11:22 a.m.

[ Boiled peanuts & passing grades ]

I really am starting to feel a bit better. Tonight I'll taper my dosage of Elavil up and hold there for awhile to see how things go. I'm starting to really enjoy this journal now that I'm getting settled in and I know I'll miss writing in it when I leave for SC on Saturday. Actually, I think I'll be away for five days rather than four because if I'm not mistaken, we'll be coming back on Wednesday.

We'll probably go to Cromer's while we're there and pick up a bag of raw peanuts. L grew up eating boiled peanuts and every once in awhile he gets nostalgic for them. They're not bad if you cook them right, which they do at Cromer's, but having never even known peanuts were boilable (I invented yet another word just now, haha), I had to go through some trial and error. Peanuts smell heavenly during the roasting process, but less than appetizing when boiling and they have to boil all...day...long.

I think the deal is this: when you're just about the pass out from the stench, they're done.

The first time I ever cooked them J pointed this out as soon as he came in from his dad's house (as if he could actually smell anything after being surrounded by that filth all afternoon).

"Mom, what is that smell?"

"Boiled peanuts."

"Well, what else did you do to them?"

"Just boiled them. That's it. Why?" (As if I didn't know.)

"Um...because, no offense Mom, but it stinks in here. It smells like you've been cooking road kill."

"I guess that means you won't be wanting any later?"

He didn't. I didn't blame him. After tasting them I wasn't all that impressed, but the ones we bought from Cromer's were actually pretty good. We got some last year when I was pregnant with Z and I scarfed most of them on the trip home.

That's it! I'll buy them already boiled. L will have his peanuts and my house won't smell like some jock's sweaty...jock.

I was delighted to learn that I won't be sleeping on an air mattress after all. When L said we wouldn't need the air mattress because his mom bought two, I thought he meant she had purchased two air mattresses. She bought two new mattresses for the extra bed in her house, so L and I will have a room with a door on it and everything. Z will be in the crib in the same room and T will sleep in the bed with us. This is much more appealing to me. We probably won't see much of the BIL and SIL because he's now working his new job full time and SIL works every other day. We'll see them but probably not until late afternoon or early evening.

We'll probably see L's college buddy while we're there too. I don't mind that, he's a really nice guy. We went out to dinner with him the night I had my placental abruption with T, so there has been a joke going around for the last two years that something corrupted his aura and his presence induced my labor. After we saw met him for lunch last year I was tempted to drop to the floor clutching my very pregnant belly and scream bloody murder. I didn't though. Something told me L wouldn't have found that as amusing as I would.

I just spoke to someone at J's school who assured me that not only did he pass all of his functional tests he also passed for the year. What a relief! I decided not to dog his every academic move like I did the year before. Not only did staying hot on his heels make me crazy it didn't accomplish anything. He still just barely passed. The problem was that he wasn't turning in his schoolwork, OR his homework, which I helped him with so I knew it had been completed. He did it, he just didn't give it to his teacher. That made me insane. In the end what motivated him to pass was his father's promise to take him to Ozzfest if he managed to pull some passing grades out of his ass. So he did. In the last two weeks of school. So I guess I have Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Manson (the main two reasons J was so psyched to go), to thank for my son's grades.

Who would have ever seen that coming?

I joined clix again. Apparently one of the side effects of Elavil is that it causes you to become a foaming, rabid attention-whore.

Or maybe I was to begin with and now I just have a heightened awareness of my whorishness.