By the way, all of this rambling on is the monkey's fault. He drugged me with an insane amount of caffene then left me to my own thoughts. Dangerous.
Posted by gwendolyn on September 30, 2001 at 03:50 AM
However, for every single thing I want huge and tiny....there are probably ten things that I can think of that I am very grateful for. The very most important thing being that right at this moment...my beautiful husband is sleeping peacefully beside me and my three little angels are snuggled up together safe and sound. Everyone I care about is safe and sound as far as I know. But our little tribe is okay. We are all here. We are all okay at the moment and that is what really counts.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 03:46 AM
I want a garden of my own. I want to cook with fresh herbs freshly cut from pretty little pots on the window sill. I want to make bread from scratch and my own peanut butter. I want to watch my kids play outside in fresh air, green grass, and sunshine. I want to feel soft grass under my bare feet. I want us all to smile and be happy. I want my children to feel good about their lives. I want them to have meaningful lasting relationships with people who care about them. I want to be optimistic. I want to teach my children everything they should know. More importantly, I want to teach them the meaning and importance of love and tolerance and understanding. I want to be more loving, tolerant and understanding. I want to sing and dance more and yell and cry less. I want to be able to reason with a screaming two year old. I want to pay off my debt faster than I already am. I want to reach a point in my life when I don't owe anyone anything financially or otherwise. I want to stop being afraid. I want something, anything, I have to say to interest someone besides myself. I want a five year plan that doesn't consist of saving up a down payment for a converted missle silo and stockpiling survivalist supplies. I want to lose the weight I have gained sitting here hiding from my life, feeling discouraged by everything that has happened, and watching television. I want to commit to Veganism and keep my promises to myself. I want more comfy snuggly clothes in smaller sizes than what I own to fit me well. I want my kids to eat more veggies and less fat and sugar. I want to stop worrying about every single thing in the entire world. I want my hair to return to it's original color, length, and vitality. I want to erase all of the really bad shit that has happened in my lifetime but since I can't have that I want closure for people who need it and justice for those who deserve it. I want the human race to stop fucking everything up. I want a good future for my children and their children and for generations on down the line. I want my hopes and dreams back. Yes, I want all of these things. I want all of these things selfishly. Not necessarily in the order they are listed. Nevertheless, I want them. I am sure it is a bad thing to want so much when so many have nothing. I can't help it.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 03:35 AM
Happy Birthday Baby :)
Posted by gwendolyn on September 25, 2001 at 10:21 PM
I went out to the grocery store on Saturday with my family. I lived. Things aren't perfect, but they are gradually getting better. I still don't think I could go out somewhere alone yet. I'm working on it. Baby steps. I didn't have the chance to be nervous at the store because with the five of us it is so chaotic that there is no time to think about anything except "get food" and "get the kids out of here as fast as you can". There were also a fair amount of cruisers in the area. I counted seeing at least four between our house and the store.
Tomorrow my old man turns 30 :) I would go on and on about how he went from a young boy to an old man through the course of our time together and how nostalgic it all makes me feel, about all the things I miss from when we were kids and about all the things that I love about him more as years go by, and about how proud I am of him and all his accomplishments, but he has heard it all because I tell him all the time.
Instead I will just remind him that no matter how old I get, he will ALWAYS be older! neener neener :P And if he is lucky I will have my workout shoes on when he gets home :)
Posted by gwendolyn on September 24, 2001 at 02:38 PM
I have been giving considerable thought to paying the monthly fee to activate our alarm system. I honestly don't think that it would keep a terrorist of any sort from invading a space they are determined to invade. Maybe it would give me a half-hearted sense of security, at least enough to let the children go back to sleeping in their own bed. Or just maybe I would realize that it isn't going to make any difference whether I have my alarm set if a car bomb blows up outside of my building. I probably wouldn't be any less worried, as I seem to be a professional at this sort of thing lately.
Posted by gwendolyn on September 20, 2001 at 03:51 PM
I got my second Longaberger basket for my birthday from my mother-in-law. I can see myself becoming addicted to collecting them. I was very excited about it. She got me my first one a couple of years ago. I have been browsing their site for the last half an hour and have compiled a huge wishlist already. My little yellow house would have looked very cute all decked out in their various baskets and dishes and goodies :/ I really miss that little house lately. I guess because I felt safe there. I want to go take it back as I got screwed on the sale anyway.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 01:50 PM
Today Oprah is about people who are afraid now. I am not the only one hiding out in my house.
Posted by gwendolyn on September 19, 2001 at 04:38 PM
Hello to everyone up north whom I didn't realize until yesterday knew this was here :)
Posted by gwendolyn on at 01:05 PM
gw3nd0lyn: i am hungry for something sweet
eatonte: Lucky you...
eatonte: You have me.
I should have seen that coming a mile away.
Posted by gwendolyn on September 18, 2001 at 03:52 PM
It is odd to think about the fact that these people who are doing this used resources such as our local library computers to email each other via Hotmail. One of the branches they used is 8.86 miles from my front door. I don't want to take my children to the library now. (not that I could because Hope would surely get us kicked out for throwing a fit over some Elmo video or some such thing) I don't want to go out to eat. I don't want to go to the mall. I don't want to go to the grocery store. I cannot believe we were out this past weekend at all. What were we thinking?
I had a dream last night where people, whom I couldn't really see clearly, had knives and were chasing me and appearing out of nowhere, looming in shadows and I just ran and ran and was never safe. They were everywhere.
Everyone is returning to normal. I keep catching site of children riding their bikes down the street toward or from school and I wonder how their parents stand to send them out the door alone. I confess have resisted opening my children's bedroom blind for the last couple of days because I don't want anyone coming up the stairs to be able to see that it is a children's room for fear that they may come back in the middle of the night and break in through the window. I have always been this way. Always. Just never this consistently. I thought I had run far enough away from all of the people who scare me. Now I feel like there is no where I can run to be okay. I opened their blind so that they might see some sunshine today. Then as I was straightening their room I saw someone come up the stairs and toward our front door from the corner of my eye and it scared the hell out of me. My heart raced. I startled and almost dropped what I was holding.
It was the UPS man.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 02:08 PM
My wedding anniversary was Saturday. Nothing went as it should have. On top of it all, I had a bit of a nervous breakdown.
The overwhelming feeling has evolved into a kind of fear that is blown up larger than life. Death is all around us and my constant worry and fear of it is rearing it's ugly head with hurricane force. The immediate shock has worn off. I am not as distracted with moving deadlines and demands. I have had a whole lot of exposure to the media because we have done little aside from watching television, discussing the unknown, and worrying about what comes next. This has become increasingly difficult for me to handle. I didn't really realize how much until Saturday. I understand that showing fear shows weakness. I cannot claim to be anything other than what I am. I have lived pretty much oblivious and sheltered by choice over the last several years. I am sure that I intentionally hide from the world because somewhere in my mind I have enough sense to know that mentally and emotionally I am pretty much tapped out for this particular lifetime. I can't handle most of what goes on so I allow myself to see and comprehend only things I feel I can handle. I cannot hide any more, there seems to be nowhere to hide. No safe place. I don't trust that everything is just going to be handled. This is why I can't seem to keep my shit together this weekend.
The fact that these people were not stopped and are expectedly in large numbers still among us, some of which seem to be living uncomfortably close to me, whose leader seems to be anitcipating our every move, and is waiting to make their next move makes me literally feel like I could puke and faint in that order, over and over again, pretty much hourly over the last few days and it probably won't go away during the entire course of this whole thing.
Saturday, I had some sort of anxiety attack like I cannot possibly describe over being in a van headed for a mall in a city. I could not control my crying, I could not breathe and my vision even became blurry. I don't know what to do about it. I have a very strong urge to hide at home which isn't even very comforting. I can't lie to my children and tell them they are safe when in fact they very well may not be. I cannot think about the near or distant future without crying because I am afraid for them. I am afraid for everyone. I am having trouble feeling confident in anything right now. I know that is a pretty piss poor attitude to have, but at least I am being honest. If I knew how to fix my state of mind I would. Hence, I am writing it all down in hopes that it may help.
I keep trying hard to focus on something else. Between the household budget, my new resolution to return to more disciplined eating habits due to my sudden and dreadful fluctuating weight, and getting back to trying to teach my children something besides what horrible things they are learning this week I managed to keep my composure today. Even then daily grind of life feels so trivial and unimportant with the shadow of impending doom lurking in my gut. I really wish like hell we didn't have to watch CNN and local news coverage every waking hour of the freaking day, but I can't seem to pull the monkey away from it for any length of time. I am exhausted as it is now stupid o'clock and thinking about all of this seems to amplify the tired feeling.
Posted by gwendolyn on September 17, 2001 at 01:30 AM
It has been a sad and strange week. I don't really know what to say about all of it except that it is overwhelming. Last night I watched CNN as some of the known flight passengers names, professions, ages and home towns scrolled across the bottom of the screen. I noticed that the plane that crashed in Pittsburgh carried a two little girls, a two year old and a four year old. I am horrified at the huge amounts of people who were killed and are missing but I am especially haunted by that. I can't explain why because I know that there were probably a lot of children that were killled during all of this. Maybe it is because I look at my own two and four year old girls and think about what it must have been like for them and for their parents.To see the names of those two little girls who were most likely completely confused and frightened and oblivious as to what was going on or why minutes before their little lives were gone is just horrible.
Posted by gwendolyn on September 13, 2001 at 11:33 AM
Today my little man is eight. Thoughts of his birth keep flashing back in my mind. He was so tiny. I was so young. It was the start of a very beautiful relationship.
To my Logan: I love you more than life itself. I wish I could relive each and every moment of our precious time together. I wish I could capture each and every funny moment, each and every hug, each and every smile and keep it close to my heart forever. If you ever stumble across my ramblings when I am old and insane and wearing my bra on the outside of my shirt, know that you are one of my greatest gifts. Each and every minute you grow older I grow more proud of you, more amazed by you...more in love with your sparkling eyes and contageous smile. Happy 8th Birthday to my very first little baby boy :)
Posted by gwendolyn on September 09, 2001 at 09:41 PM
Everybody say it with me...awwwwwwwwwww :) Who says dogs are man's best friends? They obviously haven't met Curtis!
Posted by gwendolyn on September 03, 2001 at 07:35 PM
We are still here....
We didn't get to move in on Saturday because I didn't read the fine print (that was huge and highlighted in flouresent yellow) carefully enough to see that I couldn't pay the move in costs with a personal check (which is retarded because that is what I used to pay the application fee and deposit) and the banks were already closed for the holiday weekend. So, nothing gets started until tomorrow.
Today the boys went to a Marlins game. We girls spent the evening consuming mass quantities of turtle brownies, vanilla icecream, and honey vanilla chamomile tea. Then the girls took a bubble bath accompanied by blaring kids songs and now we are watching Blue's Big Musical. I got lots of Rockin' Mom points today!