When our lovely, perfect little girl was born, my husband held her and cooed affectionately, "She looks just like a little Ghoulie!" Ghoulies, apparently, is a B (or perhaps C?) movie from the mid-80's. I know this now because he made me watch it with him, just to prove his point. There I sat, bored to death by the same tired haunted mansion story, when onto the screen pops -- my newborn?! No, a "Ghoulie"! But man, what a resemblance.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

"un-gwounded"

Remember being grounded? You'd miss your curfew or disrespect your parents, and suddenly it was no TV, no phone, no going out with friends, for a week. Very boring. Grounded, you might as well be dead. And the day you were ungrounded -- that was the day life began again.
My brother N. , however, had a different take on it. As the fifth of six children, nearly everything happened to someone else before it happened to him. And with two rambunctious older brothers, being grounded was cool. And so, at four years old, whenever N. would get in trouble, he would walk around saying, "Shoot. I'm gwounded." The kid actually wanted to be grounded. (No, my parents never actually grounded their four-year-old. They might take away The Lion King video for the afternoon, though, and that was good enough for N.)
I'm taking a page from N.'s book. I wanna be grounded. Jake being gone four nights a week, living with my in-laws partly because he is gone four nights a week, Ghoulie's separation anxiety and consequent sobbing every time I set her down, working odd hours and wondering exactly where all the money is going -- all of it is making me feel very, very ungrounded. As if I might float away at any given moment. I need someone to take away all my "privileges" -- someone please, please take my cell phone away! -- and force me to be totally bored for a few days. Lock me in my room with a book and tell me to think things over.
I am, fortunately, making the time for a regular yoga practice lately, and that seems to get me halfway there. Maybe I'll go mouth off to my mother and see if that gets me the rest of the way. That always worked when I was a teenager.

3 comments:

spirit horse said...

I'm with you, kiddo! Doesn't being locked in a room for a week with a couple of good books sound like HEAVEN??? (well, ok and we could have pizza sent in a few times :) Hang in there...it only gets crazier, but life DOES have it's moments! Love you, auntie j

Anonymous said...

Aha! I finally found your page again. I can TOTALLY agree with you on the "ungrounded" thing. And the "where did the money go" thing. And the "why can't I seem to be with my husband" thing. Life gets crazy any time there's change. I'll be praying for you, Sweetie...

~sae

Janet Everett said...

THAT'S IT---YOU'RE GROUNDED!

...and that means early bedtime too!

.........MOM :)