I didn’t write yesterday because I could have written the word “fuck once” and then just copy-n-pasted it two thousand times and called it good. I’m still catching up on sleep and being very underslept seems to exacerbate the swearing to the point where I literally have no control over it. It’s very socially awkward.

By the time we got on the final plane flight I was in a foul mood. We missed our last connection. We didn’t go to Oakland like planned. We got mercifully placed on a flight to SFO instead of getting stuck in Utah. THANK ALL THE GODS IN THE WORLD. I’ve been in Utah for extended periods before. When I am that underslept and grumpy I just don’t have it in me to be the kind of nice they need from people. Oh man.

I had an angelic friend pick us from the airport and we got the car the next day. All’s well that ends well.

I woke up yesterday in a foul mood. I did get a bit of extra sleep but not close to enough (I got a bit extra last night too but in the previous 7 day period I was down almost two full nights of sleep). I told the kids they had three choices for the day: play in the back yard, play in the play room, or help me clean. I do not have the patience or the kind voice to allow you to play in the living room while I am trying to get the front part of the house cleaned up after the gingerbread house event.

Sometimes I genuinely don’t mind them making the mess bigger AS I clean. Sometimes I will scream like an evil harpy and we will all be sorry. After I cleaned up the bonus mess they made in the kitchen while I was stupid enough to be in my room for a while (whipped cream, granulated sugar, and milk all over the floor–Shanna will be a great cook someday) the day went better. That was their last bonus mess of the day. [For the record, making a huge mess in the play room doesn’t count as making the mess worse. That is their space. I defend my right to walk through the main areas of my house without breaking my ankle.)

A girl has to have standards. I enforced them with only moderate raising of voice and a lot of raising of eyebrows as I calmly repeated the three options and pointed at the back door. All in all I call it a success. I didn’t get very far outside the kitchen, much to my sadness.

Apparently making that much gingerbread is… kind of stupid. I had to clean all the fronts of the cabinets and the walls because there was a sheen of sugar everywhere (most of it brown) and periodic chunks of cookie just hanging out on cabinet doors. I’m so glad the ants didn’t show up while I was in Texas. *phew* Usually they don’t give me this long of a grace period. Maybe they hate the cold too.

But my kitchen is clean and organized. Well, like 80% of the way there. Sometimes I am horrified by how much mess can occur in such a small space.

I also mopped the bathroom floor because, hey mop is out and the floor is nasty. W00t.

I should talk more about the Texas trip. A few pieces of my explanation confused people.

Noah has a mom and a dad, (duh) and one side has historical money (dad) and one side is a bunch of poor farmers and teachers (mom).

The rich great aunt with the many museum quality houses she owns is Noah’s dad’s sister. She’s never been married, never had kids. She has hobbies instead. She won’t send us any kind of letters, she flat told me she doesn’t bother to do those things. If we want to see her we have to come to her town. She won’t visit us. But she’s delightful when we show up.

I have some feelings about that kind of relationship. “You only want to know me if I spend many thousands of dollars to get to your house. Well I can just decide that doesn’t matter to me much.” But she is nice and funny and clever and neat to talk to. But she’s just so busy you know. She has quilts to make. Not useful quilts that go on beds. Small arty ones that go on walls. Because expressing herself is all that matters. Her community service is buying the historic houses and restoring them so rich people have a place to have tea parties. Hopefully a lot of my known class bias makes this paragraph have multiple readings for everyone who reads it. Ahem.

Whereas Noah’s mom’s family is… not so well off. Great Grandmother is a pistol. Hoo boy. No wonder she survived teaching all boys continuation school science for so many years. She’s got balls of solid rock. I would bet on her in a fight with a honey badger even if her eyesight is going.

GG (I’m not going to write out great grandmother every time) is the person we spent the most time with and I feel really good about that. She is the one working the hardest to have a relationship with the kids. We spent time with her on both days. She served us a wonderful breakfast the second day. She and the kids got along like a house on fire. That was such a beautiful love fest. These days she works with pre-k kids (she doesn’t have a large retirement so she is still working even though she is half blind) and she shared a whole bunch of the teaching material she has made. I was impressed by the sheer artistic value involved.

When she wants to teach the kids about the life cycle of plants she draws/paints pictures of the plant/seasons/people tending them that in the school. Every picture would be immediately recognizable to her students. It was beautifully tailored curriculum. She sends us stuff when she’s done with it and I go over it with the kids pretty carefully. She puts her soul into these things.

And now she is the *second* quilter. She makes useful blankets. She’s already made two small quilts for my kids. One for Shanna and one for Calli. Calli *loves* her orange blanket. Hardly anyone gives her orange/yellow and she prefers that to pink so this felt really special. Calli sleeps with it all the time. The new quilt GG is working on is so beautiful it deserves to be on a wall. It is a great grandmother’s fanciful interpretation of her two beautiful Cupcake Girls at play.

She let the girls paint the second day. The girls set up a huge “Enchanted forest” in her living room and she was so happy. She lives alone and not many people visit her because she doesn’t get along well with a lot of the family.

We also met GG’s son who is Noah’s mom’s brother. (I’m trying to be less confusing but I’m not sure I’m managing.) His whole family took us to the fried pickle place. They were polite but stranger polite. No one was even a hair rude. I have nothing negative to say. I felt like the visiting nanny but that is probably about as much about me as anything else.

It was a lovely dinner with lively conversation. GG was quiet–I think the ambient noise was too loud.

Noah’s brother came with his son. Watching the three kids play warmed my heart. They are all so happy to know that the others exist. There were a few arguments between my girls about whether the little boy was ONLY the cousin of one of them. I assured Calli that Shanna doesn’t get to decide that he only belongs to Shanna.

Noah and the girls went out to the compound on Sunday. Apparently the three kids mostly spent the time playing. Perfect. They swam in the (indoor, heated) pool and looked at the horses and played with the 5′ high dollhouse together.

I think that when we come through in 2015 we will spend most of the time with GG and the little cousin. Both of them promised lots of letters between now and then and I believe them. They have been happening so far.

I need to sit down and write some thank you’s very soon. Folks earned them from me. It was a good trip despite my anxiety.

I spent five hours sitting in a bar drinking mai tais and writing about sex. I actually had a great time. I don’t write that kind of stuff as much. It made me happy. I took some time to do some deep stretching because the bar was pretty empty before 12pm on a Sunday. Ha. I felt a lot better physically after that. I had some fun conversations with folks online–it was really nice, actually.

The ending of the trip was hard because I was out of spoons. It wasn’t anyone fault. Going more than 48 hours unmedicated at this point means that I am in a pretty ridiculous amount of pain and it is hard to be patient and keep my tone of voice under control in that state.

I didn’t do great but I didn’t do so badly I feel ashamed. I sat myself down next to Noah and he calmly listened to me list off how much I hate every passenger on an airplane who puts their tiny little laptop bag and coat in the upper compartment AS THE FUCKING FLIGHT ATTENDANT IS ANNOUNCING IT IS A FULL FLIGHT AND SUCH ITEMS MUST GO AT YOUR FEET BECAUSE WE WON’T HAVE ENOUGH ROOM YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.

But that was as close as I got to a blow up so I’m happy. Thank you for listening, Noah.

I don’t think Noah would have done as well without me there to just invisibly do a lot of work. I’m glad I went so the three of them could have a lower stress trip. I think it would have been a lot harder on the girls to not have me, even though I didn’t *do* that much directly with them.

It all worked out. Even though I arrived in Houston to realize, “Oh shit. I never made a rental car reservation and I didn’t make a hotel reservation.”

Thank goodness we are rich people who can throw money at problems. I am dreading my end of year mint breakdown. I did not stay within budget.

Uhm, we did spend less than he made. That’s what I’m holding on to to assuage my guilt. (And like, I’m putting all of the travel expense in the mental category of ‘Every few years Noah’s parents send us $10k or so… this was covered by one of those gifts’.)

I think this was the most positive experience I’ve ever had in Texas.

You know, this is why I had kids. They make everything better. My kids make me happy to be wherever I am because they are there and we can have fun no matter what else is going on. I am so grateful for Shanna and Calli.

I appreciated that everyone in his family told me over and over that they were impressed by how delightful my children are.

Children become what you tell them they are. If you tell them they are wonderful (while enforcing boundaries around inappropriate behavior) they will be wonderful. If you tell them they are monsters… you get what you deserve.

I model being considerate of them all day every day. As they get older I am being more demanding that they notice me in similar ways. (Age appropriate ways! I have books telling me what is ok! Lots and lots of cross referenced books because there are varying opinions and I wanted to know the range!)

Maybe my only complaint is that the family gave them a bunch of Christmas presents that are all for 8+ year old kids. I’m kind of annoyed by that. If I let the kids open them now, the family might as well have given the kids a baggie with sticks in it. It would be used the same way. I don’t want to open all the science kits while they are incapable of reading or having some idea what is going on with it. Right now it would just be towers and grain spills in a town as they dump all the chemicals on my table. Not really my idea of a good time. I’m good with letting them dump sand in the back yard.

So I will put them in storage for a bit. It’ll be fine.

Maybe when some of our fabulous big-kid friends come visit I can get a box out and the kids can work together. If I were more willing to micromanage I could show them how it works… but we don’t roll like that. We don’t have the kind of dynamic where I set up work that is way over their head and they “go through the motions”. We just don’t do that.

That’s busy work. I don’t do busy work. I’ve got enough work. So do you. Get hopping.

I think that for small children most of their “work” should be creative play with the items they are allowed access to all the time. Shanna comes up with cool shit. I’m not going to sit her down and force her step by step through something that is too mature for her to really understand anyway.

She’ll get to the point where she is drawn to doing it herself. With the stuff in the house she always has so far.

It is weird trusting her like this. Right now our science is life science and cooking. (Cooking is serious chemistry, yo.) I let her make big messes with spices learning about them. She’s allowed to create lots of things in the kitchen. (She’s rather talented. She can make scones, cookies, and cakes with only very minimal direction but no hands-on help from me.)

If you want to do something, do it. Don’t freaking sit there and yell at me to do it for you. I don’t play that way. I will leave the room and you can yell all by yourself.

Today is park day. I asked permission from the other families to come even though I am sick. The kids need to run so bad. One person sent me an SMS saying, “Yes, come!” No one else responded. I’ll take that as a yes.

Sore throat, coughing, sneezing, fever, runny nose… it’s like I was on a plane or something.

Today I will clean in the morning then go to the park. When we come home I will make dinner then hopefully get a bit more cleaning done.

Tomorrow is a clean/social/clean/social day. We have this holiday party coming up this weekend. I should probably finish putting away all of the in-progress crap I have sitting every where. UGH!

If I am a big douchebag and I didn’t send you an invitation to an open house this Sunday it was an oversight and not a slight. Poke me if you want to come over.