December 2011 in 2010s

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2011
I feel worse today than I did yesterday. I’m congested, my allergies are going crazy, and I feel drained of energy. What the hell is wrong with me and when am I ever going to get over whatever it is I’ve got???

Yesterday I watched a movie and did some reading but I’m continuing to neglect my book. I doubt I’ll get to it today either. If I have to take Benadryl for these allergies it will knock me out for a while and make me groggy as hell. Then I’ll really be able to complain about not doing as much as I’d like to do. All I’m doing today is a couple of loads of laundry. I didn’t even work out. I’m too weak and I would only have to stop to blow my nose along the way. It’s enough of a struggle just to do this entry.

I seem to have some kind of fungus in my toenails that is causing a few of the nails to be thick and discolored. It doesn’t hurt or anything; it’s just a bit unsightly. I think you need a prescription to treat nail fungus, though, but I’m not sure. I’m uninsured so I can’t see a doctor.

The troll just peeked in on me. Hopefully, she and her mother will be too busy with the baby the troll’s sister just had to pick on me.

Dustin, Aly’s BF, tweeted that Aly pulled through surgery but is remaining in the hospital overnight.

The next few hours are going to be a bit tense and anxious. I just dread the thought of Tom coming home to say that he was told not to return to work next year, though I didn’t have any bad dreams. More than likely, though, if they’re going to lay him off, they wouldn’t tell him that at work. Instead, the temp company would call this evening to tell him the job was over. That’s what happened last time. Anyway, the first quarter of the year will be a bit stressful unless they hire him on permanently and I just can’t see that happening.

Some German author named Clarisse whom I’ve never heard of friended me on Facebook. She’s got books on Amazon, too. Yup, I’m a magnet for those German ladies, LOL.

Later…

Before I get into what’s going on, yes, I have gone public again with my journaling. I was determined to stay underground for a while since it seemed to be the only way to purge my life of those I’ve asked to leave me alone a million times, but then I said to myself, “Why am I the one running if I know I haven’t done anything wrong?” I may have said some things that pissed some people off and that they may have disagreed with, but I wasn’t making any threats and wasn’t doing anything wrong, so why should I run and hide simply because some people just won’t take “no” for an answer when they try to contact me with their incessant needs and pleas? “Don’t contact me” means just that. Period. And so does “I don’t want to hear from you anymore.” This means that if you’re one of the ones I’ve ordered to leave me alone, I’m just going to keep on blocking and reporting you no matter how many accounts you create to harass me. I can’t control what my friends do. That’s up to them. I can only tell you what I will do.

The year is not ending on a very good note, I’m afraid, although things could be much worse. The water tank is leaking and I’ve been forced to go Mac since I’m getting too many attacks and viruses in Windows. This may take some getting used to but it simply doesn’t have the holes in it that Windows has, and like it or not it’s a lot safer to use. Rarely does OSX crash or encounter the kinds of problems Windows has. I was having tons of problems and nothing we did seemed to fix them. I had a barrage of pop-ups, I was being redirected, and we also suspected my computer was being used as a proxy. Pretty scary when you never can know for sure just what kind of illegal activities one may be up to who uses other people’s computers to hide behind.

So I’m learning this whole new system and this whole new way of doing things, although some things are very similar. There are some things I like better about it and some things I don’t. I love how OSX doesn’t need to be shut down, but the colors are hideously ugly and there doesn’t seem to be any way to change them. I’m also using OpenOffice since I can’t use WinWord and I don’t know if I like it very much at all. It takes large documents forever to load and I’m not finding all the functions I’m used to having readily available.

OSX’s choice of text readers sounds drunk but the text reading program I usually use isn’t Mac-compatible.

Anyway, it sucks that we have to deal with yet another thing breaking around here. I know I’ve said it a million times already, but I am so sick of living in dumps! I really hope we get out of here next summer. I’m sick of being cramped in here and I’m sick of all the problems this place has had. I’m glad it won’t cost us anything to replace the tank (we had this happen to us in our house in Phoenix), but it will cost me sleep. My schedule is the worst it can be for this shit! And the hot water tank is wedged in between the bathroom and bedroom so I’ll hear Jesse just fine when he comes down in the morning to see how bad the leak is and what he can do about it till he can get a new tank on Tuesday.

As for this cold; I feel like I’m never going to shake it. :(

The good news is that Tom’s going back to work next year and they expect to be very busy, too. This much is a huge relief to know.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2011
The Google comment thing appears to not have had anything to do with me after all. I went back and re-read it and the troll was actually talking to someone else about something that had nothing to do with me.

She told Aly that while she was blocked from Thoughts on her PC, she could still get in on her laptop, so she’s been harassing her that way. She found some other Facebook account Aly had set up just for her cousins, and she’s sending all kinds of messages and requests, being the needy, obsessive desperado that she is. Aly said she’s already sorry she added her there and may have to block her. Also, the troll couldn’t keep a secret to save her life, so if the mother were really plotting any sort of legal vengeance on me, she’d have been quick to brag about it. Yeah, I’m not worried about it. I’m not going to let people like that scare me despite my always being paranoid about the law after what happened to me in Arizona, just like I’m always paranoid about going broke after what happened to us since being here in Cali. But I’m also not going to let them stress me out again either and so that’s why my Thoughts blog is set to friends only.

Just when I thought she was going to go a whole day without peeking in on me, she spent over an hour on my profile page not too long ago (listening to my mixpod player?). That’s all she can see, though, since my status updates and posts are friends only.

I still don’t believe her when she told Aly that mollysmadre wasn’t her mother but there were some comments on her profile from mollysmadre that she deleted and she’s no longer mollysmadre’s friend. As long as they continue to leave me alone is all that really matters! She did admit to Aly today, though, that her mother has left comments on my blog before. This would be when she and her so-called lawyer friends harassed me on MyOpera.

The troll is continuing to pester Dani and Dee on Thoughts, and even posted her number on Dani’s profile for all the world to see begging her and anyone else to call her.

Aly’s having both breasts removed tomorrow, poor girl. I just hope this will be the end of her cancer!

Andy’s sad tonight because Stevie Nicks’ mother, Barbara, died today at age 84. He doesn’t know the particulars yet, but he’s sad because they became friends and she eventually set him up to meet Stevie a few times when he lived in Arizona.

Paula left a text-to-landline message that said: Send my perfume and the (inaudible).

Well, the greedy bitch is just going to have to wait! :)

Jesse was amazingly quiet today, and I’m still not 100% up to par yet. :( But I’m getting there. I was able to do a light workout, though most might not consider 150 crunches, plus the arm work I did, plus the running/walking as “light.” But the point is that it didn’t even last for 30 minutes when I usually work out a total of 45 minutes.

Hopefully, soon enough I’ll be back in the land of the living and able to catch up on my current story, reading, and also taking advantage of my month as an Amazon Prime member, though they really don’t have that many good movies.

I just can’t shake this rundown feeling. Even Tom’s still a little congested and rundown and he got sick a week before I did. I think I’m going to have to take it easy for the rest of the night.

For those of you interested in buying my second book but who don’t have Kindles, no problem. In a few months, it will be available on Smashwords, now that I know my good friend and one of my top fans, Monica, doesn’t have a Kindle. But I have to wait 90 days. I gave Amazon exclusive rights to it for 90 days.

I got the beauty box I won. It’s got an array of organic products including perfume, facial masks, soaps, nail polish, and laundry detergent. I polished my nails and I really like the color. It’s a very bold shade of blue.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2011
Ok, here’s the latest and hopefully the END of the troll saga. As I’ve said before, giving Molly a chance was the dumbest thing and it totally backfired on me. I thought that maybe if I just acknowledged her instead of being so quick to push her away or ignore her she wouldn’t be such a pest that way. But I was wrong. She was not only the pest from hell with all her 10 million demands, pleas and shit like that, but she can’t handle rejection very well at all. She turned on me instead of just respecting my wishes not to have anything more to do with each other, and just like she once did on MyOpera, she got her mother and possibly a friend to help gang up on me on Thoughts with all kinds of comments, insults and other childish shit. Personally, I don’t care if someone’s trashing and bashing me in their blog. It’s their blog. It’s when they take it on over to my blog and leave unwanted comments that I draw the line.

Well, I had blocked the 4 or 5 accounts I knew her to have but then her mother joined and left a comment, which was promptly deleted as soon as they saw I was online. I blocked her mother on Facebook after sending a message months ago basically shaming her for making excuses for her daughter and for being such an enabler of her online behavior. The comment she left me last night agreed that Molly needed to leave me and my friends alone, but that she’d like me to contact her on Facebook because she had some “information” for me. Oh, and don’t insult her intelligence again because she’s got a degree in mathematics, and 14-year-olds talk like I do in Texas (I had commented that she wasn’t very bright for a teacher in the message I sent her months ago since she hadn’t caught on to all her darling daughter was up to).

I didn’t contact her mother, of course, as there’s nothing to say. And perhaps I’m just being paranoid but that so-called information has me a bit worried. Especially since I saw Molly had written that she Googled but didn’t find anything. Then there were two comments in regards to that from the mother, both of which were deleted. I hope my fears are unfounded but I worry the “information” had to do with court-related stuff or maybe to rub in my past brushes with the law, guilty or not.

Another strange thing is that I sold a copy of my book just hours after it was published. A coverless copy of my book, that is. We only just now got the cover problem resolved. While I’m thrilled to make a sale, especially so fast, I just couldn’t help but wonder if it was troll-related and if they plan to bash the book. Or worse, leave nasty and unrelated comments/links.

Even though I know I didn’t do a damn thing wrong (Molly wrote post after post bashing me and half a dozen other people, though she ran and deleted them when she got Mommy involved), I always fear being thrown into another legal nightmare after what I already went through down in Arizona. Life is unfair. God is unfair. These things really do happen where the perps find ways to legally victimize their victims after victimizing them in other ways. I should know. They could only make up and falsify what they don’t actually legally have, and even though it seems highly unlikely, I still worry about these things.

Molly and her people haven’t bothered me today, but Kim was run off the site too, fed up with the troll’s stalking and ugliness. But then she went back and left a post wishing Molly the best in life but to please let her and her friends be. She feels what Andy feels in that she shouldn’t let one bad apple spoil things for her. That may sound like good advice and be easy to say, but sometimes it’s not that easy when the person is so damn determined and obsessive. She keeps creating new accounts (and sometimes her friends and mother do too) to get at me faster than I can block them. So yeah, sometimes one bad apple is all it takes to really spoil things and take the fun out of things. Some people simply refuse to coexist peacefully with others and allow others to ignore them.

Molly’s swearing to Aly that was NOT her mother who contacted me and wondered if it could be a friend, but I think it was the mother. We know Molly’s a pathological liar, and I can tell by the way it was written and by the things she said that it’s almost certainly her. I’m hoping that because the troll didn’t mention any lawsuits or anything it means I have nothing to worry about. Aly said there was desperation in her tone in her message.

So there I was determined to quit all public blogging save for email and a select group on Facebook when I got the sweetest message from a woman named Dani on Thoughts who has also been pestered for over a year by this obsessive, needy pest turned monster when rejected, complimenting my writing and urging me not to let her run me off. But I was still determined to go when yet another woman named Dee said the same thing and how she enjoyed reading my posts and all that. Really, I am beyond flattered that some people really seem to like my writing. :)

Creating a new account under a different name was suggested to me, but it wouldn’t work. The troll would find it. That’s what stalkers do. The others have tried that and it didn’t work for them. She found them in no time. And so I decided that as a compromise I’d make my blog friends only. I know Andy probably wouldn’t want to register and friend me there so I’m emailing him my entries.

Aly also said Molly’s now blocked from Thoughts and is blogging on Xanga. I’ve heard of it but never cared for it. This much might actually be true cuz she hasn’t viewed me in a whopping 10 hours. I realize, though, that she’s not going to go away on her own for more than a few days to a week, and that after a year and a half, the only way to get her to go away is if I go away. This is why I have to keep things private or at least friends only for a good long while. I’m just sick of the drama. As I said, sometimes one is all it takes to ruin an otherwise good thing. It’s like trying to eat your favorite meal at a restaurant with a kid screaming in the next booth or with tons of flies buzzing around your head. If that one thorn is sharp enough, it’s really hard to concentrate on enjoying the rose.

So other than having an overhaul in pop-ups I can’t seem to get rid of, and then the runs which knocked me down 4½ pounds in just one day along with a loss of appetite, life is good as long as I don’t have to hear any more from Molly and her associates. I’m finally getting over my illness. I can’t believe how sick I got! It’s been years since I was that sick, though I could still function for the most part. My head is finally draining and I coughed up some shit from my lungs. It didn’t taste all that great but it was good to get it up. I slept horribly, though, due to all the stress the troll and company put on me, so hopefully I’ll sleep better next time around.

But why me? If the mother really is after me, why me? Others have written similar things about her precious daughter in their own blogs.

Anyway, sometimes I think of how Tom said the other day, “I don’t have any friends. I’m safe,” when I was telling him about the latest in online drama, and sometimes I envy him. But it’s a little late for me to turn back now. I can keep from making more friends (or as many), but I’m certainly not going to dump the ones I have. But yeah, I’d rather play it a little safer from here on out even if it might slow book sales down a bit.

Speaking of friends, I got a friend request from one of Nane’s friends in Leipzig, Germany, Christiane. I thought I sent her a request months ago but she decided not to accept it and so I was confused to get one today. I messaged her about it, and she said she sent me one but didn’t see me on her list. So I accepted the request she sent me and Christiane is now on my list. She’s tall and dark but with light eyes. She’s got a great body and appears to be around Nane’s age. She’s not outstanding looking but she is attractive. And guess who’s staying away? Yeah, me. :) Personally, I don’t know anything about her or what her orientation may be. She doesn’t look lesbian and she does have a son, so I guess that leaves either bi or straight. It doesn’t matter, though, as I learned my lesson from Nane as far as staying away from the cyber girlfriend thing goes. She knows Nane and I “broke up,” too, LOL.

I’m surprised she doesn’t have any pictures of her and Nane in any of her albums. They seem to be close, longtime friends.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2011
Been up for an hour and a half and amazingly I haven’t heard from Jesse yet, or his dogs. If someone were here and willing to bet I’d hear from him by 2:00, I’d gladly go along with it, though.

My book, A Rainbow in Munich, is now available for sale (for free for 90 days to Amazon Prime members), but I’m having issues with the cover displaying. Therefore I’ll hold off on sharing the link till it’s resolved.

Uh-oh, guess who’s coming up the drive right now in his loud obnoxious truck? That didn’t take long. I’m sure the motorcycle will be next.

The hurt and anger I’ve felt towards Nane for coldly dumping me are beginning to ebb. As any normal human being with any ounce of self-respect would do, I am focusing on those who do care about me and not those I wish had cared but didn’t. Maliheh is one of those people. She’s in Hawaii now but says that even though she’s a little late in wishing some folks a Merry Christmas, and even though she’s busy, she should be home in a few days and we’ll catch up then. I told her I’d be up for New Year’s Eve and if she doesn’t have any other plans that night, maybe we can hang out together online like last year.

I had a dream that I hope wasn’t a warning of an impending layoff for Tom. It’s too soon for him to be laid off now. We’d be totally screwed. Even he admitted that it would be an issue if he were laid off before mid-January. But with my accuracy rate for bad dreams coming true, it’s got me a little alarmed. In the dream, I woke up at what seemed to be 12:30 in the afternoon. I noticed through the living room blinds that his car was here and heard movement at his desk. I peered around the corner and saw him playing one of his car racing games. “Why are you home?” I asked. “Did they lay you off?” but I woke up before he could answer.

I just hope there’s nothing to worry about for real! The dream didn’t leave me with the bad feeling the “riot” dream left me with, but it’s still unnerving when someone like me has these dreams. I know I could pray and pray to God not to let it happen, but if God wants to beat us over the head with money yet again, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Fate is fate and we can only do so much to alter it as much as some folks would rather believe otherwise.

I feel better physically, though still a bit out of sorts. I don’t understand why I got so sick. First time in years. But I shouldn’t get any worse at this point. I should be totally over it in a day or two. Even though I doubt I could run much, I’m going to make myself at least walk on the treadmill so I don’t start falling out of shape. I’ve taken too many days off as it is and my weight is starting to get out of hand again.

The drama queen is bitching about her health. Well, if she had just gone and gotten a deadly disease instead like she should have, she wouldn’t be alive to be in pain now, would she?

MONDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2011
This isn’t going to be much of an entry because I’m still pretty sick. Wish I knew what the hell was wrong with me but I guess it’s the same flu Tom had. Last night and most of today were the worst. My throat became scratchy last night to the point that I couldn’t stop coughing because I kept feeling like I had a tickle in my throat. So I took some nighttime cold/flu medicine though I didn’t sleep well. I kept waking up a lot. I finally dragged my ass out of bed around 11am but felt like my head was under serious pressure and I felt so run down. Nonetheless, I managed to go out today for a while. Picked up some KFC and spent most of the day in bed as Tom rid my PC of a virus that somehow managed to weasel its way in.

What else…? I think that’s it. No other events stand out in my mind since I last wrote other than Jesse’s truck and motorcycle, and that ever-present chainsaw buzzing away somewhere in back.

I’m getting back into bed. Maybe I’ll write more tomorrow.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2011
Finished a book on my Kindle last night and crashed around 1am. At that time my throat was “stable,” so to speak. I awoke at 4am with cramps and found them to be even worse, but the ibuprofen I took for my cramps also killed the inflammation in my throat and I woke up as good as new just like I said I would. :)

In that last hour or so before I fell asleep my near-future and long-term fears came to haunt me and I had a little “Nane attack,” too. I miss her and our chats, but she’s the one who dumped me and I reminded myself that and that anyone who doesn’t believe in me doesn’t deserve a place in my life anyway. Anytime you’re the only one who’s sending cards and messages and asking how the person is while getting nothing in return is when the cold hard truth becomes obvious enough. She’d only dump me again if I was dumb enough to forgive her anyway, but Nane’s not the type to go begging for forgiveness or to realize when she’s done wrong in the first place. In her mind, she did absolutely nothing wrong by toying with me, then ignoring me for two months, and then dumping me cuz she didn’t believe I was really having the rough time I said I was having. But while one can only insist so many times that they weren’t just “out for attention,” they can’t make them believe it. It’s got to be up to them what they want to believe. I still think, though, that she knew me well enough to know the truth and that she only said I was playing with her feelings because that’s exactly what she was doing to me. Some people are just hypocritical like that.

It isn’t just what happened with Nane that bothers me, but the same old continuing trend I’ve seen going on with me basically all my life, and that’s the non-mutuality. I hate to sound mean, judgmental and stereotypical, but it really does seem that the uglier and the crazier they are, the more they like me while the so-called “stable” and better-looking ones look down on me and see me as this inferior being. I’m not saying every hottie is a bitch or that every ugly person is nice to me. I’ve dealt with some mean, ugly bitches in life just like I’ve met a few kind hotties where the attraction was totally mutual. But for the most part, it’s not. The ugly ones are the ones that are nice, the crazy ones are the ones I get the most attention from, and the hotties don’t want to know I exist. Or at least not most of the time. The troll, who’s both ugly and crazy, has been looking for me on and off all day despite it being Christmas and having her family and extended family over visiting. Yesterday she spent over 3 hours looking for me over a 12-hour period. I wouldn’t want this much attention from even the kindest, hottest chick on earth, but if I must have it anyway, why can’t it be from someone who’s sweet and hot to make it a little more worth it? Why must it be from a psycho who looks unkempt, disheveled and drunk in most of her photos?

But I don’t know that I want to go back to public journaling anytime soon. I know I will sooner or later and that I should just do my best to ignore her and promote my books, but I like the idea of keeping her in the dark for a while as far as what I’m writing about these days (and she’s not going to like it when she finds out just what that is). Eventually, though, I’ll probably go back to Thoughts, MyOpera and MD. The more places I post the links, the better.

Today we did the cover design (very pretty) for A Rainbow in Munich and tomorrow we’ll be launching it to submissions. It will take a few days to either be accepted or rejected. They have a process they go through where they check for plagiarism, then they go over the book if not to read it word for word then to at least get a general idea of the plot and any obvious spelling/grammatical errors that may be present.

The cover shows a picture of a rainbow against a cloudy sky and is much brighter and easier to see than my first book cover, but hey, we were just learning and when you’re self-published you have to do most of the work yourself if you don’t want the hassles and pressures of contracts or any of that fun shit.

I have ideas for Renting Ginny which will be the third one I’ll submit, but I must remember not to make it too feminine in appearance since most of my readers will be lesbians who don’t usually like anything overly feminine. So, no colors like pink, no long hair, no makeup, no heels, no curvy bodies.

Anyway, back to the non-mutuality bitchfest. I know a lot of the rejection I used to get and would continue to get from most lesbians in general if I were as sociable as I once was, was due to my femininity and my height. Or lack of it, I should say, but especially my femininity. People see my pictures online and I think that after expecting to see some tomboyish-looking chick they’re like – WTF? Is this some kind of joke? But what you see is what you get and the fact that I continue to attract mostly uglies is kinda insulting if you ask me. It just makes me feel like I’m an ugly dog myself. I’m no beauty queen, I never wanted to be, and I have no intentions of actually getting together with anyone. But it doesn’t stop me from wondering about myself at times. Most people tend to go for what they feel are their “equals,” sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously. So does this mean that the uglies see me as ugly, too? Just wondering about that one. Did Nane truly see me as “not pretty enough” even though she often complimented my photos? Again, I really wonder about these things and what makes me such a magnet for the uglies as harsh and as cruel as it may sound as I know we can’t usually help our looks for the most part.

Even after all these years I still ask why. Why did God feel I didn’t deserve to act on my lusty fantasies like a normal human being? Why did He deny me that in life? I think I deserved to act out my fantasies the same as anyone else, but apparently something up there thought otherwise. Yet settling never worked for me. I tried it with Ron and then with Al and then with Brenda, but I just couldn’t get into sex with someone I wasn’t attracted to. I was certainly more attracted to Brenda than I was to Ron and Al, but it was nothing like my attraction has been to people like Nane, Barbara, Teddy Bear, Maliheh, Rosemarie, etc. I was attracted to my own husband too, and ever since we met I have never looked back despite the crushes mixed in, nor could I ever imagine life without the guy. He’s anything but the dumb, crazy and mixed-up kind of person I usually attract. But it’s still not the same if that makes any sense. I just was never as hot for him on the outside as I always was/am on the inside. I have always wished I could be one of those with a looks-don’t-matter attitude. Sorry, but I just can’t get it on with someone simply because they may be nice as hell any more than I could eat liver for dinner every night simply because it’s good for me. We try to eat what we like, listen to the kinds of music we like, watch the kinds of movies we like, and it seems that way with those we’re intimate with, too. If you’re just a friend of mine I don’t care what the hell you look like. But I, like most people, just can’t get into the idea of sex with a “sweetie” if there’s no lust involved. If anything I think lust is more important to most people than personality, right or wrong. Even I’ve had one-nighters with people who made it clear to me that they were attracted to me but didn’t think I was “right” for them.

Well, let’s put it this way…if I ever again hear another woman tell me she’s hot for me or has feelings for me, I’ll scream, for chances are she’ll be ugly, crazy or both. Maybe someday this recurring “coincidence” won’t bother me so much. After all, Nane did like me for a while, Christine is anything but ugly or crazy and neither is my husband. Also, the attraction between Teddy Bear and I was definitely mutual and she wasn’t crazy, so there are 4 people right there, plus a few guys I can think of that liked me that weren’t so bad-looking themselves. :) So even though it’s a rare occurrence, even ugly little Jodi S can occasionally catch the eye of someone who caught hers. :) Amazing, ain’t it? The only problem is that nothing ever actually happened with these people. It never will either. And strangely enough, I don’t want anything to happen with them at the same time I think, aw, too bad nothing can ever come of it. Is this normal? Or am I just as crazy as the crazies I often attract? Is it normal to have these mixed emotions and these mixed desires?

As for my short and long-term fears, doubts and worries…they were the usual. Will we just end up in the same old poverty trap we’ve been trying to escape on and off since coming to this damn state in just a matter of months or even weeks? And who will care for us when we’re old and unable to fend for ourselves? I don’t want to grow old alone and die alone, but unless I’m suddenly killed in a car accident or something like that along the way, that’s what’s bound to happen to a woman whose husband is 8 years older and as long as women continue to live an average of 10 years longer than men.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2011
Believe it or not, I’m sick today. But I’m determined to wake up as good as new tomorrow, never knowing that today I awoke with a scratchy throat and that rundown and kind of off feeling that goes with colds. I don’t know why the two cups of coffee I had didn’t kill my sore throat, but the throat lozenge and hot tea I had Tom get me helped it quite a bit. It makes me love him and appreciate him all the more, too. When I was alone I had to fend for myself and go out either on foot or by bus to get cold remedies and that could be hard, especially at night or when I lived in snowy places. So it’s nice to have someone love me enough to go out and get what I need, and I know he would do it by foot or bus in two feet of snow if he had to. It was nice, however, that he could do it in the convenience of a car with no snow or bitter cold.

I don’t know how I got whatever it is I’ve got. It’s been too long to say I got it from Tom and his symptoms were totally different. His started with a stuffy head like an allergy attack, then turned to a cough. Because the worst of it only lasted 72 hours is why he thinks it was the flu and not a cold. He still has a bit of a cough, though. So far I haven’t been congested or coughing and I don’t intend to start either.

Work went well for Tom on Friday, but they were busy and shorthanded. We could be insured as soon as January, believe it or not, but that’s only if they don’t let him go and we feel like paying $40 a month. It would be nice to get to an ear doctor who can deal with phony canals and all that, but that’s a lot to pay for people who are otherwise healthy. If we paid a little more I could even go to a dentist, but IDK. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

I was in Florida again in my dreams but I was only visiting. I don’t think this particular dream meant anything. It didn’t leave me with one of those “feelings” and Tom and I don’t visit people even if we had the time and money. But in the dream, I was standing on the beach looking at the palm trees and watching a giant wave crash upon some rocks that extended out into the ocean. I vowed silently to myself to get back there to live someday.

Jesse got on my nerves yesterday with the truck, the motorcycle and some banging, and by the time I was up barely 4 hours today, I’d already heard from him 4 times. I am like, God please, please rain this bastard off his fucking motorcycle and his dirt bike and his ATV, please! I’d still have to hear the truck and some bulldozing as the rain tore up the drive, but if it could just rain during the day for once that would eliminate everything else. beats head Oh, that little wittle cock.

I really hope to try out an adult community someday, though I suppose you can’t compare one to all of them. My first concern is excessive barking, then screaming kids visiting too often, but I still can’t imagine dogs being allowed to live outdoors unattended every day and night in an adult community any more than I can imagine 5-hour basketball games breaking out every weekend and maybe sometimes during the week, too. But like I said, if that’s the case, back to an old shitbox in the country we go.

Today we’re not doing any book prepping. All we did was upgrade my version of Firefox and we dumped my Yahoo! toolbar because I was sick of them redirecting me to their search page. We’re spending most of the day just resting up and I’m indulging in chocolate and pistachio nuts.

The drought is still causing the inside temp to get close to 80º in the afternoons and so we opened windows for a little while to air the place out. I’m not burning any incense today either.

Still journaling mostly privately for now just for my closest friends. I just really need a break from stalking trolls that just won’t go the fuck away no matter what I try to say or do. Molly is one seriously unstable motherfucker. Just minutes after telling me she’s “my friend no matter what” she deleted me from her friend list and she’s just too up, down, left, right and totally insane for me. I’ve never met or even heard of someone with such erratic mood swings before or with such conflicting and confusing thoughts and emotions. One minute she’s calm, the next she’s a raving lunatic. She loves her family, she hates her family. She misses Alison and her exes, she’s better off without them, and back and forth and back and forth. Her entourage of shrinks, therapists and medications are obviously completely worthless to her and again I have to wonder just how she’s managed to stay out of jail. I think that’s because she’s so lacking in intelligence. Usually, it’s those who are too smart for their own good that end up in jail. The smarter you are, the more creative these types of stalkers and nutjobs can be, and those are the ones that usually turn dangerous. But Molly can’t even drive, so she has no means of jumping in a car and driving to where Alison is so she can graduate from online stalking to in-person stalking, then maybe try to harm her when she can’t get her way in the end.

But she belongs locked up somewhere – a funny farm if not a jail – and she definitely should be forbidden from going online unless she has serious supervision.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2011
I wasn’t going to do an entry today but then decided to. Can’t promise much over the 3-day weekend, though, as that’s when we’ll be busy prepping manuscripts for submissions. Even though Amazon’s standards aren’t as high as a traditional publisher’s, and even though I already got published with them, I always worry they’ll find a reason to reject anything else I submit. So I’m doing my best to make sure the format and everything are as they should be to meet their submission guidelines and all that.

Eileen started reading Renting Ginny and said she was “hooked,” LOL. She asked if she could get it on her Kindle and I told her we were planning to submit my last two books for publication soon. I just didn’t think she’d want to have to buy a copy being a friend and all that, LOL.

So far it does seem that Renting Ginny just may be my best book based on the feedback it’s received so far. Even I thought it came out ok and I’m my worst critic.

Thought I heard my pest of a landlord come down (probably to get something from his shit pile) while I was in the shower. What’s he gonna do, come down every week? I can’t wait to get away from this guy! I really hope we do make it out of here next year. I sooo miss living in a real house with adequate space. Even if this place turned into a spacious, modern house, I’m sick of living with this guy and his dogs!

While the dogs go crazy when left alone at night at any time of year, this is the time of year they go crazy when left alone in the daytime, and like most people, Jesse’s in and out several times a day.

Most people have company anywhere from several times a week to several times a day, so yeah, I’m a little worried that this may be annoying to have to deal with in a senior community, and I still worry dogs won’t be allowed indoors because dogs aren’t pets in the west. I hope they have a rule there, however, where people can get them as household pets only and that they adhere to these rules. Lastly, there are the car stereos to worry about. But the only way we’re going to know if adult communities really are quieter than the mainstream is to actually spend some time in one. If it’s just as noisy as any old part of the city and rowdy kids are visiting every day, back to some little old shitbox in the country we go. I hope it really is quiet, though, because that’s the only way to take advantage of conveniences like cable, regular trash pick-up, mail delivered to your door, etc., without going back to the city with the freeloaders, college kids, etc. As I’ve learned, if we live anyplace where we can have the worst neighbors on earth, we will. We’ve had it all – welfare bums, Mormons with a million kids, home renovation freaks, drummers, partiers…

I have been utterly famished for the last few days. Nothing I eat satisfies me. I’m always, always hungry. I suppose some is connected to my cycle, but it seems a bit extreme even for that. So much so that I am seriously contemplating cutting my lips or tongue to cut back my eating. I’m tired of working out just to yo-yo back and forth within the same 5-pound weight range. All it does is keep me in good shape. This is better than nothing but I need to “transfer” the hunger to pain. I figure that if I’m in enough pain I won’t feel the hunger. Pain is easier for me to live with than hunger as I’m a little more used to that. But it’s hard to concentrate for long with this constant hunger always gnawing at me. I don’t understand just what the hell is making me so hungry in the first place. I know we’re supposed to be a little heavy when we’re older and I guess my body wouldn’t be so determined to hang onto the weight if it didn’t feel it needed it, but I just wish there was something I could do about it without going to such extremes. I simply can’t deal with the hunger and the fatigue that goes with it. But I can’t puke up my main meals either. I have tried and tried to coax myself into doing that but being as disgusted as I am by the idea I just can’t do it. Yet I have to diet and exercise somewhat because I’m not like most people in that not dieting means they just don’t lose weight. For me not dieting means I’ll gain indefinitely. Tom thinks I’d eventually stop gaining, but I disagree. I think that as long as I take in more calories than I burn on a regular basis, I will continue to gain an average of 1 pound every 10 days till the day I die. Well, I certainly don’t want that any more than I want to be hungry!

I don’t want to cut my lips because that’d be visible and I wouldn’t want people getting the wrong idea and thinking Tom did it. I’m gonna have to take a razor and slit my tongue. The thought of it makes me cringe and I don’t think I’m tough enough to muster up the courage to do it, but let’s see this pig stuff herself then.

Still getting a strange wave of spam. Still get the usual sex calls and lotto scams, but most of those get filtered out. This new round of shit is mostly from real sites as if someone signed me up for all these newsletters or something, and so they’re not hitting my spam box. I’m getting over 100 a day between both.

Irene just messaged me saying that Nane told her about what happened with us (yeah, I figured she would and that’s ok), and Irene said she wondered if I was in love with Nane and said I seemed like an extreme person to her though she cares about me very much and thinks of me a lot. She also said she’s had to see a therapist in the past and thinks I’m lonely and that therapy would be good for me, LOL. And with what insurance? LOL, yeah, I can see where one would mistake the lustless for the lonely, but a therapist couldn’t have given Tom a job or stopped the Unemployment people from cutting our checks like they did. Nor did I love Nane, though I did have feelings for her.

I can also see where due to not knowing me well and due to the language differences, one who might be facing starvation in the streets just might be seen as “extreme” and in need of therapy. But I also don’t feel bad, guilty or ashamed for the way being faced with that possibility like I was a few months ago made me feel and react. Anyone would be a basket case that was in that situation. Anyone. My only regret is not keeping my mouth shut about it. But ever since he found work and our survival hasn’t been on the line, all has been fine. Not perfect, but fine. I never expected to have a perfect life and be in a perfect mood every day, but since then I haven’t been depressed or anxious. I know all good things come to an end and that sooner or later God will once again be getting His kicks at watching us suffer, but until then I have no reason to frown or think of suicide. Ok, so like most people I’m frustrated with my weight and life’s everyday little problems – pesky landlords, leaky pipes, cold weather, etc., but my problems of today don’t even come close to being as extreme as they were a few months ago.

I really can see where Irene would’ve gotten the wrong idea about me. I disagree with Nane and how she said virtual friendships can’t work, but I also understand that online you can’t see expressions and you can’t hear tones. Therefore, it’s easy to misread someone you don’t know well and it’s not like Irene and I have communicated all that much.

Nane seems even less forgiving than I am, so I don’t think she’ll contact me, but as I told Irene (knowing she’d tell Nane) I am at the point now where I will not take her back as a friend. It’s too late for that. In fact, if I hear her name one more time today I think I just might scream. Then Irene can really think I could use some therapy.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2011
I have decided to take a break from public blogging for a while. Until and if I decide to return to it only 6 people will read my journal for now. Maliheh will be emailed a copy, Andy will get a copy on Formspring which is now protected along with my Twitter account, and in a customized note on Facebook, Alison, Kim, Christine and Mitch will get a copy as well.

I’ve decided on semi-private blogging for two reasons. One is that I was actually starting to get sick of the social scene altogether and so many people coming at me so often with comments and questions and whatnot. I simply didn’t think my writing would draw that much attention when I first went public in 2008. But I’ve been writing publicly since then and tracking since 2010, both of which have lost their excitement as it’s no longer anything new to me. I will still be out and about in public to help promote my books, but that’s about it for now. I’m not saying it’s going to be like this forever or for a set amount of time. I, like most writers, am just acting on a whim and how I feel at the present moment. And right now I feel like sharing only with my closest friends.

It was Molly who compounded and basically locked in my desire to leave the public spotlight for a while. No, she hasn’t done anything wrong by way of making threats or anything like that; she’s just driving me crazy. I’m not going to block her, delete my blogs or disallow comments. I only went private on Formspring and Twitter. Everything else is just gonna sit there. I left a note there saying that I was sick of public blogging and was going to take a break for a while. That way people know what’s going on and won’t be worried.

I considered blocking Molly since “giving her a chance” seems to be a mistake, but that may piss her off into being a much bigger pest than she has been. Yes, being a pest who simply refuses to listen (or does she just not get it?) may be her worst fault, but I’m just sick of her never-ending presence that just never goes away. And now that we’re “friends” I don’t expect to even get so much as the occasional few days to a week off I used to get without her hovering over my shoulder.

I’m untracked on MyOpera and other sites, but my Thoughts tracker is still sitting there watching to see who comes around during my absence. I wouldn’t be surprised to get a message every hour from the troll asking where I am. Well, that mixed in with her repeated requests for “help” with those of her former friends who still don’t want to bother with her on account of her moods, lies, pushiness and delusions.

She still talks of Kathy and Aly regularly in her posts, especially Aly, and I realize that nothing placates this nutjob. Nothing. Even if those people suddenly started communicating with her every minute of the day in every way possible, she still wouldn’t be happy. It’s like she’s naturally just a miserable person who lives for having something to complain about, most of which most would find totally unreasonable and silly. It’d be like the difference between me bitching about Jesse’s dogs barking for hours as opposed to a tiny sliver of paint peeling from the wall. Not even I was ever this unstable in my craziest of times as a teenager and young adult. But this nut’s 28 already. Young, but not that young.

There’s no trust there either. I asked her how she beat my blocks I had on Tumblr. She swears no one told her how to beat them and that she didn’t do anything at all. All she did was go there and find that the account was one-day public and she could read my posts. One problem with that story, though, and that’s that that account was always public.

Sometimes I think she’s just too out of her mind to get the things I tell her like NOT trying to involve me in her disputes with others or expecting me to play messenger, and other times I wonder if maybe she does get it but is deliberately out to piss people off for kicks. She claims she can’t deal with rejection and that rejection pisses her off, but I don’t know about that at times. It seems she lives for pissing people off, rejection, and trying to “win over” past boyfriends and past friends who don’t want to know her anymore. It really does seem like she’s a negative attention junkie and gets off more on reading bad things written about her than good. Is this just normal for some people? Are there really people out there who enjoy being badmouthed???

I have told her a dozen times or more that I don’t want to discuss others with her yet just yesterday she emails me to say that someone named Barbara ran into Kathy in a grocery store and Kathy told her she was disturbed and all that.

“Why would Kathy say that?” she asked of me. “I’ve been leaving her alone since last June! I promise not to bully her or anyone else ever again! Please, Jodi, you gotta help me!”

What the fuck does she think I can do anyway? Go to Kathy and demand she be her friend? Kathy’s her own person same as anyone else. She has a right to do as she sees fit without the pressure of anyone else.

I stupidly emailed Molly a few of my stories since she said she wanted to read them, so hopefully she won’t abuse that address. As it is there’s been a huge surge of spam since yesterday. That addy tends to get waves of spam anyway, and I don’t think Molly would take the time to sign me up for every newsletter on the planet, but you never know. They’re coming in every few minutes, faster than I can mark them as spam.

Andy’s another one that doesn’t seem to get it. Despite my telling him that it really bothers me when people imply or accuse me of being a liar and doing things I didn’t do, he said, “Yes, you would” when I said I wouldn’t even want to hear from Nane or Barbara every day. It makes me uncomfortable to have friends with such serious trust issues where I gotta always wonder if they believe the things I say and insist I’m not lying or joking about whatever. Why would I lie or joke about something like who I would/wouldn’t want to hear from every day? I’m generally mistrusting of people too, but if you feel you can’t even take your closest friends for face value, then maybe you need to rethink that friendship. If you feel you can’t trust me, then you should let me go and find those you feel are more “trustworthy.” As I told Nane, if you can’t handle me at my worst (and she proved she couldn’t), then she doesn’t deserve me at my best. No matter how many times I insisted I wasn’t kidding or fucking with her about our plans to kill ourselves, she refused to believe me. Sorry, but I’m too selfish and blunt to lie to people about my intentions and shit like that. If I didn’t want people or certain people to know the truth about something in particular, I just won’t mention it at all.

Speaking of Nane, two days ago I half-hoped I would hear from her even though I knew I wouldn’t and today I have no desire to hear from her at all. She simply wasn’t what I thought or hoped she would be and those are the kinds of people I don’t need in my life. I feel confident that I’m over her and her shit enough to ignore her if she did contact me, not that I can see why she or Barbara ever would. Well, I can’t be 100% sure about Barbara, but I’ve had enough of Nane’s silent treatments and bullshit accusations. Relationships, be it intimate ones or not, must be built on trust. There’s just no way that I can see where a relationship would be even remotely possible without it, so for the last time, if you feel I’m not being entirely upfront with the things I say, feel free to let me go. :)

They say that if you care about someone enough that asks you to let them go, you will. Well, despite the fact that Nane turned out to be an ass, she was someone I did come to care about. I didn’t love her like I love Tom, of course, but I had feelings for her. Honest, I did. To those of you with trust issues – I really, really did come to care for Nane. And so I have let her go and would continue to do so even if I woke up tomorrow wishing we could reconnect once again, even if it meant being dumped and shit on all over again by the hündin. I think she’d fuck with me and dump me even if I lived down her street. That’s just Nane for you.

We’re at our coldest now, almost hitting 29º last night. That’s what they said we were to get down to, but I only saw it go as low as 30º. Plenty close enough. :( I’m freezing and I hate it! The kitchen floors are cold even with socks on unless I stand over where the heating vent runs. I really hope this is our last winter in a trailer!

Sure love the dream I had last night, and yes, it left me with one of those feelings. Not that we’re going to buy a house or anything like that. I refuse to ever own again unless we have enough cash to buy a place outright, something I just can’t see ever happening in our lives. But last night Tom and I were talking about buying a brand new house in one of my dreams for $42,000 and how we could pay it off in 5-6 years. It was so cheap because it was made of this special new material. It seems there was some mention of Arizona and its population continuing to grow, but we weren’t actually in Arizona, fortunately. I awoke asking him how many bedrooms the house had.

I told Tom about the dream and he reminded me that it’s not usually the particulars of my dreams that matter since the only place you could buy a new house that cheap would be in the slums.

I can’t believe the spam I’m getting today. Was it ever this bad? Did I ever get spam every 5-10 minutes?

Anyway, I lost a couple of pounds for some reason even though I haven’t been dieting or running as much as I wish I could say I have.

Molly’s been looking for me all morning and I wonder how many years she would check my blogs in hopes of my return. She left a message on my profile page saying she’s really “calm” today and hopes I haven’t left Thoughts. Yeah, I’m calm too, Molly. :) Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2011
I can’t make any promises, but I’m determined to at least make a little progress on my new book today. Jesse was amazingly quiet yesterday. Hopefully, today will also lack barking and loud vehicles so I can concentrate. That is after I run these poor little joints ragged again on the treadmill. Ah, but it still feels so good and brings such comfort to know I could probably catch any potential mugger out there. Then when I do I will be sure to strangle the fucker with the straps of the purse they thought they could swipe from me. :)

I woke up perkier both physically and mentally than I had been waking up the last couple of days and so it’s nice to be happier and not so sluggish. Fuck the Nane’s of the world. :))))) Meinem Welt ist besser onhe ihr (My world is better without her). And no more being the “punctual” friend who responds to certain emails right away. For once I think I’ll make people wait on me and maybe I’ll take days or weeks or maybe even months to get back to people. Wir werden sehen. :)

Yeah, I’m convinced that Maliheh has “set” the time frames as far as when she emails me goes. It’s got nothing to do with her health or her schedule. It’s got to do with her consciously deciding to keep me at arm’s length and only contact me once or twice a month.

Ich bin kalt (I am cold)! Oh, how I long to be in Florida now, but even if we suddenly had a ton of money, Tom’s not 55 yet and there’s no way I want to live in mainstream Florida. Well, I don’t want to live in the mainstream anywhere. That’s why we’re out in the boonies.

Anyway, the Unemployment rate in California is now the lowest it’s been since 2009, so that’s good. It’s also continuing to be nice here in the afternoons. Nice enough not to need any heat during some of the daytime, but right now it’s freezing! It says it’s 46º but it sure seems colder.

Buon giorno a tutti!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2011
Yesterday I took a much-needed break from the usual grind and spent a near internet-free day just relaxing with a movie, reading and some music. I did some cleaning and a small load of laundry but it was the first day in months I didn’t do any story-related writing/editing at all. I only wrote in my journal. Today it’s back to the usual, though. Gotta work out and get drafting my next book and fleshing out the characters and all that fun stuff.

I received the nicest writing compliment on Nexus from Monica about my journal and she said she’ll always be the first to buy my books, LOL. :) Just as soon as Tom gets over the cold he thinks may really be a flu and my allergies settle down, we can hopefully get my last two books out there.

Tom overheard something a little scary yesterday at work and that’s that they’re going to be laying off 60% of the people. The good news, though, is that they were talking about another department, and they’re still training Tom to do new things. We’re hoping they wouldn’t think it was worth the bother for someone they intended to let go soon. There are only two others who know how to do his job (including the supervisor), and he’s still the highest-paid employee, or one of them, as far as he can tell. My vibes and logic are still in disagreement with each other. My logic is saying there’s nothing to say he won’t get laid off during the first quarter of next year, while my vibes are saying this is it. Next year we’re outa here.

I only had to hear from Jesse 6 times yesterday. Once with the truck, twice with the motorcycle, then a few barking spells. Two of the barking spells were just a couple of barks. They really went crazy, though, when the propane people got here shortly before 3pm and gave us a magnetic calendar and a pen for the holidays after shooting the tank full. Love to see the needle on that gauge climb! We were down to 12% which is as low as the tank registers, so we could’ve been just about to run out for all we knew. I was dreading that foul smell and those clicking sounds. The place reeks when the propane runs out and the heater gets click-happy every so often when it tries to ignite just to find there’s no propane to fire up with.

I have bad gas pains in my tummy now from my Slim-Fast shake. I’m lactose intolerant at times. It’s a Jewish thing. Like it or not, while I may not consider myself to be of any religion, my body’s genetics are as Jewish as can be, and one of the traits we tend to have is being lactose intolerant. And so I guess I better take my Israeli-descended ass and get it over to a bottle of Tums soon enough and see if that helps. Or maybe I’ll just fuck it up worse and have a Twix. :)

I checked into Facebook this morning half-hoping to find a message from Nane saying something like: This is silly. Let’s just forget the past and be friends again because I miss you.

I would have been dumb enough to forgive her for dumping me yet again too, but my family is a reminder that I’m not as compassionate and forgiving as I sometimes worry I am. I peeked into Larry’s account out of curiosity and was surprised at what I saw. He’s “friends” with Tammy’s kids. Wow, maybe they wouldn’t really kill each other at my parents’ funerals after all, but there’s no saying what shit Ronnie may start.

The point is that there’s still a lot of anger there and I realize that after all these years it’s unlikely I’m ever going to be able to forgive my sister or my brother for the shit they’ve put me through in the past, be it directly or indirectly. Not fully forgive them, anyway. I really truly honestly don’t want a damn thing to do with my sister, brother and nieces and the only reason I’m in occasional touch with Tammy as it is is because of Mom and Dad. If it weren’t for them and my needing to keep the peace to help ensure that I get whatever it is they want to leave me (I doubt it will be much) when their time comes, I would see them as people and not family. And I know I wouldn’t like what I saw enough to want to bother associating with them. Some things are just too grand to be forgivable in my book. Larry’s worse crime may’ve been just pissing me off as opposed to Tammy who helped pave the way for the pig and freeloaders to get at my door and wreak havoc on my life, but there are just too many bad memories connected with anyone in my family, including my parents. But it is a little different with my parents as opposed to my siblings because my parents, despite their abuse in the past, saved Tom and me and would do it again if they had to. My sister probably would too, but as I said, she cost me half a year of freedom, thousands of dollars, and an untold amount of anger and anxiety. This just isn’t a case of someone pissing me off or embarrassing me or making me cry without years of bad memories to go with it. And just knowing that I have a feeling – a big feeling – that my brother wouldn’t care if I lived or died tells me something about him right there.

Forgiving or not, the last thing I care to do is to try to weasel my way back into the lives of those who simply don’t give a damn about me. I may miss some of them like Nane, but I have no desire to contact and buddy up to those who either ignore me or tell me outright that they don’t want to associate with me. I may also be the one who dumped Larry back in late 1999, along with Andy and the rest of my family when I felt the need to “wipe the slate clean,” and right or wrong, he has proven he’s not interested in me by not contacting me. And yes, he could do so if he really wanted to. I’m not hard to find, and then there’s my parents and their big mouths. I have to remind them every now and then that I don’t care who obtains my email address or who knows what’s going on with my life, but DON’T give out our address or phone number!

I have my nieces blocked. I wonder if they tried to look me up to add. When I was checking my blocklist I saw that Jenny was on it, so she didn’t block me after all. I forgot that I blocked her. If someone blocks you then you can’t block them because you can’t bring up their profiles if they’ve got you blocked.

Later…

I have spent the day tired, cold, angry, hurt and pretty withdrawn from the online world altogether. I don’t know if it’s PMS or if PMS is just helping to compound things or what, but I was thinking of Nane on and off and how she threw me away and all that and my emotions keep going back and forth between hurt and anger. I’m sad and I miss her. I wish she would have a change of heart but know she never will. Then my angry side comes out and I find myself wishing and hoping that karma gets her for it and that someone throws her away like some old piece of shit and falsely accuses her of playing with their feelings or “just trying to get attention” or “making excuses” for something that really truly is out of her control. I think to myself that maybe then she’ll know what it’s like and how I feel. But from what she once told me she should already have a good idea of what it’s like to be dumped. She told me she was in a relationship for 16 years when she was dumped and the pain was so bad it was physical. I really have to wonder sometimes – why do people put people through the same misery they’ve gone through? Why would anyone want anyone else to feel the same misery? Shouldn’t they of all people be more empathetic? Or do they feel that their past experiences give them a right to do the things they do? Does she feel entitled to cast people away like yesterday’s news because someone did just that to her?

And why do I feel the way I do about someone I never met and never would have met? Hell, I’ll never again see or meet any of my friends in my own damn country, so why would I feel so hurt by someone on the other side of the world I could never meet simply because of their appearance? What is wrong with me? Seriously. I can ask myself what’s wrong with other people a million times over, but what the hell’s wrong with me? Why would I care about this near stranger that I never met and knew I never would meet? I just don’t get how one could come to care for someone they only knew in the virtual world, proving her theory totally incorrect in saying that a virtual friendship can’t work. Maybe it can’t work for some people, and I’ll admit that when social sites first hit the scene, the idea of buddying up to an “electronic being” seemed silly as hell. They were just avatars, weren’t they? Just a bunch of silly screen names. Right?

Wrong. Nane was real. Alison isn’t just a digital invention either. And neither is Monica. They’re real people and people I care about. I don’t know Monica as well as I’ve come to know Alison, and Alison is just about my longest-running cyber friend since she was one of the first ones I met, but they’re way more than just a series of ones and zeros. They have feelings just like I do.

Nonetheless, I’ve been withdrawn from most people for the last two days. Yes, my fatigue and gloominess are probably somewhat PMS-related, but I also think Nane’s part of what’s got me down. I’ve experienced rejection on and off all my life since I was a baby. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. It’s just another one of those storms I have to wait out. But those storm clouds will clear and time will dull the ache in my heart and Nane’s memory will fade away. And yes, immature or not, a part of me hopes karma bites her in the ass for what she’s done and she finds herself alone and wanting to talk to someone just to find that no one’s there. No one’s there because they don’t give a damn and the ones that did she threw away.

Although I woke up tired, I hopped on the treadmill expecting some muscle breakdown after working out just 1 out of the last 4 days and therefore a tougher time working out. Instead, I was in better shape and ran faster, LOL. Didn’t go as long, though. Then I got really cold for some reason and took a two-hour nap. I still feel kind of out of it both physically and mentally and even though I expected to get on with my next book today, I haven’t. All I’ve done is read, watch a movie and listen to music.

Jesus, what the hell is wrong with me?

MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2011
I’m still a little down over Nane’s official Dear John message to me yesterday. Nane, who still believes (unless she’s just saying that) that I was playing with her feelings when in fact I’ve never had the desire to do this to anyone at any point in my life. I may play pranks, but I never cared to confuse or hurt people’s feelings. But if anyone knows the anguish and frustration of not being believed or taken for face value, it’s me. I also know, though, that those who accuse others of basically being a liar are often guilty of the same exact thing as well. So Nane, who’s also so sure that it’s not possible to have a “virtual” friendship, has asked that I let her go but with warm wishes to me, Tom and the rat. She has also said she’s a little sad the friendship is ending even though it was a pleasure in a weird and interesting way to know me for a while, and even though she’s the one throwing it away.

While her Dear Johning me is no surprise, it’s going to be weird for a while getting used to the idea of knowing that there’s no possibility of hearing from her when I go to check in on Facebook and that she’s gone forever. I’ll get used to it, though, and I’ll move on.

I blame myself just as much for ending up stabbed in the back by the bitch. Not that I feel responsible for her own actions in any way. Oh no, she’s responsible for what she’s done. But where I feel responsible is that I should have known better than to approach someone I was attracted to in a virtual world or not. I learned young just what is/isn’t meant to be. Twenty years ago I vowed to stop approaching women I was attracted to in person and I did. Now I’m vowing to do that online as well. I’m sorry but I’m sick of the shit I get from them! I’m sick of attracting only ugly or crazy chicks and I’m sick of the so-called sane ones and the hotties fucking with my head, blowing me off, or being downright mean to me on account of my appearance or because of something else they perceive to be wrong with me. If this is how they feel, why don’t they tell me up front? Why string me along first? I’m used to those I’m attracted to not being attracted to me back, and no, I’m not perfect, but by God do they really have to be these mean, cruel fucking bitches and play these kindergarten games???

Well, let me just say that no one should have to have a friend they feel is “lying” to them when they reach out to them in a time of need or that puts their trust in them by divulging anything about them – their lifestyle, their physical limitations/problems – so feel free to not have anything to do with me if you don’t think I’m an honest enough friend for you or that I reveal too much about myself to you that you either don’t agree with or you just don’t get. :) I wouldn’t want to burden anyone with my so-called lies, honesty, uniqueness or anything else. I mean, shame on me for having a driving phobia and shame on me for working at home. That’s simply not “normal.” Can’t accept non-normal, though? No problem; just insist I’m lying instead or out for attention and that I’m making excuses so I can be “too lazy” to fix myself and make myself normal just like everyone else. :)

Tom’s got his first cold in quite a while, the poor guy. I tried to get him to scald his throat but he insisted his super hot tater tots were enough. But they weren’t. It needs to be done with liquids. It’s the only way to kill the virus from taking hold and fully setting in. Maybe next time he’ll listen to me even though he hates tea and coffee. He should have burned his throat with hot water.

Speaking of the virtual world, it sure overwhelmed me yesterday. It seemed that everyone was coming at me with a zillion comments and questions on a zillion sites and I just need a break at times! I’m just not into doing social sites every single day like some of my friends are. Not that I don’t enjoy it for the most part; I just need/want to be doing other things as well. I should probably restrict them to just weekends, but we’ll see. Maybe it’d be better if I learned to discipline myself by not checking them so often and by making people just wait till I feel like being social. I’ve never been much of a people person anyway. I hated to see people every day in person so why would I want to every day online?

So much for hoping for peace on weekends, though Jesse still tends to be noisier during the week. He had his fucking truck running and gunning for 10-15 minutes yesterday, then we got to hear the motorcycle, and then some barking while he was gone and I was trying to watch a movie. While I have certainly lived in much, much noisier places, I shook my head sadly, angry that God would keep allowing this to happen in every single place I’ve lived for the last 20 years or so. All I can do is hope we’ll get to rent a place next summer in a senior community and that I’ll be even happier there in a real house that’s newer and nicer and that’s less likely to have barking dogs, motorcycles and dirt bikes zipping through it, etc. We have nearly a grand in savings and that’s even after all the expenses we just had to pay, so hopefully God will be kind enough not to allow the carpet to be yanked out from under our feet between now and next summer. I will be more convinced than ever that something wants us here for Jesse’s sake since good tenants are so hard to find if Tom gets laid off soon. If he does, though, it will probably be within the first quarter of next year, so I’m getting a little nervous as the New Year approaches instead of excited like I wish I could be. First, we have to hope he doesn’t get laid off, then we have to hope they’ll be willing to rent to someone who’s just a temp. Then again, all he has to do is say he works at such and such a place. How would they know if he’s a temp or not? Probably by common sense. If you work in Cali, then you’re probably just a temp.

Anyway, today, just like almost every single day, I will be annoyed periodically by someone over a hundred feet away and that I shouldn’t have to be annoyed by. I shouldn’t have to go to bed wondering if someone over a hundred feet away might wake me up, and I shouldn’t have to worry that they’ll distract me from my work when I am up. I never expected any place to be 100% soundless, but hopefully they’ll simply come and go just once or twice a day in a senior community in a civilized way and not have company 5 times a day every day like most people in the city did that we’d live next to. When your neighbor’s driveway is just inches from the wall of your house, that’s a lot of car doors to have to deal with when they and their company comes and goes and comes and goes all day and all night. But it’s hard to believe they’d do that in a senior community or have loud, old trucks they sit and rev up for several minutes before taking off in them or on motorcycles. I also can’t believe they’d be allowed to leave their dogs outside for me to have to listen to during the hours they were gone. But I’d like the chance to find out.

I hope today’s workout will be better than yesterday’s. My joints were fine but the muscles around my ankles burned so badly the last time that I had to stop running after 5 minutes. I suppose carrying around an extra 40 pounds doesn’t help. Once my sugar-laden coffee creamers run out I was thinking I’d just switch to tea. I may still not lose weight, though. I think the only way to really lose a significant amount at this age is to starve and I’m just not willing to do that and be hungry, sluggish and bitchy all in the name of weight and appearance. It seems that no matter what I still have the same tits, hips and thunder thighs, so they’re obviously not meant to go anywhere. sighs Everything a guy wants and nothing a woman wants. Oh, the straight women usually want these ample curves for themselves, it’s the gay women who don’t like seeing them on other women. Well, not unless they’re either mean or crazy. I know I shouldn’t stereotype like that, but for me, this is how it’s been.

I sent a copy of my manuscript to Tammy. Instead of thanking me for it or expressing any kind of interest in it whatsoever, all she did was go on about her health, saying the doctors say they can’t do anything more and don’t know where the inflammation is coming from, so all she can do is see a pain management doctor. Ah, but only the good die young. You ain’t going belly-up for decades, big sis. It was all I could do to tell her I knew where the inflammation was coming from. But she probably wouldn’t believe me and the mood-influencing thing and all that anyway. I didn’t knowingly and intentionally make her sick, but that’s just what happens when people piss me off bad enough like she did in 2009.

I’m really worried about Tom. He just got out of the shower and says he feels “weird” and isn’t sure what he’s got is a cold. He said he woke up constantly throughout the night and had to pee like 20 times. I worry about him because he not only has a 25-minute drive to work, but he also has a very physical job and no insurance. Unless the healthcare reform becomes more than just talk, he’s got another 10 years before he can have insurance, and I won’t be insured for another 20 years, so we’ve got to stay healthy.

Molly is crazy. I mean totally, totally crazy. I knew this was a twisted individual but it’s like she has no concept of right and wrong even though she’s written a million times in her own journal how sorry she is for bullying others and how she promises never to do it again. I just hope I’m not going to have to block her soon (already she’s hit me up for a phone chat I had to refuse) and that it won’t make things worse for me if I do have to. Unfortunately, there are people out there who can’t simply feel hurt or angry by those who no longer want to be friends with them. Instead, they feel they must either “punish” them for it or try to win them back over. She seems to believe she can make people like her and want to communicate with her, but no matter how many times I or others try to encourage her to seek out those many other fish in the sea that will want to be her friend, she’s still obsessed with those that have cut her off on account of her possessive pushiness nearly a decade ago. I used to have some of these negative traits myself where I tried to win back those that dumped me or I’d just shit on them for it, but as I learned, that usually only makes things worse. I wouldn’t mind playing kiss and makeup with Nane now even though she’s proven to be a bitch, but she told me to just let her go and so I intend to respect her wishes even though it’s her that’s letting me go.

Just seconds after Alison (who does still seem to be the root of her obsession for some reason) changed her profile picture on Facebook, Molly messaged her to say she liked it and asked yet again to be added there after Alison told her several times she wasn’t going to add her there or call her or write her a postal letter. That’s another thing she doesn’t seem to get; that we can’t make people add us. I canceled out my own unaccepted friend requests figuring that if people I’ve requested to add haven’t added me, then they must have their reasons for it. Meanwhile, if they change their mind they can send me an invite and I’ll consider it.

Also, the troll made a review of the same Chinese restaurant Alison recently reviewed even though Alison’s in Nebraska while the troll’s in Texas.

Alison was pissed cuz every other journal post (she makes like a dozen a day) is all about her supposed concern for Alison’s health. Aly and I just don’t get why she cares so much about someone she hasn’t been friends with for so long. And this is right after claiming she was “better off without her in her life.” WTF?!

Oh, good. I just read in the troll’s blog that her older sister is having another baby in two weeks so maybe that’ll keep her occupied for a while. She does seem to love being an aunt, always gloating about her niece Ella who’s about to turn two and all that. Imagine if they knew just how crazy their stalking aunt truly was.

What the hell is wrong with my rat this morning??? He seemed to have no energy all weekend, but now he’s all wound up and won’t leave me alone.

Later…

I lazed out of running/walking altogether today. I know sore boobies and other PMS symptoms are a lousy excuse, but I seem to not want to do much today. I don’t want to work out, I don’t want to socialize, I don’t want to do this or do that. Don’t take it personally, though, if I didn’t reply to today’s millions of comments and questions, LOL. If I don’t get to them later, then I will tomorrow. I just want some alone time today from both the virtual and non-virtual worlds. :)

I just love the new Kindle. I downloaded some books and am into Patricia Gussin’s Shadow of Death right now. I usually only read during the last hour or two of my day. It’s great for when I’m too tired to do anything constructive, but not quite ready for sleep. The only thing I don’t like is that the Kindle is a little heavy to hold in this little hand of mind, and you can accidentally “flip” pages at times if your finger taps the edge of the screen.

It’s after 8am now so I suppose I’ll be hearing Jesse any minute. I’ll put the sound machines on loud enough to drown him out, but not the propane people, though they shouldn’t get here till the end of the day. The guy doesn’t like driving the truck down the steep drive when it’s full.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2011
“I see a future writer here,” the principal of my elementary school told my then 10-year-old self as I fidgeted nervously while he neatened the small stack of my “adventures” that sat on his desk before him.

“I think I want to be a singer,” I said.

“Well, either way,” the principal told me with his brightest made-for-children smile, “you shouldn’t do this, Miss O. You shouldn’t write these wonderful little stories of yours and try to pass them off as events that really happened because when the other kids find out it didn’t really happen they may not like you.”

I was remembering this particular incident with Tom yesterday and laughing, though it was anything but funny at the time. I was scared. I didn’t care so much about my classmates liking me or not as opposed to pissing my mother off enough to get my butt whooped for it. I don’t remember the tall tale I wrote and tried to pass off as a real event. All I remember is writing a few copies of the story for a few classmates back in the 5th grade. I’d love to read whatever it was I wrote, LOL, but at that age, it was probably some silly shit like me having some kind of superpower or something like that.

But the future was evident in the past. Being older and smart enough to look back on it all now, one can clearly see I was born to write and learn foreign languages, not to sing or play the piano or guitar. The signs were there all along. But when I was young I did what I wanted. Now I do what I’m best at. :) I think it sometimes works out that way for a lot of us. I always did like to write even though I was preoccupied with singing till my mid-20s or so. I can sing, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t imagine life without writing every single day at this point. I don’t sing every day like I used to. It just doesn’t interest me like it once did. As for the instruments – I’m lucky if I remember many chords. I mostly played by ear and found that to be easier although I could read music if I had to.

Andy reminded me that not everyone can learn languages as easily as I can when I was laughing at how Barbara seems to have a class of idiots. I know it’s mean of me and I shouldn’t laugh as I have plenty of things I suck at myself, but there was this one part where she asks her students to come up with positive examples of why they’re happy. Ich bin glücklich weil (I am happy because) and one idiot comes up with du bist krank (you are sick). Another dumbshit comes up with du bist traurig (you are sad).

Das ist dumm (that is dumb)!

I had a dream a few nights ago in German. Well, it was just one short sentence but it was correct. Sometimes my dreams in foreign languages are all wrong just like Andy’s piano playing is all wrong in his dreams even though his audience always loves it. I pointed to someone and asked, “Wer ist das?” That means who is that?

Nothing bad happened to my rat despite having a bad dream about him, but he is acting differently. Two days ago he was more lovey-dovey than usual. This has always been a friendly, affectionate rat, but he doesn’t like to cuddle and be held as much as some of the others. If you go to grab him he tends to squirm away. But after he did his usual running around and exploring he actually sat still long enough for me to rub his back. Then yesterday he seemed to have no energy at all. He was out and about for a while but he slept more than usual. Rats are nocturnal but he usually gets up a few times during the day wanting freedom and attention for a little while and then he goes back home and back to sleep when he’s done. Most rats will just fall asleep wherever, but not this guy, LOL. He usually goes back home and crashes there.

Been having fun with the Kindle. I watched a movie online and read a few book sample downloads. I’ll have to check out the library soon where you “borrow” books for X amount of time. Other than the movie, I was barely online long enough yesterday other than to respond to blog comments and add Kim when she joined the site. I even blew off my editing altogether so after my workout and shower that’s what I’ll be doing.

It’s a little tough trying to motivate yourself to work out when you’re up 3 pounds. I know 1 or 2 of those pounds are water, but it’s still not easy.

Andy hasn’t said anything as mean and hurtful as to imply I’m a liar or making excuses for my sleep disorder or anything like that, but all he does is talk about sex these days and post disgusting background pictures containing nudity and sexually explicit pictures. Even if the woman’s gorgeous with a great body I never found extreme nudity or pornographic pictures to be a turn-on in any way. She can be wearing next to nothing but when her private parts are totally exposed it’s actually kinda gross. To me, a woman is sexier with clothes on than without them, and of course the pictures of guys sucking each other off are a serious turn-off to me. I’ve tried to tell him this even though I know it’s his account, and I’ve tried to warn him that it may get him kicked off, even though they’ve already removed one of his pics, but he just doesn’t seem to care. It’s like he’s literally turned into this pervert who’s addicted to sex even though he admits he rarely gets any. So I anonymously complained to see if that would get him to stop. Actually, I hoped it would get him banned cuz I’m sick of Formspring altogether. I know it sounds deceptive, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings by just deactivating my account and leaving. He lives to do this with me every day, though I don’t always have the time or the desire to sit and supply him with questions and answers.

Well, unless he changed his background pic on his own, they removed the pic he had on of a HUGE woman on all fours baring her naked and disgustingly fat ass and thunder thighs.

Later…

Well, I got my official fuck off letter from Nane. She wrote:

You once said, someone told you that I was a shallow person, you yourself called me a shallow bitch........not that it hurts me in any kind of way, but it just goes to proof that “friendships” made in a virtual space cannot ever be real friendships.

You do not know me at all, the least I am is a shallow person. But there is no way that I can proof this to you, ever.

In a way, I feel sorry that our “friendship” has come to an end, but I really did feel that you were playing with my feelings, as you once put in one of your messages.

Just let me go, no hard feelings, it was a pleasure to have known you in a sort of strange, but funny and interesting way. Wishing you and Tom and your rat all the best, I mean it…

N.

I replied with:

Ok, Nane, if that’s what you wish, though I think it was YOU that played with my feelings, something we’re obviously never going to agree on. I realize that no matter how much I try to defend myself and insist that I didn’t play with yours, you’ll never believe it. I too, am sorry our friendship, virtual or not, has come to an end. But always remember that was YOUR choice, Nane, not mine. But yes, I will let you go if that’s what you wish. I enjoyed the good times while they lasted and I don’t regret “meeting” you. You’ve taken from me your friendship, but you can never take from me the memories (and fantasies). I wish you and Jim the best too, and I hope you enjoy the stories.

J.

And so I have let her go. Ain’t she just so damn sweet, though? Aly and Andy were right about her, though I figured as much, too. I just didn’t want to give up on her so easily. God, I wish I could be the cold, unforgiving bitch I was from my mid-20s till my late 30s! Never forgive, never forget. That was my motto. But I’m such a soft-hearted fool that I’d forgive her and take her back right this minute if she apologized and asked to move on and be buds again.

But now she’s basically made me let go. She’s still hell-bent on believing that when I was so sure our situation a few months ago was totally hopeless and I was contemplating suicide I was just playing with her for attention but I swear I wasn’t. It hurts to reach out to someone I thought I could trust in a time of need just to be called a liar and then dumped for it, but that’s life, I guess, and I’ve learned from it. I’ve learned not only to keep my mouth shut when feeling that way but to never again bother approaching someone I’m attracted to on or offline.

I’ve never been into playing with people’s feelings. Not now, not in the past, not in the future. The idea of that just never appealed to me. I either care about a person enough to not want to hurt their feelings or I just don’t care what their feelings are at all, period. In fact, I cared that much about her feelings that I wouldn’t tell her how shitty the last two pictures she posted of herself looked.

Oh, and you see that part about her not being able to “prove” she’s not the shallow bitch she really is? Yes, she could have proven it simply by being a friend, plain and simple. Much like others have. Phony bitches like her only make me appreciate my true friends even more like Andy, Maliheh, Alison, Mitch and others. :)

I did send her the final story she’s going to “star” in that I just finished, only I changed the names in her copy so it’s Renting Marion, LOL. “Nane” is renting “Marion,” LMAO! Even Alison got a kick outa that one. Ok, so I’m not a head player, but I am still a bit of a prankster.

Alison also said she’s sort of with her on my writing about my suicidal thoughts in my blog but that it’s MY blog and so she can just skip what she doesn’t want to read. She said I deserve better than Nane and that she loves my honesty. My bluntness is one of the things she likes best about me, she says, and how I never cross the line into being rude. LOL, I had to laugh at that last part. Actually, I do. I just reserve my rude side for Tom, Andy and Maliheh, my #1 and closest circle of people. Aly’s more like in the #2 circle but of course I wouldn’t tell her that any more than I would tell Nane she oughta borrow my straightening iron and see if she can smooth some of her wrinkles out. :) It’s just not nice to tell such a nice person, hey, I love you, Aly, but you’re second best!

While it may be true that I never played with her feelings I sure wish I could play with her dreams! Every night I’d be her worst nightmare, LOL. After I made her have sex with me I’d turn into a giant rat (she doesn’t like them) and chase and just terrorize the holy hell outa her in her dreams, haha haha!!!!!!!!!! But I’m never so blunt that I’m “rude,” LOL.

I’m not stupid either. I know she’d be the same way had I lived down her street. It was Irene who told me she was phony and they’ve actually met. Nane simply is who she is.

Mitch speed-read it and caught a typo for me – damn it. I myself caught a huge but funny fuck-up that said: She pulled me to her for a soft, sweet kiss and just seconds later I was watching her headlights fade into the distance.

Obviously, that should’ve been “taillights.”

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2011
I have so much to say but so little time because I can’t wait to get to Amazon’s Prime movie section and catch up on horror, suspense, thrillers and mystery movies! The free month came with the Kindle Fire Tom won at work!

When I first got up and saw it sitting on the table I thought I won it since I’m still winning things as the last of the expiration dates trickle on through. I won a beauty box containing various beauty products, so I thought it was a surprise win, even though they usually notify you upfront about big prizes. But I once was surprised with a $600 electric guitar so I figured why not a Kindle?

But I couldn’t find the box it was shipped in to get an idea of where it came from and all Tom said in his email that he left when he crashed was that we’d register my Hanukah present when he got up. My first thought was that while it was nice he shouldn’t have gotten it as we’re supposed to be saving to get out of here so I don’t have to keep hearing half-hour spurts of Jesse gunning his fucking motorcycle on and off. Thank God he’s usually quiet on weekends and at night, but tonight I got the dogs since I don’t think he took off last night based on how quiet it was.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to learning more about how to use it. It’s pretty high-tech! Love how it flips from landscape to portrait just by flipping it to the side. It’s heavier than it looks, though. I’ll never read another physical book again! I’m totally addicted to the digital format and never again do I have to worry the print is too small or having inadequate lighting, etc. I can’t wait to get reading and watching!

I’m supposedly able to download my own books for free but we have yet to figure out how. Now that I know it can take time for German sales reports to update I wonder if there’s a delay in this country, too. If there is then that might not have been Polly who bought my book around the time she visited my last blog.

Oh, Scheiße! Kim and her overtweeting! She’s a really nice girl, but she drives me nuts at times because she’s so damn wordy. What can be said in a simple sentence or two takes her 15 tweets. :( Her journal entries make mine seem short and sweet, too.

Back to the Kindle. They were giving away a lot of prizes at work and they were all wrapped in gift wrapping paper so you couldn’t see what the prize was. The only thing that was obvious was the 50” TV. Well, we rarely watch our 32” TV and because we’re not hard up for money right now Tom figured there’d be no point in choosing that to at least sell. They also had Playstations, gift cards and things like that. He was thrilled to have chosen the Kindle. A couple of others asked to buy it off him, but nope, LOL. We’re keeping it for ourselves unless we’re forced to sell it in the future. My first thought was that books are kind of expensive and so I wasn’t sure we could get much use out of it, though Tom would certainly love to play games on it and it’s another great source to back up things on like pics, docs and music. But then he told me they have a library! Hope it has a good selection.

My parents are missing so much! They’d love this thing if they would just get their asses back online.

Anyway, it’s a nice gift after having to shell out over $200 for a new windshield which is being replaced today, and then $270 on Monday for a propane tank fill-up. It is peak season, though, so it’s very costly now.

What else…my ear (or maybe tooth?) ached like crazy yesterday, we hit freezing last night for the first time this year, and I’m “friends” with the troll. Yeah, Aly and I got to talking about it and she was dealing with her by trying to be nice to her figuring it might cause her to back off a bit. Instead, she started getting clingy wanting her to add her on Facebook and all that, so I decided that the way to find the key to keeping her at bay may be to get inside her head a bit, and the way to do that is to give her a chance to prove she can be a decent enough friend. As you’ll see in the copy of the post below that I created just for her, I told her I would give her the attention she craves and let her read and comment on my blogs if she promises to leave the others alone. She said she’d leave Kim and Kathy alone. I hope that means Alison too, who I’m really worried about. She also told me what she likes to do for fun on my wall, friended me with two of her accounts, and made a journal post of her own addressed to me (I can’t believe she spelled my name right) saying she finds my blog very interesting (though she told Aly she reads it cuz she’s bored) and hopes to read my stories someday. As I told her, if she says or does anything to make me feel offended or uncomfortable in any way, I’m gone.

Molly,

I have reached out to you on other sites recently and tried to get you to tell me why you’re following me and why you’re so interested in me. But you have not answered my question. Back when you and your mother were harassing me on MyOpera and threatening me with bogus lawsuits, your mother said that you approached me because you wanted to be my friend. But since I happened to be friends with someone you’re no longer friends with is what made me suspicious of your true intentions. Can you understand this, Molly? Imagine if it had been you and how awkward and suspicious you would have felt too. I never had a problem with you, Molly, it was your inability to understand and accept that “no” really meant “no” when I, or others, would ask that you stop following us and stop trying to friend/message us. Know what I’m saying? So it was never you that I disliked, but your behavior instead.

When I first realized who you were I got the immediate feeling that you were only trying to get on my good side in hopes of me trying to get your former friends to be your buddy again. I have thought about asking you directly if this was ever the case or not, but wasn’t sure I’d get a truthful answer from you because you’ve been known to lie before. You’ve said things like how you hadn’t been reading my blog when my tracker said otherwise. Someone also told me that you wrote that rejection pisses you off. But then why do things to piss others off and cause them to reject you? Trying to force and push your existence on those who don’t want to be your friend is certainly going to piss them off and make them reject you even more. This is the part I’m trying to understand about you. Why would you want to try to make people like you that don’t like you when there are millions of other fish in the sea to seek out and that will like and accept you into their lives??? Did something bad happen in your life to make you feel such a need to reach out to those who reject you? You even once said yourself in your own blog that you need to work out with your therapist why you do such things.

It’s ok to feel hurt and even angry when someone dumps us or suddenly ceases contact with us and starts ignoring us. But it’s NOT ok to keep trying to “win them over” when they’ve specifically told you many times that they don’t want to hear from you. We can’t make people like or love us, Molly. Don’t you think you deserve better anyway than to surround yourself with people who don’t care?

I don’t know what makes you tick and I don’t know much about you, but nonetheless, you obviously have a serious interest in my blog. So much so that you had your friend show you how to beat my blocks that I had on Tumblr. I always assumed it was just to see if I mentioned you or others you used to know. I just couldn’t imagine someone nearly 20 years younger finding me interesting. But you tell me… am I? I’m asking you directly instead of making assumptions of my own and jumping the gun. WHY do you follow me from site to site and read everything I write?

Here is my offer to you and your chance to prove yourself but it’s strictly up to you. If you’re not interested – fine. If you will promise to leave the others alone and never again contact your former friends, I will let you read and even comment on my blogs. I just might even read and comment on yours too, if you’d like. But as soon as you try to get me to pass messages to others or anything else that either offends or makes me uncomfortable, I’m gone. I do not let people pressure me into doing things I don’t want to do. I’m not saying you’d do that; I’m just telling you like it is. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’ll give you a chance and I’ll give you the attention you seem to want, but you MUST leave the others alone. If for any reason I decide to end our so-called friendship (if one ever gets started) I not only have the right to end it just like you do if you decide you don’t like me or get sick of me, but there will be NO more contact at that point. Understand? You are now unblocked here and my blogs are open to comments. It is up to you to respond to the offer or not.

Jodi

What was funny was the unexpected feedback it generated when someone said, “My name is Molly, but I guess you’re not talking about me, LOL.” And then another one who said they found it very inspiring and was also a writer. They said they had published a few articles with The New York Times and wrote a children’s book, but wondered about publishing novels online. She was afraid to get caught up in what might be a scam. So I told her about my books for sale on Amazon and recommended she try publishing through them. I’ve already started formatting the next book I intend to publish through them.

I’m worried about Alison. She’s getting both breasts removed on the 27th, but says she’s got a really bad feeling this time around.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2011
It’s there, it’s there! My first book sale in Deutschland!!! Yes, it’s showing up on the reports now! Yay!!! I knew my new German friend wasn’t playing with me. I just knew it! I know it may sound silly, but tears of joy are stinging my eyes right now at the thought of my first sale there. I just thought it was going to be by Nane and then maybe Barbara. Once again life proves to not always be what we plan it to be. Thanks, Abby!

To finish covering yesterday before getting back to today – the rain we were supposed to get was just a few quick bursts of light rain. It was supposed to rain yesterday which would’ve made me feel more comfortable figuring Jesse would be less likely to be out and about bothering me since he just cannot stay inside his fucking house for more than a minute when it’s not hot or raining. Really, we gotta get away from this cock. I either have to worry about him waking me up when I’m on nights and then him stealing the peace when I’m on days. The thought of having to live with this little cock for much longer makes me want to beat my head into the wall! But I still fear we’ll be stuck here long enough to have to deal with the re-roofing and painting projects as well as a million other projects. If I wanted to live where there was so much of this kind of activity going on I’d have sought out a farm to live on if I wanted to hear loud vehicles, saws and hammering. It’s better than barking, screaming kids and loud music, but it still gets old.

I was trying to fall asleep when the prick came down alone in his incredibly LOUD truck just after 10:00 to get some plywood from his shit pile. I could hear the fucking thing over the sound machine even though I had the thing blaring its ass off.

Oh, how good it feels to vent in print like this. Yes, very therapeutic. But I have to keep him out of my public journals at least while we are here which hopefully won’t be for several years to life.

Anyway, he slams the sheets of wood in the back of the truck (we have GOT to ask that he bring his shit up by his place and claim we may want to deck the base of the hill out with flowers, along with pointing out that yes, the truck is VERY loud), then he pulls up by the place, gets out and sort of walks down by the door across from the bathroom as if he’s looking to see if I’m up or for any new leaks. I go to the main door, sure to sport an unhappy expression but not say anything to piss him off and possibly provoke me into going after him, and he asks how the pipe’s doing. As dumb as he is (unless it’s got to do with electrical or plumbing) he obviously gets that he woke me up, though I was actually just nodding off, and he quickly left after I told him it was fine. In truth, I don’t know if it’s “fine.” Miss Observant here hasn’t noticed any new wall stains but personally, I don’t give a shit anymore as long as it’s nothing that could affect or cost us. Let the fucking thing leak for all I care!

I appreciate that he doesn’t do it every day, but he comes down more for his shit than for any other reason so it’s definitely time to see if we can get him to get it the hell out of here. It’s such an eyesore anyway. He can leave the back of the pickup, but I want everything else gone! We can’t know for sure we’ll be moving next year. We could be here for years like I said before. A part of me wishes we could buy this section of the land from him because then we’d reserve the right to either gate the driveway or just tell him to FUCKING CALL FIRST! That is after we had him haul his shit outa here. But we could never afford that and I don’t want to own what can be lost. You can’t lose what isn’t yours unless you can buy it outright and even then there are still some risks. That’s a big lesson I learned in life.

Woke up to a bad nightmare but it had nothing to do with me and Tom or any friends. It had to do with the rat, though I don’t know why I was calling him Tinkerbell and not Tinkerboy. He was named after Tinkerbell.

I was running on the treadmill when he ran up to it. I hadn’t realized he was out loose. The treadmill was backward, though. I was facing away from the rails and panel though I wasn’t running backward. I yelled at him to stay away but he jumped onto the treadmill and got “sucked” under the front part where the plastic almost meets the belt. In reality, that gap isn’t big enough for even a mouse let alone a huge rat. I jumped off and started screaming his name. Then I flipped the treadmill over which now seemed not to have any rails or panels. The underside was facing straight up at me and I began to claw at the screws with my bare hands. In reality, the underside doesn’t have any kind of a covering other than where the motor is, but the entire bottom of the one in the dream had a cover. Tom came up to me with a screwdriver and started unscrewing this “cover.” I was crying and fearing the rat was dead because I didn’t hear any struggling or squeaking coming from him. I asked if it was possible that he’d been killed and Tom said, “Sure.”

I cried, “No, no, no!” and then I woke up. I hope the dream didn’t mean his time is almost up. It shouldn’t be till next summer or later. He might even make it to the end of next year.

I’m taking the day off from my real-life treadmill to let my joints heal. I’ve had pain in my outer right knee. My joints had been doing better since you gotta put some impact on them to strengthen them, but I should probably start wrapping both knees when I run. Running at 4 MPH may not seem like much but I assure you it’s a serious workout. Try it and see how many minutes you can keep at it. It’s a big run, alright, and it’s why many people don’t lose weight. They’re just not willing to put themselves out and exert themselves to the degree that you’re sweating your ass off, you can barely breathe, you’re dying of thirst, and your muscles are burning. Plus you gotta go at least a little hungry. But that’s what it usually takes. I’m 46 now, not 26, so I should get wrapped up. All I have around here is an ace bandage to wrap my knee in, but it’s better than nothing. I asked a friend who’s also a personal trainer and will see what she says.

The shakes have been giving me great energy and helping to fight hunger and fatigue. I tried Boost, Special K and Slim Fast. I decided I like Boost the least. They’re the least sweet yet they have 27g of sugar and 240 calories. The others have 190 calories, 18g of sugar and are much sweeter. Slim Fast’s cappuccino is a definite winner!

Tom also drinks these shakes but has been really tired and rundown lately. I worry about him. They’re running him ragged at work. If they keep him after the holidays, I hope they either back off the OT or make him do something less strenuous. He feels he’s too old to do such a physical job. He wants to lose weight and get fit; not kill himself. The extra money isn’t worth it if he’s always going to be so exhausted.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2011
Yesterday was a fun and interesting day but it ended on a note of uncertainty. Well, I met this woman on another site I’ll call Abigail. Her real name is Heike but that’s what she wants to go by. I was flattered when she said she was thrilled to meet an author and was all excited to buy my book as soon as the batteries in her Kindle were charged. She said she loved the sample of my book and found it to be what she likes to read. So I was thinking how it was definitely a good idea to join many sites, reach out to people (within reason since I don’t want to come off as pushy or spammy) and spread the link to my book to help promote myself. I was also thinking that we’ve definitely got to hope for some free time to get more manuscripts submitted for publication now that my name’s getting out there, but now I’m not sure I should do that because I’m starting to wonder if Amazon could be ripping me off since there are no DE sales on my reports. God, I hope not and that it’s just a glitch on their end and that Abigail isn’t playing with me. She truly seems sincere enough, though, and I find it hard to believe she’d express interest in the book of someone she just met and then tell them she bought it and had it on her Kindle at that moment if she really hadn’t.

It was actually funny for a while there because when she came out and told me she was from Germany I first thought, “Oh no. Just oh fucking no.” LOL, I will have to tell her about Nane and Barbara sometime. I have no idea how old she is or what she looks like but she seemed so friendly and we got to chatting for a while, again making me wonder if something wants me to really learn German. I told her my last two books have German characters and one is set in Munich (she’s in central Germany). We exchanged some German and she said my German was “GREAT.” LOL, I’m glad one of us thinks so.

Anyway, she didn’t want to do private messaging on the wallpaper site and I was alarmed to learn my email address was public there and I didn’t even know it. But thanks to her, I was able to go in and hide it once she told me it was visible to her when she’d click Contact Member. No wonder I’m the target of every spammer/scammer out there, though most are still no doubt from my sweeping days using that addy.

So when Abby emailed me (the message definitely came from Germany), she told me the reason she’s so big on privacy there and careful of what she says is that she’d been banned from the site before for downvoting. Not sure what the point is in having down or upvoting features if people can’t handle how you choose to use them, but that’s why she wouldn’t talk to me in a PM, and she asked me not to speak German to her on our public walls there or else she’ll fail to “verstehen.”

I told her it was no problem and that I myself have been banned from sites a couple of times for flame-throwing.

I asked Mitch about the reporting issue and sent a message to Amazon itself. Amazon did reply but all they said was that they’d have to get back to me later since adding Amazon.de and Amazon.it has sparked a surge in messages from people wanting to publish with them.

Mitch said that it does sometimes take a while for reports to update but that there are people out there wondering about Amazon not reporting sales.

Oh, great. You mean I could have more sales out there that I don’t know of because I never got credit for them? But why would Amazon rip people off if that’s what they’re doing? Amazon has plenty of money so it shouldn’t need to steal from its authors. But only one of three things could be the case – Amazon’s glitchy, Amazon’s ripping me off, or I’m about to be given a reason to really hate the hell out of Germans!

Then there’s Rasvi, too. He’s so funny. He’s the 20-year-old living in India I met on FB through Adonis. His English is just as bad, too, LOL. Well, he lives on MyOpera like Adonis, stopped into my blog and said it was very interesting to read and “he’s so happy cuz I’m a professional writer,” LOL.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2011
Mary’s release date has now been pulled back to 11/17/12. How excited she must be! But I can also imagine how she must feel that next November is so frustratingly far away. She still has about a year left to go after all and that’s quite a while. It may be nothing compared to a decade but it’s enough.

I still worry about whatever’s up there that finds it oh so important that we spend the bulk of our lives dirt poor. We’re getting ahead and it’s pissing it off. Sure seems that way anyway. First the PayPal thing and now the windshield.

PayPal is ignoring Tom and so he’s sending what will be his second out of three messages before we shut our PayPal account down if that’s our only option in the end. No sense in keeping an account we can’t put money in since we’d only be ripped off if we did. We clearly said on our auctions No Returns. Therefore they can’t just suddenly decide they want their money back a couple of months later.

Andy told Tom to look for a glass junkyard, saying that he got a used windshield in Phoenix for $20 and free installation but we can’t find any around here. You know how it is for us, though. We never get any breaks in life. So it’s still going to cost us around $200. Then we just have to hope that no other unexpected surprises spring up on us to cost us a couple more hundred and then a couple more and a couple more… Or that he’s laid off anytime soon.

Of course we prefer him not to be laid off but if they keep him another few weeks we should have enough money saved to get us through till April so long as we work online more than we have been. I’ve been concentrating full-time on my writing which the uptick in book sales has helped to encourage. The economy is a little better but I don’t think it’s back to where one can usually get a job within just a couple of weeks. It took just two weeks when we went to Oregon and two weeks when we first came to Cali, but if he got laid off now, more than likely it would take months to find something new.

I feel so accomplished and unaccomplished in life. I’m not accomplished career-wise or financially, but I’m accomplished personally and intellectually. Even physically. I ran 13 minutes and walked off the last 17 after doing my arms and abs. My metabolism is definitely speeding up and my weight is going down, once again reminding me that walking isn’t enough unless you can walk all day long. At least not for me. I really have to get my heartbeat up and to the point of near hyperventilation. Oh, the way my calves still burn when I run! Hopefully, that’ll ease up soon, but I’m definitely able to run longer and am less out of breath when I stop. I could probably run the entire 30 minutes, but I don’t want to do that just yet. I want to add a minute a day and slowly build myself up to it. It takes a lot longer than one may think to condition the body. You’ll notice changes right away but the rest takes time and the more you get in shape the more you need to challenge yourself. Those professional runners that run over 10 MPH for hours took years to get to that point. I don’t care to run that long that fast, but I hope to run a half-hour 5 days a week and maybe even bump my speed up from 4 to 5 MPH if my joints can take it.

I was sweaty and exhausted when I finished my workout but feeling good. :) Love the feel of the cool shower hitting my body afterward and massaging lotion into my feet.

Andy was excited because I may have the cure for the common cold as he put it, LOL. I told him to scald his throat with the hottest tea or coffee he could stand once he felt a sore throat and the onset of a cold. Colds usually start in the throat, so if you can kill the virus right at the source you should be ok.

The fucking tub is dripping again, but fuck it. As long as we don’t lose our propane, I don’t care about Jesse’s water.

We’re on for rain tonight and tomorrow just when I was beginning to wonder if it would ever rain again here. I heard the wind chimes start clanking out there but they’ve since stopped. Oh, here they go again.

The troll spent an hour and 43 minutes on my blog today and just came back. Isn’t it kind of late for her? Alison messaged me and apparently, even the assistant COP is ignoring her. Yeah, that’s the pigs for you. I was hoping that since Texas laws/punishments tend to be overly harsh like Arizona’s and just as backward by concentrating more on those that do little more than piss people off with shit they don’t want to hear, as opposed to those who actually harm or steal from people, that they would at least have the decency to check it out. But to not even reply to her messages is both rude and unprofessional. As I’ve said a million times before, I’d trust my own self up against a burglar or something like that before I ever put my trust in the pigs. If Aly were black and they could know that, then maybe they’d at least question the fucking nut.

I also got a view from Phoenix, Arizona and gave their details to Aly to see if they matched the one on her logs that was coming around every day and a suspected Molly fan. They only viewed one page and since they landed on one of my entries, they probably linked in from Facebook or Twitter since you would have to click through my profile page or other pages of my account to get to that entry. They could’ve jumped in from the public blog section but I would think that entry would be many pages away from the front page by now.

Got one view and one view only on OD yesterday. I’m kinda surprised cuz it does seem to be an active enough site.

Am I imagining it or did the “send message” button really disappear from Nane’s page? LOL, I can still send messages by replying to previous messages. There’s no doubt in my mind that she was/is playing with me. Well, she’s welcome to go and fuck herself. :)

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2011
Today pissed me off as well as put a smile on my face. It’s wonderful that I got yet another book sale (in the US), but I’m pissed that we’re about to lose over $200 to a new windshield. Tom was on his way home when a rock seemingly flew out of nowhere and hit the windshield.

Why do I have a feeling something’s trying to drain our savings? He can make the money back in just two days of work, but still, why do I fear something up there is going to start throwing these unexpected curveballs at us if he doesn’t get laid off entirely in the next few months?

Well, I’m not going to pray cuz we can’t pray for what isn’t meant to be. It’s also a waste of time to pray for what is meant to be for if it’s meant to be then it will be whether I ask for it or not.

Two or three hundred dollars isn’t much of a setback to us right now but if we have to keep throwing away money here and money there on unexpected things that arise, it’s going to add up. I mean I know it’s only a matter of time before we’re dirt poor and struggling again on food subsidies, etc. I just wish it could be a few years from now instead of a few months or less. But if I’m right about us being meant to be poor for most of our lives, this good trend we’re on isn’t going to last long. Four years ago I resolved to stop doll collecting and spending money like crazy like I did in Oregon so that we could build up a savings, yet 95% of our time here has been spent without a single penny in savings. If that’s not something trying to hold us back in any way possible, then I don’t know what is. This is why I highly doubt I’ll receive much of an inheritance. I’ve been teased with money enough times in my life not to get my hopes up anyway. The horses and the pension were just a couple of examples of that. I’d be willing to bet just about anything that in the last year or so of their lives my parents’ money and assets will be drained to nothing. They usually have 1-2 luxury vehicles but if they still owe enough on their condo, then any money from the sale of the vehicles and condo will have to go to pay off any debts they leave behind. Other than a few grand here and a few grand there, something definitely has not wanted us to have money so far. At least not for long. So I just can’t see that changing in our 40s and 50s, though we’ll probably both be in our 50s when my parents die. The parents I also wish could live forever.

I just feel bad for Tom. He’s gone from always being home to never being home other than to eat, sleep and piss. Of course we want him to be working and we love this temporary burst of money, but now he has to spend one of his days off dealing with the fucking windshield. I’m just glad he wasn’t hurt or killed. He said it hit the very edge of it where the driver is, so had it been lower things could’ve been much worse. He said it sounded like a gunshot when it hit.

Anyway, I wonder if the last book sale was from Norma. That’s Sharyn’s mother. I said hello to her a day or two ago curious to see if she’d at least visit my blog. Well, there were a couple of hits from New York, NY and while Norma lives in FL, that’s where Sharyn lives. One was a confirmed proxy and both were tagged as “new” visitors. They didn’t seem to go beyond my profile page, whoever it was.

But if it’s really Polly and Norma buying my books, why don’t I hear from these people? I can’t say that was Norma or Sharyn in my blog but I know Polly was in it and I know she’s been on Facebook. There haven’t been any new posts from her since I spilled the beans on her yesterday, but she doesn’t strike me as the type to be on FB every day either. Especially if she’s working. So she probably hasn’t picked up the message yet, but yeah, I couldn’t resist getting a good laugh out of letting her know that I know she visited me, LOL.

I guess you could say I’ve got an addiction going as far as blogging and tracking go, LOL. I love to see what suckers get picked up by the thing, but I know most people just don’t care. It’s a known fact that we’re tracked on most of the sites we visit. It’s just the nature of the web. And if I’m to keep promoting my books, then I have to remain public with my blogging.

What’s odd is that I never got one single hit from OD. Hmm…

The troll spent 3 hours on my blog on and off throughout the day beginning at 10:30 and ending at 6:00. But I know it isn’t about her being any kind of fan of mine who’s interested in what I have to say (unless it’s about her, Kim, Kathy or Alison), but about her rubbing her presence in my face instead. See me! Notice me! Acknowledge me! That’s what it’s about for her. Maybe I should claim the tracker’s not working. LOL, that’d piss the bitch off.

I’m really surprised she hasn’t been checking Tumblr.

I worked out hard today with about 150 ab crunches, arm work, 12 minutes of running, and 18 more of walking.

Nane’s back to playing games again, mainly by ignoring me. I don’t know what else may be going on in her life. She hasn’t posted on her wall in ages. I just know that I still have mixed emotions about our little fight. Yes, she has a point in that we’ve never met and about the language differences and all that, but the woman’s also very smart. Smart enough to know me better. I just feel like I reached out to her in a time of need and was dumped for it. I was honest with her, I trusted her, I turned to her in tough times… and then I was thrown away for it. Other than my husband I will never again confide in others about certain things. I’m tired of not being taken at face value and I’m tired of being pushed away and tossed out like yesterday’s trash.

Andy said it was a different camera he filmed those beach videos with that he had before I sent him the one I won.

Now if rocks that shouldn’t materialize out of thin air much less be able to fly would stop setting us back, maybe we could prepare more manuscripts of mine for publication. Regardless of who’s buying my books, my name is obviously starting to circulate and if I want to keep this trend up I gotta send more stuff into submissions and hope for the best. I swear, though, that if that rock had feeling and I could find the damn thing I’d rip the shit out of it! Instead, I think I’ll just go study some languages so… eso es todo para ahora.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2011
I was thinking I might continue emailing Maliheh’s entries, journaling on Facebook for select friends, and also privately on Formspring so only Andy and my followers there could read it.

The troll spent an hour and 39 minutes over the course of a 6-hour period in my Thoughts blog today. I’m surprised she didn’t check Tumblr just in case there was an update there.

Started emailing chapters from Renting Ginny a few days ago but haven’t finished the electronic read-through yet, so it may still have errors. Only Maliheh’s getting them so far, though, included in journal posts.

One of our eBay customers who gave us a hard time about paying us and who tried to get us to do business outside of eBay apparently got someone who works for PayPal to try to scam us. Thank God we don’t usually keep money in our PayPal account because they’re trying to get the $75 back that they spent on two of the dolls they won. What PayPal is doing wrong is that they shouldn’t be involved in a supposed eBay dispute (though there are no messages or negative feedback on our eBay account or anything) and automatically try to refund them their money without notifying us first and hearing our side of the story. Tom was on the phone with them for a half-hour. If the only way to ensure they never get their money back, thus two free dolls, is to never again put money in our PayPal account, then so be it. But Tom thinks he can eventually win this fight. Thank God it doesn’t matter how good/bad our credit is since we’re never going to be buying a house or any property ever again.

Andy sent me some links to videos he made with the camera I sent him at the beach. The camera does a good job, too. I could tell it was during the off-season since not a soul was around. I could hear that it was windy, too.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2011
Still amazed at all the traffic on Thoughts compared to other blogging sites! Tumblr had 14 visitors today while Thoughts had 128. It’s great because more people see my book links this way. Traffic is coming in so fast that when I wake up I may not see everyone that was there. As a free member, it only shows the last 30 visitors. IDK, maybe it will be worth paying $7 a month for in June if we’re not back in the poorhouse by then. Premium members also have access to TIP’s own built-in block but that’s for premium members. I could also customize it to say something like: Ha Ha, Molly!

Until Sara P. told the troll how to bypass the blocks and filters. Yeah, that’s what I suspected was the case. I figured she had help since she wouldn’t be smart enough to figure that out on her own. Then Alison confirmed this by suspecting that she’s friends with Sara again, who’s a tech blogger. I’m surprised she didn’t recommend turning cookies off so I don’t see her on my blog, but that’s what the troll wants. She wants to be seen. She craves attention and recognition and so she’ll do anything to force her presence on people and remind them she exists. I can block her from view, though, if I really want to.

Sure enough, the troll wasted no time finding and following me at Thoughts since I didn’t care to hide the link. I can’t let one troll stop me from having fun and sharing my book link in any way I can to help promote myself. I just thank God she rarely messages me and makes actual contact. She has with Aly, though, but as usual, it was in a non-threatening and generic way (have a Merry Christmas, etc.). Enough to make her presence known and to piss Alison off since she’s told her DO NOT CONTACT ME for nearly a decade now, but nothing that’ll get the feds pounding on her door.

Since Alison was rudely blown off by the Chief of Police, she contacted the assistant COP about Molly’s unwanted stalking, following, messaging, commenting and general harassment that’s gone on for what’s now coming to close to a decade. If she can do this for this long, she may very well do it all her life until someone figures out a way to stop her if they don’t beat her to death with her own damn computer first.

She’ll probably be blown off again until she calls them, but that’s just the corrupt pigs for you. They’d rather focus on those who dare to complain about their loud, rude, obnoxious, vandalizing freeloading neighbors who have the nerve to complain about blacks/Mexicans when they themselves are white and presently considered second-class citizens. They would also rather use and abuse their authority. Hey, it’s fun to pick on the victims while the perps get away with all kinds of things, isn’t it? But it’s part of why so many of them are getting killed these days. People are getting fed up and fighting back. Most of the time they get themselves killed it’s because they provoked it! I have no trust, faith or sympathy for 99.9% of those in law enforcement or the courts.

I worry about Alison because she’s been having dreams about her cancer being inoperable if she doesn’t act fast. Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of, and she’s just like me with the dream premonitions and bad feelings. So, as much as she’s dreading it, she’s gonna get back under the knife ASAP and have both breasts fully removed.

Maliheh has once again proven to be oh so right in saying that family is the other F-word. Where I suspected Polly was on FB and got my message and was the one looking for herself in my Tumblr blog and maybe even bought my book, now I know for sure she’s been on FB cuz she just posted on her wall. I swear her wall and Aunt Ruth’s were private before. Or did I just miss them? I don’t think I did. I think for some reason they just made them public. As some sort of test? So I could see Polly bragging about her daughter being accepted into college?

Never heard back from Aunt Ruth. I can understand that Polly may see me as a bit of a stranger due to the age difference and rarely seeing each other, but I would have thought she’d at least acknowledge the message with a quick hello just to at least let me know she got the message and well, just to be polite. It goes to show how stuck in the past people can truly be if her reasons are what I think they are and that’d be the years of bullshit rumors she’s no doubt heard about me, as well as the fact that I made a few pranks to her parents 25 years ago. And I thought I could be unforgiving! But I don’t know for sure what’s on her mind and I’m not going to worry about it either. I’m just making a point in that Maliheh has a hell of a point in pointing out that other F word. Tom, Maliheh, Andy, Alison, Christine, Mitch – that’s my family. Really, those are my true family members. Funny how life turns out at times. The people we least suspect end up being the ones who care about us the most and whom we love and care for in return.

Tammy and other family members are why I’m so torn between my parents living and dying. I totally have mixed emotions in that department! I wish they could live forever, but at the same time, I wish they would pass on so I can just be done with the rest of the family. I hate having to bite my tongue or feel like a real ass kisser just so word doesn’t get back to them about a disagreement I may have with another family member and get them all upset. I know I shouldn’t worry too much about my parents’ feelings after all the shitty things they’ve done to me, but they’ve also been a big help at times so that’s why it’s really tough on me. I just remind myself this – they can’t live forever. Someday they’ll be gone, I will have whatever inheritance they may leave me though I can’t see it being much, and I can walk away forever. They both know, however, that I refuse to go to their funerals. I have my limits same as anyone else goes as to how much I can control my temper. As soon as the brother, the uncle or anyone else even so much as looks at me wrong, they’ll be in the hospital fighting for their lives while I’m booked on assault charges. And in this day and age, I have absolutely no physical shortages that would prevent me from inflicting quite a bit of damage on these assholes. I always believed it was just a matter of time before the wrong person in the wrong place and situation pushed me too far. In the past, I was faced with a case of either the other person being tougher than me or having some kind of hold on me that prevented me from attacking them after they either threatened me or did some serious shit to me, but sooner or later someone’s going to underestimate me. Someone with absolutely no hold on me whatsoever. I don’t know if I’ll get away with it in the end. I’ve never had the same kind of protection from above that my own perps seem to have had. I only know they’ll be hurting so bad they just might wish I’d killed them, and I am not going to feel bad about it or sorry for them in any way!

Oh, and how could I forget to mention Norma? That’s Sharyn’s mom. I messaged her earlier in the evening not because I care but to see if she visits my blog. I mean, certainly she wouldn’t reply, would she?

Not surprisingly, Renting Ginny is going to end up with nearly 1000 more words than it began with as I usually make several additions when editing/proofreading.

Got one of those chain necklaces for glasses so I can wear the damn things around my neck when I’m not wearing them on my face. I know it seems grannyish but I’m sick of taking them off, going into another room, then wishing I had them because I suddenly see a spot on the wall that may be a spider. I miss my 20/20 vision!!!

Tom also got a traditional fold-up drying rack with wooden rods. The other one that you stack and attach to the fan was a pain in the ass to set up and it took up quite a bit of room. We should’ve gotten this one to begin with. It helps add drying space since we’ve only got 3 lines strung across the living room now and a bad feeling we just may be trapped here for many more years to come. Well, I wonder that at times anyway, unlike Mr. Optimistic here. God, I hope not! But as a certain friend of mine and I agree, God loves to kick back those who try to live decent lives while allowing bad people to flourish. So if Tom gets laid off, I will be more than just a pessimist. If not, then we should get out of here sometime next year without a problem.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2011
It was so sad reading about the mother who shot herself and her two kids in Texas so they wouldn’t have to starve to death after being denied food stamps. It’s one of many reasons I don’t check the news very often. It sickens me that this country simply refuses to take care of its own but they’ve got plenty of money for terrorists and to send to Japan after they had their tsunami as well as for Haiti after they had their earthquake. I cringe every time there’s a disaster in some foreign land because I know our hard-earned and much-needed money is going to end up in their hands! :( Anyway, I can totally relate to the woman’s frustration. That’s what Tom and I were going to do when our lovely government gave up on us; kill ourselves to keep from starving in the streets before he got a job and saved us. I’ve always been a strong believer in that we’re responsible for our own actions, but in this case, I hold the government just as responsible for those children’s deaths as I do their mother.

I’m also sick of the comparison games so many people seem to love to play by insisting they’ve been through more hard times in life simply because they’re older or they went through something really extreme. Well, I’m sorry but one can go through a lot more at just 20 years of age than one at 50 who has had a relatively easy life. While I sometimes may want to shake those who act like a flat tire is the worst thing in life and tell them to try going hungry, being poor, being homeless, having to live in dumpy motels, trailers, seedy neighborhoods, jails, funny farms, etc., I also realize that each individual has a different definition of what’s a hard time and what’s not. I think that as long as you yourself perceive something to be rough, then so be it. Meanwhile, I wish people would stop with the “My life is rougher than yours” trip or “I’m older so I know more about hard times.” It’s not a goddamn competition!

My ear has been better since Tom got a huge chunk of dead skin out of it 4-5 days ago, so yeah, it was mostly my ear the last time around. I’m sure it (or my teeth) will be back to haunt me soon enough, though.

I can’t wait to not only surprise Barbara with her “role” in my latest story but also with the picture I found on a graphics site that shows a sexy lady and says: I’ll be a good student if you’ll be my teacher.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2011
Life is still full of surprises. I wasn’t sure I would hear back from my cousin or aunt. Like it or not, people tend to think of us as we last knew them to be and not as we are now and I still had a lot of growing up to do when they last knew me. Then again, they wouldn’t know the me of today because it’s been so long since we’ve been in touch, so other than what my folks may tell them, they would be clueless.

Nonetheless, I was surprised by a quick message from Aunt Ruth. She said she was doing fine and went back to work after retirement. Because she asked where I’m living now I wonder if she’s still in touch with my parents or how often.

Andy emailed me pictures of his place. He’s still a bit of a clutter freak, but the place is nicer than I thought it would be for being where most places are so old.

Monica, my friend on the wallpaper site, says she’s loving my book so far. That’s nice to know. I’d hate to have her not be able to get into it or think it sucks but that’s going to happen sometimes as we can’t please everyone and expect to be everyone’s cup of tea.

We were going to publish A Rainbow in Munich and eventually Renting Ginny to submissions this weekend, but because our schedules are a bit off we might wait. I want us to sit down together and have him go over with me all the steps so I can eventually submit books on my own.

Decided not to worry about blocking trolls from my blog. If there was anything there I didn’t want her to see, it wouldn’t be there in the first place, though I’m a little worried my cousin and aunt may be offended by a few things should they visit my blog again. I’d also like to think they’re smart enough to realize that it’s just my own personal opinion and that we all can’t always agree on everything and that’s ok, too. I don’t mean to offend anyone with my writing. I’m just telling it like it is from my POV.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2011
I’m tempted not to bother checking my Yahoo mail every day like I usually do because I’m sick of all the spam. I don’t know why but I’ve been getting hit with it in waves. When I got up yesterday there were 23 messages waiting for me and only one of them wasn’t spam. Now there’s a new trend going on where spammers send spam to multiple addresses at once, so now those that are being spammed get to have my addy as well. I pretty much know when I’m going to hear from who as not many of my friends are that erratic and unpredictable, so we’ll see.

I wish I was better at getting myself to do what I should do and not what I want to do. I should eat less but I don’t. I should dump Barbara and Nane but I don’t do that either. I don’t think I’m gonna hear from Barb ever again, though. As for Nane, I don’t know for sure but sometimes I wonder if we really had more than just a misunderstanding and if she really was in fact toying with me and plans to do it again by ignoring me for months at a time. Even two of my friends suspected she might be playing games and it’s quite common for gamers to accuse someone of what you’re accusing them of as a means of defense. I don’t have to be a therapist to know this, but yeah, if you accuse your mate of cheating they’ll probably turn around and say they thought you might be cheating, too.

I’m also still kind of hurt that she “thought” I was just playing with her about killing myself. Ok, so never having met and the language differences may’ve been a factor in her misunderstanding, but shouldn’t she be smarter than that? I just would have thought she’d know I would never joke or play games about something so serious. Andy knew damn well I meant business until the job saved our asses, but he has known me all my life, he lives in my country, and he shares the same native language. Still, it’s made me more cautious of whom I say what to.

I guess now is a good time to express some fears, doubts, and worries that have been going through my mind, though I may not actually finish and post this entry online till tomorrow.

For the longest time, I’ve feared that what happened in 2007 and then last September was a preparation of sorts. I live with the constant fear that God or whatever’s up there is going kill me by eventually giving me more than I can handle. I just don’t get how so many people can believe He doesn’t give us more than we can handle. People are dealt shit they can’t handle all the time – diseases, accidents and so much more. Something eventually kills us all. Why? Because we couldn’t handle whatever it was that killed us!

I know that I have to die someday anyway and that the thought of growing old never appealed to me, but I would still rather grow old and die with my husband in some nice little house in an adult community that is perhaps in Florida. But I still wonder if this is just a dream. I also wonder if maybe we should kill ourselves while we’re still doing well before the shit hits the fan again and something up there gets to once again have fun tormenting us with our lives and emotions. But I just don’t have the guts to pull it off. I don’t understand why I’m so afraid to die. I have to die someday anyway even if the economy doesn’t kill us first because my husband’s not going to outlive me unless I got some surprise disease or in some accident along the way and that’s kind of unlikely. I would not only not want to go on without him, but I don’t see how I possibly could. Back when I lived alone I not only had disability benefits even if it wasn’t much, but life was a lot simpler back then. Now things are so damn complicated that as smart as I may be with some subjects like languages and writing, I don’t think I could figure a lot of these things out on my own that’s always come so easy to him. There’s also the sleep disorder so few people seem to get, and I couldn’t just go out and get a job even if the economy was booming.

But right now I’m more worried about the next few months than what may happen if we live long enough to get old in the first place. Tom’s a little concerned because they laid off a bunch of people in another department where he works due to lack of work. We know they won’t let him go before the year is out because he’s filling in for someone who’s going on vacation and because they’re super busy in his department at this time of year, but what about next year??? I totally fear he’s just going to keep getting laid off over and over until he retires if nothing does kill us along the way and that we’re going to be forever trapped in this little old trailer! It’s like something’s holding us here for Jesse’s sake. The odds of him getting hired on anywhere ever again since so few people hire on permanents these days is next to nil. How do we rent in a senior community of all places with him as just a temp? I’m hoping that these kinds of places will accept that that’s just the norm of today’s workplace, but I don’t know about that.

All I know is that I’m so afraid he’ll be laid off before we’re eligible for Unemployment again in April! Our good times simply don’t last that long and sooner or later we’re going to not just get pushed to the edge of a cliff, but pushed off the damn thing altogether. Whatever it is that’s been cursing us so badly simply won’t let us get ahead for long. It keeps kicking us down and through endless cycles of the same old struggles. I’m just so afraid this yo-yo thing is gonna kill me! Never before coming to California did we have such concerns and problems. I’ve had my share of problems all my life but how did they go from “It’s too bad I can’t have/do a particular thing I want in life” to “Will my husband and I survive the next month?”

I tried to tell myself that maybe everything would be ok. Maybe they won’t let him go. They won’t hire him on, but maybe they won’t let him go and everything will be alright. Yet I know I’m just kidding myself. Nothing up there would be that nice to us. Besides, it isn’t just us; it’s life. Most people out there these days are temps that work a few weeks/months here, then get laid off, get a new job for a few more weeks/months, then get laid off again.

Tammy would take us, and as she said, Tom could work with Mark, but I don’t think that’d be a better solution to death the next time the shit hits the fan around here. Really, running to her would be committing suicide! I can’t see myself so desperate that I have to turn to someone who calls the pigs on me every time they get pissed at me and who’s so damn vindictive. I’d simply be too afraid to trust her.

I was talking with Maliheh about growing old and she said they wondered what was worse; growing old alone or having a bunch of people around that just don’t give a damn. I wonder more than that. I wonder just how many of my friends really give a damn as much as they say they do or at least seem to from a distance. But what if I was suddenly in their backyard? What if I suddenly showed up at their door homeless, hungry and in tears? Would they care then? Would I still be a “great” friend? Would I still be “loads of fun?” I wonder about these things sometimes.

Later…

Tom doesn’t think there’s any real cause for concern as far as him getting laid off because right now we have enough saved to cover January and February’s rent. By the end of the year, we’ll be covered through March. So we should be able to bridge the gap or at least come pretty damn close to covering our asses till April. I still worry anyway. After what we’ve been through we could win a million dollars and I’d still worry.

After nearly a half-hour working my arms and abs, I ran non-stop at 4 MPH for 11 minutes and then briskly walked off the remaining 30 minutes on the treadmill. I still look like what I’d sort of describe as a “fit fatty.” LOL, yes I look fit and you can tell I work out, but I still have way too much fat on me. I can dedicate myself to working out, I’ve stopped the cravings by upping my protein, but I cannot kill the constant hunger! Most people can lose weight by just dropping to 1500 calories a day, and while that would be enough for me, it’s too much for losing weight. I need to cut down to around 1000 to lose weight and that’s simply not enough for me to live comfortably on. At 1000 I’m hungry, cold, tired and cranky. So I continue to get fit but keep the fat.

I still can’t figure out how Molly’s bypassing my blocks, but knowing that she’s not the least bit intelligent or sophisticated in any way, I’d say it’s probably a glitch on Tumblr or Toolator’s end. Alison says she hasn’t been to her blog in about a month which is weird, since we both agree we thought she’d find her more interesting than me, but Aly also contacted the cops about her, I haven’t… yet.

She agrees that Nane probably still was playing with me. Yeah, and she probably will again, too. We’ll just see how many months pass before I hear from her again. Love may be blind but so is lust. But neither love nor lust could ever blind my ability to play back. :)

Paula dodged going to jail today because they bumped her sentencing date up to February 27th. I guess the judges got tied up or something. She’s going to New York this weekend to meet her latest loser instead.

For dreams, I haven’t had anything too alarming, though I did have a few disturbing ones. They don’t worry me, though. Dreams of being stuck in hotels, jails and funny farms are nothing new for me. It’s called a lifelong case of PTS.

The best dream was the one where I woke up to find I sold 11 copies of my book. I’m not famous or good enough to sell that many in a day, but it was still nice. Someone in New York downloaded a sample of it before linking into my journal from Smashwords, but apparently, they ended up finding my journal more interesting than my story as they probably accessed every single post, LOL.

In one dream Tom and I were discussing buying something that seemed to be kind of costly, though I don’t know what it was. I hope this is a sign saying we don’t have to worry about him getting laid off. At least not too soon. But in real life, we agreed not to buy any non-necessities until we’ve got $2500 in savings, and assuming life doesn’t throw any curveballs at us anytime soon, this should happen at the end of this month or next. They’re overtiming the hell out of him so damn much that he’s taking home around $700 a week! I just hope that if there really is a reason for everything, then it’s because we deserve a break after struggling for so long and not because we need it for some upcoming crisis.

The disturbing dreams dealt with me being in two different jails. The first one didn’t look anything like a real jail. The doors weren’t locked or anything like that, but I had to be there for some reason. In the second jailhouse dream, those of us who were newly booked and then dressed in were being led single file to our cells. Only the cells turned out to be bathroom stalls in a large bathroom like what you would find in public. It was actually kind of funny.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2011
How the hell does Molly keep overriding my blocks??? I got up today to find she spent about an hour on my blog, but when I went and tested the block on my own IP it worked fine. So I deleted her block and created a new one for her. Maybe the block site was just down for a while since her IP hasn’t changed or anything.

When she didn’t spend much time there a few days ago after I let her in just so I could laugh at watching her go on a catch-up frenzy, I thought maybe she was actually smart enough to copy each blog page knowing she’d be locked out again soon enough.

Got another sale a couple of days ago in the UK. I could really get used to this trend I’ve been on! I think it’s time I sent more manuscripts into submissions. I was thinking of my last two stories.

Paula told me that if I didn’t mind I could send her those body oils I don’t care for. Yeah, I know. She loves it when I do for her at my expense, but why not? They’ll just sit around here going to waste anyway and I know she’d like them and we’re doing better than she is right now and can afford to send them.

She meets a new guy every other week and has a thing for Hispanic men like Andy does. Well, her latest is this guy from the Dominican Republic who lives in New York. Apparently, her son Justin has been bitching about it and accusing Paula of caring more about the guy than him. Hmm… isn’t 20 years old a bit old to be getting jealous of mommy?

They’ve been OTing the hell out of Tom lately. It’s great money for us but tiring for him. I just worry about how much it will slow down after the New Year. I also wonder – is something up there seeing to it that we get all this money cuz something bad is going to happen where we’ll need it? Or are we finally just being compensated for having it so rough for so long? So hard for me to believe our struggles are forever a thing of the past!

The rat has a new way of “calling” us. He chews rapidly on the bars of the cage and it causes it to vibrate in a way that’s just barely audible in the other room. The bar biter was begging for food, attention and freedom earlier. Once he’s eaten and had a half-hour or so of running around along with hugs and kisses (though this rat isn’t big on cuddling), the attention junkie will leave me alone for a while. I still can’t believe that a rodent can be so damn needy and smart, LOL.

Not that I’m complaining but so far my sister hasn’t called or responded to my email. She did thank me on FB, but that’s about it. She went to U-Conn the other day so I guess she was preoccupied with that. I keep asking myself, “What is it with her? Why can’t you just forgive her and move on? She’s done you a lot of good as well as bad in your life, so why can’t you just drop the past and move on???”

I wish it were that simple, but it isn’t. The severity of what she did to me was/is too enormous. She couldn’t have known about the warrant, as I said a million times before, but if it weren’t for her, those freeloaders and their corrupt pig pal never would’ve gotten me to court, much less in jail for half a year and out thousands of dollars. Because she had to go and call the cops on me for verbally lashing out at her ex for abusing her and Lisa, they routinely ran my name, found the warrant, and I had to suffer for the next 3 years.

I totally believe without a doubt that when we got into it online a few years ago, the only reason she didn’t make more trouble for me other than by harassing me online and getting my parents involved was that she didn’t know where I lived. She’ll never admit it, but I’m 99% sure she got our Maricopa address from someone in Tom’s family that she called.

So that’s what it mostly comes down to; she’s just too vindictive to trust. Paula has a temper too, and she may be more dangerous in a sense because she can be physically violent unlike Tammy, but Tammy is smarter. Sometimes smarter can be more dangerous to deal with than violent. Tammy is smart enough to concoct a more damaging and long-lasting form of revenge on those she gets pissed at. If she gets this address, gets pissed at me for some reason and sics the pigs on me, the pigs are more likely to believe whatever she tells them because I’m the one with the record. The law often judges us by the past the same as people do.

I believe she means well when she’s not pissed and that she really wants to get along with people, but given the distance, us being so different, and knowing what she’s capable of, it really makes me wary of letting her too far into my life.

It’s probably too soon to check and see if there’s a warrant out on my ass on account of the freeloaders, and while I may be a bit curious, I don’t care if there is because I will never go to court for these people or let them ruin my life all over again. So it doesn’t matter if there’s a warrant sitting out there or not.

The fucking dogs went off late in the afternoon. I yelled at them to shut up, but 10 minutes later they were right back at it so I turned the sound machine on. Jesse was probably bringing his kid back in the car in which case he couldn’t have taken the damn dogs with him.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2011
Not sure if I’ve got the strength or the energy for this entry, but we’ll see. No, it’s not my ear and teeth (that was yesterday), it’s my runs and allergies. The allergies are easily explainable – it’s windy out. That usually stirs up my allergies and that’s why I’m drowsy now; I had to take a Benadryl. But I can’t explain why I’ve had the runs so often lately. I had the runs 5 times in less than an hour but I don’t want to take any pills for it in case it wouldn’t jive with the Benadryl. I think I’m finally done running, though, for today. I’m not the least bit stressed out right now, I’m not sick, and so I just don’t get it. If it’s something bad that I ate; that’s a lot of bad things I’ve been eating lately. I jokingly said to Tom a while ago I wanted the runs because it helps control weight. Well, folks, sometimes we really do get what we wish for!

Yesterday I got a nice friendship candle from Eileen. It was in my favorite color, too – pink. And I got a card mostly in my second favorite color – purple with glitter on the inside. It’s too bad candles don’t work well at all when it comes to emitting their scent. That’s because the heat source is above the scented part and can’t get it hot enough. I used it as a nightlight instead so I could see my way through the living room and into the kitchen.

Andy taped on some quotes and pictures to the card he made me. I didn’t realize till later that he took a picture of a figurine with this little girl holding a sign saying Love You Nana and crossed out the ‘a’ in Nana and made it an e, LOL.

Nothing from Barbara, so yeah, I either scared her off or she simply feels there’s nothing more to say since I’m not going to be reporting to class anytime soon. Of course there’s always the chance she’s on vacation since they seem to get a lot of time off from work in Europe.

Chatted with Maliheh last night. twirls with delight As I told her, she’s still my #1 hottie. I just wish things were better for her and that there was something – anything – I could do to help. But right now she’s down from 20 students to 7 students (I don’t know how she can make her rent on that but she says she’s used to living on just 9K a year), she had to call the cops on her neighbors cuz their dog barked for hours and she wanted to kill it, and she hopes to go to Hawaii in a few weeks and sue the nursing home her mother’s in and its staff. I guess they’re guilty of being negligent and because of it they dropped her and broke her leg in two places.

Now here’s the funniest and most interesting news of all and that’s that I’m pretty sure my cousin Polly spent a half-hour in my journal last night and bought a copy of my book. I sent both her and Aunt Ruth a quick hello-hope-all-is-well-in-life message just out of curiosity as to how they may respond. I didn’t expect them to respond or go to my blog much less buy my book, but all they’ve done that I expected was not respond. Unless they’re waiting till they finish my book. More than likely they’re just curious and not wanting to actually be in touch which is ok with me.

I can’t say anything good or bad about Polly. I never really knew her that well since she’s a lot older and I rarely saw her. She would be in her 50s these days. I doubt I’d recognize her if I saw her on the streets. I didn’t always have nice things to say about Aunt Ruth, but she’s not a bad person. Just a little phony and misguided at times. Sure wish I could find Philip, though. I can’t believe he doesn’t have an account, but he probably does and it’s just not searchable. I’m not surprised he’s not on Ruth or Polly’s friend list as they probably don’t get along. Like me, Phil was the black sheep of his family.

The reason I think it was Polly was not only because they linked in from FB, but they searched for the word abortion and the name Polly. Why would she search for abortion, though? Anyway, I was a little surprised she’s in New Jersey. For some reason, I thought she lived in Connecticut, though she might have for a while. Then when I got a book sale in the US, it just seemed like quite a coincidence. If she could be interested enough to comb through my entries and access my blog’s archive, it seems likely she would be interested enough in the book. Despite the coincidental timing, though, I’ll never know for sure unless she ever comes out and tells me.

It was all I could do to keep from messaging her and saying, “Sorry you didn’t find what you were looking for since my blog’s search feature doesn’t work for some reason. But yes, I did mention you twice (in a nice way) and why look up abortion? I never had one, if that’s what you’re wondering, and if all you wanted to know was my take on the issue – to each their own. I’m amazed to see that anyone other than my husband can stand OSX and New Jersey? Shouldn’t you be up in Connecticut? Well, do stop by again sometime, and thanks for buying my book if that was you!”

ROTFL!!!

The thought of her reading my book amuses me. The synopsis and review would tell her up front that the leads are lesbians. I hope she can handle the steamy scenes, LOL. I can just imagine what she’ll tell her mother who will tell my mother, etc. Had someone told me they’d read one of my books someday I’d have hit the floor laughing, totally not believing it.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2011
So far – and I repeat so far – it’s been a peaceful day. No saws, no barks, no engine gunning. But lately, Jesse and the kid seem to make most of their weekday racket between 4pm - 5pm.

It’s still nice in the afternoons around here and we don’t need heat during the daytime but that’s mostly because it’s been unusually dry. As soon as the rains come in it will be cold night and day.

Amazon now has my book available in Italy and Spain. LOL, no one in Italy’s going to buy my book.

Our laser printer has been saying it’s out of toner, but then Tom read online that if you throw tape over the sensors, you can print another 1000 pages or so. They tell you it’s out of toner before it really is to get you to buy more cartridges more often so they can make more money. Each cartridge has a window on the end of it and when we looked inside one we could clearly see that there was indeed more toner in it. So we taped the sensors and sure enough, we were able to print my NaNo certificate and some pictures for my folks. Once my story’s done I’m going to send those and a copy of it to my folks after I edit out anything too smutty.

I saw that another sample of my book was downloaded on Smashwords, but there’s no way to tell who it was. If it was Maryann, she didn’t go to my blog that I know of. I honestly can’t imagine her buying it or going to my blog. I figured she’d at least check it out and maybe download a sample, but that’s about it.

Just took a half-hour break from this entry to talk to Paula. When the phone rang I automatically assumed it was Tammy, but then when I saw the 413 area code and didn’t recognize it as Andy’s number, I was confused for a minute. It was nice to talk to her after so long. I was wondering about her just the other day and whether or not she was in jail as I knew she had legal issues going on. Sentencing is Thursday and so she’s getting nervous. She doesn’t think she’s going to go to jail, and while I know Massachusetts isn’t like Arizona or Texas, I don’t see how she won’t since she’s being charged with both a misdemeanor and a felony. Wish I knew what class that felony was cuz that’s the problem. They run from 1-6 with 6 being what I hope hers is. A class 6 will probably get her a few months in jail while F1 is usually reserved for the murderers.

I’m not looking forward to when Tammy calls. Damn! I just do not want to talk to that bitch! I wish I could get into the whole idea of it and all that, but I just can’t. Yet I’m afraid to dump her because I know she would not only drag our parents into it and get them upset, but she would also start shit with me. Shit that may very well go beyond nasty messages and badmouthing me to whoever, wherever. She may also interfere with me getting any inheritance that may be left to me. So I have to just grin and bear it till our folks are gone and then I can walk away if I still feel the same and I think there’s a good chance I will. I don’t think the only reason I feel this way is due to our past problems but due to the distance as well and us being so different. Just because she’s my sister doesn’t mean she’s someone I would normally want to associate with. It’s different with those who are far away and with whom I have things in common or find attractive.

Got an email from Maliheh (she thinks my birthday’s today) saying maybe we can chat later on. I’d like that. :)

I know it’s dishonest but I sent Barbara an email saying I accidentally deleted a few messages and thought one might have been from her, just to see if I get a reply.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2011
Boy did my 46th birthday turn out interesting! And fun, too. :) This is gonna be a super long entry, just to warn you.

I got a record number of birthday wishes and probably in a record number of languages, too. The funny thing is that I was thinking I might hear from Maliheh and Barbara, or at least I was hoping to. Instead, I heard from Nane and Marie!

Marie wished me a happy birthday which was very sweet of her. I’m kind of surprised she remembered, though when I sit and really think about it, she loved me most of all out of anyone I’ve ever had a thing for. A few others have cared for me and been attracted to me, but Marie wasn’t just obsessed. She really did love me and maybe a part of her always will just like a part of me will always love her.

I got up just before noon and found that Tom had returned from the store and with the mail. I was checking out the new beachy calendar he got, knowing that I prefer beaches and flowers to seasonable and that I was sick of making or getting free calendars that are ugly. He said he decided I deserved the Rolls Royce of calendars this year, LOL. It is very nice.

Then I noticed the mail underneath it. I got a wonderful surprise from Andy which I didn’t expect at all! All I thought I’d get were online birthday wishes, not that that wouldn’t have been plenty sufficient enough, so when I pulled out his homemade card and $10 Walmart GC, I was delighted. I loved how he wrote A HALLMARKCARD on the back of it, LOL. As I told him, it can go to buy me a ring in the right size since I got a size too big last time around.

So after I checked out his surprise, another surprise awaited me and this one caused pangs of guilt as well as surprise and delight. Well, Nane really did send me a postcard from Turkey after all! It seems we may’ve had a huge misunderstanding and that we both had each other wrong. Nane may actually have cared for me much more than I realized.

I sent her a message letting her know I was so, so sorry for going off on her the way I did. Between the long silences between messages, the card taking so long to get to me, and her saying she’d order my book and then not doing so, I really thought she was playing with me. I told her I was sorry if I jumped the gun on her and that I hoped she could forgive me for my cruel and foolish words, and how I realized that since Irene also hadn’t heard from her in a while, something could be going on with her that I was unaware of. I said I wasn’t trying to excuse my rudeness, but when one is attracted to someone, their feelings tend to run deeper than they do for those who are just friends. Just because Nane and I never did anything together much less ever even met, doesn’t mean I see her as just a friend, and I don’t doubt that we’d have met had we not been so far away from each other. I think we’d have become more than friends had we been single. It may not have lasted long, LOL, but it would’ve happened I think. As I also told her, she will always be loved by me and welcomed in my home if she ever does visit this area.

Well, it turns out that she thought I was playing with her and that’s why she knocked me off her friend list. She said she wasn’t sure her English was good enough to sufficiently say how she felt, but that even though we’ve never met and even though it may not have been in the way I would have liked, she felt accustomed to me and close to me. She said she knew she hasn’t been a good friend only because she doesn’t believe one can be a “good” friend to someone they’ve never met, but still, she’d grown to really care about me. She said I was a little weird, LOL, but warm-hearted and nice and so my plans to kill myself had her devastated and she wondered if I really meant it or was just trying to get people’s attention. So when she saw that I was still alive when she got back from vacation, she wasn’t sure what to think, though of course she was glad I was alive.

I assured her that I was in no way shape or form trying to play with her feelings nor was I just out for attention. I have plenty of attention from plenty of people, just not enough luck at times, and as wrong as it would have been I wished it had been just a cry for attention and that we weren’t really in the serious jam we were in. But we really were backed to the very edge of a cliff with one foot in the grave and seemingly no way out, as I told her, and I would never play with the feelings of someone I cared about. I tease and joke in a fun and playful way but I would never mess with someone’s head that I cared for. Certainly not intentionally! I had to wonder just what the hell was wrong with my own English that I could have given that impression but I was very distraught at the time I wrote those messages. As I assured her, though, if we’re ever again in a bad situation like that, I’ll just keep my mouth shut and either just kill myself or hope that a miracle saves us like it did the last time. And it was like a miracle that he happened to get the job in the nick of time after trying for 6 months just to get nowhere.

I also told her we don’t have to be on each other’s friend list, but it would be nice to keep in touch every now and then. It’d be nice to have her back in my life and I admit it felt weird and lonely on FB without her and I was spending less time there.

I also heard from Eileen who said she sent a surprise to me, as well as from Alison, Kim, several FB friends, Tammy and my folks.

Again I wonder just how with it my mom really is. I kept offering to call her back so it wouldn’t cost her anything, but she said I didn’t have to do that. She also said she tried calling me earlier and I thought it weird that I didn’t hear the phone ring or that I didn’t have any VM alerts. Dad got on the line afterward and said she dialed the wrong number. She also kept saying she was worried about me because she heard there was a big storm in Cali and she didn’t know where in Cali we were.

Didn’t know where in Cali we were??? How can one not get a sense of where 30 miles east of Sacramento is?

After the usual pep talk on how life is about sometimes being up and sometimes down, but that we will get up once again after we’ve gone down, LOL, she asked if I’d heard from my brother. Now why would she ask that? I told her I heard from Tammy, but that I hadn’t heard from Larry. The part I didn’t tell her was that I don’t want to hear from him. He has a great sense of humor but he really pissed me the fuck off, and well, there’s only so much I can forgive. I think we all have our limits in that department. Every time we kiss and make up we end up fighting again and I just don’t want to go through the same old bullshit cycle all over again with him or anyone else. I just want to live as drama-free as possible. I don’t hate him or wish him bad things; I just think we’re better off ignoring each other.

Tammy’s messages always bring a slew of mixed emotions. First she wished me a happy birthday, said she has to give her love to Tom if we all chat by phone, said we should move to CT so Tom could work with Mark, and that some Arab guy tried to scam her by phone. I guess they tried to claim they were government officials and that she’d be going to court if she didn’t pay up. She said, “They called the wrong person, because we hacked into their phone line letting people know that it is a scam, called the Dallas PD, and much more. So I am not a saint when someone pisses me off.”

Yeah, I know. That’s why I keep my distance. I learned the hard way a few times over just how mean and vindictive she can be when she gets pissed. She makes my most vindictive deeds of the past seem like not much of anything. And so that’s why I wouldn’t want to be her neighbor, much less have Tom working for her husband, even if she lived in an ideal climate. As soon as she got pissed at me, Mark would let Tom go and leave us up shit’s creek. I’d hate to return to the cold, snowy winters and the muggy summers. If I’m gonna do muggy I’d do Florida where it was at least summer year-round. I realize, though, that being near her would be having someone around we could run to when disaster strikes, something I’ve wished for several times since leaving Arizona, but we’ve survived this long without any local friends or family. Despite having a temper that makes mine seem like a pussycat, I do appreciate the offer. :)

She told me the girls are doing great with one as a hairstylist, one as a grocery store file manager and another in nursing training, and again I thought to myself – big fucking deal. I wish I could care, but I’m obviously never going to be the sister Tammy wishes I could be or anyone’s aunt anymore than I’m ever going to be president of the United States.

I thought she was on disability and that Mark was on Unemployment and they were both poor and struggling, but I guess Mark is working. He’s the maintenance manager for some non-profit agency and they have a business on the side doing home improvement.

I also wish I could care that her Sjogren’s is worse, but I just don’t. She said it’s spread to her tissues, muscles, nerves, lungs and chest wall and more and she’ll need chemo. I can understand where she’d be miserable with this thing, so long as she’s not exaggerating anything, but from what I’ve read this is a perfectly manageable disease. It’s a bitch to live with at times like my ear can be, but it’s not fatal.

She really wants to chat by phone. I’m not thrilled about that idea and Tom certainly has no desire to chat with the woman who called the cops on his wife when she verbally lashed out at her abusive ex, thus landing her in jail for an unknown warrant connected to the freeloaders/crooked pig and losing us thousands of dollars, but I did give her my number.

Lastly, I told Tammy we’re not exactly in a position to move now. Tom can’t see himself spending 10 years with the company he works for now since they’re so damn incompetent which really puts him out and makes things harder for him, but it’s not the worst job, no job is perfect, and the pay is good. I also refuse to move long distance ever again with less than 10-15 grand after what happened the last time, so odds are we won’t move to Florida till he retires. The best we can hope for is to get into a bigger, newer, nicer rental sometime next year. I’m still hoping it’ll be a real house in a senior community next summer, but things don’t usually go as planned so we’ll see. I also still worry about him being laid off too, and us thrown right back into the same old desperate situation we’ve spent the better part of the last 4 years in, but I sure hope that doesn’t happen!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2011
After writing a book in the first person, which was tough to do since getting used to writing in the third person, I’ll soon have to make the switch back to the third person and it’ll be hard. Once you get in the habit of doing one or the other, switching back takes some getting used to. Like having a Spanish-speaking celly in jail and then being thrown back in with English speakers and having the brain be like, what? You mean I gotta speak English again now? Sudden changes aren’t as easy as one may think. I had my moments back then where I wished I’d kept my Spanish a secret.

The editing is slow and boring as usual. I know that the faster I do it the faster I can share the story, but if I go too fast I’ll have more errors, so I’m taking it slow and easy.

I swear I had two dreams of the evil A last night. Yes, two dreams. I don’t remember them and that’s perfectly fine with me, though wicked housemothers and hotels are better than anything to do with falling, water or violence since I know what that usually means.

It’s sunny and at least warm inside the place in the afternoons. But this is the month the weather usually takes a turn for the worst until March. :( Soon we will have highs only in the 40s and it’ll be raining its ass off.

Tom and I discussed our budget and after allotting money for the necessities, we talked about how we want to go about saving and all that and even paying off all our back taxes. God, I hate to do that! After the government left us within two weeks of death, damn do I hate to pay any agency that was prepared to let us starve in the streets or kill ourselves as we had planned! That money’s just going to be sent to other countries anyway. Yeah, my husband works hard to pay the terrorists in the Middle East, folks. Isn’t that sad? But way too soon enough we’ll be jobless, dirt poor, and on Unemployment again, right?

I feel bad for Christine and the forced motherhood thing she has to deal with. I don’t think I could stand to date one with kids unless they were on their own, no matter how hot or right for me they may be. She too, hates the noise, the messes, and the sheer boredom that goes with having kids around when they’re not running you ragged. If you’re miserable so much of the time, what’s the point? Is the person really worth it if so much of your life is no longer going to belong to you and it’s not a sacrifice you were willing to make in the first place?

One of my VH sisters I never met is so funny. She wished me a happy birthday and I said, “Thanks, but it’s actually tomorrow.” She said, “Nope, not in Australia it isn’t.” LOL, I didn’t realize that’s where she was.

I’m keeping any mention of my birthday out of my journal because I’m curious to see if Maliheh remembers it. I doubt Barbara will care, especially since tomorrow’s Sunday, but if I don’t hear from her by early next week, then I probably won’t hear from her again. Unless she reacts to the story somehow, LOL. I can’t wait to surprise her with that one, but I don’t know if she’ll even read it.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2011
Should I be flattered that I was contacted by a graphic design student requesting to use some of my journals for an assignment that deals with private and public relationships? They said not to worry if I don’t feel comfortable giving them permission, and only the other students will see it. I told them I’d like to talk to Tom about it first when he gets home later on and get his opinion, but that it would probably be ok so long as they don’t claim my writings as theirs. I’m honored that they chose me, though I don’t know why.

This weekend we’re going to discuss what to get when as far as upgrading me to Windows 7 and things like that because I’m so sick of being redirected to Yahoo’s search page so often because I’m using such ancient operating systems and browsers. And then there are the color laser cartridges we could use and a few other things. Originally we were going to wait till the spring if he was still working because we wanted to have money saved up for if they laid him off before he was eligible for Unemployment. But if all this OT is gonna keep bringing in around $800 a week which doesn’t look like it’s going to go away anytime soon, we may not have to wait on everything.

Had to listen to the fucking hammering and dirt bike again yesterday. Why couldn’t this kid have been a girl?! And when is it going to rain Jesse indoors for a while?

I have a feeling I’m not going to hear from Barbara again, but oh well. I’m still going to surprise her with my story when it’s edited and how I threw her in in a last-minute, spontaneous decision. Barbara’s a good character, though, LOL, unlike “Anina” who is based on Nane. Just curious to see if that gets a reaction from her, LOL. She could be waiting till my birthday along with Maliheh, if they remember or even care, but I doubt it. I may hear from Maliheh, but at this point, I’m really not expecting anything from Barbara anymore.

Later…

I really worked out hard! After a half-hour of working my abs and arms, I ran through a third of my half-hour treadmill workout between 4-5 MPH. My face was so flushed with heat when I was done it felt like I’d been slapped. I was sweaty and tired but I love that “accomplished” feeling of a good workout and how good a shower feels afterward. I had to eat a little more in one sitting but it restored my energy.

One would never guess I was this heavy and that my body was this old! But as athletic-looking as I’m getting to look I still have a ways to go. I’m still pretty hippy and while I’d rather the hips than the gut, I’d look better without them.

When I stepped outside to hang sheets, since it’s 68º out there today, I heard a saw that didn’t quite sound like a chainsaw. I couldn’t be sure where it was coming from but it was probably Jesse. In another few hours, I’m sure it’ll be hammering up a storm while its kid roars around on the dirt bike, but fortunately, it’s not something that goes on for hours. More like 15-30 minutes, though it is still annoying.

I killed a HUGE spider in the kitchen! :( Scared the living shit out of me! It was between the oven and fridge. It was perhaps as large as a large daddy long legs in diameter but with fatter legs. I sprayed it and it hobbled on over behind the oven. Then it reappeared and I beat the life out of it with the fly swatter. I gotta wonder how the hell long it would’ve taken the fucker to die had I not bashed its brains in??? I really hope to hell I don’t see any more of these things! If it’s in the middle of the day, just what the hell’s been going on in here at night?

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2011
Some people are saying that they’ve been unable to leave comments on my blog. What I don’t get is why some can and some can’t. Andy can, but Alison and Kim get “page element cannot be found” when they try to leave comments.

Tom had to work 12 hours yesterday so he made about $170 in just one day alone. Wish I could do that with book sales! I’d settle for $50 a week. I’m going to be spending most of the day editing after I finish this entry, work out and shower.

What’s with all the new Twitter followers all of a sudden? The language gurus and the writers love to follow me, but now the computer techies are following, too.

How could I forget to mention “slamming” Brandy yesterday? LOL, when I heard Jesse come down on the ATV, the dogs, which followed him down here, were hanging outside the door. When I pushed the door open I hit poor Brandy with it, hahaha. It wasn’t hard enough, though.

At 4pm I heard the truck come in and I assumed Jesse was picking up his kid. Then I got to hear 15 minutes of him hammering the hell out of something and the kid zooming around on the fucking dirt bike. Then the truck left at 5pm, presumably to dump the kid, but oddly enough there was no barking. The dogs used to not only go crazy when he used to work but when he’d go to drop the kid off, too. So either he’s taking the damn things with him or someone’s living there I don’t know about. Once again, things are “acting” like the beginning of the end. Most places I’ve lived in seem to start off quiet, then they get noisy, then they get quieter in the end.

Without the sound machines, I’d be totally lost when trying to sleep during the daytime. How does this cock manage to beat on so much shit so often and do all the other shit he does with a bad back? He complained about it enough when he was down here working and his back is why he’s on disability, so why doesn’t he go inside and SHUT THE FUCK UP?!

I just hope the pipe doesn’t start leaking again anytime soon, but it turns out that the tub never leaked like we thought. It took us over 3 years to figure it out but it has to do with whenever he flushes the tanks. It causes sediment to get trapped between the washers, so now we’ve learned that if we just open the faucets all the way and let them run a while, it will clear out.

Nothing from Barbara or Maliheh. I wonder if I’ll hear from them around my birthday.

Sharyn’s no longer appearing on the subscription page but is still subbied to me.

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Last updated August 12, 2024