Hoo boy. I’m tired. I’m having big feelings. I’m not able to sleep because of racing thoughts. Maybe a dump will help. I am not happy about the fact that I have adjusted to waking up at 4am Minnesota time given that we didn’t go to sleep till 10pm.

Last night I had lots of big feelings. My friend invited us to go with her to a craft night. I’m sorry we didn’t just stay in our tent. The four kids (my two and my friend’s two) were the only ones there and they had to stay in the basement because it was raining heavily and the kids were too whiny to stay outside.

The problem was the 10 year old got in front of a tv and started uhm… well he spent the whole time yelling at the other kids to shut up or leave the room because he wanted to “watch his show”. That was not appropriate for my 4 year old because it was scaring the crap out of my kid.

I was pretty pissy. I was so pissy that when the other kids started being even snottier I got my kids together and left and we went and had fucking ice cream. Even after we ate pie because you know what? If a ten year old spends that much god damn time telling me to shut up so he can watch tv I want ice cream to help keep me from screaming at him.

It worked.

I did spend a lot of time intervening. “This is not your house and you do not get to make the rules. Stop telling the other kids to leave. It is not your place to tell them to leave the only room they are allowed to be in.”

But I couldn’t leave the room or join in adult conversation because I had to mediate the ten year old yelling at every one. I said, “This is not your house. Stop it” dozens of times. I told the kid he had to put the remote control down on the table because it is not his and he does not get to have a death grip on it the whole time because other people get to have choices.

He absolutely refused to compromise so the other kids could watch what they wanted. He just threw a tantrum that he wanted to watch the one show he has been wanting to watch.

I was uhm, not impressed.

I went and got mom when the younger boy kept jumping on the other adult in the room and would not stop when he was told no over and over. The other adult kept turning to the 10 year old brother and saying, “Handle this.” Uhm, no. There is only an 18 month difference in their ages. That’s not appropriate. I went and got mom and said the kid wouldn’t stop throwing his whole body on someones neck when they say no. She dealt with it. Yay!

The tv thing wasn’t a problem but I won’t be working hard to make sure my kids can stay in contact with these kids. If they do the work, whatever, but I’m not going to push continued contact.

I don’t feel like this is going so swimmingly well that I need to try hard for a permanent relationship. It’s fine for a week. Then we can move on.

I’m going to keep contact with my friend. I like her as much as I thought I would. She’s really sweet and wonderful. I hope I get to see her again someday.

But by the time I do her kids will probably be grown and that’ll be fine. They will move on with their lives. They will move on to people who don’t mind them acting entitled to full control and silence around the tv. Psh.

I got sick of that shit when I was in elementary school.

It’s not like it was a big deal. But I’m thinking about it and I’d rather be sleeping. We have to manage to get along with these kids for another five or so days. I find that I like monitoring conversations between the kids because I’m intervening more than I usually do with my kids interactions. These boys have a very strong reality distortion field and their reality does not match mine. So I’m arguing hard and firmly and immediately when they tell my kids how it is.

“That’s one point of view all right. There are lots of people who think that is absolutely wrong though.”

I get the impression these boys are not at all used to be challenged, let alone by a woman. I’m getting some looks that would set me on fire if I weren’t 75% water.

Helps me deal with the cold.

I wasn’t that sad about missing the adult discussion last night. I listened in for the first 15 minutes before I went downstairs to moderate. The whole group got to listen to one woman discussing the convoluted route by which a rooster is being passed around her family. Ok. Obviously it was a fascinating story to the others because they asked a lot of follow up questions. This story went on and on. Ok. I can go moderate children instead.

It’s not that I’m anti-chicken. I just… don’t care that much about the migratory path of specific birds through other peoples families. I’m shallow.

Apparently folks are getting salmonella because they are spending too much time hugging their backyard chickens. I find this… kind of hilarious. It’s mostly white people getting it. The comments I read were, “That’s because black people barely hug their dogs and aren’t going to be dumb enough to hug backyard chickens.” I laughed at that. Yeah, I know a lot of people who hug their chickens. I don’t get it. They are barnyard animals who carry diseases humans don’t want to get. Where is your sense of self-preservation?!

People confuse me.

I tell my kids not to touch birds in general because many birds carry diseases humans don’t want to get. Not because they are doing anything wrong, just because cross contamination is a real problem.

I guess other people don’t worry about such things. Fair enough.

You know? I don’t worry about a lot of things that other people worry about. Like walking around barefoot. I shouldn’t judge people hugging their chickens. But they are getting salmonella. It’s kind of a problem.

Ok, I’m going to judge. Sorry.

But I grew up hating chickens because I had some fly at me when I was little. I’m used to backyard chickens being mean little bastards who need to be kicked away from you. I don’t do this when I visit my friends houses, of course. But that’s what I grew up seeing. It is odd to me sometimes when I see just how humane my friends are to their backyard chickens. I’ve seen some chickens recently who live better than I did for most of my childhood.

It’s kind of intense.

Lots of feelings.

I was talking to a woman born and raised in Alaska. A white woman. It came up over the course of conversation that I am interested in research about sexual assault. I mentioned that I read that rape is at a 100% rate in Alaska and the woman shook her head furiously. I amended and said, “I apologize. The research I was reading was specifically aimed at Native women.” “Oh of course. White women don’t get even looked at wrong or whoever does the looking will get shot. Native women get raped all the time because that’s just their culture and you can’t change the men.”

I felt violently ill. I mean, I know that such situations exist and have for most of history. White women will be protected at all costs and non-white women just… well… what are they here for anyway, right?

I felt so ill.

I know that people behave that way. I don’t often end up in spaces where people are willing to just flat say it out loud. I’ve been feeling awful since this conversation happened. I am so angry that white women will present this as being “just how it is” as if it is ok. It’s fine to rape brown women but white women are sacrosanct.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck you.

I’m white trash. I’m the rape-able kind of white girl. So I’m not real ok with the idea that it’s ok to throw some women under the bus as long as the good kind of white girls are protected. FUCK YOU.

It’s not that all white girls would be protected. It’s that they will protect the girls who have families who are willing to go shoot people in defense of them.

You know what? I’d be protected if I said a brown man raped me. I’ve only been raped by white men. That’s not worth making a fuss over.

That makes me sick and angry and I hate the whole fucking universe. Because that is how it works. I would be worth defending against brown men. Just not white men. THAT’S NOT GOD DAMN OK.

I am in my feelings.

I am so tired of seeing evidence that if white men are involved the other people involved in a problem are just not that important. The way Dylan Roof (the piece of shit terrorist who shot nine people in a church) was arrested and taken to Burger King in a bullet proof vest on his way to prison makes me fucking sick.

It makes me wish I believed in just bombing the fuck out of every police station in America. But I don’t and I won’t be doing so. (I’m not threatening anyone here.) I kind of wish I had the resolve to do it but I really don’t.

I know innocent people would be hurt and I have enough bad karma, thanks.

The police arrested Sandra Bland for not signaling a turn properly. Then they beat her head on concrete. Then they claim she committed suicide instead of going back to her life and her brand new dream job.

I am very angry at the police in my country. Fine, this was a Texas police force that is already known to be racist and problematic… WHY IS THIS OK IN MY FUCKING COUNTRY?

This is not the home of the free or the brave. This is the home of racist pieces of shit who like to think white people are superior. We aren’t.

And then there are some other people who live here too, of course.

If black women cannot go about their daily lives without assault or harassment this isn’t a free country.

As long as we tell every Muslim in existence that must personally work against Muslim extremists or all Muslims are evil…. where are the white Christians showing up to prove that Dylan Roof does not represent them?

Where?

Ok, there are white people protesting. There are white people working for justice. But not nearly as many as are working to perpetuate a racist, unequal system. And that blows.

I don’t want the status quo. I want things to change.

“That’s just the way it is.”

Well, that’s just the way people like you have made it and you want it to stay that way. It’s not exactly like that in all places through all points in history. So that doesn’t mean it must stay this way. It can change. It was made this way. We can make it another way.

I was reading something written about the perception of race. A woman did some research, small scale, asking people about their racial experiences. Apparently the white people involved just… didn’t really answer some of the questions because they couldn’t understand the question. White people usually do not become aware of their race, they become aware that other people are different from them. White people become aware there are non-white people. They don’t become aware that they are white. Whereas for people of other races, they have a process of discovering that they are “different”.

Because white isn’t different it’s just “normal”, right?

For me, I spent many of my formative years in neighborhoods where I was… the only white child. I grew up having people tell me that I wasn’t welcome to share the food that was being freely passed back and forth in the cafeteria because, “White people can’t handle spice.” I knew I was different and wrong very young. Being white wasn’t good.

I think I knew that I was white and that it was a bad thing before I moved to Oklahoma so that means I figured it out before I was seven. I knew that people like me weren’t good. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do wrong, but I knew.

I was always very aware of the kids in the back of the classroom muttering about all the dead white men and how “they weren’t so great”. I heard that more than I heard the teachers telling me how great the Founding Fathers were.

I’ve never believed in white superiority to the best of my knowledge. I found out about slavery in America hand in hand with, “The white people couldn’t get the work done so they had to steal people who *could* do the work.” White people aren’t necessarily that good at getting shit done, but we are real good at subjugating people who can get work done. And the whole time the white overseer is sitting on his lazy ass screaming about how people aren’t working hard enough. Yeah, I know how it works.

When I got into third grade I became obsessed with books about social justice. I wouldn’t have described them that way when I was a kid. I would have said, “I like reading about people who have suffered terribly.” Mildred D. Taylor was one of my saving graces. Her books were wildly influential on me. I read a lot of Holocaust survivor stories.

I needed to hear that there were people who had it worse than me. I feel guilty for that now. But I was being beaten and raped periodically by a variety of men. I needed to believe that someone had survived worse than me so that I could keep getting up.

I’m still here so I’m not that mad at myself.

I am perfectly aware that there are bigger problems in the world than one kid being snotty about having control of a remote control. But when that is the problem right in front of you, well, you have to start somewhere. If you want the world to be different you don’t walk past problems and leave them for someone else. You know that no one else cares enough to solve the problem. You do it or it won’t get done.

I didn’t change the kid. But I did present one solid brick wall of boundaries so he can know that such things do exist. No, you don’t get to bully everyone out of the room. No.

I’m also having big, explodey, bouncing feelings because someone I love very much and I feel very codependent with is having problems with someone else in their life. I know a lot of people who are complicated and layered. They have special needs. People with special needs are willing to tolerate my long list of special needs. I feel big feelings when folks start trying to say my folks with special needs have to start Behaving How I Want Right Now.

We can’t just jump through that hoop you put in front of us. Nope. That won’t work. We can’t. Notice the label we came with that says, “Hi, I’ve learned some areas where I struggle and they are _______ and _____ and _____ so that thing you just decided I MUST DO…. I can’t. No, really.”

And sometimes people are snotty about it. And decide we must jump through that hoop or else.

I pick “or else”, mother fucker.

You know what? The pizza for dinner wasn’t worth the aggravation of fighting over the tv last night. I wish we had stayed in the tent. After a marathon day at the children’s museum… Oy.

I want to go along and do what other people want. Then I come against glitches and then I really don’t want to do what other people want. Like, I’m not going to keep my kids silent so you can watch a show that is too scary for them. Uhm, no. There are literally hundreds of options you are discarding because you want ONE THING and everyone else is suggesting lots of things and you are being the sticky wicket here.

It’s not a big deal. But it’s the thing that happened less than 12 hours ago and I’m thinking about it. It’s a microcosm of a macro problem.

I am not giving in.

If you act entitled my answer is no you can’t have your way. I really don’t give a flying fucking shit that you don’t get to watch Netflix every day and you feel bitter about that. Waa waa fucking waaaaaaaa.

It’s not the kid and it’s not this event. I’m feeling… I don’t know.

I need to get off Twitter for a few days. I’m making myself crazy.

I am irritable as fuck. That’s what is going on. And the worst thing to happen to me in days was a ten year old having a God complex about a remote control.

I really don’t get to bitch about my current life. I’m in a great damn spot.

Heck, outside of the internet stuff I’m getting along ok with my friend’s kids. But I’m fierce about the way they are being snotty about some things. Nope. Holding the line.

I don’t care that I’m a guest. You don’t get to walk on my four year old.

If my kid isn’t allowed to leave the room. You aren’t allowed to scare my child.

Mama Bear. Rawr.

It’s becoming a real problem that the kid is so tall. The kid is taller than most six year olds we deal with… at four.

I guess this kid is getting height from my father’s family. They told me I’m a midget the one time I was in a large group of women from the family.

Folks don’t treat people how they need to be treated based on age, they treat them how tall they are. It’s awful.

Just like people treat people based on their race not their personality.

Just like people treat people based on their perceived gender not on the basis of their experienced gender.

I’m outside my bubble. I’m not in a place where people think like me. I’m noticing over and over.

I’m feeling awkward about how much shit I’m posting on Twitter. Pieces of it are because I want to tell Noah and I’m weird about not sending him hundreds of emails. I will litter the internet with things I want him to read but he has to chase him down. Flooding his inbox is… I don’t know…. rude?

I’m annoying as fuck.

Oh man. I’ve been outbursting on Twitter again. Like I do.

I think I know why I’m as emotionally flooded as I am and I need to chill the fuck out. I’m acting like this little boy is my current proxy for The Man.

Whoa.

Knock it the fuck off there, lady. He’s just a little boy. Who is acting… just like his father. (According to mom.) He’s doing what he is being taught. He’s still just a little boy.

If you want to change people being a man hating feminazi won’t get you very far.

And the other thing that is bothering me is something weird and stupid. I’m having feelings about hair and other peoples feelings and I need to get the fuck over that one. Good grief.

Oy. I’m being kinda dumb right now. But hopefully I can get my dumb over before 7am.

And now I figured out that I was kind of an idiot about some reservation stuff with Disney and I’ve messed up the log in. I have to wait until 8am this time zone to call them. Ok. I’ll get that sorted.

Man I make a lot of mistakes. Once I talk to someone on the phone and get the account stuff all situated then I can do all the other fixing online by myself without bothering someone. I think. I hope.

Oh good grief.