I love sugar. Sugar makes everything better. Sugar is love. Speaking of which, it’s time to start baking for the bake sale this weekend. Other folks are buying things at Costco to resell. I’m going to make things. Because. Just because I’m already committed to more than 30 hours of babysitting between now and then, and a painting project with kids and…

It’ll be fine. You’ll see. Ok, maybe I will end up crying… but the work will get done.

Maybe this is why they go to Costco. The crying isn’t worth it.

Yesterday was good. Today will be good. Lots of work to do, always.

Yesterday a friend came over and showed me how to prune my fruit trees! I’m super excited! The trees look way happier. Take that home schooling list announcement of fruit tree pruning workshops that don’t allow children. I don’t need you. Nor babysitting. Neiner neiner.

Apparently my kids did not prevent me from learning about my trees. Fancy that.

I’m kind of petty. But I feel fairly resentful of the attitude that children shouldn’t be present for learning opportunities. And I wish that home schooling lists would block advertisements for adult only activities.

But it’s not my list.

I understand that some children are a distraction. Mine aren’t. And when mine are having a hard day, I walk away and don’t distract people as I deal with that. Not every parent works like me though and I get why teachers don’t want to deal with kids. I think they should work through their own difficulty and learn how to fucking deal with kids… but whatever.

Kids know how to do what they are trained to do. They know how to exist in the world they are introduced to but not other worlds.

A kid who has been trained to be quiet will have a hard time getting rowdy. Kids who have been trained to be rowdy have a hard time being quiet.

This is why I work so hard at teaching my kids that both sets of behaviors have appropriate times and places. I need them to be highly adaptable. Sometimes you aren’t the center of attention and you have to just deal with it.

If my kids throw a fit demanding that they get a certain color or it’s just not on… I respond by withdrawing whatever it is they wanted. Nope. Not doing that. You don’t get to fucking rage at me because I handed you the wrong color plate.

We don’t do that shit in this house.

So when Calli tries to throw a fit Shanna can repeat verbatim, “Take what you get or get nothing.”

It is occasionally mortifying when she turns to another family at a restaurant and says that to a kid who is having a fit. It’s about 50/50 with the moms responding, “See! That’s how it works!” or “How dare you correct my child.” (I tell her that’s she is not a mom so she doesn’t get to lecture yet, works with her as well as it did me.)

That’s how it works. I am not going to bend to whims. Get over it.

The other big one that is coming up lately is, “We are not a family of shirkers. There is work to be done. Get up. Now.” I don’t shout it. It works way better when the ‘now’ is delivered in a growly lower voice. No shrieking. Shrieking is super easy to tune out after a while.

That comes after I have asked nicely with “please” three times. This is more or less my alternative to whining, which works not at all.

The growly now generally only has to come out once. I feel mixed. Cause it feels like instilling fear. I have asked my kids if they are afraid of me. The response is something along the lines of, “Kinda sorta some days. Not usually.” Well, that seems pretty sane and rational to me. I feel sorta sick to my stomach that some days they are afraid and it’s a rational response.

I asked Shanna what she was afraid I would do. I asked her once if she thought I would hit her. She said, “Oh you wouldn’t do that. But you might be awful.”

Fair enough. I am awful sometimes.

I’m trying to build more of a pattern. Patterns are how children learn. When I was a high school teacher substitutes loved getting my classes. Because my classes ran themselves without me. I had my students so well trained that they knew what to do and how to do it and they went through the prepared materials without the aid of the sub. The sub could sit in the corner all day and take attendance and read.

I want my kids to be that well trained about what it means to be “functional”. We exercise. We eat healthy food. We clean up the messes we make so that we have the space to make more messes. When there is work to be done, you do the work. Then you play hard.

We talk about our feelings. We make time for affectionate discourse and playing. It’s important. You have to play or you aren’t really living. You are just surviving.

I feel so lucky that I get to spend all day every day with people who are so happy. Sometimes it feels like living in a tv show. I live in beautiful sunny California in my spiffy fun little house. I have two photogenic smart kids. I have a husband who is really nice to me and who wants to have really hot sex all the time.

My life is pretty much what I wanted. Holy shit.

But when I read the letter that my shrink wrote to recommend that I remain a heavy stoner…

Not so picture perfect. I marvel at my children being photogenic because many of the pictures of me as a child were so bad that my mother spent a lot of time telling everyone she fucking talked to how terrible it was that I was so ugly in pictures.

So it’s kind of weird that people tell me frequently how beautiful my children are. I don’t think I’m beautiful. I think Noah is attractive but funny looking. How in the hell did we make beautiful kids? Genetics are weird.

It feels like they don’t really belong to me. Like I am taking care of them for someone better than me. But I’m doing my very best. Clearly they deserve better than my best. This is all I have.