One of these includes the collective weight of its occupants.

My weight has gone up over the past week by 5lbs, and despite a dip the other day, is not dropping down as quickly as I would like.

The 3lb bucket of cookie dough that I was sold by the local Girl Scout Mafia is probably not going to help this situation at all.

J. is now 185 lbs. That means he's put on 25lbs in the past few months. He's 5'4".

We control what he eats at home. We cannot control what he eats at school, which is, consistently, cheeseburger and Fries and plenty of coke.

R'.s weight is also up a couple of pounds. We are going to need to tighten our belts before we start needing to loosen them dramatically.

R. explained to her brother last night that each time he calls us collect from jail it costs about $20, so we are not going to do this more than once a week.

R's ex-husband also called and out of the blue said he would send the $800 difference for the tax credit we would have received for J.

This is unexpected and out of character. He said he did it because he 'felt bad' about taking the credit. I am willing to believe this is the case, although 'shit scared of what R. would do to him in court' may possibly be a more accurate representation of the emotion he is feeling.

I need to have some breakfast in a minute. You guys may not care about that, but I do...

I'm working from home today, and I have a lot of stuff to do, which is good.

My niece, JS., will be here in less than a week! I'm taking off the end of next week so she has company (apart from just J., who will be on spring break) her first few days.

"When do you want me to take off?" asked R.
"The Friday would be good. We get paid so maybe we can all go do something. Then perhaps another day or so when I'm not working at home."
"That might be wierd, just me and her."
"Why? You're both girls. Take her out. You can go do girl stuff."
"Girls can also be extremely catty."

I thought you ladies were supposed to be 'sugar and spice and all things nice'? What's with this inherent cattiness that is being brought to my attention? Is this true? I've been lead to believe that the world would be a better place if women ran it. That there would be less wars and so on. Am I in error in this thinking? Is your natural tendency to not get on with one another? Guys tend to look for common ground. On the rare occasion when guys only passingly familiar with one another are left alone together, they will talk about pretty general stuff, maybe watch a game, drink some brown liquor, play with the shotguns, field dress the cat, that kind of thing. Guys don't usually think "I wonder what he meant by that?".

Perhaps I'm reading to much into this. Maybe R. is just a little nervous about sharing her territory with another woman over the next few weeks. That's most likely what she means by 'catty'. We have three female cats, and they don't like sharing territory with one another. They will start hissing and biting, and tumbling over one another with their fur flying left and right.

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I think I'm going to need more film for the camera. Perhaps I should buy a camcorder...