Just a day floating past
Good morning … It’s just me. It’s a medium good time for it being a holiday morning. It’s about 8:30 am. Rich left about an hour ago and about an hour before that we got him up and about an hour before that we had gotten him up, but there’d been some snoozing in between. WooHOO VACATION!!Ok, ok shhh. Let’s calm down got a little over excited … lost track for a second … maybe had something to do with eating turkey soup, writing and turning on Bing Crosby … just a head rush. Ok, so we’re sappy … there’s no surprises here, right? “I’ve got a pocketful of dreams!” Not sure wehre we are here … we were somewhere and now we’re confused again … how did that happen? Let’s start again.
Here we are. It’s now 8:45 am … we’re going to take the morning for nothing beside writing AND maybe starting the dishwasher, but not much else. I don’t think we’re up to much more serious stuff yet. Before we go ANYWHERE though, we want to write about last night … we had the most splendiferous evening!!! The preliminary part was that Sweetie called and about 4:30 pm that we should get showered and dressed to go out … and that we would do dinner and maybe take in some lights … Oh man talk about flood our senses. Of course, because we are us the first thoughts though are that we are going to rebel against everything … no no no we aren’t going! We can’t do it … we’re not going to leave the house … I can’t take a shower, please don’t make me leave the computer. You know that kind of stuff … and believe me we mean it with our very soul. It’s terrible … I don’t know how he puts up with us. We try to stop it as soon as we’re aware of it … I can hear some of our achy thoughts and feelings of resistance – it feels painful just thinking of it. I can hear of saying you can’t make us and stop ordering us around – you can’t just tell us what to do!
Damn … we feel so sorry for him afterward … usually its just moments really, because
as soon as he disconnects someone else is already trying to figure out how to get in the shower fast enough, even though someone else was terribly distraught. Bargains and deals are being made … well if you this, then we that … and I’ll do if you … all kinds of compromises. Tears are wiped away. To every part that swears she’ll never leave the computer are parts that worship the shower and swear they will never leave it. We have parts that specialize in dressing up even if its in something not any fancier than a pair of jeans just because we have such strong complainers when it comes to putting any kind of air against our skin other than flannel.
I guess sweetie decided to stop at the store before he found us at home waiting for him out in the car. I’m not sure all the details of his grocery trip, but I think he figured we might tire fast because there was so much into getting us out. He had dropped a clue about taking us out to the zoo and maybe that he would do some of the wheel chair work … Even though we ended up waiting for him downstairs in the car for 20 minutes we were to afraid to leave the car or too excited or something to go back for our gloves we’d forgotten upstairs. I know too that it is hard for us to go up those stairs twice in one day, especially with an outing. We knew Rich would make sure we had our full share of walking. We waited and waited patiently not daring to think because we were afraid of a lesser mood.
There was only one lesser mood … Rich finally got there … we were waiting in the passenger seat so he just slipped in and he had his coupon book, which we were prepared for, but he spent too much time with it and we started to get hungry because it was taking a while and then I think he took a phone call … he finally hinted that we could do Mexican which was beyond what we knew we should be doing, but we were so hungry, but then he pulled out of the driveway to the right instead of the left and we about went bonkers on him WHERE ARE YOU GOING??!! Thought you wanted to look at lights? ARGH!!!! FOOD!!! Well, pswhoo that mishap was corrected quickly after that there were no more panic attacks, but we had to then calm down him. We were ok, knowing we were going toward the food, but he went through one when we got up to the corner of 47th and East Avenue and had to wait a triple train crossing hehehe … man we’re terrible pre-food-eaters.
Things went mostly ok with dinner. We both spent a bit of time with the menus … I
decided after only getting to the specials page and the first that I would have a
big taco salad … then he came back and said if I would do it he would too. I thought WOW! He would do that for me??! Then I said timidly – how do you feel about getting a cup of black bean cheesy chili with that? He said – we’ll order two. Then he asked me about having a Margarita. I had a hint he might try that because he noted it on the sign as we drove in. I said where do you see that … he pointed the specialties of the house out on the back page. I said Wow! They cost as much as our dinner! I thought if there was any chance for saving our diets it would be having him look at the pocketbook … this might be a good drink, but it was a SEVEN DOLLAR DRINK?!! But, he remained firm … so … who was I to say. What flavor should we try?
So, that’s about how that went … I guess our resolve wasn’t where it should be to be trying a restaurant yet. The salad was much too big and full of other things more than lettuce … I had chicken and the vegetables were cut big plus pretty sure the dressing wasn’t low-calorie, so figured that wasn’t quite the deal since I couldn’t put it down before the entire thing was gone … AND, we had chips before dinner.
Rich left some, but we just weren’t that good. He was trying to be the better example and only charitable by not trying to take the food away … I think we’d both been suffering the consequences of him hiding candy from us over the holidays’. Ok, shhh … let’s not go there.
I don’t think we did too much talking over dinner … just light stuff. Dinner was just a build-up for afterward, because you know what we did afterward? Do you?? We went to the ZOOO!!! It was soooooo soooo fantastic! The temperature was sensational and we were just in the mood. I guess that margarita may have been a good deal hehehe. Rich asked about the other parking so we told him about $2 at the south side – And, we got in on the disabled of course. The south side is closer to the main evens and you don’t have to go down and up the big block long walk way … that’s the big deal. That’s the way we almost always go … It’s pretty cool … he said that for $2 it was worth the deal.
From the very start it was very obvious that there was going to be lights EVERYwhere … all the trees and bushes were covered in lights and there were medium size trees brought in and decorated by different agencies and clubs for the occasion. I think the most impressionable thing was around Roosevelt Fountain … about every 6’ they had a 6’ tree and the trees were covered in at least three different sets of lights. The fountain itself is huge. I think it can hold about 60 trees, but I didn’t count, and at one end of the fountain there was a big fan like NBCs peacock and that’s decorated in lights too and the whole thing is coordinated to a musical sound system with music that can be heard all over the place, but every 20 minutes for a ten minute period it would play Christmas songs – beautiful beautiful Christmas songs. It was soo soo cool. During the last one especially – cuz we’d been out there for a while and our eyes were all mushy and we couldn’t help but to sing along – It was just so beautiful and romantic and wonderful and everything times a hundred thoughsand googleplexes. The lights would just blink and twinkle to the tunes and switch off from red, to white, to color it was just gorgeous and it would light up the silky mirror reflecting from the fountain and you could see people walking around the trees like skating at Rockefeller park in NY. But this was Chicago … and here we were doing it Chicago style.
Oh man it was something! And this wasn’t to discount the animals themselves. We walked around more to the SE so we saw some Bears and Tigers and some cats – oh yeah and we did cross over and catch a couple of elephants and hippos and rhinos and such – we had to go in to the pachyderm house though. They had a display of a sleigh being pulled by some polar bears … people were climbing the bears so they could get their pictures in. We only saw one occasion of kids that were too rowdy – there were a lot of families and couples and such, but felt bad for the ones dressed up too much … there were a lot of families – but, not too much.
Rich has two places he could go on Friday – I’m not sure which one he’ll take. He said if the weather is ok, we could go back to the zoo on Friday … because we didn’t even make it to see the monkeys and penguins – the zoo is just so cool at night times, I wish they’d have it open more open. They must have an entire building or two just to house the lights they use for Christmas … they light thousands of trees and they do the trees in themed colors so there might be white here or green or blue or red … it’s just so nice … I’m going to give Maury a call to see if he knows about it just in case he has time with the girls. If they can do the weather … Rich’s other option is to play cards on Friday with Bob … the thing is there’s supposed to be 5-8 inches of snow Friday morning to evening. I’m sure they have fast ways to clear the snow at the zoo, especially because of all the baby strollers and chairs, so I’m thinking it would be beautiful, just have to see that we’re both wearing hats and mittens. Hmm, do we own a hat? Maybe go with a scarf? We could do that – hehehe. Just so cool. I think it’s open up through New Year’s just not sure of the crowds – thinking it could be pretty busy as a safe place to bring families those days. I had thought on a week day would be our best bet. We’ll see … think Rich is due to be getting out with the guys – even though he says his luck’s been down.
Sure was great though.
It’s almost 10 am now and we’re being extra careful. Chief is worrisome to me. He’ rolled into a ball the opposite direction. Both sets of paws are resting on my hands and his head has been on my right hand. We noticed last night that there is something wrong with his tail … he is missing some hair at the tip of his tail. It doesn’t seem to be itching him, but he doesn’t like – never has – when we pause to exam it either. I checked Missy she is fine. Rich has plans to be doing a double game today and then he is going to pick up Jon and take him home … he will be staying there a couple of hours and then going out to dinner with him before heading home – so we can’t do anything with the kitties today – we’ll have to check with him about tomorrow if it doesn’t get better or if it gets worse. I think we would have to bring Missy in to to make sure they don’t have the same thing. Rich says not to worry about it, but that’s just not practical. It’s something … we just don’t know what it is. Right now we’re at the stage of picking up clues. They’re eating and sleeping habits haven’t changed. Chief always cuddles at this time … nothing new there, right? Ok, shhh … let’s not over worry. Breathe!
Ok, now it’s about 10:30 am. We lost some time … came out eating again. Was eating crackers, but looked at nutrition label and counted a serving of 7, plus one extra.
Just need to stop all that … we’re off the diet … was off with two servings of turkey soup. Ok, that was a snack. Water or coffee only now until noon, k? Then the protein drink and jello … let’s work through it. Need to focus. We lost time on petting Chief. He’s off now to real rest. Sometimes the kitties are just so adorable in their cuddliness that you can’t do anything, but pet them – especially when you are worrying about their help … same as when a kid is hurt or sleeping … they look more vulnerable and needy. I think it must then be like a parental
impulse to step in and adore. *Sigh*
Ok, So where are we … we’re still listening to Bing Crosby and Judy Garland she’s in on this playlist - Like 227 songs between the two, plus some composites the two have made with a few others. I picked up interest in him over the holidays – though I’m over holidays music for the season. There’s so much to listen to … I usually play my music ragged before going on. We’re still not thinking too concretely. Rich had said something about doing something more “real” I think is what he meant without saying it quite like that, but all we wanted to do was to be able to get back to solid writing thoughts … would be nice to work again, but like that more to gradually get toward that by the end of the vacation. Realistically, I don’t want to waste my free time straddled down. I want to feel at peace with myself – I know can’t do that without feeling some advantage of productivity. Just I want to be led by my imagination to just bend with the umm “productive” wind – can we do that?
Ok, that time period wasn’t so good … it’s now 11:45 am. I think we fell asleep at the keyboard and then just now we came out of it with messing around on the keyboard trying to find the right music. We put together a new playlist of music “like Celine” – actually, we let the jukebox plus do it for us … it came up with a huge variety of artists and a lot of songs – 245 of them. It’s got a lot of the popular people in it … I couldn’t figure out how to get a picture on my playlist, but I made it public. I think it’s too low on the popularity list to make it to where it’s viewable. I don’t know exactly how that happens. Because I think everybody only sees the top 100. The names I used as a description were “Like Celine, Whitney Houseon, Mariah Carey, Sarah McLaclan, Boysz to Men, NYYNC, Josh Groban, Phil Colins, Selena, Vanessa Williams, and Cher. Hehehe I know pretty generic main stream, but I’m up for happy sappy love songs.
Ok, really having a good time with the music … and love the songs … they are different than I’ve heard most of them, but are soft and hearable in my range of interest. I need music that is smoother and softer I think … you’d have to check my other parts to get their musical tastes. Like I’m not so sure who’s into Elvis, but someone is … Just takes time to gt to everyone. Ok, I know I know … not important.
Just saying is all. Shhh, I know. It’s just I never heard of Monica and she seems good. Cyndi Lauper I know. I considered rating some of the songs, but that would take too much time and attention for no true purpose … though it might be something Maury consider too. I think he’s the only son of mine that considers music seriously. If I were going to do anything for him I would consider opening an account for him, but I’m sure that he has some other means for listening to music … and as Rich would probably say … my music is spent. I’ve got to get money now to the student loan accounts there really is no money … I have to figure out how that all is going to happen and it might mean reading mail and doing bills … Yeeks … not yet. Maybe Saturday. Yikes that song is loud … we’re having one by Hilary duff.
It’s called So Yesterday. Ok, so we can do louder right … how did she do that … all the rest of them played not so loud. We might have to adjust. Hmm.
Hmm, just listening to the words. Made me think of Candice. I don’t think she is letting go of her relationship so smoothly … something about staying over at his house after he’d gotten another girlfriend and well whatever, but I think she is still in love with him sorta … but, she’s in that after part where everything is confused. Especially because of Christmas … there are so many memories. I think she’s trying to do things like dating and she doesn’t like that whole thing. She doesn’t like that her boyfriend is going out with a young girl (21 years either) – that’s driving her crazy – even though she’s saying she’s not jealous. It’s funny … I know I went through my jealous periods, but after I knew it was over – he was served the papers – I never went back after him. I knew about then of the girlfriend. I figured that it was formerly over … I never fought over him. I just said fine and left … the hard part was over the boys. Remember Dr. Woollcott saying over 10 minute phone calls no good. I remember his mother calling him to do the arguing for him and then eventually closing down those calls. I think there was something in the last call before the bankruptcy of her worrying how to pay the raised cost of water in Marco Island – her third home. I about snapped there. I met her at Maury’s wedding, but haven’t had contact since.
I don’t think I’ve talked to the boys father since then either … I really don’t want to … have no drive to speak to him. Just doesn’t usually cross my mind. I think of him as a mean person. As someone I don’t know, but feel very weary of. I feel like he’s someone that would enjoy hurting me. I don’t think he would ever have my better interests at hand. I wouldn’t trust him in a conversation in the least. I don’t know why I’m thinking of him now. I know the boys are in good connection with him … it’s like fine, but I don’t have to be. They know I am leery of him. I usually don’t ask anything of him except if they have brought him up, I will ask a generic … oh how is your father. They will say something like, oh he’s fine … he’s working on, or he’s hurt his or something … and I’ll say oh ok, but then generally I don’t think I ask much more – I don’t want to know because it makes me feel scared.
Something like I’m feeling now … which is why I’m going to ask for a conversation change, please? Thank you.
Have we talked about sweetie pie lately? Not for very long I think. We’re listening to Savage Garden … why do they call themselves that. I like them. I’ve heard this song before, “I knew I loved You,” but I would have never picked it out because of their name as scary. It’s really fine. By now Rich should just be meeting up with his son, but might have thought of me a smidge if his knees were sore hehehe … funny Rich … we’ll give him some private time. Wow, I like that song too! Now and Forever by Richard Marx … I didn’t know I liked him. But, I like that song, never knowing what it was titled. That’s the nice thing about not remembering things … everything seems to be like a surprise …
Somehow staying close to the music feels like a safety to me … and as I say it I remember now the radio that was at my house growing up. I got it early and I played it quite a bit. I had my favorite radio stations. Like I used to listen to the Casey Cason top countdown. I had the same problem with music then as I do now … I couldn’t remember the words to music – like I couldn’t remember though hearing it over and over again the words to “Away in a manger” or the “Star Spangled Banner,” or for that matter, “The Pledge of Allegiance” even though it was said at the beginning of every school day. I get as far as I pledge allegiance to the United States of America ……… after that everything is gone. It didn’t keep me from thinking I was singing or repeating … just one of those things that was never questioned by parents or school. Made me do terrible with languages where I was supposed to be remembering things. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to go to school because of it, but by then colleges weren’t all requiring a language.
As to the music though being a safety … As I’m listening to it I’m hearing it … it didn’t matter if I couldn’t remember in 30 seconds later … in the present it was sound that was putting me somewhere else in my mind – that was a mental trick that could be emotionally appreciated – probably by most teenagers, but I was definitely in the numbers. I just couldn’t tie most music to the names of who was singing it.
I would have trouble if you put Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, and Selena together in a room. I couldn’t tell you which was which or which voice belonged to which. I know though that I like their songs. Pretty stupid, hmm? Right now because of the Christmas music I was able to pin down that Celine really had a gorgeous voice on a couple of songs. I’ve already forgotten the songs, but would know where to find them. So, while I remember that she’s the one I really liked, I could look up her and people like her and wallah! I’m in luck!! Then I saved it to a playlist. But, I will go then months and months not remembering I have a playlist. Sometimes the system works and sometimes it doesn’t. Today it does. WooHOO!!
Just had a bad memory … not being able to have records as a kid and hearing my uncle fight with my father because he thought John Denver bad – He didn’t want to bring rock star into the house … we certainly didn’t find out about Elvis from home – maybe Grandma Ludford did though she watched Ed Sullivan. Not at our house though.
My father was into John Phillip Sousa and Andy Williams and he had a record with Tijuana Taxi. Other than that we had church music and Christmas carols. Except I listened to music in my room and I had a friend who had a little record player and small records, that seemed pretty amazing to me and it seemed amazing that her mother might know she was listening to those songs. Ok, ok … girls that’s as far as we’re going here, ok? Not sure what got us down this path, but too much!
Smoochy face just called to tell us that we were cute! Hehehe We don’t make beautiful very often, but cute is ok too. He was just reaching his old place where he was going to pick up Jon … so he is running late … its noon now. No, I guess that is on time then? I don’t know. Melissa Etheridge … that be too wild in our old days … shhhhh we weren’t going there, remember?
Oh dear … what’s going on here … it seems we’re freezing up again … took awhile, but just finished the lunch drink. It’s now 1:30 pm. Lost ourselves in the music and fading out … right hand is cold again. We put down the screen with the music.
We’re only on page 7 of our typing – no pictures. I don’t know where we are going again with the writing. I think we napped for part of the time we were gone. Just fell asleep at our chair … we’re wrapped in the blanket that takes care of about 2/3rds of us – not our hands. Thinking fudgesicles here though – well just one. I think we’re afraid to think.
Ok, now … shhh. Let’s try again … you know if you try and don’t succeed – try and try again? That’s got to be us, remember? It’s just that we have to have something to write about … do you think we can go check out the room for a bit? Almost 2 pm and we haven’t been there yet? Maybe someone nice there?
posted by Ann Marie @ 12/28/2007 09:11:00 AM
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