Gorillabuns

unplugged

We returned from our trip without any injuries and mostly still married.

Unless you count this beauty.

The scenery was wistful of my memories from living in West Texas when I was young.

 
Even the bug smudge on the windshield.

We did have all kinds of attitude shoot forth it's loins on this trip.

As you can tell, Celia was less than thrilled with skiing or maybe she was less than thrilled having her father make her ski down blues after 1 1/2 hours of ski lessons.  I am with her. It blew. She needed a do-over. With a more patient co-skier.

Some fun things occurred. My first experience of snow while in the mountains.

Sangria and the doggie bags they give you for transportation.

St. Patty's Day with friends.

Maybe I shouldn't have ordered shots....

Spending quality alone time with my oldest who is growing up way too fast before my eyes.

Relishing in the joy Moira brings to any activity or adventure.

I miss the solitude, my good friend we stayed with in the condo, as well as the unplugged aspect I pretty much displayed while out in nature.

I need to unplug and rewire myself more often. I think we all do.

 

emotional warfare

Every other day, Moira, receives a letter like the above one from a friend at school.  She now is receiving such letters from two other girls in her classroom since Christine started her daily pennings to paper.

It has been brought to my attention, Moira, has too many girls who want to play with her.  First world problems if you ask me.

On the flip side, Celia, can't seem to find the any good girls to play with her.  She has taken to staying inside for recess to do AR reading tests so she doesn't have to struggle to find someone to play with for twenty minutes.

I'm not sure what else I can do to help.  I've talked to the teacher and she really doesn't suggest any of the girls in the class but maybe one. The rest she says are too drama-filled for Celia.  Celia doesn't act unhappy when she comes home from school like last year.  She only dreads things like tests not people like before.  I know she would like to have a best friend like her sister seems to have in spades.  I've offered for her to invite one of the girls from class to come over and have a sleep over to maybe help spark something.  Celia has finally agreed to ask the little girl - though in a moment of totally heartbreak, she asked "what if she doesn't want to come over and play with me? What if she says no?"  Rejection from the last few years at the other school was so intense. She still feels like the little girl no one wants to play with. Though to be fair, when I see her with others at school, they aren't excluding her. 

Man, it is so hard letting go of your children to fend for themselves in life .It is hard being the mom and trying to not control every second. Making sure everything is perfect for the kids without being the hover-mom.

Rich asked me the other day what we were going to do when Moira fails at doing her cartwheel in front of everyone during her 2nd grade P.E. program (she just can't seem to pick it up and I really can't say much about it since I've never been able to do a good cartwheel myself.) My response to him was, let her fail.

He about choked. "What?" 

"Let her fail. Everything comes easy to her. Friends, school, activities all are effortless for her.  If she can't do the stupid cartwheel, she can't do it. Life will go on and hopefully she'll learn something from the situation. Learn something about herself. No one is going to die or fail because she can't do a cartwheel. She'll still be loved and we will still say good effort."

I'm slowly but surely learning to stand back with my girls. I want them to be independent of me one day. I want them to learn to trust their instincts and stand firm on their choices.  I personally don't want to be questioning them if they remember their shit or if they have it together when they are my age. I'm raising them to be better than me. To believe in themselves. 

 

In other news, pray no one dies or gets killed skiing this weekend. I'm about to vomit due to all of the anxiety from the possibilities from this trip. This coming weekend doesn't seem like a relaxing vacation to me.

yo

Well, hey.

More and more, I keep forgetting about this space. Before long the 10 people who read this will too.  I guess this is what happens to all of us when we age. We forget stuff. Especially unimportant stuff.

My birthday was nice. I think my husband read my post so he knew he needed to step to the plate and give me an actual card for the day.  I spent the day with my mother. We had lunch, did my annual bra shopping and picked up the kids and did homework. My husband gave me a knife sharpener as a gift. Nothing says romance like a knife sharpener. If he really thought about this gift in a clear light he would realize that after sharpening my kitchen knives to a fine point precision, I might actually stab him 427 times for being so romantic with this gift.  In the end he did have my wedding ring fixed by adding a chunk of metal to it so I can wear it again.  It seems almost 13 years later, I've started to grow a nice pair of man hands. My wedding set didn't fit any longer. For this, I put the knives away. 

Moira gave me a very sweet portrait for my birthday. The only time I've worn a dress since my wedding day.

I've had another kid down with the sickness. or is it the same kid? different week? I'm losing count.

Don't you love how I'll let the girls wear just about anything in public? Stripes? Pants with skirts over them? Peeshaw! We are total fashion mavens around these parts.

I'm still obsessed with Candy Crush Saga and can't figure out how everyone is moving past me in Speed Racer form. Like my husband is about to kick my ass in his movement. THIS I can't handle.

I'm so glad the Bachelor is almost over because I simply can't handle this show any longer. I can't stand this dipwad and the choices he's made. Hurry up and pick the chick you are going to dump 12-weeks later because you have completed your contractual obligations.  Have you noticed the complete narcissic giddiness he displays when he takes his shirt off? I don't think there has been one episode in which his shirt has stayed on for the entire show.  I mean, dude, I manage to keep my shirt on during my hometown visits.

A new show I'm OBSESSED with is LA Shrinks on Bravo. I love it! Mainly because the show validates every reason why I didn't persue my Doctorate in Counseling. In a word (okay, phrase) - people are crazy. I do have to say, I can totally relate to the woman who screams and yells "Fuck you, you Motherfucker!" in her car.  She seems to have a few anger issues. Sister, don't we all. We're just living the dream. Livin' the dream.

Right now, I'm finishing up a wedding and planning on an upcoming ski trip in which I don't have a stitch of ski clothing for my family. We leave in less than two weeks.  Have a I mentioned that we've never been skiing? Well, Rich has but the girls and I haven't. No worries here on the injury portion of skiing for me. I'll be tucked safe and warm in the local bar. Drinking away any anxiety of someone running into a tree and killing themselves.  I better up everyone's life insurance. and take a shit-ton of Xanax with me.

 

I officially hate/love....{insert}

Last week was Fall Break for the girls. What this really means is this is the time of year where I have to entertain the kiddos while I'm scrawling out my biggest job of the year.  659 invitations as of a minute ago.

I officially hate Calligraphy.

The week before vacation, Moira, was sick for a couple of days.

I officially hate having sick children.

While taking her temperature every 20 minutes I tried to write out another envelope - unsuccessfully. It is only a matter of time before my house is burned down because I'm not delivering this gig on time.

I offically hate anyone named Junior. It's a bitch to write on an envelope. Be original and use a new name.

On one of Moira's sick days, Rich and I sat at the table to eat lunch and shoot the shit. Moira asks, point blank, "Is this what you do all day? Eat and talk? Don't ya'll work or something?"  I looked at her and the 6 boxes of invitations to my right covered in my blood, sweat and tears and carefully exused myself from the table.

I officially hate being told I don't work. 

On Friday we decided to drive down the Talimena Pass. More like, we love Kings of Leon and watched Talihina Sky awhile back and thought since we are non planners, let's go all Bluegrass and drive down to that part of the state. and maybe find a decendant or two.

 

During the drive I found a town in which you couldn't use a toilet to save your life.  I almost dropped trou on a bank floor because they thought humans using their bathroom happened to threaten their safety.

I left my cell phone on the hood of our car. I found it two miles later still ontop of the car. The only problem was it was raining 90 to nothing and we were going 70 miles an hour.  In the end we were able to find all the pieces of my phone and it worked. The screen wasn't even cracked.

Thank GOD! someone was giving me a break.

We stopped in Talihina and stayed at the only place we could find a vacancy. A motel.

We communed with bikers and the like and thankfully, no bed bug bites were to be had.

I do have to say, we were up and out of 'em by like 8am. Offical record for this clan.

We hiked, we fell and screamed shit in the forest. We laughed, we cried and talked about Thalon being on our walk with us in the middle of nowhere.

Truth be told, I felt him there. A whisper of breeze glancing through the trees. The most I have ever felt his presence since his death.

I want to go back.

 

 

What I remember

I don't know about you but when I do anything and a day passes, I promptly forget everything I said or did during that previous day. Because I'm old.

The trip to Chicago? Same thing. Things I remember doing and saying are based on the photos. Yes, I seemingly was in attendance that week.

 

Small town where we look like we contacted jaundice.

Paul knew we were hungry so he ditched his ax for a massive hot dog. Never knew you could find this kind of stuff simply because we stopped to pee.

We did eat at a dinner and well, the food wasn't what I expected. A hot roast beef sandwich with gravy turned out to be this:

More aptly named, "shit on a shingle."

We finally made it to Chicago. We shit, showered and shaved and met up with KRISTIN!

We had the obligatory Chicago pizza at Pizzeria Due and it was damn good! For one thing, since Rich and I are blue-hairs when it comes to eating, we got there early, was seated immediately and by the time Kristin met us, we didn't have to wait too long. Seriously, if I could eat at five o'clock every day, I would be a very happy person. Well, my temper would be happy.

Rich took the girls back on the "L" to our hotel while Kristin and I moved on to a bar. Well, I think this is where we went to drink. I didn't want to look too touristy and look up as I was walking. I liked the place mainly because the beer was good and the company was BETTER! but man, Chicago boys love their hats. As evident from my late night diagram.

Don't ask me what GM means. I mean seriously, you do see a beer ring on this piece of paper, right?  

I want to move to Chicago just for Kristin. She's freaking awesome and my girls fell in love with her. So did my husband. He has to stay a couple of feet away on our next meeting. I don't trust him.

The next day we went to many places including the American Girl door store.

This foot is about as close as we got to the top of the Hancock building. Mainly because I'm way too impatient of a person with wait in lines. I don't care if it's summer! There was a longer line to get a drink on the 96th floor! Forget it!

Millenium Park

The Bean (Cloud Gate)

Bean Family Portrait

Had a beer at the The Emerald Isle Bar and Grill. Best Corned Beef Sandwich and if you sit on the patio, you stare at this view:

Now I'm not really for three-part posts but I really have to make an exception because for some reason, my recall took two hours to relate and my husband is giving me dirty stares right now. Woman, get up and do something! I'll have to recount more tomorrow AFTER my poke and prod date with my OBGYN. That should be the highlight of my day for sure.