I’m drawing pictures of my imaginary house.  I like to think about what I would change.  It’s kind of daunting to think of paying for it.  I don’t want to finance it.  I’m really repelled by the idea of paying interest on things that I want.  It strikes me as the wrong approach to life.  It is going to cost at least $250,000.  Realistically, a shit load more than that but not everything has to be bought at once.  That’s about the original asking price of the house.

My neighborhood is full of renters.  This area could change for better or worse easily.  I have no guarantee of recouping my investment.  That will be an easier pill to swallow if I save up the money in advance and have it to spare.  The problem with loans is that you are signing on to always and forever have this obligation.  It makes me uncomfortable.

A lot of it could be done for cheaper if I wanted to do it myself and deal with “close enough”.  After looking around my garage for a few months I can tell you I won’t be happy with “close enough” forever in my whole house.  I’m kind of tired of living in a cage.  I want a house with a lot of light.  My entire childhood I lived in close dark cramped quarters.  I don’t have to do this forever.  As my children grow and invite friends over… I am going to need to have somewhere to go other than my bedroom.  If I want my kids to have friendships that do not bend at my whims, I have to have a place to be away from them.

When people glorify the Noble Savage and idealize that behavior into AP dogma things get twisted.  I don’t live in a tribe.  It’s not possible for me to give as much constant contact as that requires.  AP as preached by the extremists on MDC (just to be clear who I am talking about) is pretty restrictive.  And the choices they advocate can be right given a very narrow set of circumstances which apply to their lives.

I honestly believe that if I lived in po’dunk North Dakota I would not have vaccinated my kids and I would have laughed my ass off at people who told me my kids were at risk for the diseases that are mostly wiped out in this country.  If I lived in Missouri… I’d look at what diseases are happening in Mexico and I’d vaccinate based on that.  I like international travel.  I like going off and creating stories.  I feel absolutely driven to be an interesting person.  Damnit.  My kids need to be vaccinated.

But not for chicken pox.  Or rotovirus.  Or the flu.  I think we overmedicate as a country.  I will tell my kids about chicken pox and try to expose them when they are young, but if we don’t catch it in the wild I will vaccinate them at 12.  Earlier if they tell me that I am nuts and they don’t want chicken pox.  I get the impression Shanna will be the kind of girl who speaks her opinion.  At least occasionally.

Anyway.  All this to say that I think we will get along better as she grows up if we have a bigger house.  I have issues.  I know this.  The thing is, all those Noble Savage societies have a very different structure to their entire community.  They have more support than a nuclear family does in America.  It’s an apples to oranges comparison.  It’s not that a child must have mommy 24/7.  A child needs to be cared for by consistent caregivers 24/7.  It’s not the same thing.  I can believe that an infant in the first few months may fare better with just mommy.  I now have a toddler and a kid!  I don’t have a baby any more!

The upside of having married Noah is… I can have dreams and know that I don’t have to be the only road to accomplishing them.  I can’t express the safety that feels like.  It makes my breath come short.  When I’m hiding by myself of course I dream of having the book I write in November be good enough to publish.  It’s a nice dream.  But I spend about five minutes doing that.  I don’t think it’s good to think too hard about that.  I think about what I want to say.  And why it’s worth saying.

I have a lot of format ideas that I’ve been noodling with for years.  Noah has listened to more teary conversations where I sob that I want to write a book about everything that has happened than I care to count.  I need to do it so I can move past this phase of my life.  I’m not over it.  I haven’t said enough about it.  There isn’t anyone in the world who knows the story from start to finish other than me.  I lost the people who were my witnesses.

I have to write it down.  I can’t be the only one who knows I exist and why I exist the way I am.  It’s not fair.  They can’t do that to me.  They can’t take away my right to have eople in the wolrd who know know me.  They can’t isolate me.  They can’t tell me I am a liar.  They can’t take my story away from me and call it a lie.  Fuck them.

I want to write my story because it is true.  And it fucking bothers me that no one but me saw it.  I’m tired of being told that I am lying.  I need to feel that intimacy with people.  And a few people will read it.  I hope it will be told in a way that is good enough to publish and a lot of people will read it.  I hope people will get an edutainment out of it.  It’s not that I’m always right.  I’m not.  It’s that my perspective is different.  It is jarring to people.  That is why I identify as white trash.  I have a way of speaking, of presenting myself into the world with aggression.  But not just that.  I call attention to myself with things that are kind of tacky.

Just wait till I’m done with my house, y’all.  It’ll be great.  Do you know what I’ve learned sitting here in my wonderful garage?  I’m not satisfied with close enough.  I despise the unfinished wires.  I loathe the exposed pipes.  I have a friend who offered to help (he means do all the work; he’s sweet) me fix a lot of that cosmetic stuff.  But none of that would change the fact that the city of Fremont says this can’t be a living space.  It’s a garage.  That’s why I won’t call it a den or office or whatever.  It’s a garage.  It’s a great garage… but it’s a garage.  I want to move up in the world.  This will never be good enough for me.  I will always feel like I am hiding in the dark.  I need more light.  The living room isn’t really good enough either.

I won’t ever be happy in this house until there is a lot more light and higher ceilings.  It’s too claustrophobic and dark.  It reminds me of the house in the mountains.  It’s not the color of the walls–which I like.  I am not a tall woman.  I can touch my ceiling.  I have tall friends.  I dislike that they have to duck and be made smaller in my house.  It’s a standard ceiling.  I have to jump.  I don’t care.  It’s like trying to get around in a 6′ town when you’re 10′ tall.  I hate it.  I would never have picked this house.  And moving isn’t the right option for a variety of reasons.  A more expensive house would still be wrong because what I want is a custom house.  I can do that here.

So how the fuck do I raise that much money.  Well, as it so happens, I married this geek.  He makes a decent salary.  If he keeps going at the rate he is going financially it can happen in about 13 years.  That’s a long time to be impatient.  How much do I want the money?  When would I like to do the remodel?  These are interesting questions.  The big structural stuff I simply can’t do.  I can’t add a second story full of windows and reinstall the solar panels.  I’m good, but I have my limits.  We just replaced the roof.  Most of the stuff I’m seeing says that I can expect it to last 15-20 years.  Tap fingers.  It’s been on for two years.  Twitch.  Well.  That gives me a lot of time to save money.  There is no chance I will tear it up in the next ten years.  That’s a kind of wasteful that would turn my stomach.

Ok.  I can fuss with the garage.  And try to be frugal.  And put money away.  I can have that dream.  It’s just long-term.  I kind of hate the long-term.  Ack.  It’s terrifying to think of committing, truly committing, to being in this house in ten years with a track record of maintaining the same financial pattern for that long.  It makes my blood run cold.  That’s a lot of fucking pressure.

Side note.  Right now I have Rascal Flatt’s song Stand on repeat.  


On your knees you look up
Decide you’ve had enough
You get mad, you get strong
Wipe your hands, shake it off
Then you stand, then you stand

Learning to marathon means that some goals are just not a high priority.  No matter how intense they feel in some moments.  I will have to learn how to live in close quarters with a lot of people for a while.  I do need privacy.  I need to learn how to create that space for writing.  I need to get the book done and over with.  I have too many uuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhh I wannnnnnnnnnna in my brain.  I need to get one of them done.  I have proven to my own satisfaction that I know this story.  I can tell it.  And I can certainly do it quickly.  I can write the whole thing down in one go.

But I can’t blog it.  Blogging is different.  Every time I blog I write to a different person.  I have a different ideal reader and I’m trying to coax a different reaction.  I need to write the book for Noah.  And I can’t do it with him reading and nodding and changing his behavior in random ways near me.  I would be influenced.  It’s really hilarious to me to think that.  Noah is too important to me in a global fashion.  If I want to truly create something for him I have to do it in complete absence of his knowledge of it.  Otherwise he will come home from work grump on a day when I posted something I am particularly proud of and I will feel crushed and I will stall on writing.

I use blogging as a crutch.  I have learned to write in blogging.  I don’t know if that will translate to a book.

Take what you are given before it is gone

I have a story to tell.  Not telling it is interfering with my life.  That means it is time to stop medicating to prevent my story from being present.  It means telling it fully from start to finish.  And then stopping.  And letting it go.  Maybe only Noah and Sarah will read it and care.  I don’t believe that is true.  I’m actually terrified.  I’m afraid only Noah and Sarah will read it and care.  I’m afraid that it will only influence them.  Because it will influence them.

Writing this book will change Sarah and Noah.  Eventually it will change Shanna and Calli.  I won’t tell either of them about the book until they are adults or until it is so famous I have no choice.  But this having this book in existence in complete form means that I can have people who can fully speak my verbal shorthand.  I can create a way to be fully present in all my broken glory with the adults in my life without having to constantly think about it and try to keep it away from my kids.  Blogging isn’t enough.

I want stories to be comfortable and familiar.  I don’t want to feel like I am unmasking more abuse constantly.  I want the adults in my life to be able to help me censor for my children.  I want to be able to say that I am thinking about Tommy and have them be able to ask, “What about him?” and be able to give them a useful answer.  One that will allow them to be present with me as an adult as someone who sees me without me having to tell this long gory story in front of my kids.

I feel this constant pressure to monitor every word out of my mouth.  I feel horribly uncomfortable because I want to feel this intimacy with Noah and Sarah and it eats me alive.  I can rectify this problem. I can spill my guts.  And then I can relax and listen to them talk and stop feeling so driven to share my story all the time.  I want to be able to listen.  Right now I don’t listen.  I blog and then I nod along waiting for them to mention it and help me process… only those bastards have lives.  My writing is for me.

I need to just write for me.  It’s not working how I want it to work.  Let’s try a different approach.

Life’s like a novel with the end ripped out.

It’s time to go do life.