We are our god, and we are our adversary. People create these myths to comfort us in our belief that our world should be just as we like it.

I eventually got bored with the same commercial breaks, so I started flipping around the programming guide until I found "God vs. Satan" on the History Channel. I flipped back and forth between the two for the rest of the day. I didn't see nearly enough of the History Channel, so I found a copy today. I'm actually watching it right now.

As a person who doesn't subscribe to any coherent religious philosophy, I find myself under-informed in the mythological creation lore of Satan. I consider this research for my book series. It's not that I base my character's world on this mythology, but I do use it as a context. If the reader believes XYZ, and that serves my story, then I know it's there as a context. But, if the reader believes XYZ, and I want to contradict that with the reality I have created, I need to be able to refute or twist that.

Besides, the idea that so many people have relied on this constantly adapting character to take the blame for human failures and misfortunes, to help them dehumanize their enemies, and to evade responsibility for their own lack of integrity fascinates me to no end. Oh, and Avery Brooks is the narrator. His voice is just gorgeous as long as he doesn't start singing.

I'm getting wound up for November. I have the story of the second book in my head, and I'm learning it by heart. To me, it's not about creating a narrative; it's about describing events that have already taken place in a world that only I can see. I am challenged to describe events and objects well enough for everyone to understand what happened and how it appeared to me.

Right now, I'm having a little trouble remembering the prologue. I've got some time.

The horrible incident with the Mick spawned entirely from this feeling of desperation. I really couldn't care less about that bloated turd of a man, but I fought to keep him around. I argued to try to make him stay, after he told me that he intended to sleep with as many women as he could manage--including me in that lot--and refused to wear a condom. Christ. I didn't want that, at all, but I tried to compromise and plead.

It's like being trapped in the body of a lunatic, completely incapable of articulating reason or logic.

So, I want. I want to call everyone I know and get them to speak to me. I beg a few kind words from friends who have no interest in responding. I lose patience with everyone who's left me behind without a backward glance.

It's the mood. This one is dangerous because it makes me feel like I've got no one to lose.

Fuck it. I have to do better than that. I'm just succumbing to a bunch of minor stresses.

I wore my Fantastic Four shirt today. I haven't been able to get into the thing for a long time. Even though I don't look like a model figure in it, I found it comfortable enough to wear for Casual Friday. I felt pretty confident in my weight loss until our beautiful, former-body-builder attorney told me that I reminded her of a 4 billiard ball. It was a totally innocent statement--she hasn't a trace of malice in her entire perfect body. Still, I felt deflated because I felt spherical.

I'm pretty sure that tomorrow's weigh-in is going to be a disappointment. Totally my fault--the triumphs and failures of my attempt to be healthy rest in my hands.

The Depression says, "...and it's never going to get any better, either."

That's what Depression always says.

I got a new watch from Overstock.com, and the band was a bit too big. I tried to find a little kit to adjust it myself, but had no luck. I went to Wal-Mart with hope of finding one at their jewelry counter. I was fortunate to find a girl there who made the adjustment for me in about two minutes. While she removed links, I slipped around the corner to look for a belt.

A few weeks ago, I found one that I liked, but it was way too small, despite being the biggest size they had. God, how pathetic. Today, however, it fit to about the third set of holes. Sold! I walked out of Wal-Mart with a snazzy new watch fit to my wrist, and a new belt. That's all good news.

But I tried, anyway, to find a reason. I made little excuses to keep myself occupied, but I couldn't pin down any kind of purpose. In one of my lowest moments, I confessed to Wilson the depths of my depression. I told him that I couldn't shake it, and, despite his arguments to the contrary, there was nothing to believe in.

He was frustrated with my apathy. That makes me dig in deeper like a tick. It's an affect of the depression, which only strives to tighten its hold. I felt worse.

After a short period of sitting quietly, plodding through work, he surprised me by putting his arms around me in an awkward leaning hug. I was sitting in my chair, and he was standing behind me. He told me that he'd care if I died, implying that should be reason enough. I think he was crying, and that made me cry a little. I felt terrible for inflicting that on another person.

So we became better friends, but I think about that now and feel bad. I bounce back so easily, and just move on. I wonder if my loved ones think I'm full of crap.

The state of mind is tranquil. The thoughts melt and sweep into dreams like a river delta meeting the ocean. Imagination and memory flow into dream until they cannot be distinguished.

Tonight, my world seemed perfect and vital. As I rested in the chair, my head resting heavily on my right shoulder, I noted all that I could observe.

Fall chill in the air. Clear, flat, starless sky. Full moon blinding out all but the bright planets on the western and eastern borders of the horizon. The moonlight cast an inviting visibility over the lawn and the maple tree.

No wind. I could smell the green fragrance of the tomato plants and hear the patter on the sprinkler mist on the leaves and ground cover. Near my feet, an occasional click rose from the gravel as my little dog foraged for weeds to eat.

In my head, Chris Cornell's gritty voice moaned out, "I am the Highway."

"I am not your autumn moon / I am the night"

If I could have stayed there, I would have. All I can do now is to come here and read the weak words I've left. I can read and remember the longing and the placid reflection.

I've been sensible about it, cutting fat and calories and eating whole grains instead of refined flours. I keep a log of everything I've eaten during the day, with all of the nutritional information. I use livestrong.com, and the site calculates the number of calories I can have in a day based on my weight goals. It's all very legitimate. I'm not taking supplements or shakes, or following some crazy prescribed fad diet. I'm not going overboard.

I have made one change in my diet that had nothing to do with weight or health: I've stopped buying beef of any kind. I have eaten it a couple of times since April 10, when I made the decision. Times are too financially lean to refuse to eat the food in our freezer, so I bend the rule when it comes making use of what we have. I still do not buy it.

April 10 was not a particularly special day. KJ was driving up to Vernal with the camper that is serving as his home while he works there, and I was along for the ride. Near Roosevelt, the state highway turns into a narrow road in the crease of sparsely populated hills. It winds through land dotted with occasional trailers or box houses with junk-filled yards and makeshit fences (fences made of random shit and debris in the yard).

Tragically, the shoulders of the road are covered with a depressing number of carcasses of deer, elk, moose, pronghorn, and various small creatures. I even saw the remains of a turkey vulture that must have met his death while he was dining on one of the aforementioned unfortunates.

I found it all depressing. In those cases, my first thought is that we humans ruin everything by inserting ourselves into the homes of all the creatures we ultimately destroy.

I was in that frame of mind when we passed several adjacent pastures full of cattle. Calves toddled around between the grazing adults, sometimes leaning on the mother in a posture that suggested a sort of comfort in the contact. I don't really approve of cattle. They destroy the land upon which they graze, and don't have much reason to even be in this country. They wouldn't survive if we didn't keep raising them. In my mind, that places them in the class of things that we have added to the environment to harm it because we have no respect for the system that sustains us.

Understanding that, you will hear my recount of the moment that changed me in its proper context. As we passed one of the pastures, I looked to my right and saw a a few cows standing close to the roadside fence. Between them, a brown calf fidgeted while a black calf came bounding up and jostled the first one in an energetic form of play. He was really bouncing along, tossing his head high like a horse. It was so like watching children play, and so innocent that it made me smile. Then, I thought about the fact that within a year, that little calf would be grown. He'd be knocked in the skull and hung by his rear ankles on a chain belt. The chain would carry him past a spinning blade that would cut his throat, and he'd be slaughtered for meat.

I'm sure that's still his fate, because that's what they are born to do. But I know that I won't contribute to it, and that's about the best I can do.

Dieting has been going along well. I've lost just over 20 pounds, at a pace of about 2 pounds per week. I'm still in the honeymoon phase of the diet, where I am motivated and enthusiastic about finding great low-calorie meals and snacks. I still feel positive about my slow progress, but I know that plateau is coming.

In order to help boost metabolism, Wilson and I have started taking short, brisk laps around the nearby park during our breaks. He still smokes while he walks, but he also goes to a personal trainer 3 or 4 days per week. Net result: he's in way better shape than I am, so let him smoke.

One day, we were starting our first lap and had to step around the remains of a large dragonfly being dismantled by ants. I made a sad little wimper, "aww," because I hate to see dragonflies just laying dead, fully intact. When I was a kid, I thought dragonflies were amazing because they could fly as high as birds. Also, I figured they were special because dragonflies were one of the very few critters I couldn't catch.

Wilson fired off a disdainful response without missing a step: That's what they do. They die. It's nature. Get over it.

I know that dragonflies are like other insects, with adult lives that are insignificant in all manners except for the instinctual drive to reproduce. They live to assure another generation so life can go on, almost always without them. Adult moths don't even have mouths because eating is not a priority for the adult moth.

I try to be practical, but I don't know if human practicality is the answer to empathy for the natural world.

Tonight, I drove to the convenience store for a fat-free frozen yogurt. This is one of the rare treats I get to have.

When I got out of my car, I found a dragonfly lying on its back. In its death throes, it was waving its arms in an attempts to get moving. I touched my finger to the largest set of legs, and he gripped to occupy a perch on my fingertip. It was no good, though. He twitched and buzzed, and ultimately ended up on the grass.

He continued to strike at the air in feeble attempts to return to an upright posture. It made me sad. Instinctively, a dragonfly knows that it has a very short time to reproduce. Instinct has to tell it that it's going to die soon. Yet, there it was, struggling against death when it should lie peacefully and accept the event that it was expecting.

I feel the truth of that image: life seeks to perpetuate life. Living things want to live.

Infernal Stock
Dixon Breaks Loose
Authored by Ronnie Schiller

It will be available by the second week of June 2010.

This is the first of a series of at least 3.

This is a product of NaNoWriMo 2009.

Thank you so much!

KJ's stupid $40k truck has shit all over us in the last few months. In July, it was a fuel sensor for $2k. This month, it's the transmission. $3800 to fix after the 2nd gear and reverse literally melted. That's $3800 we don't have. So, KJ borrowed $3k from his mother and we're scrambling for the other $800.

And we couldn't pay the bills as it is. So, no doctors and no antibiotics.

I hate this state.

So, you can imagine that I am not big on the celebration, now. The events following my father's death are equally horrible, but that's a tale for another time. Maybe in a book.

I am coughing almost constantly right now. I cough so hard that I'm almost retching. I clearly need to get some drugs or something. For now, I think it's going to have to be Alka-Seltzer Plus and a few hours of sleep.

I know that's easier said than done. I was raised by men for most of my formative years. My time spent in the care of women was marked by betrayal and abuse until it was too late for me to change my opinion. I have mentioned that my father influenced my opinion of women, in general. By his third marriage, I had no trust left. The moral of the story is this: even though I am a female, I don't get along with most females. I don't relate.

One of the keys to long life is having a healthy network of friends. Like a drowning woman, I am grasping for some sense of normal life. I have never felt this level of difficulty in connecting with others. Maybe this has something to do with the major disparity between me and the natives of this grossly conservative and fervent place.

This whole process feels like I'm trying to pull myself out of a feather bed onto a belt-fed meat grinder. Dying is so much easier than living. To die, one simply has to let go. Living is a constant fight for all of the futile forces that inevitably surrender to death. The implication is that one must have a good reason to fight a battle that can never be won.

I don't know when I fell into this flippant attitude toward death. I don't know if it is real or a product of chemical influence. Either way, I sincerely don't give a shit one way or the other. I could swallow up all of my medication and lay down to vomit and die, or I could drag myself out of the house for another meaningless day. I honestly feel no emotional difference toward either concept.

If I seek to fill the hollow of my life's meaninglessness with the old spirituality that I used to cling to so heartily, does that make me a desperate fool? Am I filling the emptiness with folly? I fear that I will become just another flavor of the ridiculous and pathetic believer that I chide others for being. I scorn these people for gutlessly following groupthink and subservience to a benevolent imaginary friend. I mock their man-made scriptures that have been re-interpreted by scribes over the years, stealing from the mythology of other cultures.

I don't want to be like them. I don't want to be mocked. I don't want to be the death row repentant. I don't want to be the praying atheist in the foxhole. I question my own sincerity. At the same time, I miss the feeling of belonging to the greater world as a part of Nature. I miss finding the meaning in smaller omens. I miss the sense of connection and the peace of stillness in the night and the quiet of a field. I long for the thoughtful meditation of staring into a candle flame on a neatly arranged altar.

Committing to a belief is so risky. Your convictions must be strong enough to withstand the mockery of others. I suppose that's why so many Christians huddle together under the flag of their version of worship: strength in numbers--acceptance and defense against the mockery of the thinking portion of the public. Validation. To become the majority is to arm oneself against the derision of the newly formed minority.

Madame Bovary's problem was that she could not recognize love in its true form. To her, love had to be romantic and dramatic. There had to be suffering and longing. There had to be flattery and weepy dedications. The madness of need or at least its appearance. That was love to her, and that is what she sought while her husband's constancy and admiration went unnoticed after the courtship ended.

I don't have that inner glow of self-assurance. I need someone to notice me and pay attention to me. I need someone to want to be near me, just like every other insecure girl. I want to feel pretty. Does a husband do that? Mine doesn't. My husband's idea of a compliment is staggering into me in the kitchen and squeezing my breast like a bicycle horn while I'm trying to cook him dinner. Or while I'm paying the bills. Or doing anything else at all.

Do I just give up that feeling of being attractive to anyone at all because I am married? Is that how it's supposed to work? That part of me that was so essential to my personality is supposed to just wither and die now. No arrousal, no lust, no sensuality, and no passion. That is what marital bliss is?

Is it me, then? Are these facts of life that I should have learned as I grew up? Should I have grown up?

As if the meat processing industry was not horrific enough.

Unless you are a devout Christian, this makes no sense.

Now, why in the world would that be the better story to tell the public? I can just imagine the ghost of David Carradine giving the shush sign behind the backs of his unwitting relatives.

Dear friends and family: If I die while masturbating or participating in any other sexually deviant actions, please tell everyone that it was suicide or heart failure in my sleep. Please.

Yeah, that didn't really work out.

The Peace Gardens were a little bit crowded because someone was holding a wedding in there. Not a problem, but they were set up in the Danish and German gardens, which are my favorite areas to shoot. I ended up taking a few pictures of Bixby, but nothing great came of them.

Bixby's only a baby--about 3 months old--so he hasn't mastered the leash process. He doesn't fight it or pull back, but he tends to weave around and tangle up my legs. It was awkward because KJ had the leash, but Bixby was following me.

Everyone we encountered smiled and pointed at him. People stopped to pat his head and say how cute he is. They asked what breed he is and then expressed surprise when told them he's a long-haired Chihuahua. Nobody thinks he looks like a Chihuahua, and I like it that way.

He loves strangers, so we didn't have to worry about nervousness or barking. He just wags his tail and submits to the affection of anyone who comes along. He's such a good dog.

We had an encounter with an extremely precocious 8-year old wedding attendee. She picked him up and rambled on and on about how you can tell he's a girl because he's got spots on his belly. She indicated his penis with authority while she informed us of this fact. She said he was going to have puppies soon.

We stood awkwardly, trying to think of a way out of the situation. Meanwhile, she told us about how her parents didn't have enough money because her father kept spending money on things they can't afford. "He just keeps buying things," she told us with what I imagine was an excellent imitation of her mother. I bet her parents love having her around.

We left (escaped from) the Gardens and found a lot more of the same at Willow Pond. One lady actually had us walk him over to her brother-in-law, who called his wife and had her come down to the park to see him. We had a small crowd around us. Everyone loves our puppy. I'm so proud of him.

We got to see some wildlife at the park, but none of the photos turned out well. There were maybe a half-dozen Double-Crested Cormorants--one of them a juvenile. KJ and I witnessed one emerging from the water with a large fish in his mouth, and fighting with another to keep it. It was cool, but my attempt at photographing it yielded only a splash of water.

There were mallards, coots, and red-winged blackbirds with fledglings. The duck hen had a ton of babies. There were quite a few coots, but I didn't get a count. They hid in the bushes.

Best in show: two Forster's Terns, circling and diving into the pond. I could watch them for hours.

We lucked out, because the thunderstorms moved in after we got home. Currently, it's raining steadily.