After Renee and Michelle went back to California, we got our bedrooms back, except that Lisa and I switched rooms. I wasn't severely depressed as I had been when we moved into the house, so I began to furnish my room this time and to unpack some of the things that had been boxed up. I had an actual mattress now and I set it up on old milk crates for a bed. I hung my clothing (much of it was now unsuitable for the area in which we lived and to avoid Dennis' rude remarks) in the closet, including a thick, warm ice-pink jacket I never wore anymore. I hadn't wanted pink...I always wanted everything I owned to be blue- but had been coaxed into choosing this very pale, feminine color. Predictably enough, it didn't stand up well to my romps in the woods and then Dennis yelled at me every time he saw it, said that I was a nigger and I had niggered the jacket up, that I didn't deserve to ever get another coat, I could wear the one I wrecked. It wasn't actually wrecked, it's just that pale pink stains pretty easily. Oh well...I hung the albatross in the very back of the closet where I wouldn't have to look at it. There wasn't quite room for all the clothing. Mom said I needed a dresser, but of course we couldn't buy one. Instead, we arranged all the boxes and taped them together into a unit of cubbies. She cooked up some flour paste and told me how to paper mache them togther with the paste and strips of newspaper. I covered the entire makeshift dresser, had some paste left over, made a pot or two, a small sculpture of a sleeping cat. These things all took a while to dry. Once it was hard to the touch, we painted it white and it was officially done. A white dresser, how boring. The only paints in the house were mom's oil paints (strictly off limits!) and some acrylic crafts paints for her tole painting. The acrylic paints were all in dull dusty tones, no pure or clear hues among them. So using a damp paintbrush, I lifted the pigment from pastel sticks and applied this to the dresser. The colors were bright and cheerful. I adorned it all over with bright flowers. Now I had a dresser to store the clothing in.

I also had some kind of a bookcase or desk, I think...perhaps it was only the sheet of plywood I'd had in the other room. At any rate, I unpacked my microscope and set it up there. Mom gave me a houseplant, a nondescript vining type. From time to time I found seeds...a date pit, a bit of birdseed, spices, and planted them in the pot with the houseplant. The bird seed came up right away and made the whole more lush. I must have had a chair, because I often sat at the desk gazing into the microscope and trying to draw what I saw there. I went through the usual array of specimens; salt, sugar, pepper, a strand of hair, thread, a needle. Then I got a few dead insects, and those kept me happy for quite a while. I didn't know that a fly's wings had hair on them! Life was full of surprises when viewed closely. I stayed up late into the night, thrilled with each new discovery. I still spent most of the day away from the house or outside.

There wasn't much to read, or so it seemed. I read through a number of Reader's Digest condensed books. Mom occasionally took us to the library, where they had more condensed books for sale for a quarter each. We rarely ever borrowed the library's books...in fact we hardly visited the library at all, so I chose carefully when we did, trying to make sure I wasn't buying one that I already had read. I read about the Stepford wives, stepped into Dick Francis' world of horse racing intrigues, mysteries with glamorous women and jewels and handsome men who turned out to be rotten, James Herriot. One of my favorites was Peter Jenkin's Walk Across America. I admired him very much for having the strength and grit to travel so far on foot, for being able to survive. I read that book several times. Eventually I got my hands on the entire version and read it too. We had an old set of children's encyclopedias given to us by Don and Helen. Looking back, these were far from complete and much of the information was watered down or kept to a minimum, but they were still a goldmine compared to what we had had before them- nothing. Dennis saw me reading the condensed books one day and got disgusted. He said I'd never learn anythign worthwhile from them, the world was about to fall apart and I ought to read something useful. He directed me to a stack of boring old magazines: Mother Earth News. I flipped through them. Gardening (had enough of that already! I thought), plans for producing your own power (over my head), sprouts (Mom already made those), making weird food like tofu (ewww!) and tempeh, which was made from soybeans that got so moldy they formed a solid cake of mold and beans (YUCK!). Then I saw the article about the couple who lived on the backs of mules, without a home. The woman had given birth in a cave soemwhere and there was a picture of a little kid rding with them. They seemed really happy, and I found the entire story fascinating. There were articles about camping and eating wild foods and surviving and wilderness schools and how to get by with nothing at all except for your wits and maybe a pocket knife or a hatchet. I took up the stack of TMEN mags and devoured everything in them that interested me, skipping the gardening and hippie articles. There were even directions for making toy guns out of spring type clothespins that would shoot segments of other clothespins. Mike and I made several (ignoring Mom's questions about where her clothespins were vanishing to) and had a blast with them. Ah yes...life was fairly good, all in all.