Mommy Break

Yay! I am feeling great today! Had a non-kid day for the most part. Here are the details...

Slept in till about 8:00 a.m.

Got up, went to Weight Watchers to weigh in.

I LOST A WHOPPING 2.2 SINCE WEIGH-IN LAST WEEK! Yahoo! I know writing down everything is key. I have to stick with it.

Traded kids for 1/2 hour each so my neighbor and I could go for separate runs. The weather here is finally SHOUTING SPRING all over the place, and I am loving it. Looking back to January and February, I now realize I am just not a winter person, and that season affected me this year. Glad it's (almost) all over!

Met my good friend S and her good friend S out for lunch. Where we decided to get a bottle of wine. Man, that bottle went down fast; too fast. But it was a great lunch and I had a blast with my best friend from highschool-- we have been through SOOOO much together. Friends like S are irreplaceable! We could laugh forever about the antics of high school and college. Whoa, the memories.

We 'almost' met up at Hugo's (yep, Melanie--that would have been a recipe for disaster!) for an afternoon martini, but it's a good thing we didn't. As it was, I was already running late for the babysitter, and one appletini or key lime martini would have just put me probably in a place I don't need to be on a Thursday afternoon!

Next I hit the salon for some spring cleaning of my own, if you know what I mean. You probably don't though, so I'll tell you. bikiniwax. And I put the little paper undies on BACKWARDS! Well, I think I put them on the right way people are supposed to, but the chick wanted me to put them on THE OTHER WAY in order to make sure everything was even. TMITMITMITMITIMITMIMT... TOO MUCH INFO!

Next I hit B&N where I bought these books:
This one,
this one,
this one,
and this one.

Let me know if you've read any of them and what you think. They were purchased on a whimsical wine buzz.

Now I am back at home with my darling, darling, beautiful, wonderful children who are all outside playing basketball and listening to a CD I made especially for basketball (Pump Up The Jam, Strike It Up, This Love, Fat Boy Slim, DADADA Song, Hollaback Girl, CC Music Factory... you get the picture. They are playing with the two neighbors still in town. We unfortunates who didn't get on a plane to go somewhere exotic, but hey, it's nice and warm here today.

Big Sigh... Ahhhhh. Nice day after a hectic week. How are your Spring Break plans going? Hope well! Oh, and Joel, thanks so much for the song Golden, by Switchfoot. It's awesome!

I'm off to have a Blue Moon. Anyone got an orange slice?

Getting Old; Way Old

Let's take a moment to remember the Spring Breaks of past, particularly 1988, 1989, and 1990 where I spent three consecutive college Spring Break vacations in Daytona Beach. I could excavate my college journals and tell you these stories:
~ exactly which bars I partied at (Anyone remember Daytona's White Hall hotel?)
~ how many boys (and which colleges they were from - Princeton, Clemson come to mind) I made out with
~ I entered a wet T-shirt contest and lost
~ I did my share of skin baring off a balcony to a crowd of onlookers below (somebody on the next balcony has some very imposing photos of me, and I've often wondered where those photos are, and how many people have seen them?)
~ We stayed up all night and watched the sun rise the night before we were to get on a bus to drive the 24 hours back to college
~ How a guy, who I will always love, (Stever-from college-who is another whole blog entry in itself, and of couse, Stever is one I have Googled on many occasion, but have never found) shaved my legs on the back of the bus on the way down to Daytona
~ Hot tub parties with tons of beer (Old Milwaukee or Meisterbrau seemed to be the beer of choice that first Freshman Spring Break--money was tight, and we hadn't perfected our taste buds for fine beer--we were simply going for cheap -- quantity vs. quality in those days.)
~ How I was awarded the name Puker before we even left our college campus to head to Daytona (Was it my fault the bus didn't arrive on time so we girls started drinking early and didn't stop for a full week?)
~ How we would party all night, dance with random boys, hit the beach at 2 a.m., still drinking, crash in our rooms (or elsewhere), wake up the next day and begin drinking before 10 a.m...

Anyway, my point is not to rehash those memories of college; the point I wanted to make here is that I'm on Day Three of Spring Break At Home With My Children, and I am quite possibly more tired, drained, exhausted, running on empty than I was if I had combined those three Spring Breaks into one.

I have a headache worse than the worst Spring Break hangover; it's 7:00 p.m. and I can quite possibly, DEFINITELY go to bed right now and sleep EASILY until 9:00 a.m. tomorrow.

I am drained. These kids suck the energy right out of me.

Zoo Day... And, one of the most wonderful things about Blogging and the Internet, and communicating with awesome people I would never have a chance to meet otherwise, I got to spend the day with fellow Chick Lit writer, Memoirist and Blogger Gina and her adorable little boy Aidan. Before we met up, through email, I asked if we should exchange pictures so we'd know how to find one another. And at the zoo, in a line of thousands, because, as I mentioned in a previous post, every mom and their non-spring-breaking-families have the same exact ideas on how to entertain their children, it was pretty crowded. But, the crowds parted ways and Gina and I found each other immediately! Friendship match made in Heaven! We had a great time, especially watching the monkeys...

One in particular, which I will explain now.

Well, there was a monkey in a solo compromising position. Actually, he didn't seem to mind it; in fact, this little monkey guy was really enjoying himself, despite the growing audience.

And yep, my kids noticed right away. Probably because I was cracking up at the sight of this little monkey, well, I guess you could say he was 'spanking his own monkey' for lack of a better phrase. Actually, this phrase is perfect. This little monkey was really enjoying himself, and he was on top of one of the highest limbs, and he was all by himself, waxing it up, if you know what I mean. A quick look around, and all the other monkeys, probably the red-swelled butt monkeys ripe for the takin' had all disappeared into corners, shielding their bright red bottoms from Monkey Man on Top of the Tree. It's not like they can feign a headache, or beg off because it's their time of the month, ya know.

While I could have stayed and watched actual nature in action, and my kids were having a great perverse time watching this monkey 'shine', we decided to hit the road, move onto some G-rated animals. However, we did have an interesting conversation on the car ride home, which I will try to relay to you here:

AJERS: How about that monkey who was rolling his penis.

Me: Yep. (So as not to give too much information, I simply acknowledged his comment.)

AJERS: I wonder if it was male or female?

[WHAT???]

Me: Honey, he had a penis. It was a BOY monkey.

AJERS: Oh. I din't know that it was the same way for animals!

Bwahhhahahahahahahahaahaahah!

I can't wait for the real sex talks. Dear God, help me!

X-AHH-STED

That says Exhausted, in case you weren't sure. And that's what I am. The past two days:

three-mile walk to Starbucks and back.
Kids to open gym at GymQuest.
Mall.
Ice cream and pretzel treats.
Lunch out with six kids, where I spent the better part of the outting in the bathroom with kids who had to poop or pee.
Attempt at bowling - too long of a wait.
Kids yelling, crying, being ungrateful B-tards because we couldn't go bowling and would go see a movie instead.
Nobody wanted to see Nanny McPhee again.
A trip to the Discovery Museum in which every single solitary mom and their non-Florida-vacationing Spring Break kids also had the same exact stupid idea.
A trip to Cold Stone Creamery.
Back home.

And now someone is crying about something but I've turned off my sensory buttons so I can't really hear anything anyone is saying.

Now she's yelling, "TURN ON, TURN ON, TURN ON!" and I'm like, "WHO ARE YOU YELLING AT?" and she says, "THE TV: IT WON'T TURN ON!"

Get off your ASS and push a button!

This, Day Two of The Spring Break From Hell.

Tune in tomorrow, for Scenes from the Zoo, where I will definitely start the trip out by swallowing two Xanax. (Just kidding, don't want to make any readers mad. I will really start the day with my usual grandenonfatsugarfreevanillalattenowhip, and then, after the caffeine buzz wears off, well, then I'll take the Xanax.)

Oh Boy

It's going to be a l o o o o o n n n n n g Spring Break.

I hear Tukey and Ajers giggling upstairs and I yell, "Are you guys being silly?"

More giggles, and then, "Yes."

They come parading down the stairs doing a Rockettes kind of kicking thing and singing something that sounds like a stripper song, or maybe it was a couple bars from New York, New York, I'm not sure, but then they appear...

And they are both wearing my bras.

It's the first official day of their Spring Break vacation. I better find something for us to do, or my boys might just turn into transvestites this week.

Personal But Who Cares.

Okay, I never, ever talk about my personal life on this blog (ha, yeah right), but I am going to now. So, if you're a relative and don't want to know these things, click on something else pronto:

"Nothing like a case of morning breath to stop an orgasm in its tracks. His, not mine."

That's all I'm saying for now. COme up with your own conculisions, and yes, I had a couple cocktails.

Author Love

I am so excited right now, and I think only people who are real, real, real fans of writing and reading will understand my excitement. I just received a gift in the mail from an author I truly, truly admire, but not in the Annie Wilkes / Paul Sheldon way in Misery where I want to kidnap her and chop off her feet at the ankles. More like how Jennifer Weiner feels about Cameron Diaz. (But that's not the author I'm talking about, although I love JW too, but I think-- no, I DO! -- I love this other author more).

This author sent me, plain old me, just one of her thousands, and yes, I have to say thousands, probably even millions, of readers, something that I will cherish my whole life. This item is now going to be one of the things on my list of: ITEMS TO GRAB FROM HOUSE WHEN IT IS BURNING DOWN IN FLAMES, only after CHILD #1, CHILD #2, CHILD #3 (assuming husband can get out of the house on his own).

Just the thought that a busy best-selling author would take the time to do something like this is so incredible to me. I hope that someday I will have fans of published novels that I have written, and if I do, I will always remember the feelings I've had when an author takes the time out of their busy schedules of family, writing, promoting, marketing to do what may seem a small gesture but is actually a tremendous gift that touches the lives of just one of her readers.

Thank you to my BFF! ; )

An Untitled Poem Written On The "You, Starbucks And Nutrition" Pamphlet. Today.

Unsettled
Empty - a half-drunk decaf latte...
Futile from the start.
No foam.

Energy wanes
Spirit lacks to soar and
cupfulls of rain drench
the wetness of (my)
existence.

Calm quiets me
but roars in the caverns
of my ears.

Soundless.

Yet strangely,
It is all
I hear.