Last night a friend from high school and I went to dinner. It was so great to see her. She hadn't changed very much except that she is not as shy as she used to be. It was nice. We took that trip down memory lane. Yeah, she commented that I looked great and just a tad bit different as I have exchanged my black lipstick and black clothes and combat boots for normal grown up wife and mother of three attire. I told her I haven't grown up all that much as I still have it all and have been known to wear everything except the black make-up on occasion :) I am just sorry that she was in town for the last three months and she had only just found me. She leaves for California next week. We both promised to keep in touch now. I hope we do. I hate to think that it could be another ten years before I caught up with her again. Time flies...
Posted by gwendolyn on May 30, 2002 at 11:04 AM
How would like to come home and find this handy dandy terrorism notice hanging on your front door?
Posted by gwendolyn on May 22, 2002 at 10:10 AM
Went to see my doctor today. He said he is going to personally take care of the insurance company for me. He is going to appeal the precertification penalty and involve the billing department and everyting. He said not to worry about it that everything would be taken care of. That is such a good thing because I was getting no where with them. In other news, I am back to normal physically, well not normal. Nothing about my body seems normal anymore. However, I am healing fine and functioning well. Well, except for this kidney infection or whatever it is. I am on meds though.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 21, 2002 at 09:17 PM
Sometimes a method of doing something, such as educating children, seems exciting because it is new (to you at least) and shiny and looks wonderful to you even when you have barely scratched the surface of what it is all about. Sometimes there are lots of parts of that method you get exposed to in your daily interaction with people practicing that method that draw your interest in further and that appeal to you even when in the begining you don't understand the reasons behind them. This way of doing things seems to fit a certain type of people. You think maybe you are this type of person. From an outside point of view it seems great. The children seem to be developing wonderfully, the parent teaches material smoothly, creatively and effectively and it is all seemingly effortless and natural and appropriate for all involved. You compare this to your style. You become critical of yourself. You think to yourself that your way of doing things might be the wrong way compared to this new way. You think that your days don't seem effortless or smooth and sometimes you don't feel as though you are being so creative and effective. So, you decide that you want to know more. You have an open mind. You are willing to try new things. You are willing to see if this other way is, in fact, a better way. You are not like a lot of people who just dismiss everything that isn't familiar and never try anything new. So, you spend a great deal of time learning all of the how's and why's and get beyond the surface to really get to know the new method. You read everything you can, you talk to people who have strong convictions about the benefit of this method. You spend a lot of time and money putting together materials and thoughts and ideas. Then as you are digging deeper into the whole thing, you come across a lot of fundamental ideas behind this method that you don't agree with. You start to examine the reasoning behind some of the things that once looked wonderful and you realize that it doesn't seem all that wonderful after all. You start to look back at your old ways of doing things and realize that you miss it. You chose those ways for a reason. Your reason. You had convictions about your methods. You had very valid reasons for doing what was right for you and your children. You weren't a follower.Things weren't all that wrong with your way. Sure, there needed to be some adjustments. Otherwise you wouldn't have doubted your way to begin with. Something just doesn't sit right with you about this new way though. There are still a lot of valuable parts of it, but not all of it is up your alley. Can you take the surface bits and pieces that drew you in to begin with and apply them to your own method? Can you just leave the rest out? Those people who look so comfortable using this method, they don't think that is the right thing to do. Suddenly all the shiny newness wears off of this method... and these people.
Yeah, I rambled. No, it didn't have to make sense to anyone but me.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 20, 2002 at 05:55 PM
From an email I recently received...the author swears it is a true story about her son.
One day the first grade teacher was reading the story of the
three little pigs to her class. She came to the part of the
story where the first pig was trying to accumulate the building
materials for his home. She read, "...And so the pig went up to the man with the
wheelbarrow full of straw and said, "Pardon me sir, but may I have some
of that straw to build my house?'" The teacher paused then asked the class,
"And what do you think that man said?" One little boy raised his hand
and said, "I think he said Holy Shit! A talking pig!" The teacher was
unable to teach for the next 10 minutes.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 19, 2002 at 06:48 PM
One example of how well we are doing at sitting at home saving money on a Saturday night.
Setting:Sitting on opposite sides of the living room, draped on the leather furniture, laptops in front of faces...
Me: Baby, let's do something else. I am tired of this computer thing.
Him: Like what?
Me: I dunno...let's play a game or something. *pause* Strip poker or something. *giggle*
Him: Can we just skip the poker?
Me: Just play strip? *giggle*
He then immediately puts on the song Strip by Adam Ant.
Setting fifteen minutes later: still sitting on opposite sides of the living room, draped on the leather furniture, laptops in front of faces...
Posted by gwendolyn on May 18, 2002 at 10:57 PM
On a lighter note...I swiped this from WWDN. And since I likes me some Henry, and because I really thought this was perfect, I thought I would stick it here.
"If you hate your parents, the man or the establishment, don't show them up by getting wasted and wrapping your car around a tree. If you really want to rebel against your parents: outearn them, outlive them, and know more than they do."
-Henry Rollins
Posted by gwendolyn on May 17, 2002 at 03:53 PM
So my glorious plan is not getting off to the best start. Yesterday I received a statement from my health insurance company stating that a rather large portion of my $25,316.27 charge from the hospital where I nearly died in March is my responsibility. Part of it was not covered because I was only "precertified" for the outpatient surgery. I guess when you are bleeding to death and require something like eleven hours of emergency surgery, a blood transfusion because you are nearly transparent, a four day stay hooked up to morphine and oxygen with various other tubes shoved into you in places you don't even want to think about, and three rows of staples sticking out of your abdomen you need to stop and wake up right there on the operating table when things just start going downhill and ask the surgeon (who is currently shitting his pants hoping you don't end up a big ass cold dead malpractice lawsuit) to run out to the waiting room and tell your husband and three little children (who have been sitting there the whole fucking day and night bewildered by what is happening and wondering if their wife and mommy is ever coming out again) to call the insurance company and see if it is okay if they go ahead and save your life. Or rather at 11:30 p.m. when you stir from your morphine stupor long enough to look at your ghostly white husband who didn't know what the hell to think or say to you about the fact that they had to rip you open and cut out your uterus and say "It's okay. Take the kids home." and then give more of what little blood you had left to the nurse so they could hurry up and get a match for the transfusion that was ordered to be started immediately, you should take that time to think about whether or not your insurance company is going to say it is okay for you to be there and pay their portion of the bill instead of passing back out.
I don't EVEN want to see what will happen with the anesthesiologist bill. I need some more morphine just to deal with all this bullshit.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 03:01 PM
So, we have this huge glorious plan all worked out now. I now have the full attention and cooperation of Mr. Monkey. This differs from all my previous really huge glorious plans simply because this time he understands what has to be done and is all about making sacrifices and sticking to it. He has now seen what the money we have can do if we quit blowing it all. After a couple of years of whining about not having my rapid debt payoff software I had been using and couldn't get for Mac, he finally sat down and made me this worksheet in Excel so I could plug in all the numbers and figure out how long it is going to take to pay off our credit card debt with the extra money that we have each paycheck after the expenses are budgeted out. If we keep our shit together and nothing drastic happens within the next year, we will be debt free a few months before the end of next year. This estimation is minus the loan we are still paying from the mess in Iowa, of course. That will be insignificant once this is gone though. After the credit cards are paid off that loan can be paid off in a matter of about four months. At the present time I have been paying on it for four years. The van lease will be up next December. We should be doing extremely well. I think I will start planning a vacation or a cruise or something huge.
If we don't stick to this payoff plan, we not only don't take off the balances but we end up paying even more because of the interest adding up. I am willing to stick to the plan as long as the light is actually at the end of this tunnel. Right now it is really hard to see. It is a long ass tunnel people.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 16, 2002 at 04:25 PM
Someone obviously has a voodoo doll of me and is repeatedly stabbing me in the torso.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 10:48 AM
As I was sitting in the bath a little while ago, giving my hair a nice cerveza ph balancing rinse, I was listening to Locomotive Breath. It suddenly became a better idea to just finish the bottle. Go figure :)
Posted by gwendolyn on May 15, 2002 at 11:21 AM
I need wide open spaces.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 10:50 AM
I have stirred just enough to sweep the tile with a broom, feed the children, and clean the kitchen today. I keep catching myself staring out the window blankly at the pond. I have been out of sorts all day. Logan did some of his times tables this moring but neither of us has been very inclined to sit down and put our noses to the grindstone. I instinctively move to the beeping and buzzing of the dishwasher and the washing machine and dryer but other than that I just keep wandering to the window then back to my laptop. I can't tell if depression is making me physically ill or if being physically ill is intensifying my depression. Either way, it blows.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 14, 2002 at 02:31 PM
Happy Momma's Day to all y'all rockin' mommas out there.
I spent my momma's day eating breakfast in bed courtesy of Mr. Monkey and tribe, laying on the beach for a couple hours and then baking pineapple upside down cake in my pajamas while rocking out to my extremely diverse playlist. Time well spent.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 12, 2002 at 07:15 PM
Well, there will be no romantic weekend strolling the shady streets of historic Savannah. No verandas and southern drawls. There also will be no cruising the beach in Ferris. No eating ridiculously fattening expensive food while watching the sun set from tables with white linen and candle light. However, there will be a generous amount of unwelcomed overtime, waiting around for tired grumpy people, hanging laundry, washing dishes, eating at home because we are flat ass broke at the moment, general sitting around the house making trash, and trying to decide how best to forge ahead from our little abode in the ghetto in the not-so-distant future while trying to keep our head above water.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 10, 2002 at 04:39 PM
gw3nd0lyn: you are so romantic
gw3nd0lyn: love nests and weekends in Savannah
gw3nd0lyn: and you try to hide it so well
eatonte: Ssshhhhh
eatonte: People will hear you.
gw3nd0lyn: and know that you aren't the evil monkey you pretend to be ;)
eatonte: I am so!
gw3nd0lyn: you are not
gw3nd0lyn: ima post that
gw3nd0lyn: dare me?
eatonte: No.
eatonte: I don't care if you post it. I'm not scared.
gw3nd0lyn: :)
gw3nd0lyn: you mean askeerd
Posted by gwendolyn on May 07, 2002 at 01:34 PM
Made beeswax candles yesterday. They are imperfect and a bit lumpy, like me. It was a good first attempt though. I think it will get better with practice.
We had this grand plan for today. Well, I had the grand plan. Everyone else was just supposed to cooperate. We were supposed to do school this morning, handwork at noon time, dentist in the afternoon and then come home and bake tons of bread somewhere during and after all that. Well, handwork got cancelled due to barfing children, whom thankfully aren't mine. The dental visit got upped by the dentist's receptionist to "as soon as you can get here" while still eating breakfast in our pajamas this morning. This was due to an eight year old's panic attack at realizing he wasn't going to be able to get all loopy before the needle went into his little gums. This resulted in the need for pre-meds and gas before taking two baby teeth out. Since they only pre-medicate on an empty stomach they prefer to do those first thing in the morning. So we had to jump into some clothes and race to the dentist's office. It was a long morning. We got home well after lunchtime. Some cranky, some still tired, some starving because breakfast was rudely halted, some half numb and half sore with a bad attitude because after all of that neither the loopy juice nor the gas prevented the awareness or sensation of the needles going into the gums not once but twice.
My head feels like it is goinig to explode. So by the time I properly fed and bathed the children and attempted to straighten up the mess we left, and the mess I was left with after the weekend, it is right now. The day is practically over. I have to make dinner and try to get ready to start over tomorrow. Nothing was accomplished. I honestly did start out with the best of intentions.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 06, 2002 at 04:48 PM
I can't decide if I am more sad that children all over the world are traumatized because (actor turned musician) Steve Burns has left Nick Jr.'s Blues Clues and been replaced by "Steve's younger brother" , or that we live in a world where children either happily (or sometimes aren't even bothered to) wave goodbye to their parents as they are being dropped off at daycare or school. Yet they develop such strong emotional ties to characters on a television screen that there would actually be a need for research and preparation on the part of the network to make the transition as least traumatizing as possible. Not only that, then they post tips on how to help your child through the experience on their site. Grief counciling for tots over the loss of Steve. Doesn't this seem a little sad to you too?
Yet another reason I am convinced turning the television off entirely when I did was a good thing. As my children, especially Savannah and Hope, would also have taken it hard. That really puts it all into perspective though.
On the other hand, I can understand how it would be extremely suffocating to be in Steve's position. I can also understand why he would think that nearly 100 episodes of interacting with a blue screen was enough and want to get on with his life beyond the character he is known and loved for. I am willing to bet that my music loving children (Cake, Peter Murphy and Lyle Lovett being the most requested artists in the Jaguar playlist at the moment) would dig songs for dust mites as they are pretty cool like that. Yes, I do edit out the inappropriate Cake songs, silly.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 02, 2002 at 03:19 PM
eatonte: What are you doing?
gw3nd0lyn: thinking
gw3nd0lyn: what are you doing?
eatonte: You are thinking?
gw3nd0lyn: yes
gw3nd0lyn: i am
gw3nd0lyn: want to hear what i am thinking?
gw3nd0lyn: it won't make any sense to you
eatonte: Camping or throwing something away?
gw3nd0lyn: nope one other thing i think about
gw3nd0lyn: but that was a good guess because within the last 10 minutes i have thought about both of those other things
He knows me so well. But the correct answer was money. It is the day before payday, I am planning my assault on Mt. Bigasscreditcarddebt. He should have known that one though.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 09:58 AM
Not that I would have a use for such a concept, as I am not a weed huffer. However, I was just wondering if it would be possible to run marijuana through a wheatgrass juicer and make like a weed smoothie. Throw in a Little Debbie brownie here, a side of Doritos there and there ya go. Breakfast.
Posted by gwendolyn on May 01, 2002 at 12:03 AM