August 10, 2004

Whew!  It's definitely a strenuous few days since I last wrote.  Friday, I managed to get the laundry room/office done up nicely.  The exercise bike, treadmill, resistance tubes and deflated (yes, deflated) exercise ball are all awaiting attention, books are in their rightful places and the room looks quite decent for the first time since we moved here. 

As I worked, I had to keep resting because I was still feeling a little sick.  On Saturday, Eric took Delena to a water park for the day and they didn't get in until around 1am.  On Sunday, I took the little boys into town (big excursion) for about 5 hours, getting groceries and Nathan's school clothes and shoes.  I was lucky and everything was on sale at Walmart.  Nathan's shoes were only $5.  Shirts were $6 or under and shorts were $3.  I'll buy jeans for him later.  I also picked up a couple of shirts for Homeschoolin' Dylan so he wouldn't feel left out.  It was... interesting.  It had been a LONG time since I'd taken little kids shopping and I can promise you, it will be a long time before I do it again.  Delena goes shopping Wednesday or Thursday night after Eric gets home from work.  I can't believe I'm going to be doing two trips down the hill in  a week's time.  Ack.  I hate driving.

I love shopping.

But I hate driving more than I love shopping.

When I got back home around 5pm, Eric was in a seriously bitchy mood, so I watched kids (some more) and rested.  I swear, I've not had a nonkid waking moment for weeks.  Yesterday, I tried to bring the house back to some type of normalcy.  Right now, there is a huge coffee table full of folded laundry to be put away.  The beds are unmade and I'm so tired I can barely hold my eyes open.  I hate that my drug tolerance has become so shabby as I've gotten older.  I used to be a drug aficionado.  Last night, I had a feeling I was going to not sleep well, so I took a couple of Tylenol PM and was wickedly hung over when I woke up this morning.  I'm still groggy and it's after twelve. 

I used to really like pot because it made everything amazingly funny, then made me amazingly horny, then made me amazingly hungry, then made me amazingly sleepy.  Now it takes me right to amazingly sleepy, then to amazingly hung over and crappy feeling.  I'm just not good at it any more.  

The drugs that scare me are not pot or LSD or mushrooms.  The drugs that scare me are ones like Enzyte that say things like, "If an erection last longer than 6 hours or becomes painful, consult your physician."  ??!!  Then there's the eye wetting drug that Janine Turner represents for chronic dry eye that causes you to manufacture your own tears.  "the most common side effect is a persistent burning of the eyes."  ??!!  What about Olestra, the fat binder that causes "flatulence, oily rectal discharge and sudden, explosive, uncontrollable bowel movements?"  ??!!  Now those are some scary drugs!  Honestly, the drug that most incurs my ire, having lived almost 2 decades with an alcoholic before the marriage ended a long while back, is alcohol. 

Speaking of drugs, whatever happened to Quaaludes?  They were lovely.

The most horrible thing has happened.  I've been working up to this reveal because it's a painful one.  I can't drink diet soda any more.  Dammit.  After years and years of it being one of my dearest friends, we've had to have a parting of the ways.  It came about innocently enough.  I ran out of soda and usually, that's something of a tragedy.  Eric is really good about picking up a 2 liter bottle for me on the way home from work.  It's the luxury I allow myself and honestly, there were a lot of days that went by where I drank no liquid other than diet soda. 

This time, when I ran out, I decided to try a thing I do sometimes where I will make a conscious choice to NOT do something I normally do just to prove I can.  Sort of a "control the things you can control" in a life that sometimes seems out of control.  I did it once with swearing.  This time, it was soda.  I let it go for a week.  During that time, I had one Dixie cup of soda, and I do mean one of the teeny bathroom cups.  On Friday, I asked Eric to bring some diet soda home, so he brought a 12 pack (on sale!) of Diet Dr Pepper.  I drank some through Saturday, also drinking water and such.  By Saturday evening, I felt like I'd been drinking acid all day and was wired and icky feeling.  I had acid reflux and just overall, felt nasty.  On Sunday, I went back to water and a bit of iced tea and felt enormously better.  Since then, I've had about a cup of regular soda (Dr Pepper, yayy!) and didn't get that icky feeling.  So I guess I'm off diet soda.  There's something in there that after all these years, doesn't agree with me.  Since I normally use saccharine in my iced tea, it could be the nutrasweet.  Regardless, we have parted ways.  *moment of silence*

I also found out after watching the last episode of The Dead Zone last night that I was on the last episode of the last season on DVD, dammit.  I was hoping there would be at least a few more left to go.  I absolutely love that series (Eric doesn't care for it) and never can seem to catch it airing in real time.  Like Sopranos, I came to love it from Netflix.  I have our TiVO set to record the next two episodes, so at least I'll have some Dead Zone action to watch. 

I wish I could say that today's agenda involved me crawling into bed with a good book, my remote control and no interruptions.  Sadly, I have to clean the kids' room, straighten the rest of the house, THEN some R&R might actually happen.  Dinner is fried chicken,  mashed potatoes, biscuits and green beans, so that will take a little while to fix.  I'll have to work up to it.  :)

I hope you all have a STELLAR week!

Much love,
Katrina