This is the gap that pot fills. I wish I were a more patient person. I put myself into positions constantly where I need buckets of patience and…. I’m not the most patient person.

I love the Bonus Kids with all my heart. It is challenging that every parent socializes their kid differently. The Bonus Mama and I have different things that bug us. Neither of us are right nor wrong, we just are. We train our kids differently. This visit… the four kids are all in fucking bad moods and I’m having to stop, think, process, Ok…. why do the Bonus Kids have different expectations in this moment and what do I need to do to fairly express my expectations… which are not what they are used to.

There is no right or wrong in this equation. Everyone is completely fine. But these are young kids and if I want them to adapt to me I have to god damn explain what that means. I have to do it with a smile and gentle hands.

One family that I’m friends with believe it is never ok to touch their child when giving directions. They have worked out methods that manage their expectations with their kids. I’m a toucher. I’m big on a gentle guiding hand to push a child into the direction/expectation I have. Watching my friends has caused me to seriously question whether I’m appropriate or not. I don’t think my preferences are right. They are what work for me.

I touch for a lot of reasons. (I’m talking head/shoulder/arms/back. It is touching without consent but it isn’t nasty or mean or touching sensitive areas.) My experience of working with children is you have to get their attention before giving a correction. The fastest/easiest/most connecting way to do that effectively that I know… is touch. I don’t touch all day long and I work really hard to make sure these are gentle touches. I’m just redirecting attention. “Hey, listen to me for a minute.”

I will walk up to a kid and put my hand on their shoulder when they are screaming and flipping out and say, “Hey… do we scream in this house?”

If I want to get their attention without touching…. (I feel like I should put a bag over my head)… I usually end up screaming when they are really self focused.

I’m not proud. I think I’m a loser.

But I have found a system that works well for me. I don’t touch kids I don’t know. That’s over the line. This is in my house with kids I work with a lot.

My little niece in Scotland? I want to see her again. I won’t touch her. Not unless she initiates. Children of strangers…. I don’t touch them at all. That’s a troublesome line.

But kids I’m attached to who are in my house who spend a lot of time pawing at me? Yeah. I touch them without consent to get their attention sometimes.

I know that two wrongs don’t make a right, but somehow I’m learning something new about consent in this space too.

I can get the attention of lots of children, no matter how dysregulated they are, without touching. But I get fucking loud. I can project amazingly, fantastically well. I can quiet down thousands of screaming children because….I’m louder. This was a job skill in years past. At the beginning of rallies the bullhorn wasn’t loud enough to get any attention. But I can.

I’m strangely proud and ashamed of this. Fucking a I’m loud.

I try to not bring out the bellow unless there is a good reason. (Thousands of screaming children in an enclosed space….) But when I’m dysregulated the first thing to go is… voice volume control. I’m much better than I used to be but I still seriously struggle.

I think this is why I do so well with children who have emotional problems. Dear God I understand. Let’s sit around and commiserate on how hard it is to control ourselves. If you need to have a good cry because you are frustrated go right ahead. I do it all the time. It’s ok.

But pot gives me this extra lake of patience. I don’t have to consciously freeze my body before I do something inappropriate. Instead I have a blinking few seconds where I don’t know what to do but I’m not poised to SCREAM AS IF MY LIFE IS THREATENED. Ok, I’ll tell you the truth. Post-journey I’ve had a tiny amount of pot every day. I’m… inspired by what I am reading of microdosing. Ok, so normally when folks talk about microdosing they are referring to lsd or mushrooms and I am not using either of those. So I’m stealing a term that isn’t really mine. Gosh I’m an asshole.

Anyway. I’ve been consciously using very tiny amounts. I’ve been spreading it out. I’m using the vaporizer pen because it is a lot easier to give small doses. And I don’t have any smokable product in the house. This is the last of what was supposed to last me a month. This product comes in .5g quantities and I worked on it for weeks before I ran out of bud and I’ve used it for a week now. That’s a huge reduction in usage this week. If I were to use this pen as my primary method two months ago a cartridge lasts about a day and a half. This week it has been my only method and I didn’t use half a cartridge.

I’m looking forward to seeing where my tolerance is after two weeks of not having a choice because I don’t have any and I’m traveling. (How’s that for a convoluted sentence?)

I’m looking forward to having a frank discussion with my med-doctor about pot and pregnancy. All the other meds she wants me on are known to be bad for pregnancy. At this rate… I probably feel comfortable. Especially if I can force myself to make .5g last a month because I’m just using barely enough to impact my behavior and not enough to make me high…

Oxytocin is going to be a big deal. But that’s complicated right now.

Everything is always complicated.

Folks decided to change some of their travel plans during the upcoming trip. So I get to cancel a reservation and get some time share points back. They have to be used within 60 days. I’m thinking maybe Noah and I will sneak in a trip to Las Vegas. Use the points or lose them.

If you want to keep friends, flexibility is key. I understand why they want to come back. They are the only ones not home schooling.

Thank you for coming at all.

I’m packed. I’m excited. In 49 hours we are boarding the plane. Squeeeeeeeee.

This is going to be a ridiculously fun trip. We will rest. I know that many of my friends don’t like restful vacations. I need one. I’ll be a better, nicer person after serious rest. It’s been a lot of years of not resting. As all three of my therapists have said to me recently, “Rest is mandatory. You don’t rest. You need to find a way to rest.” (With minor wording variations and different accents and inflections. But whatever. Same message.)

I’m taking doctors orders. This is my happy face. I’m going to go play on a boat for a week. A ship. A floating hotel. I’m going to be pampered. My kids will be entertained. We won’t be bringing screens. Interact with your environment. Learn how to find things to look at.

Only boring people get bored. Entertain yourself.

We can do it with sticks and rocks. We can do it in a hotel room. Now we’ll go do it on a boat with theaters and pools and a frickin water slide that goes over the edge of the boat so you can see all the way to the ocean.

Ridiculous. We are spending what used to be 6 months of my income on this trip. I saved up for years. And then the damn clothes ended up being way the fuck more expensive than expected. Shit. So I’ll be paying the trip back for a while too. Sigh. But I’m going to wear this fucking outfit forever. (The dress will cheerfully accommodate an 80+ weight gain! This sucker is roomy because that was the cut of the era. Ahhhh, room for pregnancy. Ok, not the corset dress. That I’ll have to stay about the same size for. Whatever. I really wanted it.)

I’ve returned to this size and shape over and over again since I was 15. I’m comfortable calling it my approximate size even if I do fluctuate in actual weight.

Ok. Time to focus again.