I've been doing some more rearranging. I think it looks nice and I like that the rings have been divided between pages so that it doesn't take so long for them to load.

I also toned down the font a bit and changed the link colors this morning so that it all works together better.

For the longest time I've been meaning to write a letter or send a card to Mary Kay Letourneau. I think about her so often and I don't know why. We've never met. The fact that Vili's mother was willing to testify on her behalf after Mary had been accused of raping him speaks volumes. That must have been a very difficult thing for her to do. Vili himself has said many times that she never forced herself on him or made him do anything he didn't want to do.

I guess I am able to relate to her and the kind of pain she has endured. She had a loveless marriage and a parent who only cared about her part time. She loves children and treats her family like a lifeline. Her family turned their backs on her once it was discovered that she had been having a relationship with Vili. Granted, my relationship with Larry happened post-marriage and he was not a younger person I was mentoring, but we have our similarities, she and I.

I think we both have spent and often continue to live our lives as if the Goddess of Fantasy Fulfilled is just about to grant us the lives we want. She seems as if the struggle has been difficult for her, so draining that after this last bit of trauma is over she just wants to be away from the sources of that trauma and live quietly. I know I do. Thankfully, that situation for me has dramatically improved. But what about hers? What's going to happen to Mary after she is released from prison and at age 42, is ready to resume her relationship with the 23 year old father of her children?

That's where my concern for her is. He is seeing other people, even when he knows that this woman, who lost everything and ended up in prison for bearing his children, lives for the moment they can be together. I wonder if he even thinks about her any more?

The state of Washington sent her to prison as a child molester and she'll have to live the rest of her life with that label, even though the boy himself and his mother are willing to testify otherwise.

If he had been younger and she had forced him to have sex and somehow damaged him psychologically, that would be another issue. But she didn't. By all accounts he openly and aggressively persued her.

I wouldn't be exactly thrilled to have a woman tell me she was expecting the child of my teenaged son, but at the same time, if he hadn't been forced or abused, would I want to press charges against a person who is not only a good mother, but the mother of my grandchild?

I keep trying to put myself in the mind of the prosecutors, Vili's mother, Mary's family, Vili himself.

The only one I can feel any kind of connection with is Mary. I feel as if I understand why she did the things she did.

She was married to a man who didn't love her.

She had an abusive husband who habitually cheated on her.

She had a family that was cold and distant, except for her father, who died while she was in prison.

She felt alone, afraid and unloved most of the time.

Then this boy appears in her life who shows her love and showers her with the affection she so desperately needs.

She knew it was a doomed situation and she went through with it anyway. Apparently the belief some of us have in the Goddess of Fantasy Fulfilled is all-consuming.

I feel as if I've mostly gotten what I want and expect out of life (except to be a published author, but nobody can have it all, right?).

I wonder how all of this is going to end for her? I think that in the end there are going to be some hard realities for her to deal with.

But I sure do hope I'm wrong.

After everything she's had to deal with already, I really do hope I'm wrong.