Waiting
I am stuck. I only have a little more to pack up but I can't finish it because it is too early. Three more days. This week is going so incredibly slow.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 27, 2003 at 10:15 AM
That Mouth Of Mine Gets Me In Trouble All The Time
I just got back from the dentist. I have two minor cavities. I can't win. The hygenist said my teeth were really clean and not bad at all, so how is it they can be really clean and I still get two cavities. Bastard weakened teeth. I can't win. I would blame it on my dirty mouth but my mouth is Dirty, not dirty. It is an entirely different definition. Don't believe me? Just ask my Monkey :)
Posted by gwendolyn on August 26, 2003 at 02:05 PM
Priorities
I ran across this as I was looking for ways to tone my abdominal muscles with out tearing something fragile and having another nightmare on my hands. My heart goes out to this person and every single person that has spent a minute suffering like that. My situation is/was different but I can relate on a lot of levels, since I had the ileostomy and all. I have a lot of the same symptoms as colitis sufferers, however I am not losing weight. I am gaining. Go figure.
At times I want to just sit on the couch and baby myself and be glad all my stuffing is closed up under the scars and not do anything that might remotely hurt anything. Other times I see myself sliding backward into a place I never thought I would be again. I am nearly back to where I started on the scale and it blows. I am stronger than this person I see in the mirror. Stronger than I ever thought I would be again. I have bad days. Some are horrible, but I am here and able to breathe and move. When we move I will have access to everything I could ever dream of pulling something important on. I need someone to show me how not to kill myself with it all.
Last night, at three in the morning, I took about a hundred deep slow breaths. Each time I exhaled I smiled. Stupid me laying in bed smiling in the pitch black at the ability to breathe. I would like to take yoga or something. Someday. When I become Whendoleen The Millionare and can afford such things, along with music and ballet lessons for the three children.
I have been taking a few baby steps toward getting my rear back in gear. It is very painful when I yawn still. I don't know why. It feels like my ribs are all broken. Thankfully yawning isn't a frequent occurance, eh? I feel it a little when I get winded too. That might be what triggers the fear when I do try to go out and exercise. Me and pain, we don't get along much anymore. That and the digestive hell that seems to happen more frequently when I am not anywhere near home.
I have been a fairly good girl this past week. My diet is better, not ideal, but better. I finally gave in to my better judgement and through all thoughts I have been entertaining of trying the Adkins diet out the window. I know what makes me lose weight. Eating steak, eggs, ham, and lard for every meal is not going to do that for me. Fruits, veggies and small portions of naturally low fat foods. That is what works for me. I am actually tolerating a few fruits and veggies this week. I have missed salad and juice so much. I keep whining about the fact that Planet Smoothie closed where we are moving back to. I lived on smoothies when I was losing all my weight. Bastards. I guess I will have to just live with Jamba Juice. They don't have my Chocolate Two Piece Bikini with Fat Burner but I will have to live. I make okay smoothies. It isn't quite the same though. Not that I can even think about dropping wads of cash on Jamba Juice every day for the five of us. That gets stupid expensive.
I have only had two really bad sickness days this week. I don't even attempt to go out of the house if I suspect I am having one of those days. I am trying to ease up on the bottle, of Pepto, that is. I have been relying on it for weeks to keep me from getting sick while out of the house and that can't be healthy either. I am not able to just run out and look for moving boxes like I need to. However, I am getting a lot done around here.
I have had a very self pitying attitude about my physical state lately. I only need small reminders of where I have been that bring me back to where I stand now with a clear view of how amazing and strong I really have been. I have never really allowed myself to feel that what I went through was an act of strength on my part. I have always chalked it up to simply having no choice. It's true, I didn't have a choice. You honestly can't know how abnormal life becomes until something like this happens to you. It changes every choice you make all day long, every single day. I do have a say so in how I let it get me down. I am not going to let it run my life anymore. I can't.
For me, and everyone who has had to have medical care on such a grand scale it is just as mentally taxing as it is physically. When I am not sick I have to deal with the budget and trying to work in the bickering with creditors over hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bills and insurance papers and coming up with copayments and generally dealing with the financial stress this has added. I am a couple grand away from being through with that end of it. I think. That is if I don't get any presents in the mail I am not expecting in the next few months. I don't know where it is going to come from seeing as I haven't included any payments to any of the medical bills in the grand plan for the next several months. I can tell you this though, I am not going to lose too much sleep over it. Those greedy bastards can just wait. We reorganized our household priorities and number one on the list is moving out of the ghetto.
Speaking of which, I have to call the office Monday and let them know about the roof leaking in the kids' room again and about the various other little things they need to fix before I leave so they don't try to charge me for any of it when I leave.
I am so close to being okay again. So close to being done. I want to do a little dance. It is a bit early to celebrate yet though.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 24, 2003 at 01:45 AM
I Feel Sorry For Moms Everywhere
"Notice to PublixDirect customers: The PublixDirect online grocery service has ended. All ordering and delivery has been discontinued. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough volume to keep operating. We appreciate your business and loyalty. It has been our pleasure to serve you, and we hope that you will continue to shop with Publix in your local store.
Regards,
The PublixDirect Team"
Um. This sucks for so many reasons. First of all, they were just getting a good inventory of organics. Secondly, it really helped moms who have to watch the calculator and don't have the time or energy to do so while reasoning with three inquisitive children about why we aren't buying Captain Crunch and why it is important to keep hands inside the toy car attached to the front of the huge heavy cart. Third, it really really helped moms of three who are still going through some freaking unexplainable physical hell and who also have trouble carrying anything weighing more than her own fat ass, including heavy groceries from the car, around to the backside of an apartment building, up a flight of stairs, all while trying to keep four people (including herself) from tracking disgustingness into the apartment from sidewalks frequented by retarded ducks with gastric issues in hot humid weather.
Man, it is a good thing we are moving to a duckless, garage equipped, fifteen air conditioned steps from the front door to the kitchen apartment. If I had to stay here any longer I would fucking freak out.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 23, 2003 at 12:09 AM
Can't Hardly Wait
Some days, the time between hearing the front door close behind him and hearing his key turning in the lock again seems like forever.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 20, 2003 at 04:21 PM
A Day Like Any Other
Today is Savannah's first day of being legal. No getting up at dawn or walking her to school and feeling my heart drop into my stomach as she disappears into the crowd. No worrying about if she is nervous or sad or feels uncomfortable. No lunch money to lose. No mystery meat. No raising of hands or sitting in alphabetical order all day. No going over material she has known since she was three. No squirming in her seat because the teacher doesn't believe she really has to go to the bathroom for the tenth time today. Art every day whenever we want. Eating when we are hungry. Spontaneous searches on Google to see why things are the way they are, who made them that way and why. Going outside whenever we want. Just life. The same way we live it everyday. Asking lots and lots of questions and finding all the answers. Together. Learning all the time. Yeah, this is what I lived for.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 18, 2003 at 11:46 AM
I Am Sick Of Peanut Butter
Cutting corners to the point of rationing milk and apples sucks major ass. I just thought you should know.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 15, 2003 at 11:20 AM
Get Back To Where You Once Belonged
I just can't wait to get out of here. It is like waiting for Christmas or the last day of school. Looking back at the two years we spent here I see nothing good came from it. It was a mistake. This place was supposed to be a stepping stone to something better for us. A more economic way of life so that we could save for some big grand plan. We got rid of what didn't fit. We purchased things we really weren't in love with to accomodate for lack of space. In the end we ended up in a dump with a lot of things we really don't want. It is time to reflect and make changes.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 14, 2003 at 03:48 PM
Jumping Through Hoops
Yesterday I took Savannah for her school entrance physical and immunizations. It was extremely chaotic as we have moved between four states seven times since Logan was born. This makes for an extremely messed up shot record, times three. In the midwestern states they are pretty picky about requiring original shot cards that your child receives upon birth. Iowa actually transferred all of this information from the Ohio cards to their state cards and insisted I had to present the actual card each time the children received shots. It didn't help when the doctor's offices didn't transfer them to the new pediatrician when request forms were signed here. It also doesn't help that I changed pediatricians offices here a couple of years ago and they also didn't send the records or bother to update the confused mess of cards and photocopies I now currently have possesion of when they gave them more shots in 2000. Nor does it help when the DOE destroys the one I had to give them when I transferred Logan here at the end of first grade. They told me on the phone yesterday that since he was not reregistered in a public school within two years of my withdrawing him that it was sent off to be archived onto microfiche and then the original documents were destroyed. Isn't that just lovely? To top it off, the order the shots are given and amount of doses required of each one vary from state to state. It is a mess.
However, after two trips to the pediatrician in a three hour span, several long distance phone calls, one physical, eye exam, and hearing test, lots of intrusive questions about counting, helmets, seat belts and water safety, writing her name one a piece of paper, three shots in two arms and lots of holding her down screaming, she is now ready to be enrolled.
I could have just taken the easy way out and signed a waiver stating that we don't immunize because of our beliefs but that wouldn't exactly be truthful. I don't exactly like the whole immunization thing but when I started my mothering career no one told me that all of that was optional nor did anyone educate me on the many reasons for refusing to do it. I always thought it was against the law not to. So after moving here I figured I may as well finish what I started and pray what ever they are putting into my children doesn't hurt them. I am not in the mood to go up against the DOE for providing false information anyway. The DOE is bad enough in my nightmares. Also, I have been a good mom and hauled all of these documents all over the country with me. The least these people could do is keep track of them in their own offices. I think the DOE should be required to mail the family any and all documents they have after the child has been withdrawn from public school. That is just stupid that they refused to give them to me when I took him out and then destroyed them. I also think that the immunization schedules should be the same across the country and there should be one certified form. Some sort of federal form instead of all of these state forms. But then again, no one asked me.
Oh. While I am ranting, Crayola needs to make erasable crayons. I am tired of trying to explain to Hope why it is nearly impossible to erase a line she didn't mean to draw on her picture.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 12, 2003 at 02:50 PM
I'm A Lover Not A Fighter
Apart from whatever damage this whole extra tax credit is actually going to do to our future, I am so glad to have it right now. I may actually make it this month now! I have a whole heap of kids so I got a fairly plump check in the mail today. I was at the bank in no less than thirty minutes. When it is about money, I don't mess around. I would have even drove there in my pajamas except that I had happened to just have my shower. It is a darn shame that it is already spent. Every last penny. On the bright side, had we not had this money coming we would most definitely not be moving out of this shithole of an apartment.
Last night my A/C closet filled back up again. I could keep goldfish in there. The girl downstairs is having new carpet put into her second bedroom today because hers is leaking so bad it completely saturated the wall between the A/C closet and the bedroom and then flooded the floor too. I don't see this as a permanent solution to her problem. She is determined to stay here and fight the good fight. Customer satisfaction and all. More power to her. I am out of here in 25 days and counting.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 05, 2003 at 01:57 PM
Keep On Keepin' On
August 10,2003. That is when the other people are finally agreeing to moving out so I can finally order cable and internet. Two little white teeth with massive roots still attached and a four hour buzz. That is what Savannah came home from the dentist with this morning. $81.00. That is the co-pay for good drugs and two little teeth. $1470.00. That is approximately how much I now owe as a co-payment of the $17,099.00 charge, courtesy of the Saturday morning mail, for just my hospital room for the first week of March. One inch of standing water. That is what I found in my A/C closet again yesterday morning. Transmission fluid. That is what the mysterious liquid was all over the front driver's side wheel well and tire on Friday while at the park. $90.00. The price tag on fixing that little problem Saturday. Thirty minutes. That is just how long it takes for my laptop battery to now go completely dead even after fully charging. The list goes on. I don't have the heart to type anymore of it out. One step forward. Two steps back.
Otherwise, all is well. It is business as usual around here this afternoon.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 04, 2003 at 12:53 PM
Ah, To Be Young Again
I found this yesterday crumpled in the back of a book. I think I was fourteen or maybe just turned fifteen in those pictures. He was seventeen. It is just adding to the already extremely nostalgic sort of pre mid-life crisis over us growing old. I love you baby. I wish time could stand still.
Posted by gwendolyn on August 01, 2003 at 02:41 PM