March 2005 in 2000s

THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2005
The silicone doll is definitely off. I’m learning that it doesn’t last forever like porcelain and vinyl, even if you’re just a doll collector and not out to screw them. The woman I asked said they’d start breaking down and tearing in just 5-10 years, even with proper care. And they consider that long-lasting! If we were rich, I’d gladly get one every 5-10 years and a different one each time, but I think I’ll pass. I just don’t want to spend nearly 7 grand on something I can only have for 5-10 years. They seem to acquire dents really easily, too. I was wondering just why in the world this person who was giving feedback was bragging about how their 2-year-old doll was in great condition, thinking well any 2-year-old doll that isn’t a child’s toy should be in great condition. Maybe I’ll go back to striving for a mannequin. It’d be a hell of a lot easier to save 4 or 5 hundred than thousands of dollars, though it would’ve been so neat to have one. It’d still be nice to have a mannequin if I can find one with a halfway decent face. The bodies are nice and very realistic on most of them. It’s nice faces that are hard to find. So many of them look too cartoon-like.

I decided to try bringing the big palm into the bedroom to see if that would help it. I still think it’ll slowly die off, but in the store, it was in an area with no natural light. Just artificial fluorescent lighting. Although I have regular light bulbs in the bedroom, maybe that and the fact that it’s warmer in there will help it. I’m glad it was only $10, but still, I’d like to save it if I can.

I wish to hell the guy at the transmission place would call! I still fear he’s stuck at MCX, we’re both stuck here, and I’m not getting any of these damn cavities filled in anytime soon.

I also hope to hell that given what my schedule is right now, they’re right about tomorrow’s PM showers to deter our little knife throwers.

Later…

I was stunned to learn they mowed here, according to Tom, yet I slept like a baby. They couldn’t have come before 10 AM cuz I was up till then. I’m glad I didn’t know they were coming or else I’d have woken up a zillion times expecting to hear them.

It was one week ago that all hell broke loose here. The question is, is the nightmare coming to return? God, I hope not! I am so sick of being badgered by other people’s kids! This has been going on since the NHA. At least I’m no longer badgered by other people’s dogs. I’m sure I will be again sooner or later, though. Especially in a warmer climate.

TUESDAY, MARCH 29, 2005
Well, there’s the usual bullshit going on in the news. A Mexican gang member involved in a gang rape/murder got his death sentence turned to life imprisonment all for being a Mexican and cuz they suspected the jury went by the “an eye for an eye” saying in the bible. Who gives a damn what the bible says! He should die for his crimes.

What I don’t get is why the girls he raped didn’t bite his dick off when he shoved it in their mouths. You’d think it’d be a reflex and an instinct to do so. I know if any guy shoved his dick in my mouth, if I couldn’t punch him in the face and beat him to death first, I’d bite it off even if it meant I’d get killed in the end. At least that way that pecker wouldn’t be going anywhere else ever again! Most guys are such sickos. There are just not many Toms in this world. They either spend their lives thinking with their dicks, are so damn stupid, or both. I have no pity or respect for straight men in general. I think most of them make their own beds and so they ought to lay in them! If I could make extinct all the men in the world except for Tom, I’d do it in a heartbeat. They’re one species the world could definitely do without. See, I ain’t just racist, I’m sexist, too! I used to think most lesbians were, but that’s not necessarily true. Lesbians are that way cuz they’re attracted to women more so than because they hate men, though some of them do happen to hate men. I think even most straight women hate them!

I got a couple of letters from Mary dated the 21st and 22nd and was shocked and disappointed to hear she still hasn’t heard from me. I know I’m getting mail from her faster than she’s getting mail from me, but I’d have thought she’d have gotten the first two letters by now. Then again, she said it took 9 days for my first card to make it to her. They’re either really backed up in their incoming mail, or somebody’s reading her mail word for word and maybe even making copies, too.

Meanwhile, they were all about José, and I’m like yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever turns you on. One of the things to turn her on is anal sex, which to me is disgusting. To each their own so long as no force or children are involved, but when she said she wanted to touch, taste and smell José’s ass, I felt my stomach flip-flop. I wouldn’t even do these things to a woman. She also tells me she’s excited about the idea of getting it on with another woman while José watches and that she wishes she could lick her own tits and pussy, because how much safer than that can you get? Both Tom and I had to laugh at that one, though again, to each their own. She said she thinks like a guy even though she’s feminine. Yeah, I’d say this is true! She has some gross fantasies and does seem to be pretty hung up on sex, but hey, she’s only 27.

She also praises gay men, saying how neat they are because they’re honest and neat and that if she had to be a man, she’d want to be gay. Well, I know I’d rather a gay male friend than a gay female friend myself.

It’s almost April and it’s still cold, still snowy at times, and I still want out of this state! I never thought I would miss warm weather so much! Not surprisingly, I don’t miss Arizona and most of the shit we had to go through down there, but I do so long for the warmth again! I miss summer clothes, sleeping nude, and not having to wear socks and gloves and shit like that. Trying to get as much space as we can will be doubly important in California than here, cuz if they dog their yards 24/7 in Arizona, they are certainly doing it in Sacramento and places like Redding. It’s funny how the shit we’ve gone through has made my dreams so simple – just for us to live happily and comfortably in a simple yet nice and functional 1000-1600 square-foot house with space enough around us so that our neighbors are seldom seen and very rarely heard, would be enough for me. All else after that would be considered a bonus.

I wish I had someone to talk to who knew both English and Spanish well so I could ask some questions. Estoy and soy both mean I am, but I don’t always get when is best to use which one. I read long ago that there is no set rule for when to use por or para which means “for” and that you just have to get a feel for which is best, and I have done so as my Spanish has gotten better, but there are still some things I’m unsure of.

I just hope he gets this job at the transmission place! Right now that’s our biggest thing. The guy told him to call him if he didn’t call him by the end of the week if he forgets, but I hope he’ll want to hire Tom bad enough to “remember” to call him on his own. He could have said that, though, to test him. Some places want to see how badly you really want to work for them that they will wait and see if you call them if they don’t call you. Something up there would really have to hate us if it’s determined to keep him at MCX and us in this duplex.

Things are still back to normal around here, but now I’m all stressed out knowing that she could have overnight company like that again anytime. I’m pretty sure it was a rare occasion and just maybe it was all about Easter, but still, I worry about her having company again, or moving and being replaced with something worse. I also worry about next door raising hell when it warms up or them too, being replaced with something worse. I try to remind myself, though, that it’s been quiet 98% of the time here and that noise will follow us no matter where we go.

For now, it’s a matter of going through all the steps it’ll take to get to either renting a place that’s more suitable for us in California, or owning one down there, and the depressing and stressful part of that is not knowing how many steps there’ll be and how long they’ll take. It usually takes years to climb back up when you hit rock bottom like we did. I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s so much more common for your life to fall apart overnight while it takes forever to put it back together. Only winning many thousands of dollars could solve our problems quickly, and of course, that’ll never happen. I just hope I won’t have to deal with too many people’s shit and noise along the way. If our lives are going to be budgeting to the point that we have to decide whether or not to get sweetener or Kleenex one week, versus what doll to get, I just hope we can do it in a better location. One that’s warmer and has more space around it and no one attached to us. I know there’ll be other noise sources, but I’d rather go back to an occasional sonic boom than kids stomping around for hours so much so that you feel as if the place is going to come tumbling down upon you!

MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2005
It looks like I’m not going to be submitting any more books after all. He was taking forever to do the editing what with trying to find a new job and then with his computer breaking. Between that and believing that nothing I could possibly write could ever be allowed by God to get accepted and published, I decided to forget it and just keep it as what it was always meant to be – just a fun hobby. Then he said he wanted to rewrite the story because he thinks it’s that good and is worth developing, but I know him. He never sticks to things. Never finishes what he starts unless he has to. I agree that my story needs work and wouldn’t be accepted as is no matter what, but now I’ll always be curious as to what they might’ve said had we stuck to the original agreement, but oh well. I don’t have to get anything published. Especially since it would’ve paid shit. I’ll just keep having fun with it because I know that if God wanted me to succeed with anything like that, I would’ve done so by now. I’d also have had to do my own editing when he was too busy or didn’t feel like working on it, and I wouldn’t have liked that. Everyone needs an editor they can depend on. I also get the feeling he doesn’t want me to submit anything, though I don’t know why. If this is true, then he’s not going to admit to something like that, but it won’t kill me to wonder what Barb would’ve said. It won’t be the last thing I’ll ever wonder about. On the other hand, he did say we could submit what he rewrites if I wanted to. But will he really rewrite it? And is there really any point in submitting something that wouldn’t bring any money even if it did get accepted? At least if I continue writing for fun I won’t have the stress of having to perfect every little thing I write.

He took that test at the transmission place but still doesn’t know if he’s going to get the job. The test was a combination of personality and puzzle. For the puzzle, he had to fit 5 big pieces together and he said he did lousy at it because he was slow. He still thinks he got the job, but he’s such an optimistic person that I’m not surprised. However, he always did know and admitted that he had no chance at the big-paying job he applied for.

The stereos are driving me crazy today. I don’t know why, but some days they go by one after another really loud.

Anyway, I think what I’ve always thought – that we’re meant to be poor and held down, he’s meant to stay at MCX indefinitely, and we’re meant to stay in the city, very close to others. But I also know that we’re destined to make it to California someday. We’re talking about rural Sacramento as a possibility. What I mean by “rural Sacramento” is that it’s a big enough city to find jobs, but may have rural areas around it that aren’t a million miles away and building up. No city in the country is building as fast as Phoenix is. That’s why Maricopa built up so much in the 5 years we were there. The only thing I don’t like about Sacramento is that there are more blacks there than in Phoenix, but we’ve learned that we can move with no problem and therefore we don’t have to live with them. So if we get stuck next to any, we’ll split. However, if we can get in rural areas, they tend to avoid those areas because those areas aren’t good for gang activity and the gangsta hoe crap they’re into. If you want to be a good little gangster, you gotta stick to the city where opportunities to commit crimes are more plentiful. What much can you do in rural areas? Rob chicken coops? Anyway, I don’t know where or when we’ll go to California, but I know we’ll go somewhere in that state someday, my true home that I was meant to be in all my life. There’s not much we’ll miss in Oregon. We both like the summers, I like the tap water up here and he likes the winters, but other than that, there’s nothing for us here. He’d suddenly have to be offered a way high-paying job to hold us here, but money’s not in our cards, so that won’t happen. I miss both rural and big cities. I miss rural living and big-city shopping. Oh, the variety of stores big cities have as opposed to little shitholes like this! We’re going to look for a rural place in central or northern California where it’s less crowded and polluted, that is close to a big city, but not building up.

SUNDAY, MARCH 27, 2005
At last, the animals have left! It at least appears that way. They’ve been gone since around 9:00 this morning, and I got caught up on my sleep. God, I hope she never has company like that again while we’re here! They all drove me fucking crazy! However, I’m worried they’ll return tomorrow. Maybe Tom was right about them being from out of town. He says they could very well have arrived in the area before Thursday and stayed with others until then, and are now staying with someone else, no doubt driving the neighbors just as crazy as they drove us unless the neighbors aren’t connected or have animals of their own running around raising hell. I’m still going to make our last night here, whenever that may be, holy hell on this hypocritical bitch. I want to now but Tom said that may be sending a message saying it’s okay to slam and bang shit around if I do. Well, I definitely don’t want her to get the wrong idea, so I’ll wait till we’re on our way out of here. I still don’t know exactly when that’ll be. Right now my guess is November, but does it matter? Like I said, we’d only be going to a different noise source so we may as well keep the one that’s quiet 99% of the time until we can get out of this state.

I got 4 letters from Mary, who says she’ll try to write every day. I told her not to pressure herself with writing every day. Just don’t let a month go by if she can help it. I’m too tired to cover her letters, so I’ll do it later.

Later…

All’s still back to normal around here and hopefully it’ll stay that way for the next 7 months, but I’m sure it won’t. I’m sure it’ll just be only a matter of time before the shit hits the fan again. Meanwhile, Tom said it was dead quiet and rainy all day before I got up at 3:00. All that happened around here was the usual – a visit from Romeo and next door going back and forth a few times.

Mary’s letters were quite detailed. She asked a lot of questions and spoke of a lot of things. What had me laughing my ass off (of course I wouldn’t tell her this) was her saying God works through me to help her as far as getting to José goes. Would it finally shake her faith if she knew the truth?

Another funny thing was when she said the Spanish soap operas are more realistic, but that she couldn’t understand the language. Well, then how does she know the Spanish soaps are more realistic if she can’t understand the language?

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2005
I guess I’ll do some editing as tired as I am, thanks to the assholes next door. I am so, so totally going to raise holy hell on our last night here, whenever that night comes! They didn’t wake me up, but they did, just from the stress they’ve put on me. This meant having an upset stomach and a rapid heartbeat. My stomach hasn’t been this flat in ages. I also didn’t need to exercise. First of all, I couldn’t have mustered up the energy, but I didn’t need to with the way my heart was racing. The animals gave me my cardiovascular workout just fine. It was the NHA minus the screaming from when I dragged my ass out of bed at 11:00 to 8:30. I’m hoping that because they settled down an hour and a half earlier tonight that means they’re going to get up early to go somewhere tomorrow, but I doubt I could get that lucky.

I’m now sure more so than ever before that no matter where we go, there’ll be kids, music, dogs, banging and more, so like I told Tom, if we’re so destined to listen to other people’s shit so much of the time, let’s do it at a cheaper rate. Seriously, why pay $435 to listen to other people’s antics when we can do it at around $300? He still thinks they’re out-of-towners come to visit throughout the Easter weekend (he also told me school animals are on spring break), but I say it’s the local daughter-in-law running from her hubby. The deal we made is that if she and her rowdy brood stick around a lot longer than Sunday or Monday like I think will be the case, we give notice to vacate next Friday. If he’s right, we avoid the office in the hopes of them not making us renew our lease. If they do call or mail us a letter saying we have to renew it or get out, then we’ll give notice. Where the hell we’ll go, I don’t know. I’m sure it’ll be someplace noisy, but hopefully, the rent will be lower and he’ll be making more money.

Especially since the guy at the transmission place called to tell him to come in for a test. He’s going to do this Monday and is hopeful that this test is a pay-placement thing. In other words, if he shows how smart he is, it’ll up his chances at getting started at $8.50. Then at least one of my neutral/positive vibes will ring true! But will we move to a small old house by the railroad tracks? Time will tell. The guy he talked to yesterday was impressed with the way he’s worked on his own vehicles.

Anyway, the afternoon to the early evening was the worst next door. Before Tom got in I blasted the shit out of them and sang my lungs out, though I’m pretty sure they never heard a damn thing. Not over all their own chaos, and well, I don’t exactly have an 8-speaker surround sound system.

I’m not so sure a retirement community will save us from this noise curse that’s been put on me since ’92. After all, I’m learning here that 51-year-old single women can be just as bad as the young folks, so what’s the point? If it’s not mothers with kids, it’s grannies with grandkids. I just dread when they all hit the backyard so I can hear screaming along with the banging. There’s only so much the fan and sound machine can drown out. Especially when you’re not on a solid concrete foundation.

Next door did their Friday night barbecue, but if they did any knife-tossing, I don’t know. I just know I’d take their doors over Bev’s animals anytime. She’s so fucking weird. She cared enough to get headphones so I wouldn’t have to hear her bass thumping, but she doesn’t care if I have to listen to those damn kids shake the place down. Again, she should know better from when she had to deal with that shit herself, and I can see that that had to be true hell on her. So I did my share of music, stomping around and slamming shit. I was too pissed not to anyway. This shit happens everywhere I go. Everywhere I go! Like I said, there’s no fucking escaping it! Why are people so damn noisy? I realize that some are worse than others, but still, no one gets stuck with this many bad apples. It’s a definite curse without a doubt and if I haven’t shaken free of it by now, I know I never will.

Romeo’s been over too, to see the lying hypocrite that “rarely” has company. When we leave, we’ll be happy to tell Pam why, but we’re not going to bother to complain on her because we know we’ll get something like how her right to company takes precedence over our right to peace, and even if they have moved in, they won’t care. They didn’t care about the overcrowding that was in here before we got here. I don’t think they really care how many people live in their places as long as they get their rent.

I got that pad of construction paper, more stamped envelopes, and 4 books of stamps from Mary. Yeah, well come Monday, José’s letters will be returned with no explanation and I’ll be sure to break the news to her. It’s the only way to keep her from pestering me with him. “No” alone isn’t always enough. Meanwhile, I hope she’ll let me keep all the stamps and envelopes. It’s the least she can do for all the shit I’ve done for her, but we’ll see. If she wants me to send them to her aunt, I will.

We may go to that Italian place tomorrow during the peak of the outbursts.

THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2005
I am so, so furiously pissed right now. God, I hate God for putting me through this! Not only did Bev’s animals get on my nerves for 7 hours, but they’re also staying overnight! The father probably threatened the newborn, the other kids, the wife, or all of the above, so now I gotta deal with them being over here until they patch things up. Of all the guys in this world who hate kids, why did this one have to have some of his own and marry into a ready-made litter? And why am I so destined to listen to other people’s kids?! There’s just no escaping them! How I’ve come to hate the little animals! Why oh why did I ever think I wanted one of my own? I’m doing the same thing I was doing a decade ago; listening to other people’s shit! If it isn’t their music or dogs, it’s their fucking kids. It never ends! I just can’t run from it. No matter where we go, we’ve got a guaranteed lifetime noise curse on us. So much so that we may as well get an apartment and pay just 2 or 3 hundred a month. Why not? I sure as hell felt like I was in an apartment today. The question is, how many days are they going to be over there? I can tell the mother had the kid, cuz although she’s fat and huge in the hips, she doesn’t look pregnant. When I saw they were still here at 8:00, I knew they were staying overnight. I just never expected them to show up on a Thursday night of all nights, and now they’re going to be here God knows how many nights. And I thought the quietness was a sign of the end of our time here. No chance! Between what Pam said and now this shit, I know we’re going to be here till at least November. Tom thinks we can get away with just a few more months and then there’ll be enough money to move, but I know better. Things always take longer than expected, and I know this management company is too greedy to let us go month to month. They’re going to demand we vacate in 30 days or renew the lease, but what does it matter? Anyplace we could live in for the rest of our lives will have some sort of noise, so who cares? It makes no difference. If it wasn’t the rumbling vibrations of running kids and slamming doors, it’d just be music, dogs, screaming, etc. I’m tired of running from what I cannot escape. So much so that I set a lot of my stuff back up and that’s the way it’s staying! Meanwhile, if Bev’s going to turn into such a rude selfish bitch by letting all this chaos into the place, I’m not going to worry about my stereo, not that she could hear it over the shit going on over there. How utterly rude to bring little kids into places like duplexes and apartments. We’re wild animals until we’re at least 12 years old. Most of us are anyway. She should really be a little more considerate!

They pretty much crashed over there just after 10:00, but the question is, are they going to let me sleep? The thought of living with other people for the rest of my life alone makes me want to kill myself, but he keeps on insisting that things will get better. Yeah, when? When will they get better? Nothing’s changed. We’re still listening to other people’s noise, we’re still broke, and we’re still unable to do the things we want to do in life, so why does he continually insist we go on? I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to be some puppet in a controlled environment. He’s so sure we can buy a house in 5-10 years, but what do we do in the meantime? Be forced to be a part of our neighbor’s business? Part of the reason I don’t want kids (not that I ever had a choice anyway) is because I don’t want to have to listen to their shit. Instead, I gotta listen to other people’s kids! Fuck this never-ending cycle of shit! It’s going to be a zoo here in the morning! Some of the kids may go to school, but if they’re staying overnight tonight, then they’re likely to be there indefinitely. As soon as those kids get out of school if not before, it’s going to be nothing but a series of bumps and bangs from 3 PM - 10 PM. As I said, it makes no sense to move other than to save money or to go to a warmer climate, and I doubt we’ll get to California anytime too soon. I just don’t understand it – live where you don’t want to live and don’t get most of what you want in life – why am I so doomed to fall under this rule? What did I ever do to anyone to deserve so much shit and for so long?

Meanwhile, Tom’s pretty sure he’s going to get the job at the transmission place. This is what he said about Walmart, so we’ll see. He says if we can stand to hold out another few months, we could save enough money for a house that’s more secluded, but why bother? Like I said, if it isn’t one thing, it’s something else. So why not spend at least 237 more days here? It’s better than jail, Phoenix or the NHA. All I know is that we can’t escape what we run from. We ran from the sickos in Phoenix, but they caught up with us in Maricopa. We came here to build a house on a secluded mountain and look where we are. Back in the city with kids, stereos, etc. If we’re going to have to deal with shit like this, we may as well take the warmth of California and the convenience of a bigger city, since we’re fated to live with people and their bullshit no matter where we go.

I said I wasn’t going to blast her out on our last night here – well, you can scratch that one! Like I said, I’ve been so stressed out that I’ve had very little to eat. Stress is a good diet, though I’d rather be fat and happy than thin and miserable. But that’s just the thing; I know I’m never going to be happy no matter where I go or what I do.

I’m still pretty sure they got in a fight, although they could be painting or remodeling their place. I wondered if it could be her birthday, but you don’t usually do slumber parties at 52 years old. Romeo was over at around 6:00 and had to park on the lawn cuz this bitch has a big old black SUV. I pretty much ruled out her being sick or hurt, cuz you wouldn’t have the damn animals running around like that in that case. I’m sure they just got into a fight and now her problem is our problem. Meanwhile, why did she have to come here? Doesn’t she have a mother to go to? Tom said that because we’ve never seen this vehicle before it could be out-of-town visitors, but I’m sure it’s her very local daughter-in-law and animals. If only we were on solid concrete! That’d eliminate the bulk of the banging, but like I said, if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. I see a very definite pattern here. Let me guess - we live with various people’s bullshit too close for comfort, then we get a nice house in a nice quiet area and we lose it. Right? We may as well just stay right here then. Or at least return to a warmer climate as soon as we can break free of this place. Getting out of places I don’t want to be is always tough, though I don’t know why it should be since we’d only be going to another one just like it. Maybe even worse. This isn’t a family curse. I’m the only one who’s been forced to move around like crazy and live huddled in with others like this. So why is it just me who has to live this way? Everyone else can have money and live in peace, but not Jodi. I hate God’s guts with a passion for putting me through this time and time again, year after year! Oh, how I hate Him!

I’m too pissed off to write any more about Tom’s interview or anything else right now. All I know is that just like old times, I want to hit the sack as early as I can, knowing they’ll be up by 7:00 over there.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 2005
Got two more Mary letters today, this time with just one small favor, on top of another José letter that I’ll tell her I sent, till Monday, when they all start coming back. I figure that by that time she’ll have my last letter and will stop sending stamps, envelopes, letters and now paper, from what I just read.

Before I get into her letters, Pam, not surprisingly, said we couldn’t transfer our deposit. Yeah, I knew the bastard in the sky wouldn’t let us out of here that soon. Oh well. At least the neighbors are annoying at times and not a round-the-clock nightmare. They’ve been quieter lately, but summer’s not here yet. He still holds out the hope of us being allowed to go month to month, but I know there’s no chance. Their unwillingness to transfer the deposit tells me just how greedy they are. And I thought it was easier to escape rentals than houses! God’s got us right where He wants us, but it’s nothing new. I’m used to being a puppet on a string with no control over her own damn life. I go where fate puts me and that’s that. Meanwhile, there’s a little, old rundown house for rent further down on this street, plus those cabins near the casino, but I’m sure we’ll be here till November at the very least. All I have to do is hope to hell Bev stays put and next door doesn’t get any worse than they have been. Or get replaced with someone worse. At least they have no dogs or little kids.

I just wish I knew when that fucking queen was going to die and how much she may leave us! Right now I feel as if everything, especially owning a house and some land, is just a dream. It very well may be, too. Something wants me to stick very close to people, but why? I wish I could make a deal with God and say look, if you’re going to squeeze me into the city, even if it’s a small, tame city compared to even Springfield, then how about a nice secretive, hot-looking chick on the side for when Tom’s not around? One to just play around with and who would also be okay with just playing around, as well as drug and cigarette-free? I know I may feel a little guilty and like a cheater, but can I really be “cheating” on someone I’m just friends with? I don’t think so, so any guilt I may feel should be worth the pleasure. However, I know there’s just no bargaining with whatever’s up there. I wish we’d gone straight to California! Our lives still may’ve been hell there, but I just didn’t think that was possible. I thought all of California was too expensive, even the parts that aren’t crowded.

To help ease my anger and depression, Tom took us to Burger King. We got fries and a burger, and man was that caramel cheesecake ever the best! He got a chocolate pie for himself, then we stopped at a convenience store for other little treats we shouldn’t have spent the money on or be feeding our bodies, but oh well. We felt we needed and deserved them.

They did come through on that certificate, too. It’s $30 at an Italian restaurant called Antonio’s. I expected $20 if they were going to really come through at all.

He also got a couple of additional old printers, so now we have two lasers and a dot matrix. At least dot matrix ribbons are only a few bucks as opposed to the $60 it takes for new inkjet cartridges. Inkjets do better for graphics, but dot matrixes are more consistent and reliable when it comes to text.

I’m only 10 pages into this new Mary Higgins Clark book and already it is so, so good! Without my reading, writing and music, I’d be totally dead.

So now that I got the usual drama out of the way, Mary’s letters were nice. She talked about many things and asked many things Paula would never care to ask. I still haven’t even heard from the selfish bitch! Oh well. I couldn’t call her anyway. We let my minutes run out, and I’m just going to send Tom text messages if I have to.

They’re now using rubber security pencils at the jail, so her letters are light and sort of hard to read. Especially on yellow paper. She says in many ways it’s worse there than Estrella cuz they can’t have things like radios, and not even hair conditioner or lotion. Without my lotion and Chapstick, I’d be totally lost! I’d be as dried out as an old lady.

They painted the place gray-blue, she wishes they’d have something else on TV instead of the news, and the inmates won’t let her eat in peace cuz they beg for food off her tray.

She has a cavity, and naturally, they’d just pull it there and not fix it, so she’s going to try to hold out so she can save the tooth. Me, I’d rip every single one of my molars out if I could!

The little favor was for me to look up what sentence an inmate got that she knew at Estrella. One that came after I left. That was no biggie.

She asked what I like about Oregon, versus Arizona, and what color is my hair. I told her 20% gray, but Tom, who says I don’t understand math, says it’s 1%. Well, I do have a lot of hair on my head!

She said hurricane season was really scary. Yeah, I wondered how she was taking it. I think I’d have found it exciting as long as I knew I wouldn’t be harmed. She said they never lost power, but the lights flickered and it was just a gray blur outside with palm trees bent sideways.

She fears José will kill himself if he doesn’t hear from her, and I’m like, please! Of course I didn’t tell her this, but his death might be doing us both a huge favor, though she’d just pick up with some other inmate somewhere else. She’s a bad boy lover. She just can’t seem to help herself. She feels certain the guy’s going to get clemency in 6-7 years. I think she’s going to be very disappointed in the end.

TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 2005
Surprisingly, there were no favors from Mary today or yesterday, but God am I ever so sorry I found José for her! Then again, she does tend to write in clumps. Today she should have my first letter saying I don’t think I should do any typing for her so she doesn’t have to worry about any false motives, and because the printer’s always so finicky. I started writing her a letter by hand, knowing that this other printer would go on the fritz any moment, and recommended she use my handwriting as a sample in letters to José. She should write rather than print and use pens, too. I also recommended the usage of punctuation and paragraphs whenever she changes subjects, but Mary’s always been hell-bent on writing her own way, so far.

Next door’s still quieter than usual. Is that the sign of the end to come of our time here? For some reason, things not only start off quiet when we move, but they go quiet before we move, too. Tom’s going to speak to Pam tomorrow. Meanwhile, I only heard them make a pass once yesterday and once today. I looked over there late last and things are still brightly lit as usual. I see the computer on in the daughter’s living room, but I never see anyone at it. There were balloons tied to the chair in front of it. What’s weird is that she’s got a nightlight in the kitchen yet you’d think it’d be a waste with the living room light streaming in.

They were all psyched at work yesterday because he fixed a printer that no one else could fix. The owners are a sister and brother team, and the sister talked about giving Tom a certificate to eat out as a way of saying “thanks,” but we’ll believe it when we see it. With all the people that have us do for them for nothing, I have to see it to believe it. It was funny, though, when Tom said that if they gave us the certificate and then he quit to go work elsewhere, he’d be like, thanks for dinner, have a good life now! Whether he stays or not, I think he deserves the certificate.

Meanwhile, he has an interview at a place that rebuilds old transmissions that starts off at $8 - $8.50. That’s what the bank started him off at, and at the end of his 8 years there, he was at $16, but I don’t expect to be in Oregon for 8 years! Anything’s possible, though. What looks promising about it is that it’s a bigger company so they’d be more likely to offer insurance for both of us without taking so much money. So, although it wouldn’t be significantly more money at first, we’d at least be insured, and he’d have a shot at overtime and advances.

The only sucky thing is that in order to get to California, we’d have to be torn down and start all over again. Even if we could manage to hang onto what stuff we have left without having to pawn things or play motel for too long, he’d still have to start from scratch and work his way up from the bottom. I don’t know, maybe our best bet would be better to stay in Oregon either until the queen dies or he retires. Then again, we aren’t out to do our “best bet” or else we would move into that $300 studio that includes utilities and suffer from the noise, the chaos and the lack of sleep we’d no doubt be in for. And of course that would also include a major lack of space and privacy in a studio.

I just hope we can find a house on a busy street. It’s the low-traffic streets that they tend to sit out in their vehicles blasting music. They’re not going to play them unless they know others can hear them, and while they could be heard here, they know it’s even easier to hear them when you don’t have all this traffic going by. Low-traffic streets also tend to have more kids out making a ruckus. I wish we could end up next to old folks or those who are single, but I know that if there were houses next to us, they’d contain families. God could never be that kind to us until and if we ever did make it into a retirement community. And dogs too, of course, but at least I could blast my stereo and not worry about what I did or about Bev moving and trouble moving in that we’d have to be attached to.

Something got jarred loose when he switched printers, so this weekend he’ll open up the case, unplug everything, then replug things in really tight.

SUNDAY, MARCH 20, 2005
Yes, I think resuming contact with Mary might’ve been a mistake after all. I don’t know. I have such mixed emotions about it. It’s just that she’s such a pest with all the damn requests! Who does she think I am? Her slave? I apparently misunderstood her. I thought I was to enclose José’s letters with mine, but she wants me to type up letters to him, which are novels, and then send them to him. This is because the place they just transferred him to recognized her handwriting and sent her letters back to him. I appreciate the fact that she sent 2 books of stamps and 20 envelopes and offered to send paper too, but she really should’ve waited for a response to the request. That’s nice that she was willing to send $25 a month in stamps and more, but she doesn’t understand that I don’t have the time and ink money for this. Unless you’ve got the money to keep replacing old cartridges with new ones, printing’s a major bitch that’s hit or miss. As it is, Tom had to swap our printers because we simply couldn’t get the Lexmark to print. So now I’m back to my old Epson. Like I said, I just wish she would have waited because now I’ve got all these stamps and stamped envelopes. I asked if she wanted me to send them to her aunt or just keep them. She hasn’t even gotten my last letter. In that letter, I really put my foot down about the favors and not wanting to do any typing jobs for others. I have enough typing of my own to do, regardless of ink costs and printer problems. She really overwhelms me at times.

Also, after saying in her last letter that she didn’t want to publish her book, she wants me to consider typing it to completion for her under a fictitious name and claim that any events related to real-life circumstances are purely coincidental. Again, I told her I don’t like doing favors for others, especially big ones, and explained the printer problems and the fact that it’s too time-consuming. I also reminded her for the millionth time that she’d be better off waiting till she gets out of there. She can’t get any money from it in custody. I appreciate the fact that she trusts me to hold any book sale money for her and how she says she’ll give me some, but I just wish she’d wait till she can be independent and learn to take care of herself. I know it’s hard to be independent in jail, but she can only expect others to do so much for her. Another reason I don’t want the job of typing her letters to this loser is that I don’t want to risk getting into any trouble. Remember, I’m the one that can’t get away with shit. I’m a white Jew living in a Christian country of increasing color, so I don’t want to set myself up for trouble. Meanwhile, I recommend she consider disguising her handwriting and having her aunt send letters like she has been, even though they can’t talk as freely as they’d like to that way. I told her I hoped things would work out, and I do. It’s just that I don’t want to get involved and I don’t want to be responsible for their silly, naïve little communications. It’s just so absurd the things they say and believe! I don’t know why he was transferred, but they’re supposedly really strict there, and José’s supposedly trying to get clearance from the warden so they can communicate, but I don’t see how he stands a chance. I encouraged Mary to just hang on and keep in mind that she’s not going to be locked up forever.

I know it’s dishonest of me, but I told her I sent José the first 17-page letter she sent me to type up since she already sent me the letter without waiting for a reply, but that I wouldn’t send any more, and to tell him not to send any to me to send to her. In a week from now, I’ll claim that the letter was returned with no explanation. Meanwhile, unless she wants me to send them to her aunt, I got a lot of stamps and stamped envelopes out of this frustration!

This doesn’t mean I won’t send any emails for her if they’re quick and not too often or do little things like that and occasional online research, but the book and letter carting are just too much for me. There is one request I can handle each time I write her. She asked me to burn incense while I type the letters which makes them smell like heaven – no problem. It does smell great! I wouldn’t mind sending her a light bulb ring and any oil I may try and not like once she’s out.

I believe her when she says she’d do me favors if I needed them, but other than keeping tabs on Teddy Bear back in Estrella, I can’t imagine her ever being in a position to do me any favors.

I also had to get on her for overstuffing envelopes and causing us to pay some of the postage. Given all the stamps she sent, 23¢ is no hardship on us, but in the future, I hope she’ll be more careful. I also told her she need not send any religious material to me. I just hate to see her waste her time and money sending me things I’m not interested in.

Mary has a lot of good traits. She’s a sweet, compassionate, generous and forgiving soul, but she’s also a pest, naïve and obviously unsure of herself. First she wasn’t going to have any more kids, now she wants to have either a son named Dante with José or a daughter named Bella with him.

She’s also still paranoid I’m going to post her book online and I had to again explain to her that I have no desire to do so. She said I could use her name in a book of mine once she’s released, but as I told her, I really don’t see why I’d need to. I’ve used other names and places I know, but her name or life story wouldn’t fit into any future projects that I can see.

She shared some of her and José’s sexual fantasies and desires with me in her letter and some of them are utterly sick and disgusting! She says José wants her to be a little dominatrix and the thought of that excites her. To each their own, but I don’t see how one can be excited about the prospect of beating someone they’re supposed to love, or of being beaten. I had to laugh when she said she wished she could have sex with herself cuz that would turn José on. It’s just funny hearing someone say how they’d love it if they could have sex with themselves. The disgusting part is that José wants her to pee all over his face. That’s sick! It also goes to show just what kind of guy he is, but of course, she can’t see it. She’s got this false delusion of him getting out, them marrying, then having kids and living happily ever after. Even if he could get out of there, which I doubt, they would never be allowed to associate with one another. Especially him. She may not end up on probation for life, but he certainly will if he gets out. They simply don’t let convicted murderers go that easily, and when they do, they tend to keep them on parole.

Tom learned that our new little dumpster isn’t for recyclables. He said every house on the block but ours has one of these for regular trash, and also a bigger one for recyclables. I don’t know why we don’t have a recycling dumpster, but we’re not gonna be here much longer anyway if all goes well. It’s nice to have these for trash in the meantime because it’s on wheels and has a lid.

I see a pattern beginning to form next door. This is the second weekend where those guys come over, they do a barbecue, toss some knives, then it’s dead quiet all weekend. I’d say somebody over there is taking off for the weekend with them. If there is a pattern, that means they’ll go back and forth tomorrow like crazy.

I know it can’t hurt anything by doing this, but I wonder if Tom’s losing it, too. He actually carried out one of the rituals that are supposed to remove curses. I was laughing, teasing him about being just as bad as Mary, though I did help him with it. You pour 3 drops of oil into a small bowl of water, place a small needle through the eye of a bigger needle and put it in the bowl. Then you add dabs of salt to it while you take scissors and cut at it and chant, “Eyes against eyes, return to sender.” He thinks it worked, but I doubt it. I still say the curse was put on us by God and that you just can’t fight God.

Someone went down the street just now shouting, “I love this woman!” I guess it’s based on a commercial where a man gives a woman either an engagement ring or a necklace or something like that. At first I thought it was Romeo screaming at Bev, who’s become a bit of a klutz. We’ve heard a few bumps and bangs over there that suggest she may’ve dropped things. I don’t think it’s the animals.

SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 2005
It’s been rainy, quiet, and Bev’s gone again.

Tom’s been working on my story and he says it’s such a good story that he feels it’s all the more reason we ought to do it up as best we can. In fact, he feels it’s such a good story that he thinks we can get it published anywhere and not by just a gay/les/bi company. I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I don’t know about that. Yes, there are some books with gay characters in the mainstream, but they’re usually not the main characters, and the authors are usually males. Again, it’s still a man’s world out there, like it or not. For a woman to sell a book with gay main characters, well, I don’t know about that.

He was also searching online for writing tips. One of the things he came up with suggests the author “do an interview” with their characters. At least the main ones anyway. This allows the writer to better develop them so that the reader gets to know them better and sees them as you do. You ask them mostly trivial questions, I guess.

Tom’s getting to be as bad as Mary. He came to me all excited about this ceremony you perform to rid yourself of curses. Then again, maybe we ought to try it. If it works we’d be free to die (as in how we always used to say that we knew we wouldn’t die young because that’d defeat the purpose of whatever wants us to live a cursed life).

FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2005
That’s two blacks I’ve seen walking down the street today. That’s not good. I don’t like that at all. It only serves as a reminder that these second-class citizens are out there.

I thought I’d be hungrier than I have been seeing that as of last night, we ran out of food. All that’s here is peanut butter, bread, ketchup and mayo. I made toast in the oven a few hours ago and put peanut butter on it. Meanwhile, Tom should be in any second.

We’ve now got pails for recycling. I was wondering why we didn’t have those since that seems to be a big thing everywhere, but I saw them deliver them today. They’re smaller than the ones we had in Phoenix and an ugly shade of dark green rather than medium blue.

I’ve been a little too busy to write because I got a bit of a surprise in the mail. I got 3 letters from Mary. My first thought when Tom came in the door with them was that she was writing to tell me off. His response to that was, “And it took her 3 letters to do it?” When he mentioned mail from Mary, I didn’t think there were 3 letters till he handed them to me!

Hopefully, I won’t regret resuming the friendship. There were a few things I read that bugged me. As it is, she’s already asking for favors. She wants me to let José mail his letters to me for me to mail to her so he can speak more freely. They were using her aunt and his mother, who now lives in Puerto Rico, to do the carting. She assured me she’d send stamps. I told her I’d do it as long as they didn’t go getting carried away and didn’t cost me additional stamp money. I also told her I didn’t think I should type for her. That way she won’t get any false ideas about me doing it for some hidden, evil, selfish motive. Printing’s too much of a bitch anyway, we’re always so broke, and well, it’s just that I hate to do favors for others. They always get carried away on me and I end up overwhelmed and spending money I don’t have. I can handle an occasional email as long as she doesn’t give me a novel to send, and of course, I’m not doing for her friends. I’m much busier these days with my own writing to be spending much time on others and too broke to spend the money. I may have a ton of envelopes right now, but paper, ink and stamps add up quickly. Since saying “no” is often hard for her, I hope she’ll remember not to tell the whole damn pod there what I have, so they don’t all pressure her into asking favors of me themselves. Of course, I can say “no” with no problem, but that way she won’t have to go through any bullshit, cuz if I say “no” they’ll take it out on her. Even she said the place weighs heavy on her at times and she has to deal with a lot of assholes there.

The only other thing that bugged me was that she sounds like more and more of a religious fanatic by the minute, talking about how all of heaven loves her and how she’s freeing souls from purgatory. To each their own, but it does get to be a bit much with her. That’s how Andy ended up. I still feel most people get this way simply because they can’t face reality and that most of what they believe is hogwash, but oh well. Whatever turns her on. Despite the fact that I’ve told her time and time again that I don’t believe God’s good, for the most part, and that I don’t do prayer, she sent a prayer and a web address to a Catholic site, saying that if I ever felt like getting her a gift, she’d like something pertaining to angels and something else. I guess they’re books? Anyway, I didn’t bother to check out the site, I’m not in a position to send gifts and if I were, I probably wouldn’t. That way the person wouldn’t have to feel obligated to send me something in return. Other than sending Paula incense and CDs every now and then, I’m just not big on favors and gift swapping.

Anyway, she said she never dumped me and that I’m welcomed back with open arms. That’s really sweet of her, but I thought she was just as finished with me as I was with her only because she went over 4 weeks without writing. She’d never gone longer than that, but she says that after I told her off like best friends do every now and then, she thought everything was ok. She said she was hurt and angry over the letter but understood where I was coming from and that I was going through an awfully hard time, etc. She prayed for God to do good things for me, too. Well, He didn’t. And I’m sure He’s not going to let Tom have the job he put in for that pays $2700 a month and that he’s way, way qualified for, either. He’s applicant #39 out of 50. I guess they only want 50 people or at least 50 applicants so they can maybe narrow it down to the top 10 or something. He put in for other jobs, too. They only pay a little more than he’s making now, so there’s potential there.

Another thing she said didn’t bother me, but it was rather funny. I believe it, too. Typical paranoia and hype of those in law enforcement. Well, she supposedly sent my last letter to her lawyer, and according to the lawyer, he was insisting I sounded like a “woman scorned,” so I assured her there was not one stitch of sexual attraction for her on my part. Also, he was “disturbed over my feelings towards José.” Being in a country that’s so protective of its non-whites, I don’t doubt this.”

She says the trial’s been postponed to the 5-year marker, whatever that is because Monster’s got some new hotshot lawyer. She’s still sure that come sentencing day, she’ll go home. I hope so and that she doesn’t go to prison, because in prison, attitudes are much different. It may be more comfortable there, but if someone who’s in for life with no chance of parole and nothing to lose happens to want to kill her, what’s to stop them?

She says she doesn’t want to publish her book these days and that the hypocrites of the world aren’t worthy of reading it. She says that for now, it’ll be a journal for her son to one day read. She asked me about my book, and I told her about PD Publishing.

I was hoping she’d be done with José by now or that he’d be killed, but no chance of that happening anytime soon! In fact, the cock let some Hispanic gang initiate him into it so he could be safer. The Latin Kings, I guess it was. I was hoping he’d be out of the picture simply so she wouldn’t pester me with things like carting letters, but if it wasn’t him, it’d just be something else. I’ll just be sure to put my foot down whenever the requests get too much.

I’m also not going to bother sending many journal excerpts. That way I have the freedom to write freely without having to edit this or edit that, and I have less to print. This cheap shit of a printer is hit or miss. In fact, I’ll probably do short letters by hand.

I can’t think of anything else she discussed other than her academic achievements and how she wants to learn Italian because she’s part Italian.

Anyway, we agreed to forgive each other of our faults, and as I said, I’m not in the habit of forgiving, so hopefully I won’t end up making a mistake in resuming contact with her. I know I could always cut her off for good if I had to so I’m not too worried about it. For now, I realize certain things are more forgivable than others.

Later…

Bev’s been out ever since I awoke at 10 AM. This is a definite record for her. Meanwhile, they got on my nerves with the knife-throwing next door. Fortunately, it was only for a few minutes, but I still found it annoying. Also, it could be heard over the fan, so now I gotta sleep with earplugs on when I’m sleeping during most of the day. If the weather report is right, they should get rained indoors over the weekend. They were also barbecuing, too. I guess this may be a Friday night ritual with them. If those guys don’t live there, they may be at least spending weekends there.

Tom repotted my new palm. Hopefully, it’ll make it and hopefully, I won’t lose it in one of our many future moves.

He also helped me download some new cursors from a sight that doesn’t add a lot of shit on your computer along with it.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2005
Sure enough, I hear her washer swishing away next door. Is this going to become a daily ritual? I would be sort of surprised if she hung clothes out today. It’s awfully cloudy out there.

Also sure enough, next door is hopping back and forth, and even stood outside to have a quick convo yesterday evening, as well as this morning. It’s getting old. These people are getting way outdoorsy on me which tells me that true to vibed, they will live out there all day when the weather warms up for sure. Today’s supposed to be 53º and mostly cloudy. Tomorrow’s supposed to be a degree cooler with rain and snow (I doubt it’ll snow).

For now, if we could just get into a house that doesn’t have dogs and screaming kids in the neighboring yard, and if he could get a better-paying job, that would be great. However, I don’t sense $10 or more dollars an hour for 3 years. This leaves a very big question – if California truly is meant to be, then how do we get there? We may be trapped here indefinitely. Then again, I only sense a year and a half, and Tom had some new ideas. Gas is outrageous right now thanks to those fucking Arabs who just have to fuck with us in every way they can every chance they get. This truck isn’t great on gas mileage, so he was thinking of selling it for an old used car. There was a Nissan Centra they were giving away for free the other day in the paper. All it needed was a new transmission which he says you can get at a junkyard for under $200. So if we get a car that not only saves on gas, but that has a hitch, we could get a trailer for much cheaper to make the move in. Then the question will be where to put the stuff and where to stay once we get there. More than likely, we’ll be stuck playing storage and motels again, a game God seems to like us to play.

Not that there’s money to be in a position to make the choice right now, but a part of me still thinks I shouldn’t get any more dolls. Incense is one thing because it’s something you use up and you don’t keep. It’s just that I saw how easy it is to come so close to losing everything like we nearly did, so I’m hesitant to get any more dolls. What’s to say we won’t end up in that situation again, and what’s to say we won’t lose everything the next time around? When we finally get down there, we’ll probably have to play the storage/motel game, like I said, which means anything could go wrong during that time to cause us to lose our stuff and end up on the streets. One is always more vulnerable until they get established.

Later…

Bev is hanging clothes out after all. It appears to be the same stuff she did yesterday. It must be her new daily ritual. Oh well. What’s a bored 51-year-old living next to an ex-con to do with her time? At least she’s a fairly silent presence. I’ve been up just over 2 hours and already next door has hopped across 7 times. Oh well again. I know other people’s noise is as much a part of our fate as a lack of money. I’m sure there’ll be barking dogs next to us in the house, but I think it’d be a worthy trade-off. Especially since it doesn’t seem customary to have your dogs live in the yards here. All but the blue house across the street has dogs and they all spend the bulk of the time indoors. If this place were in Arizona, then I’d want to stay here. But here, how often can little Susie and Johnny be out playing with Spot and Fido?

TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2005
Again with the laundry hanging out. She had Roto-Rooter over yesterday, so maybe that’s why. If she had a clogged drain, though, why didn’t she just pour a drain de-clogger down the drain? It must’ve been a bad one and it must’ve been where the washer is because that’s where I heard them fiddling around. The clog must’ve held her up from doing as much laundry as she wanted. She definitely has a dryer over there too, so if she’s got a dryer, then why hang the clothes out? To save money? Or is it God’s way of annoying me by having me see people I don’t want to see, and stealing more of my privacy?

Next door’s back to the usual catcalls and hopping back and forth. They also replaced the bright floodlight bulb that burned out a week or two ago that I hoped they’d be too lazy to replace. I don’t get why they feel they need so much light outside when the light spilling out of both sides lights it up pretty damn bright enough.

Between them and Bev, I feel like I have no singing privacy whatsoever. I know I’m not a bad singer, and it’s not like I care what they think of it, it’s just that I like privacy on the home front. I know, though, that it’ll be years before we ever have space around us again if we ever do at all, so I don’t let it stop me from doing my thing.

Later…

It hit me the other day, that yes, we will get anniversary, birthday and Christmas money this year as usual. Tom had said he doubted we would because of how we’ve been ignoring them. However, I realize that whatever’s up there will see to it that they do pay up in order to stop me from having the wonderful gratification of speaking my mind and pissing them off really well. Because I decided that them stiffing us out of our anniversary and birthday would be a good final excuse to let them have it (preferably by regular mail so that the bitch reads it, rather than just hears the main highlights as would be the case if I emailed it), I think God will see to it that they send the usual money so I keep my mouth shut. If we were rich, I’d tell them off figuring that the few hundred bucks a year we get from them isn’t worth it, but we’re so damn broke that we need every extra penny we can get. See, God not only likes to see my perps get away with fucking me over, He likes me to keep my mouth shut, too. Oh well. I won’t be dying to tell them off forever (especially the queen) because she’s not going to live forever. Too many more years, but not forever. I know she’s in relatively good health too, or else they’d be crying to us about it in their letters. Unfortunately, though, that bitch hasn’t even got a toe in the grave yet, let alone a whole foot.

Roto-Rooter was here again. I guess that means another load of laundry will be hung out tomorrow.

MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2005
Wow, again with the laundry. That Bev does laundry every few days! She was out yesterday for what were more hours than I’ve ever known her to be since I’ve lived here. I’ve also never known her to hang laundry out this early either. She usually waits till around noon or later. Maybe she’s taking off all day again and that’s why she’s getting it out of the way now.

The last two days were next door’s quietest ever as Friday was their noisiest. The temperature’s going back down, so I don’t expect much from them over the next few days. It’s only going to be in the high 50s today and tonight it’s supposed to drop to the high teens. I thought they may’ve actually gone away which shocked the shit out of me. I just didn’t think these people would have the desire or even the guts to go anywhere. There’s a word for it – something phobia – for people who are afraid to leave their homes. Another possibility is that they got into a fight or that just one of them took off somewhere. Either way, I cannot complain. I don’t miss the door-slamming, and of course, I can do without the knife-tossing, too.

Tom, who insists on keeping an open mind, was looking up ways to kill our financial curse, but like I tried to explain to him, it’s not a curse, it’s fate, and you can’t fight fate or alter destiny in any way. I try to keep an open mind too, but I know I’d only be kidding myself in trying to find ways to get more money. You can’t do what’s not meant to be. The way the Phoenix and Maricopa houses had so many leaks; that was a curse. And once we stopped living in things we owned, it stopped. Money, however, is going to always be an issue for us no matter where we go or what’s going on in our lives. Like it or not, it’s simply something we’ll never ever have again, and it’ll be years before he’s making $10 or more an hour. Like at least 3 years. Meanwhile, he is still going to look for better jobs, but the “better job” may simply be another dime more per hour, and benefits for both of us. Maybe some overtime, too.

I did some sewing yesterday, using natural light which I seem to see much better in rather than artificial light. I sewed what was supposed to be a dress for the Tonners, but it ended up too small and on Barbie instead.

SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2005
Although they were rather comatose next door as opposed to what we had in Phoenix, it’s looking more and more like we are going to get out of here in 50 days. Tom’s pretty sure that this management company will have no problem with transferring our deposit. Even if we can only get two more feet of breathing space, at least we won’t have anyone attached to us and I can blast my music and not worry about running around and doing tasks that may make a racket, unless he’s sleeping, of course.

Surprisingly, I haven’t heard much from next door today, though it’s not exactly their prime time yet.

My cavity is doing ok now, but it acts up on and off. I’ve decided not to bother with the queen, which I would’ve had to do by regular mail or else Dave would’ve played blind to any email I may’ve sent and made like he didn’t get the message. Unless it’s to tell her just what I think of her, just because I can and just because it’d make me feel good to do so and to piss her off like she’s pissed me off for years now, the thought of begging her makes me sick. The thought of being pen pals, visiting or doing anything with that selfish bitch, makes me utterly want to puke. I have come to loathe all three of them. For a while, Dave seemed like the only cool one left until he tried to ignore our pleas for help when we first got here. That showed me he was just as bad as the rest of them. Anyway, Tom’s going to look into some sort of dental plan that’ll allow us to make payments.

This weekend we’re going to work more on my story. We want to intensify some parts of it and hopefully stretch it to around 75,000 words to leave a cushion for if they accept it and edit it, figuring they’re going to take stuff out and not add stuff in.

What appeared to be Bev’s son and a few kids were next door briefly, but other than hearing the front door and a bit of squealing, there was no banging of any kind. The son seemed pretty pissed at one point, but I couldn’t tell at whom. Hopefully at his mom so he won’t be by for our remaining time here.

Tom had a “radical” idea last night, as he put it. That would be to pack the truck of everything but the plants and a few other things and to go to a motel in Sacramento, which would have more jobs available, using what would’ve been May’s rent money, our deposit, and whatever he could get from unemployment. Then he’d scramble to find a job and a house to rent.

While it may sound good and simple, I don’t like the idea at all. We’ve done radical before, and radical only gets us in trouble. For one, I think it would take several truckloads just to transport the bare essentials, even though we have significantly less than we did when we came here. I’d also be paranoid about running out of money before we got established, and of the one-month stay in a motel turning out to be a few months. I do not want to return to playing motel! We also don’t want to have to cram things in such a tiny space again like we had to when we left Arizona.

So, we both agreed in the end that we’d rather Klam it than cram it. This means we’ll rent a house here, and that’s ok because I know it won’t be for too long and that we’ll eventually get to California. It was meant to be. I’m thinking it’ll only be for a year or two. We may buy a few pieces of cheap furniture from the local Goodwill, then donate it back to them when we move.

I’m just glad God didn’t hate us enough to cause Tom to lose his job when we first started playing motel here. If that had happened, we’d have lost everything, and we’d have had to stay in a shelter. I think I’d have killed myself for damn sure if that had happened!

At the same time it’s easy for me to bitch about all the moving we’ve done and the changes we’ve been through, would I really have been any happier if things had stayed the same year after year? Like Miss Perfect who’s lived in the same state all her life, had the same number, the same email address, the same job, the same house, etc., for well over a decade.

FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2005
It’s good to know that while not in my case, at least in some other cases, judges really do get what they deserve. After all, when we play God with other people’s lives and toy with people as if they were mere robots or pieces of clay, we’re asking for trouble. Period. As I said in the message I posted in a forum in regards to a certain article I read online about a judge whose husband and mother were shot to death (I meant it when I said I wouldn’t let the sickos scare me out of adding my two cent’s worth, and if others can get away with using racial slurs, then I can certainly get away with what I said which was pretty mild), I have personally seen too much injustice and abuse within our legal system by insensitive, power-hungry control freaks. They think they’re invincible and already this judge is “feeling safer” now that they know white supremacists aren’t responsible. It was a man dying of cancer whose malpractice lawsuit was dismissed by this bitch. He killed himself at a traffic light when the pigs pulled him over and left a suicide note implicating himself in the murders, which DNA from a cigarette butt later confirmed. While it’s easy to say that it’s unfair that two innocent people were killed, maybe this will send a message to judges everywhere that, no, they’re not God. This judge wouldn’t even listen to the man’s malpractice suit. What’s one to do in a case like that? Go home and say, “Oh well, shit happens?” I wasn’t there, but I think the bitch was simply in a hurry that day. Perhaps she was overworked and overwhelmed with too many cases, and so the quickest cure for that was to dismiss as many cases as she could to get caught up. Nonetheless, I don’t feel the least bit sorry for this judge. I just think she should’ve been the one to get killed. Then again, because it was her family and not her, she’ll have to live with what she’s done and with the knowledge that she’ll never see her husband or mother again, assuming they were close enough to be worth missing. She’ll also have to live with her children’s grief, and maybe – maybe – she’ll be looking over her shoulder from now on, too. That won’t be a very fun way to live.

Another one that’s going to get what he deserves if he doesn’t cut the shit is Bob. His letters are decent for a while, but then I have to remind him yet again not to bring up sexual stuff and so on in a never-ending cycle of shit. He’s just a natural slut. A natural pervert living up to his label and reputation. It’s ok, though, he’s going to die in a couple of years, so he says. Until then, I don’t want to hear it, and I warned him that if he writes anything sexual that’s not the contents of a joke, I’m gone. I’m not going to ask again for him to knock it off, I’m just walking for good.

Bev may be cool, but I’m still hoping to move. Not just because I want to be in a place that isn’t attached to others, but so I don’t have to have people right outside the window. They’re already starting to hang outside more often and it hasn’t been that warm yet. Yeah, I knew God didn’t reserve this side for us without a reason. Nonetheless, I hope we find something with more breathing space that’s cheaper. Or at least not more expensive than here.

By next Tuesday we’re supposed to be having highs only in the low 50s which is more normal for this time of year. We’re also going back to having a 40-degree difference between the highs and lows. Although that’s not good for the electric bill, it should deter them from thinking of hanging outside too much.

Several nights ago I peeked over there because it had been a while. As usual, the place was wide open and fairly well-lit. Both sides were. At one point as I was gazing into Crystal’s side, I was like, oh wow, what a pretty aquarium. But then I realized it was a screen saver on a large monitor I was looking at.

Bev sure is a laundry fanatic. Yesterday she was hanging out what appeared to be rugs.

Later…

They’ve been going back and forth like crazy all morning and afternoon. I usually only hear 2-3 passes between 7 AM and the late afternoon, yet they’ve already made at least half a dozen passes. Just what are they doing? Are they running a home business or what? They must be up to something to need to see each other that often. I hope it’s not a weather thing. If they’re coming and going this often in the mid-70s, then I hate to think of what the 80s and 90s may bring.

I am so sick of that cavity flaring up! I’m also so tempted to write the queen and say something like: I’m writing this in the hopes that you would be willing to help me with a dental problem I’ve been having for many months now that’s getting much worse. I have a cavity that flares up on me regularly and I need badly to get the tooth either pulled or filled. However, his job doesn’t offer dental. I am uninsured altogether because they would take an additional dollar an hour from his pay to insure me and we certainly can’t afford that. Also, I’m cleaning houses and babysitting under the table, so there’s no real money or benefits there either. A dentist would want to do an initial exam and then take some X-rays before they do anything. I don’t know exactly how much this would cost. Perhaps a few hundred dollars. I’m asking you to please, please help me out here, and I’m only asking for a few hundred, not a few thousand. I’m in a lot of pain and am sometimes tempted to pull the tooth myself, though I don’t want to have to do that. We’re supposed to be family here, and well, I don’t understand why you won’t help us simply because we’ve needed help before. We did not ask to be in this predicament and if we could help ourselves, we would. Please remember all the things Tom has done to help you in the past without ever saying “no more.” He wouldn’t do that to you. I hope you will care enough to help me out here. It would be greatly appreciated and I will gladly send you a copy of the dental receipt to show you that the money truly did go for that if you want me to.

If it doesn’t accomplish anything anymore than his last letter did, could it really hurt? If anything it’d just give me more of a reason to let them have it when the time is right, and I figure I’ll know when the time is right, and let them know what insensitive, selfish assholes they are. This tooth isn’t going to hold out much longer, so if no one gives a damn enough to fill it, then I will have to pull it myself.

I often read the headlines on my homepage, and when I see shit like 50 Cent selling 1.1 million records in 4 days, it really burns me up. Like most rappers, he’s a former drug dealer and a current druggie who’s also violent. He uses his rap, also like most rappers, to vent his hatred towards whites and to preach racial harmony while he continues to shit on everyone. And I mean everyone. They have no more respect for each other than they do for us. Rival rappers are constantly threatening each other, and some have even actually killed one another.

The point is, what do we have to do to make money? Deal drugs ourselves? Kill someone? Why is it that more often than not, the most undeserving of people are the ones to succeed while people like Tom and I who just want to live in peace and not get any shit from anyone, can never seem to get ahead no matter what? And when we do get ahead, it’s not for long.

Later…

Next door has been annoying on and off for most of the day. Not only are they slamming doors and barbecuing, but two young guys are now throwing knives like Bev told me they did. At least the fan seems to be drowning them out and I haven’t heard any music, little kids or dogs. It fucking figures, though. It totally fucking figures! It’s like, thanks, God. Thanks a fucking lot! And for having my tooth act up when we’re broke and I’m uninsured! It’s like my whole life is listening to noisy people and struggling! I knew it, too. I knew from day one that these would be very outdoorsy people anytime it was over 50 or 60 degrees.

THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2005
I know this is just a dream, but without dreams, what do I have to look forward to other than a life of struggles and loss? Well, since a silicone doll is out of the question, custom porcelain dolls and Ashton-Drake dolls are too expensive, and PG dolls, along with Barbies aren’t quite as nice, I’ve decided to focus on expanding my Tonner doll collection. They’re overpriced too, and some of their dressed dolls can be as high as $300. However, most of the ones I like are in the $50 - $170 range.

What I like about Tonners as opposed to porcelains is that they’re vinyl so they can’t break easily, they have no soft-bodied parts, they have rooted hair, nicer outfits, and I’ve never had a problem getting them. I also like how they all have the same body molds so I can put their clothes on any of them, be it Tyler, Mei Li, Esme, or any of their friends I’d like to get like Sydney, Carrie, Kit, Angelina, etc. I think it would be cool to have different versions of the same doll, too. I have a brunette Tyler and there’s a redheaded and blond version of her I’d like as well. I just wish they weren’t so expensive! I think it’s because they’re limited editions which is silly. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make more of them and lower the prices so that more people could afford them?

I sent pictures of a few dolls to a site I’ve gotten dolls from before that say to let them know if you want to sell them any dolls, but they haven’t responded yet. I was hoping that if I couldn’t get cash for them, they’d at least let me use them to trade with, but I know I couldn’t get that lucky.

Tom and I were laughing about how Bev was going on about ex-cons in Redding and Yreka, never knowing she’s living right smack next to one herself!

As we both agreed, though, her logic makes no sense. If ex-cons flocked to borders, then they’d be at the borders of all states, and since K-Falls is a border town, there’d be tons of them here, too.

I definitely don’t regret leaving Arizona, despite the few things I miss about it, but I still don’t know if “Klamming it” was such a bright idea. That’s ok, we’ll be in California someday. We’ll have to be cuz he can’t get much more than what he’s making here. A part of me wishes we didn’t mind crowds cuz it’s the big cities that have it all. If we didn’t mind, I know I’d want to go to San Diego. Wherever we do end up going, I just want to get settled in someplace we both like for at least 10 years! Wouldn’t that be nice?

I went to call Paula like I do each month, but I got a recording saying her number’s been changed to a non-published one. No doubt it’s because of the lovely men she associates with.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 2005
I was right. Mary’s not going to respond unless she’s taking her time to decide whether or not I’m worth it. I suppose it’s better if she doesn’t and that I should stick to my rule of once broken up always broken up. As I got older I came to believe less in forgiveness as well as in playing kiss and makeup. I think that if a certain couple or friendship was meant to last, then there wouldn’t have been a breakup in the first place and that if you do have a spat that causes a breakup, there’ll be others as well.

The best and most shocking news is that Tom got a raise, even though it’s just 25¢. So that’s $40 extra a week. Better than nothing, but still insulting when you consider how much money we’ve made/saved others. We’ve lost so much to others and have done so much for others at our expense that it just seems so unfair for people to have profited off us the way they have while we can’t have shit for money. Not even enough to pay for what we need, let alone what we want. We so seldom can get anything for fun these days, and we rarely can pay our bills on time. Once it warms up and we don’t have the big electric bills, maybe it’ll be easier then.

My rage at Queen Marge still burns red hot. Oh, how I wish she’d die! I just don’t understand why God won’t take her. All she does is delay us money we need, take up space, and make more work for Miss Perfect and Dave, who have got to be so sick of having her as their daughter. Their whole marriage has included her in the picture. Like I said, though, I don’t understand why she’s still alive. People need her help and the only way she can help us is if she’s dead and left with no choice! Alive, she’s nothing but a selfish, burden and a punishment, particularly to us, Miss Perfect and Dave. I don’t feel the least bit sorry for Miss Perfect and Dave what with the assholes I’ve come to know them to be over the years and the way they’ve offended, used and insulted us, but I feel bad for my husband and I! The only benefit to her living on is that she’d accumulate more money. However, she could lose most of it if the end is such a long, drawn-out and expensive ordeal. That’s totally something God would do to us too; see that she’s got a lot of money at the very end and then cause her departure to cost a small fortune. And I still don’t think Carol and Steven should get anything either. Not with Carol’s parents being as loaded as they are.

I wish Tom had been an only child. I know part of the reason he was meant to have so many damn siblings is to keep him from getting much money in the end, but if he’d been the only one, we could’ve had her living with us and we’d never have had to struggle. Two’s company, three’s a crowd, yes, and I wouldn’t have liked her tagging along, but we’d never have been as bad off as we have been, and we’d be getting a ton more money in the end.

It’s going to hit 75º, way above normal, in a few days. Meanwhile, it’s just 8º in Springfield. There’s a global warming trend going on that’s warming up some places. Fortunately, we’re one of them, though it’s still cold enough. I miss being able to wear shorts and sleep in the nude!

TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2005
Bev really is one weird chick, if I heard what I think I heard and that was her having a conversation with herself while she vacuumed. I couldn’t hear that part until I placed my ear on the wall, but when I did, I could tell it was the same chatter I heard in the utility area. In the utility area, I had assumed she was talking on a phone, but maybe she wasn’t. I know there’s no one living there or else we’d have seen/heard evidence of it, and I could tell by the pitch and intonation that it was her and not her TV. Besides, how could you hear if you were talking on the phone while you vacuumed? It must be something she’s aware of and has control over because I’ve never heard her talk to herself outside. The only words I could make out were, “Oh yeah.” Either way, I’d still rather the nut than the wild welfare mom with the equally wild boyfriend and brat.

Later…

I saw Bev out hanging stuff and decided to go out and “get some fresh air.” The truth was I wanted to see if she’d mention moving in case we stay here. She was very friendly, as usual. She said she’ll be here for two years in May, but didn’t mention moving. I didn’t ask about leases/month to month cuz Tom said that wouldn’t be wise. If it got back to the property management, it could get ideas rolling in their minds for raising the rent and that wouldn’t be a good thing if we end up staying here. She asked when our lease was up and I told her and said we didn’t yet know if we were moving.

When I mentioned that we’d one day like to be back in a house, probably in northern California, she said to watch out for all the ex-cons in the Redding/Yreka area. She said they’re given bus tickets when they get out of prison and they go “as high as they can go.” Since they can’t cross the border into Oregon while on probation, they go to those places, she says, but I’m not scared.

She said this has been an extremely mild winter and that they still normally have snow at this time. She said there’d be snow as tall as her every winter as a kid, and once it even snowed in July. She also lived in one other place besides Washington and that’s Germany. She said it was “fun” and that she wouldn’t mind going back there as a civilian and not in the military.

I asked if it got hot in here in the summer and she said she opens her windows/doors in the morning, then closes them and her blinds a while later and it stays nice. Can’t do that in Massachusetts or Arizona! Too humid or too hot.

She said she bought headphones, but that her DVD player may get a little boomy every now and then. I told her she’s been wonderful. It’s true, too. An occasional cabinet, washer and vacuum are nothing. I hear more from next door than from her, but at least I know that if we’re stuck here, we shouldn’t have to worry about her or that she’ll move. Worst case scenario next door comes out and acts up, but I doubt they’ll be Phoenix-bad as long as they keep dogs and people under 12 out of the picture.

I just wish I were more psychic! See, if I could know we could go month to month, next door wouldn’t get too bad, and we were going to make it to Redding in about 6 months or the queen would die soon (that’ll be the day), then I’d say sure, let’s stay put. But if I’m right about the queen not going till ’09 or ’10, and if my two-more-years-in-K-Falls vibe is right, then I’m still all for getting a house. To ask for things to stay peaceful around here for another 2-4 years isn’t very reasonable at all.

Either way, for however long we’re here, it’s nice to know the one attached to us is quiet, respectful and considerate, yet doesn’t bug us. It’s nice compensation after what we’ve had to deal with in the past. I won’t blast her out on our last night here. Although I miss being in a house, not just to avoid others’ noise but also so I can be noisy if I want to crank up the tunes, I’m not as stressed out as I was about it. Like I said, I’d wipe out Mom and Crystal before Bev. So I guess you could say I’m learning to adapt to living with others to a degree, although it doesn’t make me want to socialize either.

I mentioned writing and we got into that. When I told her my main characters were gay so as to get out of an overly competitive mainstream, she thought that was a great idea since the world was pretty diverse anyway.

That’s pretty much all I remember. We only chatted for a few minutes.

What was funny about it was that if Mom and Crystal overheard me mention us both using headphones, they’d think I was the biggest liar. Earlier, when I noticed Bev’s car gone and Crystal’s door open, I blasted my stereo for a short while thinking it was about time they heard me, instead of it being the other way around as usual. I’ve never seen or heard of a family this tight. Makes me wonder just what in the world is really going on with these people.

When we went to Kmart the other day, I saw 4 cars at their places. One in each driveway and one on the street in front of each duplex. That’s a lot of cars for people who are always home. I’m back to not being sure when the hell they sleep. Judging by all the cars, there are probably more people living there than I thought, and some are up during the daytime while others are up all night. They may have their set times when they’re more likely to go hopping back and forth, but I hear doors at any given time of the day and night. So, although there’s a pattern, there’s not. Nothing definitive other than that they’re always there.

MONDAY, MARCH 7, 2005
Only 55 days to go. Supposedly. I think about it, then I say to myself, nah, God ain’t gonna let you out of here anytime soon. Then again, we’re talking about going from one rental to another and not buying a house. That we won’t be allowed to do anytime soon. Also, God wouldn’t exactly be keeping me trapped in a living nightmare if He did make sure we got stuck here unless he has Bev move out and the wrong people move in. It’s not exactly “noisy” here. Since Bev’s cut her bass and kept her animals out of the picture, there are just a few bumps and bangs I could do without and the stress of knowing they’re so damn close. Other than that, this is hardly like the Phoenix house or the NHA.

Despite the poverty and uncertainty going on in our lives, we took $10 yesterday and treated ourselves at Kmart to candy bars, a book, a sample can of Primo and hazelnut cream oil for burners. The only catch is that it stunk once I got it in my lamp ring. I don’t know why, but it had a foul smell mixed in that reminded me of a filthy bathroom. Sort of like how the bathrooms smelled in the rooms the Mexicans had been in when we went to check them out at Tina’s place.

SUNDAY, MARCH 6, 2005
If the warming trend brought Crystal and her mom outside, I didn’t know it. I slept long and well. However, the mid-60s isn’t all that warm. It’s when we get up into the 80s that things may change around here. Bev was hanging clothes as I was falling asleep, but she never wakes me up. Strangely enough, her door, which is attached to our place, never wakes me. I guess it’s all in the angle and positioning of the doors around here that makes the difference.

Not that it really matters much, but if I had the window on Crystal’s side open during the summer, they couldn’t see in here if they were out there. The bedroom windows aren’t as low as the others, for one, and also, because we’re on a hill, the window is even with their roof. Shasta Way isn’t quite as steep of a hill as the street where the triplex was, but it’s steep enough. When I look out front at the white house on the corner versus the yellow house on the other corner, the floor of the white house is even with the roof of the yellow house.

This morning we’re going to go to a bookstore just to get me out for a while. Besides, I only have one book left that I’m halfway through, so I could use more. Although my vibes say we may be in this town another two years, I agreed with Tom to take just a few of the more expensive books I’ve read to trade in with, rather than all the books I’ve got.

I’ve been in a creative, fix-it kind of mood, so I sewed on snaps that had loosened or fallen off of some of the doll’s clothing and things like that. I don’t mind sewing by hand since machines are so unreliable with threads and needles always breaking. I just wish I had my old eyesight back!

We’re going to download some patterns online so I can use some of my material for making new clothes for the Tonner dolls. Most of my material is from the queen, though, so it’s old-fashioned and boring.

Maybe Tom can help me with that arm of Jade’s that’s too long. I think I can make an incision in the cloth, pull out some batting, then have him snap the armature in half, pluck out a bead, then scrunch the arm back together much like they did with mine.

FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2005
I had a vision of myself being shot to death at age 42, had we stayed on the mountain and built a house there. In the vision, I’m sitting out front when a car, seemingly lost, pulls up. I think it’s people asking for directions or about available land in the area. Two guys get out. One pulls a gun on me before I know what’s happening. I quickly wrestle the gun away and fist his face just as his friend whips out his own gun and guns me down. I get shot in the back and the bullet goes through and pierces my heart.

Dead. Dead in one shot.

Instead, I’ve been fated to live a going-nowhere life filled with hardships and struggles. Filled with settlements and failures. Really, it’s not going to get much better than this. Knowing that even the simplest of wishes can’t come true if we’re the ones doing the wishing, like wishing Walmart would call, is no way to live. Anyone can work at Walmart. Anyone. Except for Tom S. Tom S who was no doubt discriminated against because of his age. It’s just as much of a loss to them as it is to us, though, because they just passed up a damn good worker! Tom says they still may call him because his application will remain active for 60 days, and he reminded me that MCX and that place that made T-shirts didn’t call right away. I know they won’t call because whatever’s up there that’s so against us knows we want them to. I’m just surprised they granted him an interview in the first place. They had no other way of finding out his age until they saw him because it’s against the law to ask a person’s age in an application, and while the lady never came out and asked, you’re talking about a guy who looks like he’s in his early 50s. Walmart has hired older people, but only for petty jobs like greeting customers at the door. This lady was talking about stocking merchandise, in which case they’d want some young stud for the job. As soon as Tom told me she told him not to call him or else they’d be bombarded with calls, I knew she was full of shit when she mentioned contacting him by the end of the week. In other words, what she really meant was, “Don’t call us because we won’t call you because we don’t want you working here.”

So now he has to find a part-time job to supplement the one he’s got because just as I predicted, there’s no higher-paying job for him. At least not here there isn’t. First we were trapped in California by the breakdown and now we’re trapped in Oregon! He can only work two jobs for so long, so it may be a very long time before we can save up enough money to move to Redding. I think we should take advantage of the garage we’ve got and kill ourselves. I really do. The sooner we do it, the sooner we’ll be cutting out of a lot of bullshit in life. I’m sick of how unfair life is, watching all kinds of people with money and things we can never have, going places we can never go, doing things we can never do. It really is a rich man’s world, and I’m tired of looking at life through the window of a locked door, wanting to open it and participate, yet knowing I never can. I’m tired of being screwed by fate, screwed by society. Tom and I did nothing to deserve the shit luck we’ve had other than making some poor decisions. He didn’t work as long and as hard as he has over the years just to get stuck renting a duplex. We both realize it’s better than being homeless, but we’ve been through this before and I can personally say for both of us this: when you don’t have much of a life to go with wherever you’re living, be it a nice place or not, then what’s the point? Just like there was no point in me keeping the beautiful apartment I had in Deerfield just to be broke and miserable, what’s the point of continuing on? What I didn’t know then that I know now is that life is never going to change, and when it does improve, it’s only for a short while. Tom is smart, yet naïvely optimistic when he says that in a couple of years, this will all be history. No, it won’t be. Money will be a problem for us as long as we live. The only difference is that sometimes it’ll be more of an issue than others.

I still have no vibes about moving, but I don’t need to. Again, I know we won’t move because I want to. Seldom does anything happen that I want to happen, and when it does, it’s not that fast. So I know without being psychic that we’ll either be here till November or next May. Maybe even longer. Besides, I don’t think he really wants to move. He’s just not going to come out and say so because he knows I do. That’s just Tom for you. He did this with the kid and he’s done it with other things. Putting his foot down and saying “no” to something only I want to do isn’t an easy thing for him. I’ve learned long ago to go by his actions and not by his words. On the bright side of staying here – nothing’s broken here, the truck hasn’t had any major problems, etc. Why? Because we belong here. If we did have money, then yes, God would go after the truck to keep us broke. Oh well. As I’ve said before, why not stay down when going up only means an inevitable fall back down to where we are now or worse?

Meanwhile, since I know he’s never going to want us to hop in the truck, shut the garage door behind us, and carbon monoxide ourselves out of this sorry world, the queen will live on in luxury and we’ll continue to struggle and I’ll keep on writing stories that no one will ever publish.

As I told him, if he just looks for a job with shit pay, no benefits, no raises, no nothing, he’ll get it for damn sure. Then again, I think he should quit trying to fight fate as far as getting us more money which we’re not supposed to have and just stay put. Trying to change fate only gets us in trouble.

Mom and daughter were both out back early in the evening. Something to do with the cats, I guess, because I heard the mother say, “Don’t bring him in the house, Crystal.” She sounds rather harsh compared to her soft-spoken yet high-pitched kid. I guess they won’t be that big a deal in the summer even if they are out back a lot. Meaning that because they’re not black-loud and because there’s no music, barking or ball-bouncing (I hope not!), throwing the fan on low should cancel them out so long as there’s no knife-tossing or little kids brought over and taken out back. I wish people in Oregon were like they are in Arizona cuz then they’d all hang in front. Hopefully, we won’t need to bother putting the AC in. You need it more in Massachusetts because it’s so much more humid there, even though the temps are pretty similar. I don’t think we’ll need heat at night like we did in the RV either. Then again, we may until summer gets well underway. I remember those cold nights down in the 40s and 50s. Still, being on a mountain in an RV doesn’t compare to a normal building in town.

Later…

The assholes next door woke me up, which of course, was coincidentally after 4 hours of sleep. And also, of course, there’s nothing I can do to wake them up in return. Oh well. If it wasn’t them, it’d be something else. God has to do something to wake me up every now and then if I’m not going to have to have an alarm clock doing that 5 days a week like most people. It’s like He doesn’t want me getting off that easy.

I wonder if Oregon is like back East where you get to go month to month after your initial lease is up? I doubt it. I think they’ll want us to renew our lease, but either way, I already know we’re not moving in May, so it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they don’t drive me too crazy when it warms up. I’ve never seen a family so damn devoted! No mother and daughter are this close! They don’t miss a day together. Some days I only hear one or two doors close softly. Other times they have a handful of slamming sprees where they go back and forth and back and forth. They almost remind me of the fucking freeloaders and their car doors! Why, God, why???

Anyway, I’m not even going to bother looking at rental ads or insisting Tom take us out to look at places. I knew God would never let us out of here in just 6 months. It took us 6 years to get out of the Phoenix house. We may not be here that long, but I always knew deep down, once we left the land, that I wouldn’t be returning to the sticks anytime soon, and I also know we won’t be returning to a place that stands independently anytime soon with no one just outside the window, so why fight it? As hard as it is on me, I must simply accept that this is where we live and make the best of it. It’s better than jail.

He started a new job at work stamping cables that they “say” may pay more, but I know better. The company’s in shit shape financially. They’re barely getting by. I’m sure it’s why God led him to that job in the first place. He talked about getting a part-time job so I could buy things, and that’s really sweet of him, but like I told him, don’t get a part-time job and give up more of your life just so I can do a little shopping. Shopping is not a high priority right now as much as all women love to shop. Besides, I have a block as far as mail orders go and who knows how long that will go on?

It’s going to be in the mid-60s next week. In other words, our electric bill will go down while my wake-up calls go up.

I just hate feeling like I’m in an air balloon, not knowing where it’s going to land or when. I only know the big things in life won’t change – the financial struggles, the wake-up calls no matter where we live, etc. (though sometimes will be better than others). I know this is an unrealistic fantasy, but I sometimes wish we could go away once or twice a year for 2 nights and 3 days just to get away from it all, even when things aren’t necessarily a nightmare. Just get away from the same old, same old. I’d want to go to places like Vegas, Reno, California, etc. All I know is that as long as our wonderful God won’t allow him to make more than minimum wage, we can’t save money. He’s all sure that we can make it to Redding in November, and I’m like – come on, will you! Get off your naïvely optimistic horse and be reasonable. Maybe we could do it in January if the queen pays up, but I don’t know about that. We just have to hope that wherever we go in the meantime, we don’t get hit with a 1-year lease or else we couldn’t leave till next May. Well, we could, we’d just lose the deposit or last month (whichever applies). Then again, I’m almost positive we’re not moving in May anyway, and if they won’t let us go month to month, which I also doubt, they should at least allow us another 6-month lease and not a year. It’s the houses that normally start off at a year.

I would suggest he apply at other department stores, but I know God would forbid them from hiring him for the same reasons Walmart won’t – opportunity, discounts, etc.

I was looking at the statistics in my native town of Longmeadow, and the average annual income there is $75,000! That’s money we’ll certainly never make. There’s virtually no crime there either. They have no murders or rapes per year, just a few assaults and auto thefts. Redding has about 55 rapes a year and there was even a murder in ’01. Phoenix, however, has about 200 murders a year and LA has nearly 700.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2005
I had a damn good idea. At least an idea that I think is damn good. We’ll have to see what Tom thinks about it when he gets up. Well, I would prefer for Walmart to hire Tom, even if it means 1-3 years more in this going-nowhere town. But here’s what I think we should do if they don’t. He said he’d be eligible for unemployment in April which I assume would be for 6 months (we’ll have to check to be sure). So he quits MCX in April and begins collecting. We don’t pay April’s rent (by the time they can evict us our lease will be up). We use April’s rent and the unemployment to U-Haul us to Redding. There, we go back to playing motel/storage till we can rent a house and he can get a job (a job in which Oregon couldn’t garnish his paychecks for that last month owed cuz we’d be in California). This time we’ll be smart and rent a motel room by the month and not by the day/week. The last thing I want to do is go back to playing motel/storage, but if the end result is a city with jobs for him, stores for me, a warmer climate, and a state I’ve always wanted to live in, why not? I think this is a damn good idea if Walmart blows him off (I don’t like the fact that they told him not to call them). It would be easier if Walmart called him, hired him and then transferred us, but when do we ever get to do things the easy way? So I say we should go for it and get out of here if they blow him off. He said he doesn’t mind living in California, and I know I belong there. My experiences there may not always be nice any more than they were nice in Arizona, but I look at it this way - I said life wouldn’t be happening for me and that I wouldn’t really get ahead in New England and then I said that about Oregon a few months after we got here and I was right. I also said just the opposite about Arizona and I was right, despite the few nightmares mixed in with all the fun wild, wild west adventures I had. So, the point is, if I’m saying good things will happen in California, why would I be wrong? Being psychic is like being a singer. I can get rusty, but I can never not do it at all. I may not be as detailed as I was in Arizona, but when it comes to overall things, big things, important things, I think I can be counted on!

I just wish we could stop “drifting.” All I want in life is a secure job for him and a secure place to live. A job that doesn’t treat him unfairly and a home I can comfortably live in without the neighbors butting into our peace. All else after that would be a bonus, be it dolls, incense, etc.

I don’t have any vibes right now about Walmart, moving or getting my book published (which has been delayed due to Tom’s not feeling well), so I guess I’d have to go by logic and say “no” to all because they’re things we want. I don’t think Tom cares if we move, but I’m sure that just like me, he’d like to work at Walmart and see my book get published. I’d like for him to work at Walmart and for us to move more than I’d like to see my book published because there’d be no real gain to getting it published. However, there’s opportunity in Walmart, and our moving could be a blessing in the end. I don’t know how quiet even a house would be if we got the wrong neighbors, but I’d rather the wrong neighbors in a house than in a duplex. Maybe Bev’s fated to move in June and trouble’s due to move in then, but if we split in May, we’d be getting out of having to be attached to it.

Later…

Tom pointed out that my idea isn’t so great because if we didn’t pay the last month, we would be losing the $450 deposit.

Oh well. I tried.

Not surprisingly, Walmart hasn’t called. You know we cannot have anything we want, no matter how reasonable or off the wall, so why bother submitting the manuscript or moving? We’ll just stay right here in this duplex till and if we can ever own anything. We can forget about California too, as Tom was right when he pointed out that I’ve had worse experiences in other states. It may be too cold here, but in Oregon, I never had to go to jail or a funny farm, never had a cigarette/pill addiction, never had to deal with my family, never wanted a kid or to be a singer, never felt deprived sexually cuz I’m content/used to being Tom’s friend, never had a cold/flu, never had a killer asthma attack, and never puked. If my only troubles in Oregon are being cold, broke, and 25 pounds overweight, why not stay in Oregon? Since I’m so sick of moving, the only way to stop doing that is to stay where I don’t want to be. If I feel this strongly that we’re meant for a lifetime of heavy-duty struggling and not having what we want, I don’t see how I could be wrong. I think Tom would be a fool to give up his job. Why trade in one minimum wage job that doesn’t do raises or normal insurance for another? And for one that may not be as secure. At least this job is secure. He’s getting these shitty-paying jobs because they’re what’s meant to be, so why don’t we just struggle along in this duplex till the queen dies and hope she cared enough to leave him something?

There is another option and that’s that since he’s not likely to get higher pay in K-Falls, we could lower the rent. This would mean cramming ourselves into that $300 studio and really being where I don’t want to be, but I’m such an old pro at struggling and being where I don’t want to be that I can’t imagine life any other way. Sometimes you just gotta accept things the way they are. Especially when you can’t control or change them in any way. So we should just make the best of what’s meant to be. It will probably take some stress off of us if we just relax and resign to fate.

I knew we wouldn’t be back to rural living anytime soon because lost things often take years to get back if I can ever get them back in the first place.

I was setting up Haiku and her arm fell off, so she’ll have to be redone properly just like Chris. They really fucked up on her! PG dolls are better put together than she was. I decided it was time to let the Palas know what shitty dolls they make. With all the times in my life that I’ve been forced to suppress myself, I look forward to any chance I get to speak out. I’m just itching to tell the queen just what I think of her and her perfect little daughter, but I don’t just in case they do continue to send birthday, anniversary and Christmas money, and just in case the bitch does have the heart to leave something to Tom if she can ever hurry up and die. Better yet, I don’t want to talk. I want to throttle the mother-fucker! This is someone who could care less if her own son dropped dead. In that sense, she’s worse than Doe and Art cuz they would’ve at least helped us out as often as we needed it. While Doe and Art may have other traits that are much worse, that’s really fucking cold when you don’t even give a damn if your kids live or die. Doe and Art may not have cared if I suffered at times, but they never wanted me to die. At least not to my knowledge they didn’t.

I was surprised to find myself down a whole 3 pounds. So it was mostly water bloating me out. I learned that tea is like water pills. It really flushes the water off quite well. I’ve been having backaches, though, so I’m back to doing more crunches, even if they push my gut out rather than pull it in taut. However, I did quit the extra 20-minute workout because I didn’t seem to benefit from it in any way. Now I’m just doing a half-hour a day, 4-6 days a week. Nothing ever changes with exercise other than that a bare minimum keeps me out of the 130s as long as I don’t eat 2000 or more calories a day. It also helps keep me strong, fit, flexible and agile and it gives me stamina too, so I can’t say there are no benefits to it at all. It just doesn’t make me lose weight/inches.

TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2005
Well, my weight’s up again, but what else is new? 4 pounds in less than a week without even trying.

Things aren’t so great now because he has what he thinks is a mild case of pneumonia. I don’t understand why my spells haven’t protected him against this. I’ve been blocking him from colds for the most part, so why not this? He said maybe my spells have been effective and that he’d be a lot worse off otherwise. Whatever the case may be, I just hope he doesn’t get so sick that he can’t work.

I have had a bit of tightness and congestion, but I don’t think it’s from any sort of illness. For one, my spells protect me. Secondly, I had a lifelong pneumonia shot. It’s probably just because of all the incense smoke and the mildew killer I sprayed, but either way, my lungs are never perfect.

I’m a little worried that Walmart is going to blow him off, but should it surprise me if they do? I mean, since when do Tom and Jodi get what they want? As I told Tom, if he can’t get a better-paying job and we can’t move in May, I think we’d be stupid to try to fight it. Fighting fate only makes things worse, so we’ll just keep on struggling along and deal with it. We’ve survived this long so we can keep on doing it if we have to and hope the queen dies a lot sooner than my vibes say.

I just hope this place stays as quiet as it has been for however long we’re here. Tom very faintly heard her vacuuming on Saturday which told us there wouldn’t be any animals the next day since you wouldn’t vacuum just to have the little animals come over and trash the place the next day. You know how destructive little kids are! I just hope that if we renew the lease here she doesn’t say, “Fuck it. If they’re not moving, I’m not keeping my grandkids from visiting anymore. They’ll just have to deal with the antics.”

Mary should get my letter in a couple of days, and the more I think about it, the more I think that no, I won’t hear from her. Especially since she preaches forgiveness to others. I don’t know why, but quite often, it’s those who preach forgiveness and things like anti-violence that tend to be pretty hypocritical. I also doubt I’ll hear from her because she’s too sensitive. She’s simply way too sensitive. The things I said in my letter (which was just expressing my opinions and not aimed at hurting her) had to hurt really bad. So bad I may as well have been there kicking the shit out of her.

I got a Bob letter today. He says he’s been sore since they took his bandages off after doing biopsies, and that’s pretty much it.

Paula won’t hear from me till I hear from her.

We’re going to have to pay the rent in chunks this month since the last electric bill killed us. Of course, that’s no problem with the office because they make $50 extra that way. Once again, I have to ask myself – is something up there using us so that these people can make extra money at our expense?

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Last updated July 17, 2024