Playing House
I haven't had a whole lot to say this week. Things are pretty stressed out right now. I think I just need to keep on keeping on and things will eventually work themselves out. We are rearranging house. The children and I, that is. Yeah, I am lifting on stuff I probably shouldn't be. Shockingly enough, I can sort of move today. I need to finish up switching some closets around and work on getting the kids' room put together. I literally have a pile of living room furniture in the living room at the moment. I hope it goes quickly.
Posted by gwendolyn on April 30, 2003 at 09:46 AM
The 12th Of Never
Setting: Children in other room winding down and in bed but not yet being quiet or going to sleep as requested. Mr. Monkey is using iMovie to capture home videos of the children for the relatives.
Background noise starts of Savannah as a wailing newborn baby.
Savannah: Can I see? Can I see? Can I seeeeeeeeeee?
Me: Not right now, go to sleep. We can watch them another day.
Savannah (very sarcastically):Yeah. Like the 12th of never.
Who do you suppose she gets that from?
Posted by gwendolyn on April 25, 2003 at 09:15 PM
One Dirty Mother Plucker
I need to stay away from the mall. My husband needs to stop smiling at me slyly and encouraging me to go use my shiny new Angels card. I went to redeem my April coupon for any Signature Cotton bra for $10.00 with any purchase on my card and ended up bringing home another huge pink striped bag of sin. I can't help it people. I can't. They lure you in with a Passbook that has some sort of promotional coupon for every month for six months. Sometimes the item is free with purchase and sometimes it is a pretty nice discount. My point is that I can't just stop with the promotion and one regular purchase. I am going to have to get a freaking job to support my habit. I am an underwear slut.
I am also cancelling The Big Wax. I have read some really scary stories and if having my underarms bleed immediately and then stay red and burn for two days following that waxing is any indication at all of what might happen to my bikini area, I think I will take a little hiatus from the pain thing. Right now I have had enough between all the shit I have gone through and then spending the last few weeks repeatedly being drilled on in the dentist's chair. Maybe in a couple months. I am back to getting my brows waxed regularly though. It is also one of my expensive habits. I plucked them this morning because there were only a few random ones coming back in and I think I can space out my visits to the salon more if I do the odds and ends myself. I hate plucking though. I am such a spoiled girl. Speaking of the whole body hair issue, I have learned that going without shaving for several weeks in preparation for waxing will send me into severe mental breakdown. There is something just so very wrong with feeling that icky.
In other more Motherly less Dirty news, I took the girls to Barnes and Noble while the boy went to work with his dad yesterday. I had several different armloads of workbooks at different points during the visit and ultimately decided that what I really need to do is buy a big box of printer paper and some extra ink cartridges. It seems kind of silly to buy big workbooks for the girls for Preschool/Kindergarten/First Grade when I can just go to any curriculum publishing site and make a list of all of the subjects covered in those books and then find free print outs on the internet and skip the stuff they know and are bored with and customize the whole thing. It just takes a ton of time and a ton of ink. However, I love to do that. I always strive to get away from packaged learning but I never seem to follow through with it. So to make sure they are still working on the skills I purchase the workbooks. I have their best interest in mind by doing that even though I know that it doesn't encourage their creativity or ability to think outside of the normal age/grade level box. Customizing their curriculum to their abilities and personalities has always been my goal. I guess I had better get that paper and ink then.
Well, this has been a diverse update hasn't it?
Posted by gwendolyn on at 04:18 PM
The Almighty Panty Gods
Savannah's eye is completely better now. The purple is gone from her eyelid and the bloodshot look is subsiding. So you would think that everything would mellow out in the Eaton household, right?
Not a chance.
Yesterday was a series of really frustrating events undoubtedly caused by the complete karmic chaos that was tripped by my bra not matching my panties. It was VS laundry day people. I couldn't help it.
Old men who talk a lot of shit and run half-assed stores selling computer products that they know absolutely nothing about, and who treat women who come into their store like they are stupid and easily manipulated need to pull their heads out of their asses.
Husbands who insist you need to switch software and then publish your iCal so that they can coordinate their lives with your own need to pay close attention to what day it is and not accidentally send you to the dentist chair to be drilled on a week early and with non-matching panties and bra. My karma was so messed up that the equipment just up and quit. No warning. Just broke. That is the power that my non matching lingerie has on the universe.
So then today I looked forward to just hanging out, handwashing my laundry, watching the children play Jumpstart school games on the new iMac. Instead, I woke up to Hope puking in my bed, then after that was all cleaned up and we fell back to sleep she woke up and puked on the floor beside the bed, then again in the bathtub as I was trying to clean her up, and now she is on the floor in the living room with a makeshift bed of waterproof sheets and bath towels and blanket and pillow. Eating crackers. She insisted she needed them. There is no doubt in my mind that in about ten minutes I will be cleaning them up too.
The underwear gods can lay off now, geez.
Posted by gwendolyn on April 23, 2003 at 09:42 AM
Baby Blues
Savannah can see.
A few minutes ago I took off her eye patch and convinced her to let me open her eyelid so that i could see if there was anymore yellow junk coming out of it since I hadn't cleaned it for about 24 hours. She protested and then reluctantlly let me. To my shock there was no yellow film and her beautiful blue eye was looking back at me. It is extremely bloodshot but intact and semi-healthy looking. Her pupil was the same size as the other one and no clouding that I could tell. Suddenly she realized she could see and hold it open and she started jumping up and down screaming and laughing. We all did. After a few minutes of a lot of blinking and me explaining to her that she can't rub it she decided that she didn't need another patch. The lid is still kind of greyish purple and doesn't exactly symmetrically match the other one. It is still a bit swollen I guess. However, her eyes have never looked as beautiful to me as they do right now.
Posted by gwendolyn on April 21, 2003 at 04:43 PM
Blind Man's Zoo
Yesterday morning was so sad. We blindfolded the other two children to even up the odds during the egg hunt. We described her Easter goodies to her. We fed her. I read her a story. We led her around all morning and I held her a lot and cried. She grew very bored. I did everything I could think of to relieve that.
Late in the afternoon she finally opened her right eye. The one that isn't purple and swollen and seeping. She admitted that she had been peeking with it all day. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. On one hand I was elated to know she can see out of it, on the other I was upset that she had went on with the complete blindness routine for so long and let me cry and feel so awful like that. She even admitted to having peeked a little bit during the egg hunt.
The injured eye is less swollen this morning, less purple, but still not healed enough to be able to be opened. Let's hope she keeps making progress and that when she does finally open it, she will be able to see just fine.
I zoomed around the kitchen all afternoon cooking. Yes, mostly from scratch. I don't cook like that very often but when I do, it is chaotic and messy. We now have enough leftover food to feed two families for a week. The children didn't eat very much at all. Not because it wasn't good but because they just are such picky eaters.
I made a 99% organic ham, broccoli and cheese quiche and Sara Lee poundcake with sliced pineapple and organic strawberries for brunch. The girls don't like quiche or strawberries or pineapple. Fine. More for me.
For dinner I made baked Boar's Head ham with brown sugar and pineapple glaze, organic mashed potatoes with roasted garlic and shallot gravy, organic yeast rolls, stuffing (non organic from a box because I suck at stuffing), and organic green bean casserole (except the french fried onions weren't organic they really need to work on that). Savannah had a couple of rolls. Logan ate some ham and most of his mashed potatoes. Hope actually ate ham and liked it and she had a yeast roll. Of course monkeyboy and I ate everything. I think the kids had way too much candy all day. Maybe that is why they didn't eat very well. Oh well. I kept saying that we should have had someone over to eat all of it.
I never cook when we have company. For several reasons. One reason is that I am not a very confident cook and going out for dinner when company comes seems to double as entertainment. We don't normally eat big huge meals like that unless we are in a restaurant. I think we have only actually cooked real meat in this apartment a few times in the two years we have lived here. Probably around five times total. Another reason is lack of entertaining space. It is a feat in itself to get the five people who live here to all sit around our little table for a meal, I wouldn't know what to do with any extras since the leaf to our table is buried in the back of a closet. Not that the dining room would accomodate actually using the table like that. It isn't that I wouldn't like to have people around. I would. Just that this place is tiny. Everytime we have people over it seems very crowded and chaotic in here. I worry more about the guests being uncomfortable than us. It would be less of an issue if we could have table and chairs outside and not be confined to dealing with an upstairs apartment.
I hope to relieve some of that soon by clearing out a lot of the furniture we have mistakenly accumulated and at least making enough room for our little tribe to actually live in. Since we have physically grown out of the family bed and have somehow managed to create an living space with two living rooms, two bathrooms, one bedroom and no yard or way to relieve the feeling of being boxed in for the five of us things just aren't working. It is making me incredibly claustrophobic.
Posted by gwendolyn on at 11:47 AM
Worst Mother Of The Year
I am a horrible mother.
This morning at about 10:30 I had the girls in the bathtub and I went to squirt some of my Dr. Bronner's Baby-Mild Magic Soap spiked with Lavender essential oil (by me) and the pump to the soap dispenser was a little too enthusiastic about squirting and it completely missed the washcloth and went directly into Savannah's open eyes.
This is a bad bad thing.
I flushed her eye with water as much as I could for about three hours before I had freaked out enough over her screeching to put her in the car and take her directly to the pediatrician. I had thought about the ER but decided the pediatrician would be a better idea. She is already terrified of the hospital thanks to all of my experiences. Thankfully, they were very accomodating and took her right back and the doctor came right into the examining room behind us. I showed him the bottle that the soap came out of and the Lavender oil bottle. He said that it was a pretty mild soap and that it was probably less irritating than most liquid soaps. I knew that, that is why I bought it. It is all natural. Unfortunately it is not tear-free.
He put numbing drops in her eyes (amazingly enough without getting his own blackened) with help from me laying over her holding her arms and legs down with my body while holding her eye open for him. Then the process was repeated a few times while he kept trying to get some sort of yellow dye into them. Then he turned out the lights and turned on some sort of purple lightbulb tool and we held her down once again to hold her eyes open enough to see them glowing flourescent yellow/green back at us. She could also not see a thing out of the left one, which was the one that was swollen and hurting and now pretty much glazed glowy yellow.
He told me he thought that it would be okay and he prescribed some Erythromycin ointment to put into it and told me that if she started rubbing it that I would have to cover it with an eye patch. He wants to see her again first thing in the morning. I agreed as I fought back tears and listened to him tell me that "these things happen" and that I did the right thing and that it was going to be okay.
All she wanted from the start of this was to go to bed. She was in bed all afternoon in the dark. I think she dozed off a couple of times but every so often she would start screaming and crying again because it is stinging. She hasn't seemed to have gotten any better over the evening. She can't handle light and she won't uncover her eyes. Currently she is on her daddy's lap on the couch with her pink silk over her eyes, listening to cartoons. It is so sad.
I am sore now. She instinctively beat the hell out of me while I was holding her eye under a stream of cool water to flush it and holding her down for the doctor. She has the fight part of the "fight or flight" instinct down. Also, it's because I carried her forty-something pound butt around like a baby all day because I feel like the worst mother on the planet.
Posted by gwendolyn on April 18, 2003 at 07:18 PM
My Not So Excellent Adventure
This afternoon I tried something new. Instead of sitting around here feeling like this apartment and everything I hate about being here is swallowing me whole I took a drive.
First I passed the hospital. I like to drive past it. In my head I whisper to it "You didn't get me you bastard." And if I am alone in the car I will flip it off just because I am insane like that.
Then I think of all the people just like me standing at the end of the hallway resting for a minute, faces pressed to the glass, watching the world pass them by, knowing they are helpless, thinking no one even knows they are there. To all of those people... I know you are there. I think about you everyday. I wish I could help you. My heart goes out to you. Don't give up. I was there and I made it here. You can too.
So I drove through Weston to Markham Park. I made a trip around the camping grounds to check out how many RV's were playing house and to smell the yummy smell of campfire in the Primitive Camping section of the woods. I took the kids into the hiking trails in the woods. I took a couple of pictures of them. Then as we were strolling down the path a huge raccoon peeked up over a fallen log in the path ahead. I figured it would get scared and just run off. It didn't. So we kept moving closer to it. It decided to jump the log and run straight at us looking rather threatening. I don't know if it had babies back there or what but it didn't want us there so we turned around and hauled ass out of there. How is that for our first family nature walk in the woods here?
So then I decided to go over to the beach and see if I could get some nice pictures of some sail boats. I have two words for ya. Spring Break.
While I was making my way up A1A through the madness, I rolled the windows down and opened the sunroof to let the feel and smells of the ocean in. At that point Hope lost her gum somewhere in her hair that was whipping around quite nicely. I calmly pulled over into a parking lot and wrapped a piece of paper around the mess so that more hair wouldn't get stuck in it before I could get her home. We came straight home so that I could get it out and give her another bath.
So much for just relaxing and going with the flow.
Posted by gwendolyn on April 16, 2003 at 05:27 PM
Why Is There No Ecoslutwear?
The hardest part of being me is figuring out how to handle the parts of me that cancel each other out. For example, I was saving up all my recent Ebay earnings to pay for the lovely extremely ecofriendly hemp sheets and blankets that I want. The ones that match my extremely nice shower curtain and bathmat. I had scored quite an impressive stack of coins last week and was well on my way to having them. Then Friday came.
At the insistance of one monkey I swung by what will now forever be known as The Evil Mall to pick up a certain pair of Sugarmelon lace boyshorts from VS. Yes, it went against all of my better judgement but I will say that I do feel particularly naughty in them. Anyway, I got a little carried away and came home with a big bag of Pretty and a very very evil brand new VS charge account. I know! Someone please save me from myself.
I got drawn in by the VS ladies with their forked tongues and batting lashes. They convinced me that I spend enough money in there that I may as well open an account and get all of the perks that come with spending large amounts of the bank's money in there. Perks such as $75.00 worth of free merchandise upon opening the account. Now I pondered this idea a whole two minutes. Then I figured maybe I could just have it long enough to get the freebies and then close the account. Yeah. That's what I'll do...
In the meantime, let me just get this cute little pink and black merrywidow with the garters that really really makes me grin because I feel particularly girly today and I don't have anything pink, and the matching ruffled thong, and the pink satiny bra that matches that with the black trim and bows, and the black satiny version with pink seams and bows that matches all of the other stuff in the set and really floats my boat, and the black thigh highs with the backseam and the lace with heart patterns at the top, and of course, a Sugarmelon bra to match the boyshorts. Uh huh. Yeah.
Mercy. What the hell was I thinking?
Oh yeah and the evening wouldn't have been complete without my very first shopping trip to The Spice Of Life, solo even. Which was both entertaining and creepy all at the same time. They're hiring. I wonder if you get an employee discount. Some of the guys in there were just entirely too creepy. No, I don't think so.
Then I stopped by KFC to bring him home a box of biscuits, because you know, sometimes you just have the munchies for the weirdest things and you really need to get that taken care of and no one is going back out in the middle of the night. If you are going to mess up your entire deal you might as well do it right.
I walked through the door with the strangest combination of loot a person could imagine. It made for an interesting Friday night.
So I felt so completely wrong about the whole credit card thing that I got out of bed at like two o'clock in the morning and paid it nearly completely off with my Paypal account. I hate being spontaneous and responsible all at the same time.
My cozy, tranquil, relaxing, ecofriendly, makes me feel serene bed is now a drawer full of undoubtedly chemical ladden, undoubtedly sweatshop produced lingerie that will undoubtedly get me laid steadily for the next several weeks, but just not in my dream bed.
Posted by gwendolyn on April 14, 2003 at 12:12 AM
Roots
Today I spent two hours in the dental chair. I had a root canal done on that molar. It wasn't exactly fun. However, it wasn't as horrible as I had expected. I must really be a tough patient because even after two numbing shots I was numb on the outside but when they got down into the tooth to the roots I could feel so they had to give me two shots in each root to numb the root so they could then take a wire file and file the root and the blood vessel out of each canal. There were also three canals instead of the two they predicted. Go figure. I can't be normal to save my life. So then they have to make each canal wider so they can disinfect it and fill it. So they drill and file over and over again. They drill down through the "apex" which I believe is the hole at the bottom of the root of the tooth that the nerve and blood vessel come up through. There is still a bit of feeling where the nerve is in my jaw so when they got down to the point where they were actually going through the root of the tooth into the jaw tissue I could feel that a bit. It was weird. So then they filled the canals up with some sort of pokey looking things, paper points, or something like that. Then they do some other stuff that they didn't explain to me and then they put another temporary filling in.
Okay so this is my third trip there and I found out today I have two more trips back. One is to drill down into the part they filled up and put in "posts" and then I have to have some sort of impressions done so that the lab can make the crown. That takes two weeks.
Thankfully, Terry took a few hours out of his day to come sit with the kids. That made me feel much better. I could not see them running wild while I was doing that. He is not very happy with me having to go back two more times. I don't know what I am going to do about that.
The dentist told me to take lots of Advil for the next two days. Since I know that Ibuprofen products cause gastrointestinal bleeding in people with history of gastroinstestinal problems I am not very comfortable with that idea. I think I will stick to Percoset for pain. I have plenty of that.
Posted by gwendolyn on April 10, 2003 at 03:55 PM
Faithful Tattooed Dentist Sitters
Well, this evening was my second trip to the dentist for work on the same broken molar. He numbed, he drilled, he painted, he drilled, he painted, he drilled some more...this went on for-fucking-ever. All the while I am listening to the nurse tell Dr. K about her love life, the details of which was all rather jr. high school for woman of her age. She was probably at least fifteen years older than me. To make matters worse the dentist was way more interested in their socializing than he was in working on my tooth. He finally decided after an hour of drilling that the tooth was so bad off that I will have to come back in to have a root canal before he can crown it. So he built me a temporary filling much in the same manner that a homeless person builds a home out of a cardboard box and sent me on my way. I was going to have to wait another two weeks for a Tuesday night appointment. He openly admitted that he didn't know if that filling was going to last long enough for me to even get out of the chair. Monkeyboy suggests I go in during the day on Thursday and let the receptionist watch the kids while they play in the arcade of their pediatric dental office that is connected to my adult dental office. She says she will keep an eye on them. He thinks that will be okay. I am failing to see that as a good idea.
For one thing, the three of them can't even ride in the backseat of the car together without getting themselves in serious trouble at least a dozen times. The younger two don't mind me very well at the dental office let alone a nine year old. I am just not liking that whole scenario. At. All.
I told the receptionist that we don't have a sitter and will have to take a Tuesday night appointment. She asked me why we don't have a sitter. I told her that I had not met anyone here yet that I felt comfortable enough leaving my children with. She suggested that we really need to join a church. Her church. Of course, because it is such a great way to socialize. She said that her church has a great children's program. Yeah that is what church is for, socialization. Nevermind the whole God thing as long as you have people to hang out with and get to know someone good enough to pawn your children off on them. I just don't think so. I am not anti-church. I am anti-hypocrisy. I won't go to church just to find a babysitter.
As I was leaving, the tell-all nurse decided to ask me why on Earth I would choose to tattoo the word Dirty on my neck of all things. I suppose telling her to go fuck herself wouldn't have been very nice. Maybe I should have told her it was so the people at the other lady's church would have something to talk about while we all socialize.
Posted by gwendolyn on April 08, 2003 at 10:33 PM
Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo
Saturday Savannah turned six years old. We really hadn't planned a birthday party or anything for her. I don't know why, we just suck I guess. We wanted to do something special for her. She is the middle child, after all. So...
A spontaneous jaunt to Walt Disney World was in order! We drove up Friday night and stayed over at The Walt Disney World Hilton and then spent the entire day Saturday at The Magic Kingdom. We had a birthday breakfast at The Crystal Palace with Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet, complete with a birthday parade around the dining room led by the characters, character shaped food and a decent buffet, autographed birthday card, pictures with each character, and cupcake with candle.
We rode a few rides and got our pictures taken with Mickey, Minnie, Cinderella and her mice, Peter Pan, and others. Logan and Savannah participated in performing on stage at Belle's storytime but Logan got extremely embarassed and a bit emotionally overwhelmed when he was supposed to be Gaston asking her to marry him. He had the double role of her father and Gaston. There were a lot of people watching him. I don't think he is ready for stage performing. Savannah played Chip and was all too happy to be on stage.
I accidentally took Logan and Savannah on a rollercoaster. It was Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and we had no clue what it was. We thought it was a slow train ride. They wouldn't let Hope on. That should have been our first clue, but in all of the mass confusion they talked us into taking turns with the older children so Terry ended up waiting outside with Hope. The older two and I slowly got up to the front of the line and I was still trying to figure out why Hope was not allowed to get onto a freaking train ride.
I asked the people working if this was even remotely a scary ride and if so then I needed to get out of line and they assured me it was not scary at all and that Savannah would be fine. Um. They lied. I hope they burn in hell for it.
It was a rollercoaster, a kiddie one, but still. She cried and screamed the entire way, "Mommy, why are you doing this to me?" and "Please, I want to go home right now." I felt so horrible. We were in the very front seat. I held both of them as tight as I could and made them just close their eyes and not look. I tried to convince them from second one that it was almost over and just hold on. I nearly lost my purse, her doll, and both pairs of Mickey ears.
Afterward, I kept apologizing and telling her that I had no idea and if I had known that it was a rollercoaster I would have never ever taken her on it. It took about an hour afterward to get her to go on anything else. We made sure that all of the other things we went on were slow non-scary rides. It broke my heart. Poor baby. Not to mention I don't think I am in any condition to be thrown around like that. I bet my surgeon would have shit his pants.
Just for the record, I am sorry Dr. W., I am really not trying to get my guts to fall out. I didn't know!
We watched the parade in the afternoon and a show in front of Cinderella's Castle. Some adults just need kicked for pushing their way around and crowding in front of little children trying to watch when it is standing room only. Fucking morons.
We walked. We rested. Then we walked some more. Then at the end of the day we had dinner in Cinderella's Castle. Cinderella was there and occasionally made a sweep through the dining room. It was pretty cool. We were up in the castle during the closing fireworks so we felt them but didn't see them.
Other than being hot and feeling like a melting witch and the agony of sore legs and feet by the end of the day, the whole experience was pretty good. Expensive as hell, but good.
Pictures will follow soon.
Posted by gwendolyn on April 07, 2003 at 10:31 AM
Think It And Be It
I think I have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt I can eat like a manly man once again. I have used the excuse that I am making up for not being able to eat for two months for entirely too long. So long, in fact, that even I don't buy it anymore.
New day, fresh start, positive outlook. Fruit for breakfast yada, yada, yada. Try to start taking a walk in the evenings again. You know the drill. I exercised more when I was sick than I ever did when I was well. In the hospital I walked about four miles a day. I walked so much that eventually my muscles in my calves hurt so bad from walking on concrete all day and night in socks that I couldn't move them. So I must be getting well because I am as lazy (and lumpy) as can be. I have to stop thinking that just because I am still healing means I have to stop moving around. I just have to be careful.
I think the best way for me to feel better would be just to go back to eating a Vegan diet. I was a so much better me then. My newly working digestive system would probably thank me to lay off of the steak. I am past trying to convince myself that I need that protein and iron because I know better than that. Not to mention I have reverted to constantly trying not to think about what it is I am eating while I am eating it. Doesn't really make sense now does it?
Posted by gwendolyn on April 03, 2003 at 09:36 AM
The Domino Effect
It would seem that the chain of events of the last year have taken it's toll on all aspects of my health. Sunday morning I bit into a carob chip cookie I had baked the night before, and no they were very soft, and ended up crunching on half of one of my lower right molars.
An emergency page to the dentist revealed what I had already suspected, the heavy duty antibiotics, anesthesia, pain killers and other poison that my body has had to contend with have aided in weakening my teeth.
This particular molar already had a very large silver filling in it which I am very happy to be parting with considering the information I have been reading about Mercury in those fillings being extremely bad for you.
I had asked Mr. Monkey to take the day off on Monday and go with me to the dentist's office to take care of the children and also because I didn't know what I was in for or if I would be able to drive home. So, he did. Even though he has entirely too much work to do to be taking time off. He is a good monkey.
The dentist took an x-ray and determined that I did a wonderful job of destroying the poor tooth and decided that there was going to be about two hours of work involved including crowning it. Lovely. Then he informs me that he doesn't have that kind of time that day and that I will need to make another appointment. I explained to him about the whole having hubby take off and no babysitter and foolishly thinking he was going to actually fix the tooth then and there and he apologized and said basically that I was out of luck.
So then I find out that the only time I can possibly come in while hubby is off work is on a Tuesday night. This was on a Monday. They couldn't get me in the next evening. They can get me in a week from then though.
So now I have not only mastered the arts of chewing up nasty bitter pills without even bothering to chase them, swallowing plastic tubes as they are shoved down my nose, but I can eat with broken teeth. I am so fucking talented I am my own freak show.