I got up at 11:30 PM. The rat was waiting for me, but I needed to wake up first, so I gave her a treat. Then it rained for a little bit. I had my coffee and made a shrimp, tofu, and veggie stir-fry. After that, I took the rat out to play.
It hit me that Rosa is going to be released from prison next year. That was a long stretch! The fact that she’s going to be deported tells me she was in the country illegally.
I just looked her up at Perryville. The crime of second-degree murder happened in December of 2000, which is when we met. Two years later, she was transferred from Estrella to Perryville. She’ll be released two days before my 60th birthday. I’m pretty sure she’ll be in her mid-40s. The son she had shortly after going in is now in his early 20s.
She’s had one infraction since being in prison—some kind of unauthorized contact in 2007.
Second-degree murder is defined as killing someone on purpose but without planning it in advance. I can’t picture her deliberately killing her daughter, but I wasn’t there, and I realize that anything is possible. Something happened. The question is whether it was deliberate or accidental. If it was deliberate, she would never admit it. Whatever happened to the baby happened in the bathtub. I’m not sure if it drowned or if it suffered a head injury. Maybe she accidentally dropped it, or maybe she really did drown it because she was tired of being a mother. Though why she let herself get pregnant again if that was the case is beyond me.
She didn’t seem mentally unstable. She seemed aware, and very friendly and outgoing. The only thing that bugged me a bit was that she seemed too positive and upbeat. When I asked her why she didn’t cry for her daughter, she said it would only make her sick. She knew little to no English then, so all our discussions were in Spanish.
There is a small part of me that can kind of understand her reasoning. I had to do what I could to push Tom out of my mind because, even though I was there for months and not years, thinking about him only made me depressed and miss him more.
Later…
I can’t log into Facebook. WTF?
I’m not happy with my latest Walmart purchases. One item I got was crackle nail polish, but it barely crackles. Instead, it just looks like really bad nail polish that cracked unintentionally rather than crackled by design.
I also bought rainbow pencils, which are colored pencils with multiple colors. However, they don’t color smoothly and actually look like a little kid scribbled with different colored crayons. The pencils are also thicker, making it harder to stay within the lines.
I haven’t made it to Maine yet, but I’m hoping to today. The border always seems further away than it appears. A couple of days ago, I rode 32 miles just to get to New Hampshire! I now have a total of 145 miles to go.
Do we live in New Jersey in another dimension? I dreamed some guy from my dentist’s office called to confirm I had a cleaning and some other procedure due, and he said I had to go to the office in a place that sounded like Glassboro. I’d never heard of it, but I asked Tom if that was okay, and he nodded. So I looked it up to see if a Glassboro exists, and indeed, one does in New Jersey.
Then I dreamed I was living in a giant adult community, and my parents were still alive. Well, at least my dad was. Everyone ate breakfast in this huge auditorium-like building. The seats and tables were layered in tiers just like a regular movie theater or stadium.
Having seen a really good show, I wanted to recommend it to him, and I knew he would be having breakfast there when I entered the place. Because there were hundreds of people around, I couldn’t spot him easily. So I shouted over all the people to ask if anyone had seen him. Instead of him standing up and waving to me, several people stood up and surrounded him to point him out.
I also dreamed I was either in or remembering Marty and Ruth’s house, even though it didn’t look quite like it did in real life. She’s 84 years old now. Part of me wishes she and many others could know the real me and not what they think they know, but another part of me just doesn’t care.
I want to care even less than I do now, and that means working harder at not contacting those who don’t contact me, whether we’re on good terms or not. If someone cares enough to reach out to me, they will.
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