The freedom to walk around naked. That's one of the things that Janine and I miss the most. The weekends were our private time. If we didn't feel like wearing anything, we would spend the entire day naked or topless or whatever. We weren't worried about being seen, because there wasn't anyone around, except maybe Helen, Susan or Annie, but we knew they didn't mind. They were used to our nakedness.

Yes, but things have changed. Now it's different. Now there's a lot of stuff that we can't do anymore, because Eva is living with us. We have to constantly watch what we say or do, because we don't want to be a bad influence on her. We know that she's already seen and experienced more than her fair share of bad things, but we don't want to use that as an excuse for being lax in our behavior around her. We have to act like proper adults and set a good example.

We also need to be on the same page, in regards to the rules. We can't allow her to play us. Not that she's tried, but it's better to be prepared, than to be caught by surprise. Actually, to her credit, Eva has behaved extremely well. She abides by our ever-evolving set of rules, without complaint and she completes all of her chores, without being asked twice.

That doesn't mean that everything has worked without a hitch. In the beginning, Eva wouldn't allow us to spend any money on her. She put up a bit of an argument when we tried to buy her clothes and bedroom furniture. Apparently, a couple of years ago, she stayed with a friend and she really liked it there, but they couldn't afford to keep her, so she thought it would be the same with us. She really liked it here and she figured the less money we spent on her, the better her chances of staying. She wanted to demonstrate that it wouldn't cost much to keep her.

We told her not to worry, because we had already expensed the clothing and the bedroom furniture as part of her stay with us. We thought that would be the end of it, but then we caught her shoplifting at the supermarket. When we confronted her about it, she revealed a massive stash of food under her bed. Apparently, she took whatever she had stolen from the supermarket and stored it under her bed, along with the food that she didn't eat at dinner.

Very strange. It reminded me of Brittany Murphy's character in Girl Interrupted. We sat her down and talked to her and found that she was shoplifting more out of habit, than out of getting a cheap thrill. I guess, after years of living on the street and having to go for days without food, shoplifting and hoarding became ingrained as a survival mechanism.

We told her to stop, but a week later, we found her hoarding food again. This time we laid down the law and wrote it into the rules. Later that night, during the thunder storm, I went to check on Eva, but she wasn't in her bedroom. We thought we had pushed her too far with the rules and she had run away, but when we checked the doors and windows, we found them to be locked. So that meant that she was still inside somewhere.

We heard a soft humming noise coming from under her bed. She was curled up, with her eyes shut tight and her hands clamped over her ears. She said she was hiding from the loud winds and the thunder. We tucked her into her bed and stayed with her until she fell asleep. Then we pulled the rocking chair into her room and took turns keeping an eye on her.

Janine convinced me Eva's behavior wasn't bizarre. She told me to look back at my own childhood. I always had a safe place to go to, whenever there was a big thunderstorm. Well, Eva didn't have that luxury, so she did the next best thing. She hid. We figured she needed a safety blanket of some sort and something to keep her mind off of the noise. So we bought her a MP3 player and a giant 60" teddy bear to snuggle. Apparently that worked. She's fallen in love with that bear.

All of this stuff happened within the first few weeks, and since then, it's been relatively calm. That doesn't mean that we're totally comfortable with her. I mean we still keep our bedroom door locked, just in case there's a homicidal maniac hidden deep inside her.