, is awesome! Our rent is low for California and we don’t pay for water or electricity.

The only negs are that it’s a half-hour drive and is just a temp job. I think he’ll impress them enough with his smarts and capabilities to get hired on, though, which should be in 3-6 months at which time we’ll be insured, believe it or not. I need these teeth ripped out and dentures put in sooo badly! The enamel is just so soft and is really going to hell. It’s a hereditary thing that pretty much happens to everyone in the family.

Even though I have total confidence in him, I’ve been teasing him about the stress now being on him. I told him that after 22 months of it being on me, he could have it, LOL! He knew things would be rough while we were basically what amounted to forced welfare bums, but I really thought we weren’t going to make it at times. You know I’m a pessimist.

It’s going to be nice having the place to myself more often, too. Like I said, no matter how well you may get along with someone – and Tom and I never fight – it’s still nice to get some alone time beyond when he’s asleep or just out running errands.

He’ll be getting up at 4am (same time as Jesse if Jesse ever gets back to work himself). Speaking of Jesse, I wonder if he’s been out of town. The dogs went off all night long last night, and Tom never heard the motorcycle today. His truck is up there, though, and someone must be there now because it’s quiet. Anyway, he’ll leave around 5:00, then start work an hour later, then leave at 2:30.

He went to the temp company’s office yesterday to fill out all the paperwork and to have his pay transferred to the card.

From now on I’ve got to start writing down all my dreams, no matter how silly, strange or trivial they may seem. A couple of days ago I dreamt we had just moved to what seemed to be another rental. While the rental seemed bigger and more modern, I hated the snow. There was a dusting of snow all around us, and my dream self was bummed at the thought of having to deal with that regularly, yet it was obvious it was for a good cause and that other things were going well. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Well, we’re 1000’ in elevation while it turns out that the place he’s going to actually be working at is 2500’ in elevation. Weird, really weird.

So does this mean we’ll move? I don’t think so, even though Tom said there were tons of remote places along the way. I don’t want to go back to that shit. The one or two days a year we get a dusting down here at the Sierra Nevada foothills is more than enough for someone who can’t stand snow, and so unless we found a hell of a deal, I don’t see the point in bothering when we’re just going to buy a place in a couple of years. I don’t know where our forever home will be, but we’re going. Oh, yes we are! stops to wipe happy tears Meanwhile, even though the dogs drive me crazy at times, why move to a place that would only be just as noisy or worse? And while bigger, newer and nicer is always great, we don’t want to spend that much extra money between now and buying the house. Except for occasional perfumes which I’m addicted to, I don’t want to spend much money on things we don’t need until we get home. But this is it! Sure looks that way anyway. We have found the yellow brick road. All we have to do now is just follow it. For now, though, it’s nice to know that moving is much more of an option for us if we ever do decide to move.

Laughing, I asked him if he thought he’d slip and fall on the ice up there in the winter like he used to do in Oregon. I never fell once. Not with my balance. Remember, I was a dancer and I also skated a lot as a kid.

I thank God for finally answering my prayers, even though I don’t know why it took Him nearly two years to do it. Guess there really is a time and a place for everything.

I told Andy, Mitch and Eileen the good news in an email, and once we find out even more, I’ll call Mom and Dad. He doesn’t know exactly what his job will entail just yet.

I’m still buzzing with so much excitement that I might not be able to concentrate on my story tonight (sorry boss!) but I have my work cut out for me thanks to Nane. :) So I better get to it soon!

Ah, to be able to wake up without that damn dark cloud hanging over us and without that phone never ringing. Woo-hoo!!! Every day I’d wake up and the first question on my mind would be whether or not we were going to survive. Our unemployment was set to expire soon, and the pressure to beat the clock was getting really nerve-wracking. I’d try to enjoy the moment, then it’d hit me that we were on our last extension and time was fast running out.

Tic-toc, tic-toc…

I’d try to concentrate on my story or other things and try to live for the moment, then, you’re on the last tier.

Tic-toc, tic-toc…

Trying to study languages, then, less than 60 days to go.

Tic-toc, tic-toc…

Cleaning the house, then, will it really be as easy as you’ve heard to die by carbon monoxide poisoning?

Tic-toc, tic-toc…

Time’s up…

WE WIN!!!

Those in Istanbul-Shit, Ghana-rea, and India really seem to like me, LOL, based on all the friend requests I’ve been getting from there lately. I might look for a way to turn off the photo comments, though, as I get tired of the same old, same old. I don’t mean to seem rude or unappreciative, but yes, I know the desert is hot, I know I was cute at 4 years old, and I know I usually have insanely long hair!

Nane only corrected my written submission and not my spoken one. In other words, I probably sounded so horrible she didn’t know what to say about it, LOL. I just can’t seem to get some of the tenses straight (rot, rote, roten, ein, eine) and so I sent her a message asking if there was some tip she could give me that would simplify things for me.

I was going to remove any reference to my finding her attractive in case she makes it over to my blog (the link is on my profile page) and doesn’t like the idea of it, but what’s she gonna do – fly over here and shoot me for it?

No one’s reviewed my Esperanto yet, but my Italian-speaking reviews were very good. I’m currently 38% through Esperanto 101 with a score of 99%, and 95% through German 101 but with a score of just 82%. My last lesson was a killer! The speaking part was easier, though. Still, how is it that I’ve made Student of the Week in German every week since enrolling in the course a couple of months ago? Esperanto I can see kicking ass in because it’s so easy. But German is not.

Tom got another scratch ticket and I did my thing and concentrated really hard on “zapping” it with happy, positive winning energy. This one was a crossword ticket. I ended up one letter short of a HUGE winner! How frustrating yet encouraging!

Tom said that maybe he actually has to be working before I’m in a good enough frame of mind to “rig” tickets. Yeah, let’s just hope he will be real soon too, when he calls the office tomorrow.

A few days before he went on the interview I had a dream where I told him that a major change was on the way. I wonder if that was a job premonition I didn’t see at the time. I wrote the dream off as meaningless. I’ve occasionally had dream premonitions without knowing right away that they were actual premonitions.

Mitch finished his book The Changeling! Next, he’s going to go over my last book and read the start of my current book to give me an idea of what he thinks so far.

Other than me and two of my cyberbuds being stalked and annoyed by a crazy woman in Texas, all is fine. I went out running, and soon I shall be transporting myself to the whacky world of Maliheh and Joni. Speaking of Maliheh she didn’t show up in Dreamland last night. Amazing, huh? I kind of missed her, even if it means being chased by her at times because I know I can always wake up if she catches me. :) Then again, I don’t always mind being captured, depending on whoever’s doing the capturing. :)

She was looking for me on MyOpera this evening and into the evening, but all she got to see were my fake comments, along with a few from Alison and Kim. She’s jumping in from Facebook again too, now that I mentioned I would stick around there for those that have no other means of getting ahold of me if they want to. I also like to post blogs and language lesson scores there.

I decided to say I have “reason” to suspect an impersonator at this point and that I doubt the comments from Maliheh are really from her so as to hopefully up my chances of us being friends in the future. As it is she may already suspect that I’m the one who left the comments to begin with.

Paula sent a message that was both sweet and funny despite how unbelievably poorly written it was, LOL. “You’re my best friend, I love you, I miss you, I’m dating a sexy guy, I’m moving to a 1-bedroom, here’s my new number, call me.”

Something like that anyway. She changes numbers faster than I change undies, but as I told her, I’ll call her when I get a chance. Probably next week.

Okay, time to head to class and then Never Never Land!

Later…

My latest exchange with Nane has got me thinking about this influencing thing again, alright. :) I told Nane that the grammar had me so confused that I was ready to beat my head in the wall despite having a knack for languages, and she said don’t do that, LOL! LM isn’t the way to go in her opinion because it doesn’t teach any grammar, and I so totally agree. I’ve always been an anti-full immersion method.

Nane was not only kind enough to give me half a dozen or so links to sites that may help with the grammar part of the German but accepted my email addy after I told her I was a “liberal” person who liked learning about different languages and cultures (at least that was half-true). She replied saying, “Ok, ratgirl. :) it will be a chance to brush up on my English as well. :). :)

This put a grin on my face. Yes, Nane, I’ll be happy to brush your English up for you anytime. Anytime! One does tend to learn faster when they’ve got a crush on their teacher, and so I’m sure my German will start advancing rather quickly.

I sent her picture to Mitch. He agrees she looks fortyish and that she’s a hottie.

Anyway, the links provide a whole lot of helpful info, and so as not to seem pushy, and because I’m getting tired anyway, I’ll wait a day or so after I go through them some more and then message her on LM if she doesn’t beat me to an email first.

Then again, would I really have much influence on her if I was single and she lived nearby? Hmm… I don’t know about that one.

Later…

“No, no, no, don’t wake up!” I started to tell myself this afternoon as I slowly started coming awake. “If you do, you may find that this morning was just a dream. Play it safe. Stay asleep.” But that wasn’t possible, of course, and I quickly realized that no, that morning was no dream. I smiled widely as I replayed it through my mind, stretched and yawned. Then I remembered Nane and her links and I smiled even wider as I got up out of bed.

It was just before 9am this morning. He came in from being outside on the cell phone. Then he told me about it and I walked into the bedroom intending to do something on the computer but instead of doing that I collapsed in a heap of relief and tears on the bed and cried steadily for a good 10 minutes or so knowing that 22 long, miserable, stressful, depressing – and sometimes scary – months have finally come screeching to a halt! It’s over. Just like that, it’s over.

The sense of relief that comes with stepping out of the gloom we were in for so long and into the light to return to the land of the living is both amazing and wonderful. I have been crying tears of joy on and off and zipping up and down the place grinning like a mad idiot. We have survived the storm! I’m so ecstatic that if I were a drinker I’d be getting totally smashed right now! Wish I had tons of scratch tickets now. I know I’d win most of them for sure with the way I’m flying! I have been laughing and crying, laughing and crying, back and forth and back and forth, and right now the screen is blurring up on me. But it’s so nice to cry tears of joy and relief instead of stress and depression!

Now that it’s official I can give some details. He’ll be working days. The pay is much more than we expected at $12/hr.! We thought he’d get $8 - $10, and anything would have been fine, but to get what we’ll be getting which is plenty adequate for us, is awesome! Our rent is low for California and we don’t pay for water or electricity.

The only negs are that it’s a half-hour drive and is just a temp job. I think he’ll impress them enough with his smarts and capabilities to get hired on, though, which should be in 3-6 months at which time we’ll be insured, believe it or not. I need these teeth ripped out and dentures put in sooo badly! The enamel is just so soft and is really going to hell. It’s a hereditary thing that pretty much happens to everyone in the family.

Even though I have total confidence in him, I’ve been teasing him about the stress now being on him. I told him that after 22 months of it being on me, he could have it, LOL! He knew things would be rough while we were basically what amounted to forced welfare bums, but I really thought we weren’t going to make it at times. You know I’m a pessimist.

It’s going to be nice having the place to myself more often, too. Like I said, no matter how well you may get along with someone – and Tom and I never fight – it’s still nice to get some alone time beyond when he’s asleep or just out running errands.

He’ll be getting up at 4am (same time as Jesse if Jesse ever gets back to work himself). Speaking of Jesse, I wonder if he’s been out of town. The dogs went off all night long last night, and Tom never heard the motorcycle today. His truck is up there, though, and someone must be there now because it’s quiet. Anyway, he’ll leave around 5:00, then start work an hour later, then leave at 2:30.

He went to the temp company’s office yesterday to fill out all the paperwork and to have his pay transferred to the card.

From now on I’ve got to start writing down all my dreams, no matter how silly, strange or trivial they may seem. A couple of days ago I dreamt we had just moved to what seemed to be another rental. While the rental seemed bigger and more modern, I hated the snow. There was a dusting of snow all around us, and my dream self was bummed at the thought of having to deal with that regularly, yet it was obvious it was for a good cause and that other things were going well. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Well, we’re 1000’ in elevation while it turns out that the place he’s going to actually be working at is 2500’ in elevation. Weird, really weird.

So does this mean we’ll move? I don’t think so, even though Tom said there were tons of remote places along the way. I don’t want to go back to that shit. The one or two days a year we get a dusting down here at the Sierra Nevada foothills is more than enough for someone who can’t stand snow, and so unless we found a hell of a deal, I don’t see the point in bothering when we’re just going to buy a place in a couple of years. I don’t know where our forever home will be, but we’re going. Oh, yes we are! stops to wipe happy tears Meanwhile, even though the dogs drive me crazy at times, why move to a place that would only be just as noisy or worse? And while bigger, newer and nicer is always great, we don’t want to spend that much extra money between now and buying the house. Except for occasional perfumes which I’m addicted to, I don’t want to spend much money on things we don’t need until we get home. But this is it! Sure looks that way anyway. We have found the yellow brick road. All we have to do now is just follow it. For now, though, it’s nice to know that moving is much more of an option for us if we ever do decide to move.

Laughing, I asked him if he thought he’d slip and fall on the ice up there in the winter like he used to do in Oregon. I never fell once. Not with my balance. Remember, I was a dancer and I also skated a lot as a kid.

I thank God for finally answering my prayers, even though I don’t know why it took Him nearly two years to do it. Guess there really is a time and a place for everything.

I told Andy, Mitch and Eileen the good news in an email, and once we find out even more, I’ll call Mom and Dad. He doesn’t know exactly what his job will entail just yet.

I’m still buzzing with so much excitement that I might not be able to concentrate on my story tonight (sorry boss!) but I have my work cut out for me thanks to Nane. :) So I better get to it soon!

Ah, to be able to wake up without that damn dark cloud hanging over us and without that phone never ringing. Woo-hoo!!! Every day I’d wake up and the first question on my mind would be whether or not we were going to survive. Our unemployment was set to expire soon, and the pressure to beat the clock was getting really nerve-wracking. I’d try to enjoy the moment, then it’d hit me that we were on our last extension and time was fast running out.

Tic-toc, tic-toc…

I’d try to concentrate on my story or other things and try to live for the moment, then, you’re on the last tier.

Tic-toc, tic-toc…

Trying to study languages, then, less than 60 days to go.

Tic-toc, tic-toc…

Cleaning the house, then, will it really be as easy as you’ve heard to die by carbon monoxide poisoning?

Tic-toc, tic-toc…

Time’s up…

WE WIN!!!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 2010 It’s after midnight here and we had to shut windows tonight, which sucks, and probably will tomorrow night, too.

We were talking about the job and Tom said that if he really did get it, then the stress will be off of me and onto him since he’ll have the pressure of trying to do the best job possible, though I’m sure he’ll dazzle and amaze them with his smarts and abilities. He wants to get us insured as soon as possible so I can get my heart checked out. That’s ok, I’ll pass up Dr. Cardio for the dentist. :) Still, I got a kick out of the stress being shifted from me to him part. Ah, that’s a nice breath of fresh air! I could get very used to breathing it, too. :)

Later…

Had a little scare that woke me up an hour into my sleep where I woke up coughing. My throat was burning and I had trouble swallowing. I guess I burped up some stomach acid – yuck!

Got up at 1:30 and had a busy first few hours. I ran a few miles, got a 100% on my next Esperanto lesson, reviewed some English and Spanish submissions, then changed the rat’s cage. See what I mean when I say I do what most people don’t, LOL?

You know you moved to the wrong place when you’ve got all your windows shut during an August afternoon. It did later make it up to 83º in here and I’m letting it get as warm as possible because it’s to drop to 53º tonight. I don’t think it’ll go over 83º, though, as it’s already almost 6:00.

Maliheh’s got me bookmarked now. :) Before she would jump in from FB.

I was just about to demolish my Facebook account when a friend reminded me that they like to see my language lesson scores posted there (yeah, wait till they start dropping as the lessons get harder), and other friends have no other means of getting a hold of me when they want to. I also like the “connection” to Maliheh, even if there isn’t really any connection. If I wanted a private account, then you bet I’d get out of there! But for now, I’ll leave things alone, even if a part of me will probably always consider leaving Facebook, MySpace and Formspring. Part of my artificial intelligence work requires me to have these kinds of accounts, and sometimes I enter sweeps that are connected to them too, which is another reason to keep them open.

With Tom working I’ll be “eligible” to win more. “You know how it works,” I told him. “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” We may not be poor or rich, but the concept is the same; the more money you have, the more it seems you get, and vice versa. The only time I won big when we really needed money was when I psyched out that 9 grand in the motel.

Anyway, Tom set up my microphone for me and now I’m back in training. “Where have you been? I’ve missed you,” my German buddy told me on LiveMocha. LOL, I’d say I’ve been missing her a little more than she’s been missing me. And tonight I’m sure I’ll give her a good laugh with the speaking exercise of the next German lesson, though she’ll probably be in bed if she’s like most people blessed with the ability to keep a normal schedule. It’s 8 or 9 hours later in Germany.

My Esperanto teacher is just some guy named Panta. I can’t imagine being called Panta, LOL. I should go see if ole Panta Claus has reviewed my lesson yet.

To answer other questions – yes, learning languages takes regularity to ground things in and to retain them. I study for at least a few minutes almost every day. Sometimes I do whatever language I’m in the mood to do, other times I have set plans. And yes, one will help with the other, but they also confuse and override each other. It seems that when I speak a sentence, my voice wants to throw in the words of whatever language I think of them first. So sometimes my Spanish sentences are sprinkled with Italian, and sometimes it’s the other way around.

Might work on my story tonight, but probably won’t post anything.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2010 Tom went on a job interview at a temp place in Grass Valley. The job is for manufacturing video equipment. I asked if he thought he got the job, but he said they were very hard to read so he doesn’t know. They said they’d make their decision soon. Instead of discussing much about the job, though, they asked him about himself, including whether or not he has a computer. He told them he has an iMac and before that, he used to build his own computers. Calls and interviews are nice, but he needs to be hired!

Alison and Kim are my top cyber pals along with Mitch and Dorian, even if I don’t hear much from them guys lately (along with my special buddy).

I hope my heart doesn’t go weirding out on me again. Yesterday I had palpitations every few minutes! It was really annoying. And today it’s beating a little fast and hard.

I don’t know why, but I only slept for 5 hours and so I’m tired today. Chapter 6 really burned me out so I’ll probably take a break and not work on my story till next week. Tomorrow we’re picking up my microphone and so I’ll be busy with my German and Esperanto lessons!

Later…

OMG, OMG, OMG!!! Yes, I have what is the best news after 22 long, stressful, frustrating months! Tom got a job!!! dances with delight Yes, he really, really got a job!!! shouts for joy We won’t know the details until next Monday, though, because we missed her call. The cell phone won’t ring inside the trailer cuz of the metal walls and trim. She called right before closing time and when he went outside to call her back when he saw there was a message, she was gone. She simply said, “I have some good news for you. Call me back.” He left a message that he’d call back Monday morning.

Although it’s only a temp place and he may or may not be hired on permanently, the sense of relief and happiness is sooooo nice and it’s sooooo overdue! Watch out, OLS, the influencer is coming back and she’s gonna kick ass! Gonna start raking in those wins again like crazy! You know how it works for psychics of my kind – the better the mood, the more good things happen. And it’s in a much more extreme way than with most people. You can’t win all I used to win without being at least somewhat psychic!

Watch, I said to Tom, now that you’ve got this job, other offers will come crawling out of the woodwork. He said he was just about to say the same thing. It was so fucking funny! It felt so good to really laugh, and then we laughed harder when he said that he’s still gotta put in 3 applications tomorrow for his unemployment form. Depending on the hours and pay we may still get unemployment checks for a while. Don’t know yet.

Someday we’re gonna buy a house and really go home! Oh, yes we are. We’re gonna take back what we lost and this time I ain’t letting nothing tear us down again. Like Maliheh said to Joni in the story, “I’m taking and I ain’t never giving back what I take!”

I don’t know why I didn’t see it in my dreams, but you know me, it’s usually the bad things that I have dream premonitions about.

I will continue to work at home with the online job and the writing. Right now I’m too excited to write anymore or work on my story. twirls with delight I’m just gonna listen to music or watch movies. And hope my heart stops beating funny. Got a bit of chest pain too, but nothing serious.

Oh, shit! Now I’ll be taking on all the chores again now that he’ll be working, LOL! What a nice problem to have, huh? Woo-hoo!!!

In other news, there’s a new twist in the Maliheh case. Sort of. At 8:30 ET I got a Hope Mills hit. One hour later I got hit by Fayetteville. Same providers, different IPs. Hmm… maybe the Hope Mills visitor wasn’t her after all. It definitely wasn’t a case of her modem resetting and assigning a new IP# cuz the Fayetteville one is the same as always. I think that with the story heating up, she’s just more anxious to share it with friends, LOL. I’m getting a lot more hits from people in states she’s lived in before or that she’s got friends in, like Missouri and Kansas. And they don’t seem to mind that I know it, too.

I also have a regular visitor from a university in Ohio. They would come in once every week or two, but now they too, are coming in more often.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 2010 I noticed a missing word in a sentence in the last part of the story and so I added it in. I also put a sentence in quotes that shouldn’t have been in quotes and corrected a word in the steamy dream scene. beats head How do I keep missing these things? I mean, I know a lot of work goes into writing a book and that it’s no easy task, but after going through one silent read-through and one electronic read-through, you’d think I’d catch more of these things. Argh!

Maliheh’s getting pretty anxious for the next part of the story, seeing that she’s already been in at least 4 times today, LOL. I never would’ve believed in a million years she’d be back in my life, even though she’s not really, and she’ll never contact me unless I “make” her. I think I’ll go make her say hello on my blog right now. It’s been a few days.

Got my first visit from someone in NJ from the old diary site. Since I’m still on the favorites page there’s no way to know if they specifically looked for me over there or if they linked in through the favorites page.

I want my damn adapter so I can learn more of my beautiful teacher’s ugly language! If it doesn’t arrive at the mail place today, then tomorrow for sure.

Now that I’ve gotten enough other work done, it’s time to tackle chapter 6. I hope to have at least some of it posted by around 9pm.

Later…

There’s no way I can finish chapter 6 today. It’s just too much work and taking much longer than expected. Part of this is because I’m referring to past journals where I mention Maliheh. I’m not sure yet if I’m going to use some of the actual excerpts or just work them into the story in other ways, but when I was reading through from the second half of 1991 to the beginning of 1992, a couple of surprises jumped out at me.

I wrote that I sent Maliheh a “prank” letter in February of 1992. But I never had her address! I also have no recollection whatsoever of writing/sending the letter. In the whacky letter, I would have mixed lines from songs and shit like that so it was really confusing.

I also may’ve falsely accused her of returning the prank calls. Maybe at least some of them had nothing to do with her. According to what I read, a guy called me in November and hit on me. They also mentioned that I’d had a breakdown the other night and was at the Northampton crisis center which was true. I had been. I spoke to the crisis center people by phone a few times each month during the 10 months I lived in S. Deerfield. The bar’s parking lot was within view of the crisis center and so I had assumed that Maliheh and some friends were at the bar that night and saw me. I do stand out and don’t exactly have many look-alikes.

The same guy called back two months later in January. Only problem is that I had a different phone number! They cut my service for a while because I had a huge phone bill, and when they reconnected me it was with a different number.

That leaves two possibilities – that all or at least some of the calls were either connected to Kim and Mark, or to a crisis worker.

Reading back on some of this shit I see that yes, I was one mixed-up, immature person, alright, but I also understand how and why the accumulative effects of the experiences I had in life could cause one to lash out the way I did, right or wrong. I don’t expect others to understand me and I’m not trying to make excuses for what I did. I also realize that I will never truly be forgiven for what I did, simply because most people don’t forgive. They may talk about it and agree that it seems like a nice concept, but I know it’s not real life for the most part. This doesn’t mean that I myself am going to switch back into non-forgiving mode, even if I probably should.

I still don’t hold a grudge either way for the calls (if she was behind them) or for upsetting me with any disagreements we had after all these years. The past is the past. Had she robbed me or beaten me or tried to kill me, that would be different. That I would never and could never forgive. Yet despite being fucked over a million times worse by a few others in life, she has remained just as memorable as them in my mind. Strange, huh? I wonder if she’d be less memorable had she not been someone I was attracted to.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2010 Signing in today at a scorching 107º. This is definitely the hottest day since moving into this place! I feel bad for the dogs. Most people out west wouldn’t take their dogs outdoors no matter how hot or cold it got. We’re going to drop down to the 70s by the weekend at which time I’m sure Jesse will make quite a racket, then it’s going to come up again. I wonder how much longer he’s going to be out of work. I’m sure he’ll be back in time for the weather to be cool enough for the dogs to start barking their asses off which they prefer to do in the cooler weather.

Got caught up on Formspring questions which I’m now sending to Twitter and Facebook, did some online work, cleaned the bathroom, went out for burgers and fries, and will soon begin chapter 6 of my book.

Now my story has two votes, so I see, while the journal has one.

For some reason, the satellite images of this area on Google Maps are the closest and clearest ever. And they’re pretty recent too, as you can see the ugly strips of fake grass by the trailer, our car, our shed, his place, etc. Too bad I wasn’t out running that day, LOL. If I thought the pile of crap he has down here is ugly enough, he has a ton of crap all over the back of the land. Fortunately, we can’t see it here. Neither can he or his neighbors as there are too many trees surrounding it. It’s so cockish, though. It really is.

We checked our old places in Oregon and Arizona, but they don’t have such detailed images on their maps yet. Mitch (Paul) says they’re scary and that you can see his mother’s birdbath in the backyard.

Nane and I swapped a couple of messages on the language site. She had the same problem with her microphone at first, too. My adapter should arrive tomorrow or the next day so she and I can get back to work – ooh! Like I said, having a good-looking teacher helps make learning more fun since German is kind of an ugly language. Gotta learn it, though, as every language I learn helps with other things.

Last night I dreamt that Tom, Maliheh and I were all watching a movie one night in a ground-floor apartment. We seemed to be on the end of a strip of little apartments. It almost looked like the NHA. Tom and Maliheh were sitting in recliners and I was sitting on the floor sort of between them.

“Anyone want some popcorn or hot chocolate?” I asked during a commercial.

Tom looked over at Maliheh and said, “Need anything from our little waitress?”

“Yeah, but I don’t tip,” Maliheh answered.

I laughed and Tom and Maliheh exchanged amused smiles. Then Tom suddenly looked worried and said, “There’s someone outside.”

It was as if he knew there was trouble, and so he bolted from his chair and ran out the front door. I jumped into my flip-flops and followed. Seeing no one in sight, I ran into the apartment next door which the front door was wide open. Immediately I knew something bad must’ve happened. The place was trashed and there was a bloody trail leading to the back door which was also wide open. I didn’t see a soul in sight and began to call out Tom’s name in a panic, even though I knew I shouldn’t be leaving fingerprints, hairs or anything else of mine at a probable crime scene.

“Jodi, get back here! NOW!” I heard Maliheh shout from out front.

“But Tom’s not answering. He’s in the woods in back. Something’s wrong!” I cried as I followed Maliheh back into our place where she shut and locked the doors.

“We have to call the police!” I said.

“I’ve already called them,” she said. “Just get down.”

“Down where?”

“On the floor. Now!”

And then I woke up before we could find Tom.

Too bad I didn’t first contact Maliheh just one day sooner than I did. I would’ve been her birthday present, LOL, as I just learned that her birthday is May 13th. So’s Mike M’s.

I decided to let Alison in on the Maliheh thing in an email. I was curious about her opinion on what she thinks may be going through Maliheh’s mind. Next comes Mitch and Tom, but not just yet as far as Tom’s concerned. He’s as paranoid as I am a worrywart, so I don’t want him getting all worried that I’m doing anything to draw in the bacon.

Later…

LOL, Maliheh’s getting impatient for the next part of the story. I didn’t get around to posting anything new today. She checked more often and later, too. Her last check was at nearly 3am her time. Can’t sleep, huh? LOL

TUESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2010 Nane, my oh-so-attractive German teacher corrected my last German lesson, but never checked out my journal or caught up with me on Facebook. But hey, why should anyone I find attractive want to associate with me unless they’re crazy like Marie?

Yesterday I won two instant wins in a row for Carl’s Jr. breakfast coupons! The influencer is back! Sure hope she is anyway.

Looks like Maliheh’s buddy in Kansas just checked out the steamy sex scene I just posted, though she’s only listed as being in the U.S. this time. As soon as I saw they came from Facebook, I figured there was a connection. But trying to hide behind a proxy (although Tom says they’re not necessarily doing so) didn’t help them, since all I had to do was point at the newest dot on the map to figure out where they were.

MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 2010 I’m sitting here with my hair all gunked up with hair dye, not looking forward to the long half-hour ahead of me. I didn’t want to put my glasses on and get dye on the frames, nor did I want to sit staring blindly into space. So I magnified the hell out of the screen so I could type. People with ADHD don’t do well sitting still with nothing to do.

It’s going to be over 100º tomorrow and the next day – yay!

Jesse (and probably his kid) were annoying for a while on the dirt bike, but otherwise, I enjoyed my 3-mile run today. It was the easiest it’s been in a while, so now I have to speed up or run longer. I think I prefer the speed. I’m running around 5 to 6 MPH.

Since Tom doesn’t exercise much other than when he’s out working on the land or doing inside projects, and since I prefer running to biking, we decided to throw the bike outside on the deck.

Tom received a couple of calls regarding jobs. While they do seem encouraging, I hate to get my hopes up after all this time of nothing happening. For now, we remain a pair of “accomplished losers.” Accomplished losers with so much to offer the world, but unable to find just who to offer it to.

My Facebook friend in Italy, Marilena, said that if we don’t make it to Italy she’ll come see us instead. That’d be nice. She seems like a really nice lady. I guess she’s married with kids and doesn’t know very much English, but has always wanted to visit the U.S. Yeah, come on over. We’re all fat here, our computers come first, and we wouldn’t dare think of helping a stranger in need. :)

My German teacher and I are now friends on the language site, who happens to be extremely good-looking. Makes learning more fun. :) Her name is Nane and I look forward to working with her. She has dark hair and eyes and is older. I’ve always liked older women for some reason. I can’t really think of anyone I was attracted to who was my age or younger.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2010 Wow, Maliheh must be getting impatient, LOL, because she checks out my journal 3 or 4 times a day, she pretty much knows what schedule I’m on (I’m off to a late start today), and has been checking my journal every hour for updates. Man, I still wish to hell I knew what she was thinking! Is she over the past? Wanting to screw me? Does she like the story? Will she ever contact me or accept the friend invite?

Brandy went off (I think it was Brandy) before sunup, and Whiskey went off at 7am. Was Jesse even home last night? I know he went out at 6pm last night, but did he ever return? At age 54, I doubt he’s seeing anyone, but if he were, why not bring her here to what is a big beautiful house? Let me guess… God would rather he go to her so I can listen to the dogs, right? Bet He’d have her come here for damn sure if they would blast music for hours and hours that we could hear down here.

I got up to find the bedroom at 70º and the living room at 65º. That is totally freezing to me! And it’s not even September yet. The unseasonably cool weather we’ve had for the last couple of days is to end soon and we’re to be back at 100º - yes! But why oh why am I so damn sensitive to cold? I hate it when the place is under 77º except for when I’m sleeping or working out! I love having it between 77º and 82º in here. I hate to have to be bundled up in robes and to wear long sleeves that get caught on things and restrict my movements. It’s making me think of Florida more and more, though I know that if we make it, we’d never have the money to move there, and if we did, I wouldn’t have the guts to make the move after having each long-distance move I’ve made get more and more disastrous. Living on the edge of poverty really restricts your options, but instead of getting all pissed off about it, I’m trying to learn to accept that some things are just meant to be and there’s only so much we can do to change them. If we’re not meant to have money so as to be held back in life, nothing we do is going to change things. Not much anyway.

I was teasing Tom yesterday and we were laughing and joking about some things which helped take my mind off of things. “Love how they say it targets only the grays,” I said as I was reading the box of hair dye he bought for himself. “You’re gonna really be under target,” I added, and he laughed.

Then when I took a break from writing to give my mind a rest from so much thinking, I went into the living room and said, “Writing a book is such hard work. No matter how good you may be at it, the editing takes forever. I feel like I’ve written dozens of pages, but I’ve only written a few.”

I headed back into my little office to write some more when he comes out of the bathroom and says, “I wanted to pull a few brown hairs to later compare with the dyed ones, but I can’t find any to pull.”

I laughed my ass off and assured him there were a few in back I could pull for him. “But then I won’t have any left to compare with,” and we were cracking up again. It was so fucking funny!

We were also remembering the time the refrigerator door fell off in old Gert. It happened right as Tom was crashing and had the sheet over his head. I was startled and squealed out in panic as it fell off, but what was so hilarious (though it wasn’t the least bit hilarious at the time) was seeing how fast he struggled to get that sheet off his head. It must’ve taken him at least 5 seconds to get untangled from the sheet, and of course he was like, “Calm down, it’s no big deal.” But I wouldn’t hear it. I went right into my why-does-God-hate-us? mode.

He started to haul the refrigerator door outside and I yelled, “What are you doing going out in the dark? Are you out of your mind? Get back in here!” And after I reminded him we were in the middle of the forest – a northwestern pine forest - with no one around for miles but bears and other deadly goodies, he said he doubted any bears would get him. “Maybe just a mountain lion instead, right?” I said.

“But where do I put the thing?” he asked, and I told him to put it on top of the rat’s cage for all I cared, but we were NOT going outside.

Something was really out to get him one day. We went into the city (K-Falls) for pizza, went back out to the land, and he puked. Then he was working on adjusting the satellite dish that was on back of the RV when the wrench slipped from his hand and bonked him just under the eye. So he had to walk around with a black eye, looking like he got punched out for a week.

Oh, what fun and disastrous times we had in the Pacific Northwest until circumstances forced us to abandon old ugly Gert and the land. Oh well. It was too fucking cold anyway. It was in the 30s there last night.

Later…

They made me a translator on livemocha.com. That Spanish submission I had to review the other day wasn’t a mistake after all. Because my score in Spanish is so high, they made me Community English and Spanish teacher and now translator as well. The only thing is that I do enough for free, and all they give you are “mocha points.” Big deal! I care more about cash than showing off achievements.

I really wish people would quit sending me their speaking lessons with TVs blaring in the background. Use your fucking heads, people!

My first attempt to “psych” a bingo scratch ticket into winning was a bust. beats head But I was one number away from a $5 winner on 2 of the 4 games. You get a second chance to win online, too. Tom said that since I was never 100% on these things anyway, we’ll soon try one more time on another ticket.

sighs And I still say that I lost that ability upon moving here, though I don’t know why. At least I can still keep the colds away and have the dream premonitions even if some of them aren’t good.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 2010 Marilena, a friend on Facebook who lives in Italy and knows very little English, said to stop by and see her if we ever make it on the trip to Italy I won before it expires in 2014. She’s near one of the trip’s designations, so I’ll let her know when and if we’re ever on the way. The truth is that I doubt I’ll even live to turn 45, but oh well. I gotta die someday anyway, don’t I? I’d just prefer carbon monoxide poisoning over Maliheh’s rigged chicken sandwich.

I’m probably going to put my language lessons on hold till we can get the adapter that’ll allow me to use my mike in Windows. I could jump over to OSX, but that’d be a real pain. We’re going to order one online, if we don’t find a suitable one at Walmart, with the Swag Bucks certificates he won.

If I do put my lessons off for a week or so I’ll probably jump back to my story and try to get chapter 3 finished this weekend. The faster I work on it, the more I’ll have done if life really is going to see to it that my name soon ends up on Legacy. I also don’t want to rush things too much and end up fucking things up. That’s how you end up sending black people to tanning salons, LOL.

Later…

After correcting an error in my last entry (I wrote that Marilena was near one of the Italy trip’s designations when it should’ve been destinations), I happily annoyed Tom with speaking different languages. He didn’t mind too much, though, when I told him in Spanish I was going to make some coffee, then answered a question of his in Portuguese. Then I told him that a rabbit ran by in Italian, and answered another question in German. I only know a few phrases in Esperanto as of yet. I even signed a little and threw some French at him, though I can’t speak nearly as much of that from thin air as I can understand what I read of it.

As Andy pointed out, McDonald’s is always hiring. Ah, but now they won’t even consider you if you don’t have fast-food experience. That’s ok. I already know we’re not going to make it. That’s getting more obvious by the day. I’m just going to try to enjoy what life I have left to live in the meantime… unless this one thing I can’t talk about works out and saves us.

We’re both dyeing our hair tomorrow – his light brown, mine dark blond.

I’m doing laundry now, but as soon as he gets back from the store and settles down to do some programming, I’ll try to focus on some writing.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2010 I miss winning. I really, really miss winning! I won more than usual, and those who know me or have read my bio know why. Unless they don’t believe in psychics. But if they do, then they’ll know why I not only used to win things like crazy but how I killed the cold I had starting to set in yesterday, too.

Every few days I’d win something. Sometimes it was little piddly stuff, sometimes it was big stuff – guitars, trips, designer clothes, cruises, thousands of dollars – you name it, I won it. But then the economy went to hell and it all came to a stop after winning the two giant iMacs and the color laser printer. And so here I sit, former winner and former psychic.

Wait. Former psychic, my ass! I said to myself when my throat was sore and my fever was climbing. I will not be sick. I will NOT! I refuse! I absolutely, totally refuse to be sick. I’m just gonna have to work my magic again just like old times, which really isn’t all that “magical” if you learn what to do.

“Hop to it!” I demanded of myself, and made myself comfy in bed while I put myself in a trance and concentrated on all the right things this particular spell required. Ten minutes later my throat was fine and my fever was gone. That was 12 hours ago.

During the last 12 years or so I have learned a lot of psychic techniques, for lack of better words. I can’t move objects or tell you what you had for dinner last night, or if you’re going to be in a car accident, win the lottery or anything like that, but I can influence things. I’ve made people like me that I’ve had crushes on or at least notice me somewhat. Like Liz the gorgeous cashier in Oregon and Randy the jolly old mailman who wasn’t that old. I’ve made myself win things I shouldn’t have won, I’ve cured illnesses, I’ve “jinx-written” things into happening, I’ve “rigged” scratch tickets, I’ve made ill those I’ve gotten mad at just by being mad at them, even if I didn’t want them to fall ill or get hurt in any way. It became so developed that I couldn’t help the effects my moods and emotions would have, which could be just as much of a curse as it could be a blessing. The better my mood, the more good things would happen. The worse my mood, the more bad things would happen. Only it was much more extreme for me and it went far beyond the usual good attitude causing good things/bad attitude causing bad things. And because the economy was so bad and got us so down, I just couldn’t keep the positive, happy mood going in order to cause the desired domino effect it would normally have. I was sad, I was mad, I was stressed, I was scared… and so bad things kept happening. I still believe there is a God or some other outer force working against us, yes, but I have yet to figure out a way to balance things back out to where they used to be. The longer life sucks, the harder it is to keep your chin up. And if you’re an influencer like me, you’re going to find that you’re a bit of a “nasty influence” on yourself.

The only things I still have which are considered on the psychic side are dream premonitions, and the ability to keep colds away. I’ve only had a few since 1997. It took me a while to figure out how to keep them away from Tom, but eventually I did, and even from Paula. Paula called me right as a cold was starting to set in and I told her I didn’t think I could help her from across the country. But she urged me to try and I did. A few hours later she was as good as new.

I was going to write about the dreams I had involving Maliheh and a few others I used to know, but I’ll do it later. Right now I want to take my next Esperanto lesson before I write some more and polish what skills of mine as a psychic I have that have gotten a wee bit rusty. And I will! Starting with a pair of scratch tickets later on today if Tom can grab some while he’s out. I used to make every 3 out of 4 tickets win. Why not do it again? It just may take a while before I can hit the 50 and 100-dollar winners.

The Influencer is coming back! Oh, yes she is!

Later…

Yesterday I got a 95% on my German lesson and 100% on my Esperanto lesson. Today it was the other way around and I got 100% in German and 95% in Esperanto.

Current overall scores:

25% through Esperanto 101 with a score of 98%.

74% through German 101 with a score of 96%.

Ok, on with the dreams, one of which I woke up relieved from, the other feeling a bit creeped out and curious as to what it could mean if anything.

In the first dream, I was in a motel. What a surprise, huh? I swear I’ve had more hotel/motel dreams than anyone else on the planet! I was alone, sitting just outside the door watching movies on a giant movie screen that was set up in the parking lot. Others were out and about, also sitting outside their rooms watching movies. I caught a glimpse of a man walking by and realized with alarm that he could’ve quickly slipped into my room and ripped me off.

I got up and went into the room, not happy to see the inner door to the hallway open. A couple of young girls I seemed to know that were around age 10 were in the room. One had a jump rope, the other a hula-hoop. I glanced at the dresser and did not see my purse. Panic started to well up inside me till I realized it was on the bed. I breathed a great sigh of relief to see my money was still inside of it, too.

“Ok, girls,” I said, “you have to leave now so I can watch the next movie that’s going on in a few minutes.”

They said ok and wished me a happy birthday for some reason.

I was truly relieved too, when I woke up from this dream. Had the purse or the money been missing it would’ve been a sure sign of trouble ahead!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010 Now that we’re back online and up to speed I have quite a bit to catch up on, so this entry’s going to be a quickie. It’s so wonderful to be able to zip around the web once again! It’s not like cable, but it’s no longer slower than satellite either. Before I couldn’t play the radio, couldn’t do much work, couldn’t stream videos, and if I was lucky enough not to get kicked offline altogether, pages would take forever to load. I’m just glad they took care of the problem because we couldn’t live here otherwise.

Tom’s not up yet, so I don’t yet know exactly what the problem was, but we both suspected a leaning pine tree towards the foot of the drive that was leaning on the wire. The drive is hundreds of feet long with lots of twists and turns. Near this leaning tree, the driveway is at its steepest. So steep that it’s paved to keep the rain from washing it out. What a workout it was walking up and down that part! But fun, too. I felt every muscle from my calves, hamstrings, and quads, right up on to my ass, working like crazy. I doubt my parents could’ve done it.

Jesse and the dogs came down for a few minutes to check the pipes and tell us that he once tried to get them to cut a tree that was interfering with the wires, but the lazies wouldn’t do anything till it actually snapped the wire. Brilliant, huh? He said if we could get them to take down the leaning tree, he’d be happy to come by and drag it away.

Brandy ran up and greeted me, then shyly moved on while Whiskey happily let me rub his belly.

Jesse then said something about having to get a tire balanced, and he later passed us along the drive as he and the dogs were leaving. They probably would’ve been quiet had they stayed back since it was getting hot by then, but I was glad to see them go. Jesse probably didn’t want the dogs scaring the internet workers anyway if they showed up while he was out.

They didn’t show up until 3:00, and by then I’d been up 16 hours and needed to sleep. I expected to get woken up along the way, but I didn’t. I just woke up to pee around 7:00 and was surprised when Tom said they were still working on it but had gone out to get gas. So since no one came inside that I know of, it probably was the tree that was the problem. I’ll find out for sure in a few hours. Although it would’ve cost us $100, the easiest problem to have had would’ve been a bad modem. Instead, I’ll eventually be spending the money we saved on a new keyboard and microphone adapter. I’m sick of these keys sticking and not being able to do the speech part of my language lessons since I’m running Windows on an iMac. It’s just that I hate OSX with a passion! Worst operating system ever. I refuse to use anything other than Windows.

Why they’re suddenly sending me Spanish lessons to review on the language site is beyond me. Shouldn’t native Spanish speakers review those no matter how much Spanish a non-native may have learned?

They finally got their own shit together on the language site after having tons of tech issues themselves, and so I could finally enroll in the Esperanto course I’ve been wanting to check out. The sound files aren’t as good as those of the major languages, but it’s not nearly as horrid as the Catalan was. I also like this language a lot so far! It seems even easier than Spanish because there’s not much in the way of gender words which makes for grammar that can be harder than in English. I like how they put “mal” in front of words to make them have the opposite meaning: alta – tall, malalta – short. So Esperanto will be language #7 for me – woo-hoo! I’m really excited about it. I don’t know why I’m such a language fanatic, but at least I have something fun to look forward to despite being stuck in the usual rut.

Things have been running smoothly for the last couple of weeks, and while I’m enjoying it immensely, it also worries me because I know the shit’s going to hit the fan any minute now and God will once again have His fun tormenting me with some kind of stressful situation. It’s bad enough that I don’t know if we’re going to survive the year, but would rather not have to deal with any shit until the end comes, if it’s coming. Yet we just can’t seem to get ahead in life, and when we do, we get kicked back. Sometimes I’m not sure I want to own a place again. Sure it would be nice for various reasons, but wouldn’t God find a way to take that place, too?

Paula sent an email confirming that she got the package and loves it, so that’s nice. She said she was glad to have a friend in me and hopes to visit someday. I’d like that cuz I sure as hell ain’t going back to New England. I haven’t been back since I first left it 18 years ago, so why go back now?

Ok, so maybe this entry wasn’t a quickie after all. But now I’ll definitely be off to catch up on things, which means the next part of my story may be delayed a bit.

Sharyn checked out my blog today. At least I think it was her. Someone from New York came in from Facebook, and while anything’s possible, the odds of it being someone else seems unlikely since my FB page isn’t as exposed and in people’s faces as my tweets are, for ex. Besides, I’ve been posting more things to FB lately, and that shows up on your friends’ activity feeds. The language scores and blog posts would be more attention-grabbing than just an occasional comment on someone else’s posts which was all I’d mainly post for a while.

Later…

I wasn’t going to do another entry today, then said why not? We just got back from the grocery store, and I even splurged a little on some Chinese take-out. Why not? We’re going to be forever poor anyway. It is damn good, too. Especially their fried chicken. Something about the batter that’s just totally awesome.

It’s hot and dry out there just the way I like it.

Earlier I felt like I was coming down with a cold and found I had a temp of 99.1, but I think whatever it is is going away. It better! I almost never get sick. Besides, I haven’t been around any sick people.

The problem didn’t turn out to be the tree, but a bad section of wire instead. First they called him to say they’d have to send a crew out tomorrow, but then at 6:00, a guy called saying he was at the foot of the drive. He was here for nearly two hours replacing the line. I was really starting to think we’d never get them to come out here! But now our connection is faster than in all the time we’ve lived here and we don’t have to move. Before, if one of us wanted to watch a movie, it’d slow the other one down. But now we can both watch movies on our computers! I don’t watch movies very often, but it’s nice to know I can do that now if I wanted to.

I’ve been making up for lost time at the job site. We decided not to list anything on eBay today so we can get caught up on work and things we haven’t been able to do online in a while.

I might not pick up with my current story till next week, but Alison tweeted that she’s on chapter 8 of my last book and loving it so far. Especially the journal parts.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2010 Thought I’d squeeze in an entry before they come to turn us off since it’s only after 3am, and they sure as hell ain’t coming this early.

Yesterday I noticed my tweets from Twitter weren’t present on the sidebar and found it was turned off when I went to check my settings. So this site isn’t perfect after all. I turned them back on and hopefully they’ll stay on.

Decided to post my German scores on Twitter and Facebook (and maybe impress Maliheh, LOL), then jump back to the French course before the Chinese course.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2010 My message to Jennifer is still marked as unread, so who knows if she even has the same email address or bothers to go on MySpace these days? Her account is private and I can’t see her last login date. I used to be able to see it, and she did go months without checking in, so who knows?

Maliheh was late checking out my blog yesterday and didn’t get in till around noon my time. Her last check was 9pm. Again – why, why, why??? What’s on her mind? What are her intentions? To hope to “get” me? To be friends? Or is it just plain old curiosity on her part, and if so, is she as curious about me as she is about what I say about her?

I thought Tammy would check into my blog yesterday to see if I mentioned her birthday, but she didn’t. Someone in Lenox, MA, checked in from Topix Forums where I left the link in the comments section of the news article on VH being shut down. Since most of the students were from out of town or state, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a staffer.

It’s been too quiet in the mornings for Jesse to be working lately. The dogs came to see me when I was hanging out sheets the other morning. It was so cute. Whiskey definitely likes me better than Brandy does.

Andy said that for a few days, my blog was “blurry” as he would scroll down through the entries, but all is fine now. How did we go from “much of the day” as Will had said to “a few days?” Were different blogs screwed up worse than others? I just hope this doesn’t become a regular thing, but so far I’d say they’re more stable than the other site. It was nearly every day that I was having problems over there. The site was down, messages weren’t getting to me, I couldn’t send messages, I couldn’t update my profile, pages took forever to load…

Andy also said he likes how I keep changing the background and that I am too artistic to leave it the same and that change is good.

When is there ever going to be any change in our lives?????!!!!!! I still worry and wonder – will we survive the rest of the year? Will I live to see my 45th birthday in December? Is our dream home really just a dream?

I wish everyone had 20” monitors like I do. My Formspring background looks awesome! A pair of “moving” eyes that fits in perfectly at the sides of the questions. Yet when I checked it out on my laptop, the left eye was cut off on the right side and the right eye was cut off on the left side.

Our own connection issues are still going on, but hopefully we’ll only have one more day of having to deal with it since they’ll be out Wednesday to fix things. So if I’m not around on Wednesday, that’s why. It stopped cutting in and out like crazy for two days but remained very slow. But then Tom said it was in and out all day yesterday.

Guess I’ll spend the remainder of the night working on my story and languages. I probably won’t post any more story excerpts this week.

Later…

Andy’s getting on my nerves again insisting we’re not doing all we can to help ourselves get jobs. And once again, California simply isn’t Massachusetts. He’s gotten jobs online before, so if we’re meant to survive this economy in the first place, he’ll do it again.

I do agree that it’s a youth’s market out there like he says, and that Tom should consider dying his hair. It’s like you have to be perfect. You can’t be old, you can’t be fat, you can’t be ugly, you can’t be short, you can’t be female – you can’t be shit! And non-whites get first dibs on everything these days. They’ll hire a black person who’s half as qualified as a white person, and when it comes to two potential white people – the youngest, skinniest one always wins. This world is so fucked up and unfair.

I love the guy and I know he means well, but why spend the gas money to drive around in a car with a broken AC to collect bottles like he suggests for half of what we can make online in the cool comfort of home? I’m glad he enjoys doing this himself, though.

I figured out how to recall friend requests on Facebook. I took hold of the mouse and said to myself, “Ok, girl. If you wanted to be friends you’d have accepted my invite by now. Right?” Then I started to cancel it and my hand suddenly froze on the mouse. Why was it so hard for me to click that X and cancel it out? Just one simple little click of the mouse was all it would’ve taken. “Come on, you can do it,” I tried coaxing myself. But I couldn’t. For some reason, I just couldn’t break the connection. I’d rather she be the one to do it if she wants to, though I still haven’t figured out why. I’m never going to see this person again, and for one who isn’t much of a people person to begin with, she sure has become like this strange sort of magnet with a hold on me.

Seriously, I hate people in general. I really do. It takes a lot to impress me and little to lose me. And I used to be – or so I thought – the least forgiving person on the planet. Never forgive, never forget, never move on. I basically strived to live by these rules. But it’s like Maliheh’s changed things somehow. Andy’s back in my life, not that he did anything wrong which I needed to forgive him for. And now my sister’s a Facebook friend. I still can’t believe it every time I see her picture on my friend list, and I’m still not sure that’s a good thing just yet, but even so, it’s like I’ve reached this new turning point in my life upon contacting Maliheh and I don’t know what it means just yet.

I still don’t even know what’s on Maliheh’s mind for sure. I believe it’s her I’ve been communicating with, but I still don’t know her true intentions if she has any at all. Maybe she feels the same – drawn to me, curious about me, and wondering what the hell she’s doing by being friendly enough to communicate with me and to have suggested the story since Maliheh always struck me as also being very unforgiving. Or maybe she still hates my guts and hopes I get hit by a car, I just don’t know. All I know is that I couldn’t bring myself to let go and break the so-called “connection.” I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Could it be that despite never seeing each other again I’m still attracted to her? Hmm… I guess it’s possible. If she looks this hot in her 50s, I can totally see why I was drooling all over her in her 30s. She’s that good-looking! Maybe I didn’t want to admit it at first, but she really is a true beauty. She has a beautiful face, my dream hair, and a great body. Who wouldn’t be attracted to her? Yet it doesn’t seem like enough for me to not be able to cancel the damn friend request, but oh well. She’ll wear off in time.

MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2010 So Tammy’s 53 today. Why is everyone 53 all of a sudden? Tom’s 53, Tammy’s 53, and so is the star of my story.

I started getting friended by spammers like crazy on Facebook, so I temporarily switched from allowing anyone to friend me to friends of friends only. Hopefully, this will stop it. Do I think it’s connected to Maliheh or the black bitch? Nah, probably not. This was a promotional sort of thing that’s quite common.

Andy also sent pictures of some of the buildings on Locust St. in Springfield, MA, right by where I used to live, that have been condemned as inhabitable for humans. Those buildings are definitely old.

Wish I had more to say, but I don’t.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2010 Did something I never thought I’d do and sent my brother’s daughter a message on MySpace. She would be in her late 20s today. I would’ve sent one directly to him or his wife, but they don’t appear to have accounts on MySpace or Facebook. I simply said that despite our past differences, I do think of them, wish them well, and sometimes miss laughing at Larry when he would be freezing his ass off during the winter. He used to love it when I’d give him a dose of that psychotic laughter of mine!

I don’t expect a reply and personally, I don’t know that I want one. Like I said about Tammy, we don’t need to have a relationship, but I’m all for moving on and dropping the enemy status. I was very angry with him for years for coming between family members and for basically being a hypocrite by saying he didn’t want to get involved, yet sticking his nose in people’s business anyway and condemning others for doing the same thing. I felt like I was back in high school playing the so-called he said/she said game. But I also realize that not only can the death of your own son make you do things you might not ordinarily do, and while it may be ok for each of us to disagree on things, it’s pointless to go on harboring such hate and anger. They don’t have to like me, accept me, or want me to be part of their lives. I just wanted to send a friendly hello through cyberspace is all.

And now I want to thank Maliheh for inspiring me to write the book I’m writing. I wasn’t going to work on it earlier, but then I thought of her and that motivated me to get off my ass and get typing away. Normally I write for me and for me only. But this time around I’m writing for her as well, and so that got me going with a good chunk of chapter 3.

Sure enough, Paula didn’t have the decency to take two minutes of her time to send an email about the package she should’ve received yesterday. Yet she has no problem sending messages when she wants something. Then again it’s always possible that she didn’t make it to her PO Box yesterday, so we’ll see.

For the longest time, I’ve been going on and on about how rough it is to be poor. But then I got to thinking about it and realized that since I’ve gotten my shopping sprees out of my system (and I sure did shop like crazy during the years we had money), I really have become a rather low-maintenance woman. Sure, there are a few things I could use around here. A new office chair would be nice. But I realize that as long as we can pay for our necessities, life on the poor side ain’t so bad. I know we’ll always be poor and that I will go through the bulk of my life uninsured and worrying about the car breaking down, for example, since we don’t make enough money to save anything, but other than that, I don’t need to have a lot of money. If anything, money would only get me fat, LOL, because I’d be tempted to splurge on all kinds of stuff, not just in grocery stores, but in restaurants as well. So while PCH is still welcome to float a few million our way, not having money isn’t the end of the world.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2010 Went out for my run just after 7pm. It was still kind of hot for running (in the 80s), but I managed to run a few miles. I should add the part of the driveway - until you reach the fork - into my running path. It’s an extra challenge to get up the driveway, then it’s kind of fun coming back down since gravity more or less pulls you down. You just have to be careful not to slip on the gravel that’s how steep that part is. You can see the trailer’s roof from there. Anyway, I’m down a couple of pounds, and later I’ll do my round of ab crunches.

Someone said my sparkly background wasn’t that noticeable, though it could be her browser. It should be very noticeable, but since it may not be for some people, I put a regular picture back on and will include a picture with each entry, some of which are animated.

I wonder if Tammy could view my blog the day MyOpera was down?

On Friday Tom got a call asking him if he’d be ok with having things “ready” in case they want to do a background check on him for a job. He said sure, and then last night I had a dream he was on his way to work. The only thing that shoots my hope of it being a dream premonition is that he was leaving in an elevator of a big hotel. And the hotel wasn’t quite right. In the so-called restaurant which looked like a dingy old diner, I was fixing myself a bowl of cereal for breakfast after he left, then went over to check out the day’s “jobs” written on a huge dry-erase board. They had jobs for artistic people, jobs to help the cops, mechanical-type jobs, etc. I said something like, “Well, I hate pigs and I’m not the mechanical type, but I am kind of artsy and will be on days for a while. So I guess I’ll go do some drawings.”

Maliheh is still a very faithful follower, checking me out multiple times a day. She usually makes her first check just after 7am my time. I’m definitely one of the first things she does when she gets up, LOL! She came in earlier than usual, though, on Friday at just after 5am my time.

I still wonder about her probably a little more than I should. What is it about that mean, cold bitch that draws me so? And what’s going through her mind? Is she plotting against me? Hoping for something in particular? Does she still see me as a cockroach that oughta be squashed? Or is she, through reading and learning about me, slowly opening up her mind and her heart to me, little by little, inch by inch? Right now my guess is still that I’ll never hear from her, she hates me with a passion and is only interested in my journal for what I might have to say about her. She might even hope for a chance to sue me for it, too. But time will tell.

I considered sending Tammy a birthday message for her birthday on the 16th, then decided against it. Tammy is simply no one I care to be buddies with. I’m ok with no longer being enemies, but looking from the outside in, as if we weren’t sisters, I just don’t like Tammy B. Period. And I don’t want to be buds with the brood either.

Once burned, I’m the victim. Twice burned, I’m the fool. And I don’t want to give her a chance to sic the pigs on me the next time she gets pissed at me, even if she doesn’t have our physical address and there’s no one to call these days that would give it to her. I also don’t know that I want to be buds with anyone who doesn’t “get” me. It isn’t just that we’re different, but she’d just laugh at you if you tried to tell her one is born gay or bi just like one is born straight. And I can just imagine her reaction if I tried to explain my sleep disorder to her. Like I said before, I probably wouldn’t get it myself if I didn’t have it.

Our connection is holding on by a bare thread, so it’s hit or miss as to whether or not I will successfully be able to copy this entry in from Word. Wednesday’s a long way away!

Hope to get back on with my story tonight and my language studies, if I can get myself to stop goofing off and downloading tons of these really cool blog graphics, LOL.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010 Ever since my blog was featured, I’ve been getting nearly half a dozen friend requests a day. I don’t mind clicking the accept button and being “friends” with anyone who doesn’t annoy or offend me, but I still have to wonder why some people would want to be friends with someone they both never met and never talked to before. Do they just want to “collect” friends or something?

I get a lot of requests in the middle of the night from Asia being that it’s daytime over there when it’s nighttime here. So in just the few months I’ve been here I have around 70 friends, but only 41 on Facebook, which took forever to accumulate in the years I’ve been a member there. I think I’m still only in the 30s on MySpace. I’ve never friended anyone there, but Gloria. I let them come to me, and most seem to be local business owners and bands.

I still wish Marie the best, but the more I read back on our cyber lives together, for lack of better words, the more I’m glad she’s moved on. She wasn’t just an obsessive, overwhelming pest, but so immature and childish as well. I won’t miss the stress she put me through. I hate to say anything bad against those who are bipolar. It’s not their fault any more than it’s my fault for having ADHD or my mother’s fault for having breast cancer, but they are just so hard to deal with! They’ll take you on the rollercoaster ride from hell and really leave you winded in the end! It’s not her fault she was abused either. But I will always love Marie and hope for the best for her. I know what it’s like to have abuse make you do things you might not ordinarily do. Not to shift blame or excuse myself from the way I hounded Maliheh on the phone, but I have to wonder – would I have done so to such a degree if my childhood had been different?

I know I’ve said it before, but I’m sorry about driving Maliheh crazy years ago, and I do hope she’ll find it in her heart to one day forgive me if she hasn’t already. And for falsely accusing her of harassing me online.

Boy, California really has been the “state of reunion” for me when I think of all the people I’m back in touch with that I never thought I would be – my parents, my sister, Andy, Maliheh, Rosa, Eileen… anyone else I’m forgetting? Yeah, probably. But that’s ok.

Anyway, my period’s due Monday so I’m dragging real bad here. Not even two cups of caffeinated coffee have perked me up.

Later…

“First we lose 10 acres and a brand new 2100-square-foot house in the desert, and now we lose 2.5 acres and a chance to build our own home in the woods!” I sobbed miserably as I pelted the flimsy metal shed with the biggest rocks I could toss.

“Sweetie,” said Tom, “why are you destroying things?”

I turned to him incredulously. “Do you really want someone to get what was supposed to be ours?! What we paid for?!”

“Jodi, it’s 2004. I promise you we’ll do it right next time and within a decade. There’s a home for us. There really is. Three times the charm.”

“Oh, fuck that fucking bullshit, Tom!”

More rocks went flying. Sheets of metal came tumbling down. The sound was deafening.

“Don’t hit the truck. It’s all we’ve got left.”

“I’m nowhere near the truck, and I don’t need any reminders that despite all our hard work and the money we lost that all we have left is a piece of shit of a truck, a few personal possessions, and a dumpy old motel room to return to. In the city. In the fucking city we’ll never escape!

A rush of movement somewhere in the stand of ponderosa pines behind us made us turn and glance in that direction.

“Not bears, I hope,” said Tom. “Wouldn’t want to be their dinner.”

“Ooh, lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Actually, they’d be doing me a favor by turning me into their dinner. What better purpose do I have in this fucked up world anyway, but to lose one thing after another and suffer one heartache after another? Hey, Jason, you out there?!” I turned to shout into the woods at the side of the clearing we stood in. “Michael Myers?! Come and get me! I have nothing to live for. I’m just a fucking loser destined to fuck up and lose all her life.”

“Sweetie, come on.”

“Where? Back to a cold, dingy motel room? Sorry, sir, but I’m in no hurry.”

I swooped down for more rocks that lay between the scattered patches of snow and started battering old “Gertrude,” the name I picked out for our old, ugly RV. I thought that an ugly RV deserved an ugly name.

“The rats will take it over before anyone comes up here, finds it, and considers taking it, not that I expect they would since they didn’t take the nicer one someone else abandoned on the parcel adjacent to us.”

I pushed over our clothesline and stomped on it.

“Come on, part of this was our fault for buying the land sight unseen. If we’d checked it out first, then maybe we’d have realized we’d be on a volcanic mountain that’s way too rocky to build on. You saw me try to start digging for the septic. There’s just no way. Not even with an ice pick and all the other tools I used.”

I collapsed onto an old tree stump of a dead tree the forest rangers had long since sawed away in hopes of preventing forest fires and burst into tears. “Why?” I cried. “Why does God hate us so much? What have we done?”

My husband was at a loss for words that chilly autumn day, back in Oregon. And so was I other than to continually ask why.

Just another PMS-induced memory, I guess, of some of the sad times in our lives. wipes tears from cheeks

Well, I can’t swear to it, but I see a little light spot in the satellite image I’m checking out. I think that’s our little RV, ugly, old Gert, still sitting up there and probably home to the local rats. This was where we were going to live until we built our two-story dome house. It was supposed to be about 1600 square feet. I would have hated the cold and snow at 5300’ in elevation, but it was still another dream lost, and oh - I’m just crying too hard to go on right now.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010 Sure enough, Facebook Eagle doesn’t let you view private accounts in secret. I figured it was too good to be true. Especially for being free and legal. You still have to notify the person. But why bother when you can just send them a friend request?

Tammy finally checked out my journal, along with Maliheh, and my parents have been married 59 years. I tried to call them, but thanks to our shitty connection, Dad said I was breaking up, and so I said I’d get back to them. Dad seemed really worried about us being affected by fires, but California’s pretty much always on fire, LOL. Mother Nature and arsonists do a fine job of seeing to that. There have been no fires around here, but as I told him, “Relax, Dad. Half the state’s on fire just about every single day.”

Speaking of connections, Tom finally got them to realize there’s a problem and they’ll be out next Wednesday. It’s a long time to lose even more money and not be able to list things on eBay, but you know something up there loves to interfere with us making money every chance it gets.

I’m glad my stats chart didn’t scare Maliheh off, but I realize there’s always a chance she didn’t get the email about it. It’s unlikely, but it is possible. That much I have no way of verifying. Even so, I thought I would complain in my blog about the stats “disappearing.”

I just hope she and Tammy could read the damn thing. They were down last night for a couple of hours and Andy said my blog is fun to read, but it was hard to read with the floral background.

But the background should be solid white! I checked today and all seems to be working the way it should be. I hope they don’t have regular problems. Part of why I switched to them was for the reliability.

I just wonder what Maliheh’s game is. She either wants me to think it’s her communicating with me, or she’s got something else in mind, and the only thing I can think of is the revenge theory where she’s hoping for an excuse for vengeance. But why has she blocked me on MySpace but not Facebook?

As I’ve said before, I’m proofreading old journals. And right now I’m in Arizona in 1993, living next to Andy in my little 400-square-foot studio apartment with a bitch next store who couldn’t shut up. Oh, the pranks we used to pull together, and I don’t mean just on the phone! When our birthdays would come around, we’d go to all the Denny’s we could and collect free desserts. Once, I was one waitress’s total nightmare when I shoved an open, upside-down bottle of ketchup into some uneaten food, along with our cigarette butts, since we both smoked back then. We’d loosen salt shakers and do all kinds of shit.

One night Andy and I went to a restaurant called Mother Tucker’s, which we, of course, called Mother Fuckers. Supposedly, he had a coupon and we were going to split a steak and shrimp dinner. We ended up having to wait forever for cold, uncooked food, and we walked out with me hitting on the gorgeous hostess. I don’t remember hitting on the hostess, though, or even what she looked like.

The closest I come these days to being a “prankster” is that I sometimes play with scammers and spammers that show up in my inbox. I’ll reply with the link to my journal, some journal/story excerpts, and things like that. In fact, I just got another “Dear Friend” message with someone wanting me to cash a bogus check for them, and my reply was, “If any other student contacted me right now and said they were attracted to me or told me anything else I promised not to write about, they might as well be telling me they liked the color of my shirt for all I would care.”

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2010 I’m dieting, I’m exercising, yet the scale is still going up – WTF? I’m up to 133 pounds. I guess my days of keeping the weight off are coming to an end. I figured they wouldn’t last forever since I’m not naturally thin. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Paula’s package will be going out tomorrow, but as I told her, don’t expect any more. Songs are getting hard to find for free so I urged her to have Justin get her signed up with iTunes or something like that.

Later…

I decided I should follow Tom’s diet more closely, which isn’t really a diet, as he says, but the way he’s going to eat for the rest of his life. He not only cut his calories but also allows himself to eat the same amount of calories each time he eats so as not to stretch his belly out and worsen the hunger. He said if I can get through the first couple of months, I’ll be used to it, though he thinks I look ok as I am.

He’s now lost 40 pounds and I want to lose 31 pounds which would put me to 100, though I would settle for 110-115, even if 100 is most preferred.

Of all the times Tom has to be asleep, it just has to be when I go and discover this thing you download that supposedly lets you view private Facebook profiles. And it’s free and legal, too. I could probably download it myself and figure it out, but I’d rather wait for him. It just figures I have to be on nights now! Especially with my parents’ 60-something anniversary being today and my wanting to call them. I think I’ll still get up early enough to call them, though.

Anyway, with my shit luck, Facebook Eagle, as they call it, won’t work or will be a bust, but I’m looking forward to finding out!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2010 God was kind enough to spare my sleep today and not have the propane people show up until after I got up. Even if the rumbling of the truck didn’t wake me up, the smell sure would have. It was disgusting! Especially with the cooler on, but it pumped it back out in just a few minutes.

I woke up at 1pm and tried to get up then, but couldn’t. So I didn’t get up till 2:30. When I checked my email there was a message from Eileen saying she was on her way to Province Town and would be receiving two new grandkids next March. Yay for her!

Marie is so all or nothing that I haven’t heard from her. At least I think that’s why I haven’t heard from her. I hope that’s it and that she’s moved on to someone new and that the reason for the lack of contact isn’t because anything is wrong. Marie will always be special to me and I will never regret the few months we had together in cyberspace, even if she drove me batty at times. But that’s the thing with Marie; she’s either obsessed with you and wants your undivided attention every minute you’re awake, or she would rather not bother at all. The constant emails and following me around from site to site were really getting to be a bit much for me. Twenty years ago it would’ve been kind of fun. I was more eager and persistent (even Maliheh said that, LOL) back then because I had nothing better to do. Today I have a husband and a full plate of responsibilities and hobbies, unlike before. But she couldn’t seem to understand and accept that I couldn’t spend my whole day, every single day, swapping email messages with her or talking on the phone. So wherever she is, I hope that she has found someone who can give her what she wants and needs and that she is happy.

Andy’s still unlucky in love as ever, the poor guy. He dumped this guy for drugs and drinking that recently called him insisting he’s cleaned up his act, yet Andy could tell right away he was high.

Other than internet problems more persistent than I ever was way back when, I’ve got to head off to work and then I will get on with my story. Might post the next chunk later or tomorrow. We’ll see. Before I go out for today’s run I’ll be running through my language exercises. I studied Italian, then found it a bit of a challenge to make the sudden switch back to Spanish, then did drills in German immediately following that. It’s fun, but a tremendous amount of work!

MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 2010 Pounded away like crazy at the keyboard last night and almost finished chapter 2. Almost, but not quite.

Anyway, Tom and I are doing our usual things and waiting, waiting and waiting for what never seems to happen. We live, but life passes us by. Make that, we exist. We don’t live, we just exist. Will we ever get to return to the land of the living? Hmm… each month I get more doubtful.

“Just go out to the shed, grab the bag of charcoal, seal yourself up in the bedroom, light the charcoal in as many pots as you need to fit them in, and you’ll be gone to sleep forever,” I tell myself. “No more worries, no more nothing. And no one will care.”

But then again, Tom would care, Andy already lost a friend to suicide, Maliheh wouldn’t get her story, and so I guess if I’m going to go bye-bye I should wait till I have more of an excuse than being stuck in a rut and an annoying toothache that won’t quit, shouldn’t I? Besides, it’s still summer! Ah, but it’s already beginning to cool down. Instead of being in the 90s, we’re now in the 80s. As I was falling asleep at the crack of dawn I was actually a bit chilly and fell asleep giving myself one of those useless well-if-you’d-just-stayed-in-the-desert-or-gotten-your-ass-over-to-Florida-you-wouldn’t-be-chilly-in-August-of-all-months lectures.

So I guess that’s it for now from the fucked up and the fucked over in life, and now it’s off to Storyland. At least things actually happen over there.

Later…

Wow, Maliheh’s managed to stay out of my journal for almost 6 hours now. It’s coming up on her bedtime, so she may check in one last time within the next half hour. She was in 12 hours ago, too.

Marie is so all or nothing that it’s almost asinine. She is who she is, but if you’re not willing to give her your undivided attention practically every second that you’re awake, she doesn’t want anything to do with you. That appears to be the case with her anyway since she unfriended me on Facebook and MySpace and has ignored my last two email messages. I still sent her my story, which is now 100% complete, as I said I would. In the end, I’d guess that only Tom, Mitch and Alison will read it, though I did send a copy to Maliheh, too. I think, though, that the only story Maliheh’s interested in is the one with her in it, LOL. She should be. It’s going to be good.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2010 Maliheh still checks my journal every few hours, but Tammy hasn’t. I’m surprised. Maybe she’s not interested, or maybe she’s afraid of what she may read.

When I got up today around noon, I quickly checked my email and blog like I usually do before showering, eating and working out. I don’t usually do much computer-wise till I’ve been up 2-3 hours.

So when I checked my blog you can bet I was surprised to find a zillion friend requests, messages and photo comments! It actually started late last night before I crashed. I wondered what in the world was going on, and I guess the start of my story is a real hit so far, according to some people, LOL, that my blog was featured in the community section. I guess this was sometime yesterday, and that’s the reason for the spike in friends, visitors, comments and messages, though there doesn’t seem to be much more than usual in the way of blog comments.

One girl who read my blog sent a message with her email addy saying she’d like to take me up on my offer to email stories. Only I accidentally deleted the message with her email addy, so I’ll have to wait till she gets back to me. Meanwhile, if I haven’t yet responded to some of you, I will soon. I promise!

I had to laugh at all the comments on my photos, both older and current, telling me how sweet, hot, cute and sexy I am. LOL, thanks but I do not think so! What was even funnier was when someone asked who “Joy” was, saying she was so sweet. Joy is actually a 24” porcelain doll, LOL!

Last night our internet connection was so bad I couldn’t stay connected for longer than a few minutes at a time, but Tom said it’s been stable all day. Watch, now that I’m up and about it’ll crap out on me again. It’s me it wants to pick on.

Let’s see… what else? I guess that’s it for now. I will be working on stories and may or may not be back later.

Later…

I thought Jesse would be home on a Sunday night, but based on all the barking I hear going on up there right now, he’s not. Why have a place to live if you’re never going to live in it? Seriously, this guy is never home! But I know God only allowed us to break the home-all-the-time neighbor trip we were on for 14 years simply because this is the only case we’ve had to deal with where having the neighbor not be home means more noise for us. He’s not always quiet when he’s home, since he is out and about engine-gunning often enough, but he’s dead quiet compared to our past neighbors. If he were as noisy as our past neighbors, believe me, he’d be home all the time. He’s been out of work again, but I know he’ll be back full-time just as soon as it cools down enough to bring out the worst in the barking since the colder it is, the more they bark.

The sad thing is knowing that we couldn’t just move away from it even if we could afford to move. We’d only get the same shit elsewhere. If someone shot these dogs, he’d go out and get new dogs the next day that would also be left outdoors to create the same chaos.

When oh when am I ever going to get used to it? Maybe I should turn the sound machines off once we’re back to the all-day barking fits and then try to adapt and learn to work and carry on as usual despite the racket. I am, after all, able to tune out the frogs when they get going like crazy during the rainy season. It’s unlikely I’ll ever leave the West where most dogs aren’t allowed indoors, so I’ve got to get used to it. I’ve just got to.

So is Maliheh going to return to my blog today? She must be tied up because she hasn’t been to it since just after 1pm. She seems to sleep from 2am - 10am her time, so I guess I’ve got a couple of hours left to wait and see.

Is she ever going to say anything to me? Accept my friend invite? I wonder this, though I highly doubt it. And I really wonder what she thinks of my journal and her little story. Even my pictures. I wonder about her and her life too, though I’m still not sure why. Just what is my obsession with this girl? She was nothing but a mean, cold-hearted bitch to me in the end.

Eileen and Alison have checked out my blog today, and Mitch and I swapped some messages, too.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 7, 2010 As suspected, Maliheh checked out my blog at 11pm my time. When more than a few hours passed without her checking in, I figured she’d gone out somewhere like she appeared to last Friday night as well. Last Friday night she also didn’t check in until 11pm.

Hmm…out clubbing? With a lady?

Andy had a 3-minute date last night, unfortunately. He went to meet this guy he’d started falling in love with that he had dumped for drugs, who called insisting he’d cleaned up his act. Yet Andy found him drunk out of his mind.

Not sure why my vanilla lip gloss tastes like licorice, but I like it.

It totally figures that back when I have a piece of shit for a printer, I have tons of people to send letters to. But now that I won this $700 color laser printer, there’s no one to write to since everyone’s now doing email or prefers to be called. Other than occasional letters to Rosa, the printer rarely gets used.

The connection is much more stable, but it’s satellite slow for a DSL line. But that’s the best we can get living out in the country. I’m just glad it will be so cheap for the next year.

The propane people are coming next week. We’re going to fill up the tank which should cost around $200.

I began the second chapter of the Maliheh/Joni story, went back and read some of what I already posted, and found that something was bugging me. I couldn’t put a finger on it at first, but I knew something was wrong. Come on, I told myself, what’s wrong with this picture? Then it hit me that it was a bit of a coincidence for Maliheh and Joni to meet up again on account of Joni of all people, who happens to be called in for this special job all the way from California. The odds of that seem rather unlikely since there are others with her skills. And so I decided I would have Joni know someone in the company that recommended her, and Joni felt it would be a good excuse to visit old friends while she was at it.

This is why I hesitate to post story excerpts before they’re complete. Even the best of writers edit their books several times before they have the finished product.

Work will be slow today, so I will tackle more of Chapter 2.

Tammy and I are now Facebook buds. Her kids look terrible, too. Lisa looks ok, but Becky and Sarah are huge and plain-faced. Tammy’s still huge too, of course. I see what they mean about obesity getting to be such an epidemic that even young people are heavy. A lot of us have had heavy spells when we were young, but there’s just no comparison to what’s going on these days. They don’t have fat spells. They simply are fat.

What a punishment on Bill to have to live with the embarrassment of having two fat daughters. After all, he once taunted Lisa for her weight, yet funny how she’s the only one that’s thin. So to have the two that he actually fathered be fat is karma, in a sense, though true karma would be seeing that he himself got fat as hell.

I’m really surprised she hasn’t checked out my blog. The link to it is right in front of her face.

My hair is now just above my waist, but that’s only when it’s pulled straight. Couple more years and I’ll be sitting on it again.

Later…

Tom is making some Barfaroni, the rat now appears to be completely blind, and I’m thinking it’d definitely be best not to post my book until it’s 100% complete. Sorry, but you’ll just have to be patient and wait till the end of the year.

I went and fixed that “odd coincidence” and had the software company Joni works for be based in NorCal. So that’s her reason for having to go to MA.

The internet connection continues to be miserably slow. Molto lento! There is obviously a loose connection in the wires by one of the poles around here, but they refuse to spend the money to send someone out to fix it. So Tom’s going to keep on complaining, hoping that sooner or later they’ll get sick of it and do something about it. I wish they would get some competition in this area! Once they do, they’re not going to be able to ignore people who can just switch companies.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 2010 Tom and I kind of felt like kids being “grounded” what with not being able to go online at all yesterday. Instead, we did other things during our “punishment.” He fixed the oldest sound machine, we got some DVDs out of the shed we’re going to send to Paula next week along with a few other things. I almost never play games, yet I played Jezzball for a while, one of those old, ancient and virtually colorless computer games. I didn’t work on my current book, but I proofread my last one. It should be out on its test run in less than a week, but not posted here. If you want, send me a private message with your email and I will float a copy your way.

I love my MyOpera blog site so much that I’m not sure I really want to bother launching my own site unless they kick me off. Since I don’t expect to make much money from book sales since I’m not famous, why not just stay there? This is the only site I’ve come across so far that doesn’t have a million and one glitches. Ah, but all good things come to an end, so I assume things will eventually change. Oh well, I’ll just enjoy them while they last and not decide anything either way when it comes to my own site.

Wednesday night I had the worst chest pains ever. It was the first time I actually had to stop what I was doing and lay down, which did seem to help. I’ve had some today too, though nothing that’s prevented me from carrying on with life as usual. I still say it’s not my heart, but if I die of a heart attack, it won’t be without patching things up with my sister first.

Yes, you really did read that last sentence correctly. It wasn’t my keyboard or my mind going crazy. When I went to check my mail I saw she left a message for me at the old diary site. My first thought was, “Oh no, oh no, oh no, not again.”

But wait…don’t assume the worst before you check out what she has to say, I told myself. And besides, the message had her real email address on it and wasn’t sent from a bogus email addy.

So I go over there and instead of reminding me how poor I am with my all-I-got-in-life dingy trailer and how I should be forever funny-farmed, there was a very sweet and sincere message waiting for me instead. She basically said that while the past can’t be undone, she really does love me and hopes we can go forward and be sisters again.

So I thought about it while Tom was in the shower, and when he got out I asked for his opinion on the matter, even though I’d already made up my mind as to what I was going to do about it. He said it was up to me. I figured he would say that, but that’s part of why I love my hubby so much no matter how many women I may be hot for on the side. Guy lets me do my own thing without fail.

Deciding I should try to start being a little more forgiving – after all, humans weren’t created to be perfect – and realizing that holding onto the past or any ill feelings wouldn’t do any good, I sent big sis a direct email and let her know that I left the diary site because of all the tech issues. I also told her that I agree; the past can’t be changed or undone, and while I wasn’t sure about full-blown buddies since we’re so different, there was nothing wrong with an occasional hello. I also told her to have a rockin’ birthday later on this month.

It’s true too, that we are very different. My family’s pretty liberal. They don’t want to go around trying to ungay the gays or anything like that. They don’t have a problem with women choosing what to do with their own lives/bodies/fetuses. But I could probably count all we have in common on one hand. We don’t look, act, or share the same interests. She’s tall, I’m short. She converted from Judaism to Christianity. I converted from nothing to nothing. I am a singer/musician/dancer turned contest enterer/writer/artificial intelligence worker. She was basically a mom who later went into the healthcare business caring for the elderly. At least I think that’s what she did. So other than being able to swear like a drunk trucker when pissed, we haven’t much in common. I’m sure I’ll always call her by the nickname (drama queen) I gave her a while back, too.

I have thought of her often throughout the years. The talks we shared, the way we’d laugh over stupid silly jokes, and how she’d always look out for me and be the protective big sister that she was. If you messed with me, you were messing with her, and that could be a very bad idea.

But in her reply, she said she thinks we may have more in common than I think, and that it’s hard for her to grasp that she’ll be 53 cuz she acts like a kid. She also plays more games than Becky and Sarah, who tell her she needs to get a life cuz she talks to her animals.

Nothing wrong with that. I talk to my rat all the time. I tell him to hurry up and croak since he was never much fun for a rat. I only kept him because Tom wanted to. His tumor’s bigger than he is, just about, and he is very old for a rat, so I think he’ll listen to me soon enough and move onto the next plane, whatever that may be for a rat not nearly as sociable, friendly and smart as most of them are.

Her message brought a smile to my face, even if a part of me hates to say so. Yeah, you put a smile on my face, bitch!

I got a kick out of how often Maliheh went looking for me. Especially since I came on with an “I’m back and will do a real entry later this afternoon or evening” message at around 11am my time. She’s been looking for me every hour ever since! I’m flattered she can’t wait to see what I have to say next, regardless of whether or not her intentions are good.

As suspected, my sister made her Facebook profile public and so I friended her. She doesn’t look as bad as I thought she might. She and the girls are heavy, though, except for Lisa.

There’s more to update on, but I’ll do it later. Gotta get to work now at my main job, get writing, get on with language studies, etc.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 2010 Maliheh hit my blog at 7am my time, and again at 10am my time. The only thing I don’t like about this geomap is that it only shows the same person’s last hit for the same date. So if I don’t get up until noon to check and see that she came in at 10am, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t in at 6am as well.

Just how is it she manages to check me out so often? Is she on unemployment also?

Despite having a pair of well-muscled legs, I have such skinny little ankles. So I’m going to have to add an additional hole in the strap of my wedge sandals.

Amazingly I didn’t gain any weight from yesterday’s cookie fest. Gotta run tomorrow, though my hip has been bothering me again. I thought exercising my joints would help more, but I actually woke up in pain last night – argh!

Why is it that Maliheh, guinea pigs and vacations are a regular thing in my dreams lately, LOL? I don’t know where I was, but in real life, I would never want to vacation alone. In the dream, I was at this place that was sort of like an adult camp where they had all kinds of activities and entertainment. I toted my pet rat around with me who kept turning into a guinea pig. I had to slap it to turn it back into a rat (Tom found this part hilarious).

We’re losing a lot of money this week, though Tom assures me it’s nothing we can’t deal with. If anything, this forced vacation (though my rat never turns into a guinea pig and Maliheh is nowhere in sight), simply allows for more writing time.

Now here's a big fat holy shit, followed by a big fat yay! Caligays have been kicking ass! They won round #1 in federal court and a judge overturned the ban enacted in Karmafornia. Wow, there are some good judges after all.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2010 I jogged and dieted off a few pounds and now I’m eating sugar cookies. Smart, huh?

After not hearing from Marie for a while I was delighted to get an email from her this morning. She knows that no matter who she meets along the way and even if we never see each other I’ll always be her girl. And that hottie will always rock my world in some way or another.

Why can’t Jesse quit being a pest or turn into a gorgeous woman and at least serve some eye candy while he’s at it? He didn’t come down today, but his buzzing about on the ATV got a bit distracting. Tom was out earlier and said he was weeding. “It’s two-thirds of the way through fuego season and he’s still weeding? Wouldn’t it be faster with the bulldozer?” I said. That’s when he told me the bullshitter was at someone else’s land that he’s been working on. It’s gonna take a while to do an 8-acre parcel of land, even if all he has to do is the drive and the area around his house. The drive is hundreds of feet, though, LOL.

MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2010 It’s looking like we won’t have internet access this Thursday. We’ve been having all kinds of problems lately with pages being really slow to load, connections cutting out, etc., so we decided to drop the phone part of the package since we never use it and it’s usually full of static when we do anyway. We’re hoping this will fix the problem, because the last time they made a major change to it, it sped up the connection big time. The good news is that instead of paying $60 a month, all we have to pay is $14 for a year since they’re having a promotional thing going on now, which is no doubt due to their losing so many customers thanks to their shitty service.

I wasn’t going to mention this, but then said why not? Last month I sent Charlotte a letter of condolence when I learned through Andy that her son died. I was a little disappointed not to have received a quick card or letter of acknowledgment in return, but then I realized that in her present state of mind, responding to letters is the least of her concerns. To lose a husband and then a son has got to be heartbreaking for her.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2010 Maliheh returned last night and twice this morning to my blog. I guess she really is interested in the story! Especially since I messaged her on FB to say I might put the intro in my blog. But once again, is she interested because she thinks it’s cool, or because she wants to screw me?

I re-read the synopsis for my last book and realized something was wrong. Then it hit me that I didn’t say anything that’d explain how it got its title – duh! – so I edited the very last sentence.

The cyst on my ovary was acting up last night but is better today. Just when I thought I was done with this problem too, as it’s been months since it’s bothered me.

Later…

I’ve written about my life and I continue to do so. Sad times, fun times, bad times, happy times, mad times, scary times, funny times… but would most people take it to the internet as I have? Probably not, so if reading some really personal and sometimes heavy-duty shit isn’t for you, then this entry will probably kill you. Just warning you up front, cuz when it rains in my journal, it really pours. I have no shame, no fear, and no guilt as far as putting my life online. I simply tell it like it is and go with the flow. I just don’t know why. Perhaps it amuses me. Or maybe I just don’t give a shit.

Sometimes I long for what my husband cannot give me. He can’t be as attractive in my eyes as that Italian guard I’m totally in lust with. He can’t give me the kind of sex I’d like to have. He can only give me himself and be who he is. I’ve been to many places and have done many things, and I love Tom for loving me as I am. It takes a tough, tolerant and very special person to do so.

But sometimes I feel like I’ve missed out on some things. I experience all kinds of love, lust, attraction, sex and adventures in my imagination and in my stories which I’ll never actually know firsthand, and I ask myself – does everyone go through this? Does everyone else settle for a mate even if they aren’t literally settling? Does everyone else feel that they’ve gone through life missing out on some things?

I know that if I could suddenly have this guard, the lust would eventually wear off, like playing the same song over and over makes it less appealing with time. But sometimes I just want to play the damn song in the first place till it loses its shine, but I know I never will.

It’s easier to meet people these days, and I know I could meet people if I wanted to. But what are the odds of them turning me on? I mean really turning me on? It’s not like I feel the “spark” with just anyone, but just a few select people here and there, so meeting someone would be like buying a lottery ticket. The odds of getting a winner just aren’t that great. Then there’s the fact that other than Tom, I tend to get people who are either stupid, obsessive or just plain crazy. A little craziness is fine. It livens things up a bit. But there’s crazy and then there’s crazy! If it were just for sex it wouldn’t matter as much, but still, I don’t need any obsessive whack jobs in my life to any degree, and it seems all the women I was with were one extreme or another. Either they got obsessed with me and wanted to smother the hell out of me, or they’d one-night-stand me and dump me.

People in general – gay, straight, male or female, are usually one extreme or another when it comes to me and they either hate me or they love me. Few people seem to just like me. I capture someone’s heart and I deeply intrigue and interest them till they can barely get enough of me, or I send them screaming in the opposite direction, determined never to even think of me again in their life.

But I will miss the fantasy-only excitement of realizing I have a crush on someone. Then realizing they have a crush on me. Then getting to know each other. Then having amazing sex. Hey, at least I got as far as step #3 with Officer Johnson a decade ago, LOL. She tried to keep me alone in the end there, but when Misha was moved over to M Dorm, mine was the only cell with a spare bed at the time. Otherwise, I’m sure we’d have had at least some fun. I still don’t know what captivated me so much about her. She wasn’t my usual type. She was a very butchy redhead with a face full of acne, but as I’ve said before, I loved all 5-foot, 10-inch, 200 pounds of that girl. Everyone did. She was so friendly and had so much charisma about her. Oh, the shit she and the few other guards that liked me let me get away with while I was at that jail!

Not knowing her first name, I was never able to find her. I sure have wondered about her over the years, despite her letting me down in the end and learning that she was transferred to a men’s jail for flirting with too many inmates at Estrella.

Who were you and where are you now, Officer R. D. Johnson?

Who knows, maybe I’ll come back in another life and do the things I didn’t get to do in this one. Maybe I’ll be oh-so ordinary instead of the fluke that I am that can basically only do what most people can’t and can’t do what most people can. Maybe I’ll be of average height and I’ll work a typical 9-5 job. I might even be straight and have a couple of kids, though I don’t know about the kids. I’ll drive without an ounce of fear and I’ll have tons of great sex. I won’t have a deformed ear or any kind of sleep disorder.

I won’t be able to sing, I’ll be a lousy dancer, and quite unteachable when it comes to foreign languages. Like most people, I won’t have a clue as to how to write a story and will have your typical all-American shitty grammar and spelling. And hey, why would I even think of having ADHD?

Yeah, maybe. Just maybe I’ll be so damn ordinary and so damn boring that boring will almost take on a whole new meaning.

“But that’s what I love about you,” Tom’s always told me. “The fact that you’re so unique, smart and talented…”

smiles, then laughs I think I’ll go work on my story some more and then maybe pick out another language to learn, cuz there ain’t NOTHING ordinary about this crazy bitch!

[weekend-nathan]

Part 3: It's decided

In the morning, I always have trouble waking up, but I know it's my fault, I played on the console too late again and didn't get enough sleep.

Mom comes to wake me up, dad is drinking his coffee. She has to shake me several times to wake me up and open my eyes. I hope she doesn't see the console I put under my bed before falling asleep.

I finally get up and go have breakfast.

"What day is it?" I ask once seated.

"It's Tuesday," dad replies.

Oh man, the week is far from over. Can't wait for the weekend to get some sleep. My schedule sucks and I have classes every morning at 8 am, no chance to sleep in on a weekday.

"Don't forget to ask your friends if they could host you for 2 nights," mom asks. We still don't know which days, but it will be around the end of the week.

"Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that funeral."

"Yes mom, I'll do it."

Once I'm done, I get dressed and decide to go by bike this morning. I have to take advantage, soon it will be dark in the morning and my parents will want me to take the bus.

Nathan is already at the bus stop and watches me arrive.

"You look tired," he says, "did you play Fortnite again last night?"

"I leveled up several times and didn't want to stop. I had to turn off the console around midnight."

"Oh yeah, that's only 6 hours of sleep, not much. Avoid falling asleep in class like the other day though. By the way, did your parents say anything when they saw the note from the teacher?"

"They haven't seen it yet..."

"Haha, you'll be in trouble one of these days."

"You look better than yesterday, though," I say.

Nathan doesn't respond, apparently not feeling like talking today either. I don't insist.

Our bus arrives and we arrive a few minutes later at school where I meet several acquaintances. I could have asked Nathan if he could host me, but I prefer to ask others first. Throughout the morning, I ask those I know:

"Sorry Sam, but it's not possible at my place, my stepsister is already in my room," Antoine replies.

"Yeah, no way," Kevin says curtly.

"I'm not here this weekend," Ralph says.

"My parents don't want me to invite people to sleep over," Tony replies.

Well, I think I've covered everyone, I think to myself as I arrive at the cafeteria. I think Nathan heard my requests but didn't offer for me to come to his place. While queuing to enter the cafeteria, I still ask him:

"My parents will have to be away for 3 days from the end of the week and I'm looking for a place to stay, do you think it would be possible at your place?"

"Um... I don't know..."

"Otherwise, I'll have to go with them to a funeral, and I'm not too keen on that."

"You know, my mom, she is..."

"Plus, it would be great," I say, "we could spend some time together."

"I know, yes, that would be nice. I'll ask her tonight and let you know tomorrow."

I don't know if Nathan just doesn't feel like it and uses his mom as an excuse, or if she's really a special case.

The afternoon passes, as usual, very slowly. In the evening, mom asks me and I tell her that I'm waiting for a response from Nathan or more precisely from his mother. Mom tells me they don't know yet and that they'll leave Friday morning and come back Sunday evening.

The next morning at school, Wednesday morning, I quickly find Nathan and ask him what his mother said.

"Oh, I forgot to ask her," Nathan replies.

Hmm... forgot or deliberately forgot...

"You'll ask her tonight, right? My mom needs to know if she needs to inform that I'll come with them. It would be to stay Friday night and Saturday night. My parents come back Sunday."

"I'll ask her but I don't think she'll agree, you know."

Again, I don't get a sincere impression from what Nathan is telling me.

The next morning, at the bus stop, I find myself asking Nathan the question again.

"So, what did your mother say?"

"She didn't say no but... she said it would be better if you checked with someone else."

"I've already asked others, and they really can't. You're the last one who can help me."

"You know, at my place... it's..."

At that moment, the bus arrives and we get on. There are already acquaintances inside and they come towards us, ending the conversation.

It's already Thursday, and my parents leave tomorrow morning. They'll want me to come with them, for sure. Nathan didn't say he didn't want me to come, and his mom didn't say no either.

Today, I'm having a bad day, I even got a detention for next week for pushing another 6th grader who was in my way. It's not my day.

Nathan doesn't bring up our conversation again but I don't forget it. Once home, around 5 pm, mom is already there. She's obviously back earlier than usual, probably to pack our things.

"So, are you staying at Nathan's or not?"

"I don't know. He didn't say no and didn't say yes either."

"So you're coming with us."

"But I don't want to come! And I feel like Nathan didn't even talk to his mother. Mom, please, can we go to their place to ask? It's really close by."

"But if Nathan didn't ask his mother, it's because he doesn't want you to go to his place."

"I don't think that's it either. He was about to talk to me about his mother when we were interrupted."

"Alright, at least you two aren't mad at each other, right?"

"We get along great and I'd be really happy to spend time with him for the weekend."

"Okay, let's go to his place then."

Cool, I'm happy, at least I'll know where I stand, at least if his mother is there. During the few minutes of walking with mom, I cross my fingers that there will be people at Nathan's place.

The car is there, a good sign. Mom knocks on the door and it opens, I recognize Nathan's mom.

"Hello," my mom says, "I'm Samuel's mom."

"Hello ma'am," she replies. "Samuel? I don't know," she says without even looking at me.

Suddenly, her gaze falls on me.

"Oh, but yes, Sam," she says. "Nathan talks a lot about your son, they're friends at school."

"Yes, my son prefers to be called Sam. My son also talks a lot about Nathan, I feel they get along well, yes."

Suddenly, Nathan comes over to his mom but stays behind her.

"I'm sorry to bother you," my mom continues, "but my husband and I have to be away for 3 days starting tomorrow morning to attend a funeral. My son asked yours if he could spend 2 nights at your place and..."

"But of course," Nathan's mom responds, cutting her off. "There's no problem at all. When are you leaving?"

"We're leaving tomorrow morning and coming back Sunday evening. Are you sure this wouldn't bother you?"

"Sure, and certain!"

I see Nathan's mom turn around and look at him for a few seconds. To me, this conversation and that look confirm what I thought: that Nathan didn't even ask his mother. I hope he won't be too mad at me. I look at him, but the room isn't very bright and I can't see his gaze.

"What time are you leaving tomorrow morning?"

"We have a long drive so we'll leave as soon as Samuel is off to school."

"Would it be alright if he stayed here tonight?" Nathan's mom asks.

"Oh, but I wouldn't want to inconvenience you, already two nights is fine."

"If I'm offering, it's because it doesn't bother me."

Mom looks at me and I nod to indicate that I agree. I still can't see Nathan well, it's as if he's hiding.

"Okay then, thank you. It will allow us to leave a bit earlier. I'll bring him over tonight after dinner then, with clothes for 3 days and his school stuff."

"I'm sure Nathan would be happy for Sam to join us for dinner tonight, right Nathan?" she asks, turning towards him.

I don't hear a response from him. It's really strange that his mom is so nice and that he didn't want to talk to her about my need to stay over. He must be hiding something from me, or maybe we're not really friends and he's pretending.

"Bring him over as soon as you can," Nathan's mom continues, "we're not going anywhere and we'll be waiting for you."

"Great, we'll do that, thank you very much. I'll leave you my phone number too."

"Yes, good idea, you never know. See you soon."

"See you in a bit."

Mom and I walk away and quickly return home to pack my things.

[superfluouskeys]

foot update/mental health stuff

so yesterday I went to what I call the overpriced grocery store which honestly is probably a normal priced grocery store these days but I do not wish to believe it, but anyway it’s the only grocery store I can reasonably walk to (and they have a few select items that are either reasonably priced or i will simply buy anyway bc too much of a hassle to get elsewhere) but bc there’s a lot of construction in that area the least insane way to get there is up about three flights of stairs LOL.  and while going upstairs is now more or less okay for me, going DOWNstairs is not, so I wasn’t sure if this adventure would be a good idea but……….i really needed some things LOL.

the grocery trip went really well – I put an ace bandage on my foot just in case and very much shuffled down the stairs leaning on the handrail but it didn’t hurt or anything I was just being extra cautious.  so when I got home I was like, wellllllllll, my foot is already wrapped and I feel good…………dance time???  and of course I was having so much fun even having to be extremely careful that I worked through several dances I thought I could probably handle, I puttered around and did some light cleaning, I paced my apartment a fair amount because idk I was jazzed by the prospect of physical activity LOL

and looking at my fitbit stats I guess I actually did a lot yesterday!  but I felt so good I wasn’t even thinking about it, so today my body is EXHAUSTED and all my stats are bad LOL!  but goddddddd it feels so good to be able to be physically active again, like I KNEW it was gonna be really bad when I hurt my foot, like that was the FIRST thing I thought and what got me so upset was just, this is the only thing keeping me sane, I am going to be so crazy if I can’t use exercise as a stress reliever – and I’ve been thinking a lot that I’m honestly pretty proud of myself for handling the situation as well as I have and not just completely crumbling lol, but even KNOWING that not exercising is a one-way ticket to crazytown I still had this moment yesterday where I was like oh wow I feel normal and not depressed suddenly!!! huh! wonder what could have caused this!

and granted forcing myself to take a few days off + engage in my hobbies was also a contributing factor but like…..I mostly spent Friday catching up on admin tasks and I was absolutely crazy about my class at like 1 am on Saturday morning, and usually just resting to calm down kind of takes a few days to take effect lol like I was pretty sure the extra days off were more of a band-aid to keep me from snapping than an actual solution. 

and idk I think there was some value in having to just……..sit with myself while I was upset.  like I cannot stress how often over the last few weeks I was just sitting in my chair with my foot elevated on another chair, violently sobbing, because I couldn’t even go for a walk LOL.  It was kind of wild to realize that even when I was absolutely spiraling there was still a very sound voice of reason that was just like calmly countering every crazy thought I had even when I couldn’t really feel the truth of it, and I think that’s a real testament to how far I’ve come. and it's also like......it kind of forced me to face what was and wasn't working for me instead of just using intense exercise to cope with it.  BUT I was also like passively suicidal the whole time LOL so it’s definitely better to have the option of physical activity that has maybe a 0.00001 percent failure rate for making me feel better instantly.

I still have to be very careful, and I really think the spectre of having to go back to the foot elevation chair of sorrows will keep me on my best behavior, but WOW this is really going to help me get through the rest of this term with my sense of self intact LOL!

[wanderingandfound]

I am full of so many little aches and pains right now, even ignoring the big, disabling back pain. Potentially TMI under the cut.

Wonder if this sore throat of over a week now (last Monday) is from dry-swallowing so many pills. Like, it's pretty bad this morning and I didn't even use my BiPAP so it's not from my mouth being open while I sleep. (Also before I could breathe through my nose I had that sore throat every morning, and it would go away after a few hours.)

Also, even though I've only been taking my prescription NSAID with food (although wjen I had COVID in December I did not take the ibuprofen with food) I think I've given myself an ulcer. My physical therapy doesn't start for over another week, so I really don't know what to do.

Also, my toe nail finally fell off on Saturday but the new growth only covers like a third, and the broken growth only covers like another third, so I've been using bandages to keep the old nail on but it's hurting again so maybe this is a mistake.

Additionally, I lost my biteguard when I had COVID and have not been able to find it (I'm guessing it's either under my bed or in a haze I took it downstairs in which case who knows). I was kinda hoping maybe my teeth would regrow and align themselves so my bite would go back to being as naturally perfect as it was my entire life before this whole biteguard saga begun. But no. In fact they've seem to have gotten worse. And I know my teeth grinding has gotten worse because every morning I wake up with my teeth and jaw aching, and I didn't used to grind my teeth thay badly.

And to top it all off, now that I'm back at work I'm back to washing my hands and then immediately exiting the building into the cold winter four times a day, so the skin on my hands are starting to crack and that hurts too. I need to get some more lotion because there's still multiple months of cold weather ahead. But also I hate the feeling of lotion.

I've been staying up too late for no good reason at all which means for hours at night my eyes and the head behind my eyes both ache. But that hadn't been enough to get me to put down the phone and laptop and go the fuck to sleep.

And of course, spending all my off-days stuck in bed leads to so many little aches and pains throughout my body. But if I move my back tries to murder me. I hate this I hate this I hate this.

[potatoes83]

Slice of life...

Took my mom to her second chemo appointment today. Besides being supportive, seeing the process also helps me utilize the analytical part of my brain, instead of merely the emotional one that has been silently screaming for over a month. I don't know exactly what all does what, but learned quite a bit today. I know she had seven bags in all, 5 medications, two primaries, I think they called them? Apparently going every two weeks is very aggressive, and see that's the thing, when you say something like that, or this many lesions, or the mass is this many centimeters, I have no frame of reference. I don't know if that's good or bad. And for the love of God, don't Google that shit. Boy howdy was that something I should not have done.

Point being, she is on very aggressive chemo, because the mass is quite large and has grown quickly, and the lesions where it has spread to are plentiful and problematic. It's bad. Not insurmountable, not untreatable, and every day there are better and better advancements in this sort of thing, but this is definitely bad. And I'm really not sitting here all doom and gloom, but as I've said before, I can't sit here and just say that it's going to be okay. Because I don't know that. Because this thing is too big right now. I can't see around the other side of it yet. I am deeply convicted in my faith, but I have to take this thing as it comes in little waves. I cannot yet latch onto a broad form statement of whether it's going to be okay or not. Too soon to tell, as they say. But she has a bunch of very good doctors, and they are all being aggressive as hell to treat this, and she has no intention of giving up, so given the circumstances, you really can't ask for much more than that. And there's a whole awful lot of people pulling for her, praying for her, you name it.

I gave her the prayer blanket from our Parish today as we were on the way up for treatment, and although not of our specific denomination of Christian faith, she really really appreciated it. It is a beautiful ministry. So it's something for her to take with her, put over her lap if she gets cold, wrap her hands in it, whatever. It helped being there today. Just seeing how it all works, even though the vast majority of the time is just sitting there and chatting while the bags go drip drip drip. The place is comfortable enough, the people are very kind and friendly, there's lots of windows to let in the light, I mean given the circumstances, it's about as good as it can be really.

My schedule is completely shithoused now, because if I worked as I did yesterday, and then I'm off today, well obviously that means today must be saturday. Which means tomorrow is sunday, which means that I don't have to go to work, except I have it on good authority that is in fact not the case. Not only do I have to go to work, but there's a work Christmas party tomorrow for the department, and a work Christmas party on friday. And given the circumstances, I still really don't feel like it. I don't want to smile and talk and make a speech, I'd rather just be left alone in my office so I can curl up in a little ball in the corner. That is unfortunately not an option, but I am downright dreading having to go to these parties and put it on.

But we do what we must. And today was good and helpful. It was really nice just spending time with my mom, just bullshitting about this that and the other. And seeing her looking normal. Again, no frame of reference, I don't know if she's sitting there wrapped in a blanket freezing and miserable, throwing up every 5 minutes, laying there barely conscious with tubes hanging out of her, I have no idea what this whole chemo business is supposed to look like. So the fact that she's just sitting there in a comfy chair while we're laughing about days gone by, that was a good thing. It was a good day. And of course, always accepting prayers, because you can never have too many. It's something I really need to do more of myself. 🥔

[just-absolutely-super]

Mini crack

Lan: hmmm

Mega: what?

Lan: I think you can be a like dad sometimes.

Mega: well yeah, he is our dad. There's gonna be similarities

Lan: I meant you can have a scatterbrain moment like him.

Mega: dad is not scatterbrained, and neither am I!

Lan: but you were so excited about your date with Roll to the point you forgot that she was busy with Mayl today, and kinda crashed their piano session

Mega: I-I just forgot which day me and Roll were supposed to go out. It happens. It doesn't make me a scatterbrain

Lan: it does in your case, especially since you're usually on top of everything else.

Mega: no, it doesn't!

Lan: yes it does!

Mega: It’s just the one time! It won’t happen again!

The next week

Mega: Okay so Lan, you need to work on your history paper tonight so don’t be slacking off now. Then tomorrow you’re supposed to get a haircut, soccer practice is Thursday, you’re helping Mom clean the house Friday evening, a NetBattle tournament Saturday, and then Sunday Dad is supposed to take us into the city for a day trip. Homework is supposed to be done every evening and you definitely need to be in bed by 10. Are you getting all that?

Lan: Yeah but you’re forgetting something

Mega: What? I think I have everything down that’s important

*tap tap*

Mega turns around and sees Roll, arms crossed and a neutral expression on her face

Mega: Huh? Roll? What are you doing here?

Roll: Lan’s right, you are forgetting something…

Mega: What? You mean a date? Our date isn’t tonight, it’s tomorrow isn’t it?

Lan: Check your calendar, Megaman…

Mega switches over to another calendar

Mega: Oh…it is tonight

Roll: Need a raincheck, sweetie?

Mega: …Yeah, I do. I need to help Lan with homework…

Roll: I understand. Maybe next time

She kisses his check and logs out. Mega slumps down and groans.

Lan: So…about not being scatterbrained

Mega: Shut. Up.