No more Study of History class, yay! I just printed out the edited, proofread, completed final edition of my 25 page term paper on the history of women's role and status in the Middle East from year 600 to present. I will turn it in tomorrow or later tonight.
Over the break, I finished my Sex-Education videos that I am planning on using during my group presentation on the validity of teaching sex-education in public schools. The first video is just clips of people around campus explaining their opinion on sex-education in schools and whether they were taught by their parents, in school, or neither. The second video is of my group's skit depicting three comical ways that sex-education should not be taught. I signed up for youtube today and put both of them on the website. I will also try to upload my interviews with three women with eating disorders later tonight.
Thanksgiving break was not as bad as it could have been. Alex and I hung out, ate pizza, and watched a movie Tuesday night. He was really sweet and volunteered to go out in the freezing cold at night to fetch my toiletries bag -which I had forgotten- from the car. Wednesday I flew into Orlando and went shopping for a swimsuit with Mom and Mary.
After I found a swimsuit (a green, speedo one peice), mom took me to meet her boyfriend, Ernie. Mary half-jokingly calls Ernie "mom's sugar daddy" -even to my mom's face. He is a retired dentist about my paternal grandpa's age; he was dad's dentist from the time dad was a boy... weird. Mom has always talked about Ernie, brought him pie when he was her dentist, and laughed at the e-mails he would send her. Ernie's wife died in June, mom got divorced in October; none of these things were sudden though -mom emotionally divorced dad years ago and Ernie's wife was sick for four years.
He is nice, but it's really hard for Mary; mom spends a lot of time going to dinner with Ernie and not getting home until 9pm or a little later. Mom talks to Ernie on the phone every night, from what I can tell and what Mary says. Dad is also taking it hard (it's weird to have your ex-wife date your dentist who is your dad's age), but is in private counseling and going to a divorce-care group at Northland. He insists he will find another woman and marry again, eventually; he has said that since the beginning of this ordeal. Mom had always said she planned on not dating, on focusing on me and Mary, on making her own life; it is weird that she has gotten so blinded by Ernie so quickly.
Mary says she doesn't mind Ernie as a person, it's just him as mom's boyfriend that she doesn't like. He always gives her (or anyone else) food whenever she comes over and even takes her out for food when he [occasionally] picks her up from school. Mom asked me over break if she thought it was ok for her and Ernie to go away for a few days together -I obviously, without needing to think about, said no. It is not acceptable for her to go away, over night, with Ernie to another state, even if it is at one of his friend's houses. No, the fact that he is unable to get an erection does not make it alright.
The next day, I brought up that going away together will send a bad message to Mary and she replied that she is going to go and have fun. She completely brushed aside everything I said. All I can hope is that she and Ernie are not together long enough to make the trip. It doesn't matter much though, Mary knows mom wants to go on the trip with him -mom even invited Mary and I to fly up and meet her in Maine for a week after her week up in Maine with Ernie. It sends such a bad message to Mary, to me, to Dad -it looks horrible on her part. She is 55, dating a man who is exactly 20 years her senior; she just got divorced and is dating a man whose wife just died. She even complained that Ernie didn't like her going out to eat with Jack (another old rich man...he paid for her half of my tuition this year). Gah.
Oh, back to Thanksgiving break... Grandma and Dad came over for Thanksgiving lunch at Mom's house. Grandma's nurse came too, since she was on private-care for Grandma that day anyway. I'm pretty sure the nurse would not have come if she knew she was eating at the same table as a divorced c0uple. People get really weirded out when they find out my parents still talk and go to events together (thanksgiving meal, Mary's recital, to visit me at school).
I spent Thursday night at Dad's townhouse and watched Ace of Cakes on Food Network while drinking hot chocolate and occasionally talking about Dad's family/personal history and discussing mom's behavior and how it affects me, Mary, and him. We went out to lunch the next day at TooJay's and from there I went to meet mom to look at bikes. I want a bicycle to start training for a triathalon and maybe take a few biking trips across the state. I got my size (17") and he recommended a Trek 7.2 or 7.3 FX womens, but it came with a $480 price tag. I got online and found on craigslist a 17.5" Trek 7.1 FX mens with a $300 price tag in lexington and am going to look at/buy it Wednesday. The price for the bike on the Trek website is $599.
I don't know if we will find Alex a bike -they are just so expensive and he doesn't have the money and probably not the time to ride either. I was hoping we could take a bike trip from South Florida to St. Augustine sometime though, it would be so sweet. On Saturday night, Alex and I and his mom went to the Southgate House in Cinci to see his uncle's band play. It was a pretty sweet venue and I would like to go again -maybe when I'm 21 so that I don't have to pay the extra money for not being able to drink. Saturday afternoon, before Southgate, Alex and I put up the Christmas tree together and then took a 2 hour nap together on the sofa -it was one of the nicest days I've had this entire semester.
Did I tell you that I got a membership to L.A. Fitness for when I am down in Florida? Yup, I can now swim, run, bike, lift weights, or even go to a pilates class or a cycling class all in Florida without having to sneak into the Baldwin Park facility anymore. Wednesday night, when I thought I might not get to work out, I kinda began to cry, punch things, and scream and was pretty much willing to pay any cost in order to work out. I called mom and she called dad, who promptly met me and his gym to get me a temporary membership that would last through the Thanksgiving holiday (I joined at the end of the holiday so that I could work out over winter break). I got to swim everyday I was in Florida, which means I only missed one day of working out -that was still hard, but I did manage.
I am sick, I know. I tried to get help this summer for my obsession with working out, but I don't know if I want to get help. I like working out, it is a stress reliever. I can deal, if I really have to, with not exercising... I lasted 2 days in a row over Fall break and I did one day over Thanksgiving break. I even went a week in Europe over spring break last year (though I didn't eat much and was walking everywhere). When I had to stop exercising this summer because I hurt my knee, I started restricting my calories to 1,000 a day and skipping meals (it was easy to do, working 12 hours a day myself, my sister gone at camp, my dad living on his own, and my mom working 12 hour days too).
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