In the morning we chuck our stuff into the van and drive home. We did it.

I was shaking my head watching the kids play at Legoland. A mom started up a conversation. She asked which kids were mine. We both dodged careening bodies. I pointed. My kids were currently fighting. She laughed and said, “Girls do that too? I thought that only happened when a boy was involved.”

I said, “Oh no. Fighting happens between siblings regardless of gender. We’ve had bloody lips and bruises.”

She looked shocked.

She asked why they fight. I am pretty sure she meant it in a rhetorical manner based on how it was phrased but I never let that stop me.

I said, “They fight because your family is your practice for having big feelings. It is the safest place you’ll ever have in your life if your parents do their job right. Kids need to have a safe place to learn how to have big feelings. That’s what siblings give them.”

She looked positively shocked.

Then she said, “I really needed to hear that. Your family is your safe place for having big feelings. Thank you for saying that to me.”

I said, “No problem! I’d say I’m here all the week but it’s a lie. We push out tomorrow. Good thing you caught me.” Then I grinned a Noah-worthy cocky grin.

She laughed.

Like, my kids today have alternated fighting, playing, (currently) giving one another massages, and vowing that they will never play with you again.

Right. Did I mention the massage going on now?

They crack me up.

They also frequently tell me that they are really glad they get have the life we have. They talk to school kids a lot. They don’t want to go to school. They want to learn. Eldest Child keeps saying, “I’ll go to school some day. Like college or something.” Youngest Child started out the trip pissed off about missing kindergarden. We had seriously negotiations about the possibility of a mid-year start.

I don’t see it as likely now. Yeah, they need some space away from one another… but this is working. We need to tweak some things. They need separate damn bedrooms. That’ll happen. In six days.

We split them up before leaving. That way I don’t have that task waiting for me. Yay!

Thank you past me. Your future self says good fucking work. Smart thinking and all that.

I’m having serious thoughts about my pantry. It is probably going away. I don’t know what I’m going to do for food storage. I need the room for books.

I’m going to have to get creative and interesting in how I store books. I’m really looking forward to this. This is my happy face. This is my happy place.

I haz all the booooooooooooooooks. I’ll write reviews and such. 😀

I want to go home and read books and have tea parties. I like my bubble. It is quite wonderful. Soon. Two more nights here. Four nights at Disneyland with Sarah (which will be rad).

I’m looking forward to the adult conversation.

Despite my early difficulty in adjusting to the plug in fridge it has been a lifesaver. I had to learn a few ways to adapt to it, but at this point I would never go on a long car trip without it again. I *love* the freedom it has afforded me in carrying food around. I’m glad I didn’t dump it.

An ice chest would be way more work and money. Yay mini-fridges that plug into the car!

I have to have a long extension cord (30′ I think) and an adapter so it can be used with regular electricity. I need a power strip so I can keep the fridge and my computer plugged in.

Priorities.

Southern California is a trip. Being here is weird. The trees look right. I know where things are. I know how things go. It feels like home and not home at the same time. I don’t ever want to live here again, but it feels weirdly like my soul thinks this is home.

My grandparents lived a few miles from where I am right now for decades. I never met them, but they were here. My extended bio-family is not that far. I’ll be driving past even more of them in 11 days.

I see shadows of my past everywhere. The hospital where Tommy recovered after his car accident is 17 miles away. 17 miles. I can run that far. (Ok, probably not given the shape I’m in… but I could with just a bit of training.)

It feels weird to be here with my kids this time. I feel like a lot of this journey has been about giving myself the chance to start again. I get a blank slate. I don’t have to be what I was.

But then I think about what I have ahead of me when I go home. I’m nervous about a bunch of stuff. I’m feeling paranoid and scared. I’ll deal with it. But I’m having big feelings. I want to work on scripts but I’m afraid of drama. I may attempt to write them off-line. Or maybe I’ll be an immature baby and put it on livejournal behind a filter.

I feel scared of being public about my feelings and processing. I don’t like it when I feel this way.

I don’t like when I feel like unless I hide I will be punished. I’m not saying that anyone else has said that. I’m saying I feel like that.

I’m looking forward to going home to my garage. And my candles. I can hide in my garage and burn candles and not talk to anyone. Life will be lovely. Folks will come visit if they feel like and not if they feel like.

Frankly, there is a part of me that isn’t sure how much effort I ought to devote to trying to fix problems. There is no fixing. I just don’t want to be hated. Sometimes it don’t matter what you want. You are going to be hated.

And sometimes you just won’t be thought of at all because you aren’t important anyway.

I’m ready to go home. I’m ready to hide from the world in my safe little bubble. My bubble is so god damn awesome.

I need to go to sleep but my mind is racing. I’m so tired. Today was quite an adventure. I had us packed up and ready to roll out at 8am. That’s pretty good from a camp site. But my van wouldn’t go into gear. Cue panic.

I call lots of people (including AAA–Thanks Pam!!!) to ask for advice. Is it the transmission? Is it an electrical problem? AHHHH!

By noon the car was fixed. It was a fuse. The dude who fixed it wouldn’t even let me pay him. He got the part from pick a part. Ok then.

We didn’t get out of Phoenix till 2pm with various other errands and sundries. I got into my hotel room at 10:30. (There was a time change too.)

I think I’m partially having trouble sleeping because in the past week or two we’ve hopped time zones and seen daylight savings change. So I feel weird. But it keeps getting earlier so I should feel tired. I don’t get it.

Ack. We are in San Diego. Tomorrow we are going to Legoland. Squee.

I would like to point out that I am recording the lowest points in my journal because I don’t want to gloss over them later and pretend they didn’t happen. Mostly we are getting along very well. Mostly we are having fun wonderful days full of playing and laughing. We are getting along pretty well.

And then the stress gets to me and I lose some piece of my control. I don’t want to deny later that the worst parts happened so I’ll write them down. I feel comfortable coming back later and filling in the gaps on the good parts. (Yes, this experience will probably turn into a book.)

I’m scared of not being honest about the worst of the worst. I don’t want to ever be in denial about that.

The kids and I had another intense conversation about boundaries, limits, abuse, and standing up for themselves. We talked about how it is better to hurt my feelings now by telling me to BACK OFF rather than hurt my feelings later when you have to stop having a relationship with me because I have a pattern of hurting you. I’d rather not hurt you. Sometimes I am a giant asshole and I will hurt you. I require feedback. I’m sorry that I do. I do.

This trip has been a wonderful experience and I’m so glad we did this. I will remember this forever as a positive time when we learned how to depend on one another to get stuff done. We take our sense of home with us. We haven’t gotten really impatient and pissy to go home till this last month. That’s pretty incredible. And the kids have never gotten mad and told me they are angry we came on the trip. They might get halfway through a similar sentence and I say, “Oh really. You are sorry we did ____ and ______ and _____ and” then they say, “Ok I’m glad we came. This has been incredible.”

I don’t want to bully them. I don’t want to “get away” with doing it because I’m not being watched. So I watch myself.

It’s the only way I know to try and be better.

Eldest Child had a fascinating question the other day about why is it hard to deal with a lot of these parenting issues. We had a conversation about how we are at a fascinating place in history where parenting ideals are radically changing and adapting is hard. There are always hard crunch points as populations change and grow. We talked about the evolution of beliefs from “You must hit your children to prove you love them” to “You must not hit your children to prove you love them” and why that is hard in terms of managing bodily impulses and frustration.

God I love talking to this kid. She blows my mind every day.

Youngest Child continues to alternate between being a ray of sunshine and having excessive temper. Goodness the intensity of that kid.

I’m told that as often as possible I should just be using “kid” as gender instead of boy or girl. It’s kind of clunky in language. But I’m trying.

I’m trying every day. Only 15 days till we go home. I won’t start frequent blogging right away. I seriously need to let my arms heal.