By this time tomorrow night my big hairy monkey will be snoring and taking up too much room in the bed. I can't wait. I told the clock to go faster just until he gets here, then to slow down to almost stand still. Think it is listening?
Posted by gwendolyn on November 30, 2001 at 11:20 PM
I may have failed to mention in previous posts is that the only reason I am not still having nervous breakdowns over the world issues we are neck deep in, is because I don't watch television. Only cartoons and educational/informative programs. No news. Unless by accident. See, I am a much better me that way.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 11:12 PM
I meant to post about the littlest person ralphing all over me and her walking to the elevator in the parking garage in the airport. I also meant to post about the trip back from Orlando to see the newest baby in the family, and how the littlest person ate cheez doodles, M&M's, and grape kool-aid then ralphed all over me and her seat on the Turnpike. But well....I have been too busy. Hmmmm.
I have also decided that I suck and will have to start my diet on Monday. No excuses. No delays. Promise. Please, someone hold me to it.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 10:40 PM
I want my Monkey back. Give me my Monkey back....
Posted by gwendolyn on November 29, 2001 at 09:28 AM
It feels strange to have spent the last 10 days (not counting yesterday because he went to work) with my monkey and then suddenly he is going to be gone for four days. It actually sucks beyond belief. It is sad when you can't even be away from someone for four days. Fortunately, I will be distracted as his mother is coming to stay with us.That will make it easier on the children too. We are going to go to Orlando to see the new baby of the family tomorrow through Thursday. The van has been cleaned yet still reeks so that should be a painful four hour journey each way back up and down the road.
I am determined that this whole separation thing will help me get going back to my old ways. Vacation was not kind to me as far as weight control goes. I pretty much threw out all the rules and we just pigged out all week. I am paying dearly for that mistake. I am uncomfortable and bloated and my middle physically feels bruised from all the abuse. Both of us just complain and whine after every meal we have eaten in the last two weeks. It is plain stupid. I stocked the fridge last night with spring water, fresh fruit, and juice. Hopefully, with the cheez doodle and pizza eating bad influence away in New Orleans, I can find my discipline and get back on track. No dairy. Low carbs. Have to have my oatmeal though. Minimal meat, if any at all. All properly combined. Think I can do it?
Posted by gwendolyn on November 28, 2001 at 10:27 AM
Oatmeal is by far the most perfect breakfast. Now I know I am not the only one who thinks so. So :P to all you nonbelievers (monkeys) out there!
Posted by gwendolyn on November 26, 2001 at 03:52 PM
We are in mourning today. Flipper the fish got killed at the fish sitter while we were gone. It most likely would have made it had we just left it home alone. In spite of my not enjoying cleaning the tank, Flipper was a good goldfish. He was with us for nearly two years :( For all you future pet sitters out there who want to do the fish owners a favor while they are away in Hell...Don't overfeed the fish. Never clean the biowheel no matter how nasty it looks. And if you do decide to clean the tank after you've overfed it, don't replace the spring water in the tank with tap water.
Posted by gwendolyn on November 25, 2001 at 12:13 PM
This song was played approximately one zillion times in a row this week as requested by Hope. It is our favorite song. Very appropriate also.
If I Had A Boat
If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat
If I were Roy Rogers
I'd sure enough be single
I couldn't bring myself to marrying old Dale
It'd just be me and trigger
We'd go riding through them movies
Then we'd buy a boat and on the sea we'd sail
And if I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat
The mystery masked man was smart
He got himself a Tonto
'Cause Tonto did the dirty work for free
But Tonto he was smarter
And one day said kemo sabe
Kiss my ass I bought a boat
I'm going out to sea
And if I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat
And if I were like lightning
I wouldn't need no sneakers
I'd come and go wherever I would please
And I'd scare 'em by the shade tree
And I'd scare 'em by the light pole
But I would not scare my pony on my boat out on the sea
And if I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat
Performed by Lyle Lovett
Posted by gwendolyn on November 24, 2001 at 10:52 PM
Where have I been all your lives? Well, I have been sort of busy. First with deciding that we were going to go see all the oldsters and the cousins, aunts and uncles and friends for Thanksgiving. In Hell. Then there was the rush of preparing and shopping. Then there was the quickly cleaning and packing for the trip. Then there was all the driving of the van up the road. Then there was Hell. Then there was all the driving back down the road. Lots of cold catching and freezing tatas and booties and baby puke in the van and general hellishness that IS going to Hell for the holidays. We did take a day of the trip up and a day of the trip back to goof off in the mountains which made enduring everything okay. And I was glad to have gotten to see the people we did and felt kinda shitty about not seeing enough of the people we should have. Everyone was just so sick and whiney and miserable and tired of riding and tired of listening to themselves and each other being sick and whiney and miserable. So anyway, I did not flip completely out up there, only half. I lived. I am home. I appreciate my life even more now that I had to leave the comfort of it for awhile. Florida is warm and sunny and green all the time. I am going to buy a boat not an RV. This is my home despite the fact that I had to chase a lizard who was hiding in our bathroom within the first five minutes of our arrival back. I was meant to be surrounded in balmy sunshine and smell like tanning oil. I can't wait to go to the beach.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 10:45 PM
The middle of the night sucks.
Posted by gwendolyn on November 12, 2001 at 01:31 AM
My children are hanging out in their tent. Yes, their tent. In their bedroom. Complete with big fake ficus tree looming over it. Yes. I am the coolest mom in the universe. Thankyouverymuch.
Posted by gwendolyn on November 08, 2001 at 03:02 PM
I am avoiding sleep. It would be depressing except for the fact that Lyle Lovett is on the Late Show to keep me company.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 12:16 AM
This is a specially formulated diet designed to help women cope with the
stress that builds during the day.
BREAKFAST
1 grapefruit
1 slice whole-wheat toast
1 cup skim milk
LUNCH
1 small portion lean, steamed chicken with a cup of spinach
1 cup herbal tea
1 Hershey's Kiss
AFTERNOON TEA
The rest of the Hershey Kisses in the bag
1 tub of Hagen-Daaz ice cream with chocolate chip topping
DINNER
4 glasses of wine (red or white)
2 loaves garlic bread
1 family size Supreme pizza
3 Snickers bars
LATE NIGHT SNACK
1 whole Sarah Lee cheesecake (eaten directly from the freezer)
I wonder if this would be more helpful than my silly idea of working out and eating more veggies and less carbs.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 12:13 AM
Then there is the dream where Terry is hit by a car and his bloody handprints are on the window of the passengers side door of a black sedan with tinted windows. And he is screaming for me in an ER while no one is telling me anything. I just happen to go to my grandparents house and the car had been towed there and everyone is acting like I don't need to know why it is there. Meanwhile, my mom is at the ER with Terry who is screaming my name and bleeding to death and she is telling him that I will be there and not to worry. I am watching it all from above the room. He dies. I freak out in a major way. It goes on and on and on. I have dreamed that one several times too.
Posted by gwendolyn on November 07, 2001 at 03:20 PM
I used to have a dream when I lived in Ohio that I had over and over for months. I have a friend who has a daughter. At the time her daughter was about Savannah's age. I used to dream that she was missing and we were all out searching for her in a huge storm and I found her naked corpse sinking in a deep muddy ditch. I fucking hate that dream. I only dream it when I am in Ohio. I think the only reason it has her in it is because the little girl looks similar to me when I was little. It is awful though. It usually makes me flipped out for a day or two. The last time we moved back there I had that dream almost every single night, alternating with the dream about the person standing over my bed.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 03:15 PM
I am going to start writing down all of my dreams here. Maybe it will help. I have two dreams that I dream pretty much the same way everytime I dream them. One is a dream about a man standing over my bed in the dark watching me sleep. I can never tell who it is. I am pretty sure that is the dream I had over and over last night before I woke up when Terry left. I think this because I remember having a weird cold chill shoot through me and waking up for a split second and looking toward the closet door. It was open. I hate it when it is open. Most of the time when I have dreams that involve spirits they come out of the darkness of an open closet like it is some sort of gateway. A morbid version of Monsters, Inc. huh?
The other is a dream where the kids and I are on a huge ship sailing across the ocean that always ends up not taking us where we thought we were going. There are hundreds of us. All of the women and children are then gathered and have to pick out dresses and clothes for the boys (everything we have to choose from is white) and then we are given our choice of gold or silver crowns for our heads and then we are all gathered in the hull of the ship where there is an huge opening that you can see up out of the "pit" and then we are all mass murdered. Some unseen people are all shooting from somewhere above deck. Through the whole ordeal I know they are going to kill us and I am trying hard not to panic in front of the kids. Usually I wake up when all of our bodies are in a huge white and red pile.I am usually clutching all of the kids to me til the end. I am sort of watching it all like an out of body experience.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 03:02 PM
I am sure that I had bad dreams all night but I can't remember anything except what I was dreaming between the time I got up when Terry left for work and when I woke up at 9:00 with tears streaming down my face.
I was sitting in a diner having lunch with my Grandpa who died a couple of weeks ago. I had been there to meet friends and had spotted him at a table reading the paper. Odd thing was that it was the paper from the day he died and his obituary was in it. I went over and sat down with him and we were doing the crossword puzzle together and he was explaining some maps that were in the paper. Don't ask me why the paper had pages of maps, I have no clue. We talked about when I was little and he would take me with him to the store to get all of the supplies we would need for our camping trips. I kept remembering little details and saying really loudly "Oh you remember when....." and it went on and on like that for a long time. Each time I remembered something new I was crying more and more and seemingly out of control. I don't know if some of the things I was remembering even happened in real life. Possibly they did and I just can't remember. He just kept smiling and talking to me really calmly and he didn't understand why I was so upset. I was upset and hysterical because he was dead. He was just having lunch and reading the paper. It was all very strange and sad. I kept looking over at my friends who were watching me and they kept smiling and acting like I should just stay there with him and not to mind them.
The last two dreams I have had have taken a serious toll on me physically as well as mentally and emotionally. I really don't know what I can do about it. In fact, it may require that I go see the doctor.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 02:11 PM
I am awake at stupid hours obssessing about whether or not everything is going to go perfect tomorrow and hoping that I have done enough not to appear to be the suckiest mom in the whole universe. You would think by the way I have checked and double checked my list and organized the activities and supplies that I was getting ready for a wedding instead of preschool co-op meeting. I just want it to be good.
Sleep hasn't been kind to me recently anyway. I am sitting here trying to mellow out to The Captain by Kasey Chambers so I can hopefully stop stressing myself into nightmares. Last night I dreamed that I had left Hope in my bedroom watching television in a second floor apartment we moved to, to go down to the back courtyard to talk to the manager lady about the noises and weird things that were going on in our second bedroom in the apartment that mysteriously didn't have a window or fire escape like all the rest of the buildings. As I kept an eye on Hope watching Sesame Street through the window, she was telling me about the past fire that had killed two little girls and that they did indeed haunt my apartment and that there mistakenly was no bedroom window or fire escape re-added to the side of the building during the rebuilding of that part of the building. Just as I was about to kick her ass for putting us in a known haunted apartment, she noticed smoke starting to bellow from the roof of the building where that room was located. Split seconds later I am trying to scale the side of the building to get to Hope and the wall starts to fall down and Hope is trying to climb out of my bedroom window onto a railing as it was falling and she is screaming "Mama, Mama I emmm skeeeeeewd. Help me! Help me!" And the fire is trying to swallow her up and she is just out of my reach. And I can here the voices of the spirits of the little girls who had died in there before giggling as little girls do.
At that exact moment I woke up to Hope in a panic, trying to climb into my bed, and saying "Mama, Mama help me I am skeeeewd." She had gotten up and we were all asleep and she was coming back into my room after investigating the kids sleeping in the other room. Maybe I was screaming in my sleep. I dunno.
Just another typical Gwen dream. There are a million of them. Most of them much much worse than that one. Sometimes, especially when I dream about Terry's (usually graphic painful) death and me always in some sort of insane state of freaking out and deep mourning, I wake up screaming and crying. October 30th I had a dream about that after an evening of being drilled on at the dentist and he felt sorry enough for my emotional trauma to stay home with me for the day.
I admit that I was pretty shaken up about this one for a few hours after I woke up this morning too. I had to hug Hopie extra hard a few times. I wonder where Terry and the other two children were in my dream. I hope they were somewhere safe.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 01:16 AM
We took the children to see Monsters Inc. this weekend. It was adorable! I was impressed at Hope's attention span since it wasn't exactly a cartoon. She was actually the one who went nuts over the commercials for it over the past few weeks. She can also detect when we are within a half mile radius of the movie theatre. My two year old is addicted to going to the movies.
I am growing very tired of being a carnivore already. What I really want is a smoothie for breakfast, a bowl of fresh fruit for lunch and a huge salad with all sorts of odd things in it for dinner. I don't think I am doing this protein/red meat thing quite the way I was meant to. I have still consumed huge amounts of carbs. Halloween candy didn't help. I just don't know how many more steaks I can eat. The novelty has worn off. The only really good thing about it is that I have gotten to grill almost daily, which is one of my most favorite things. But honestly, I feel much worse than I did before.
Posted by gwendolyn on November 05, 2001 at 11:26 AM
I have made yet another huge mess in our apartment. I am finding even more stuff to get rid of. I didn't know we had anything left really. It did seem that I had to carry an awful lot of crap from the van up to the apartment during the move.
Posted by gwendolyn on November 02, 2001 at 01:36 PM
On a different note- Halloween went smoothly. In my attempt to overcompensate for the lack of actual trick-or-treating activity, my children attended three halloween parties over the course of the day/evening. I was entirely consumed with trying to distract them from the fact that we were not letting them go door to door. I should get some Rockin' Mom points for that. We had a Harry Potter, a pink and black spotted cat, and a cheerleader. When we got home we ate stupid amounts of cookies and candy, and drank red apple juice with plastic spiders in them.Then we played checkers. A good time was had by all.
Posted by gwendolyn on November 01, 2001 at 09:46 AM
My husband...King Instant Message Pervert.
eatonte: What are you doing?
gw3nd0lyn: reading the site of one of the people who emailed me about mine
eatonte: What are you wearing? ;-)
gw3nd0lyn: your surfstation t-shirt :)
gw3nd0lyn: you pervert
eatonte: Anything else?
gw3nd0lyn: not a stitch
eatonte: So your nether-region is exposed?
gw3nd0lyn: yep
eatonte: Touch it!
eatonte: :-)
gw3nd0lyn: no way
eatonte: hehe
gw3nd0lyn: yer a perv
Now normally I would humor him, but I am momming this morning and not playing the role of the horney housewife. Also, for all you nasty freak people wondering why I am running around half naked in front of my children...the shirt covers everything.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 09:23 AM