Noah is ok. He made it to Hiroshima and their current weather forecast is clear and mild. So he missed the worst of the storm. Phew.

The kids and I are doing fine. We miss him. I think it is funny that having Noah out of the house means I do a lot of random anxiety cleaning. The house is just about to the point where I don’t feel anxious about piles still sitting around waiting for management. Stuff is cleaned up from the remodel and life and… we are ready to move on to the next stage. (Except for the piles that will require the most cognitive load to put away. I did procrastination cleaning where I do the easy stuff that I do to avoid the stuff that Needs Done.)

I’m even getting close to figuring out where all the baby schtuff goes. A few things are shoved into corners but mostly items are just finding homes.

I forgot about the massage party my massage therapist REALLY wants me to host. Is there much interest? She would bring a colleague she has trained and they would both come to my house and do chair massages on folks for 30 or so minutes for a pretty darn cheap rate. Is there much interest in such an event? Cause I’m not up for planning a failure right now.

I checked and I’m about half a pound down from my pre-pregnancy weight at this point. At 18.5 weeks. BUT DON’T EAT MORE THAN 300 EXTRA CALORIES A DAY. Even though at this point I’m rapidly getting to the point where I’m going to need to need to gain a little over a pound a week to be in the “recommended range” so shuddup.

I just need to fecking eat, m’kay?

I haven’t taken my vitamins in two days. Partially because I’m feeling hella nauseous and when I try to swallow handfuls of pills when I feel this way I’m much more likely to upchuck them. Partially because I was an idiot and when we were coming home from LA I left a weeks worth of pills to melt in the car on accident. See, I take some gummy vitamins to minimize how much hard swallowing I have to do. Gummies melted… all over the other pills… creating a solid block of nasty about the size of a walnut shell. I can’t swallow that and I can’t take it apart without shattering the nasty tasting pills. So yeah. A week’s worth of medication down the drain. That costs… a lot of money.

I’m getting to the point of feeling sick to my stomach when I think about how much money I’ve spend on nutritional supplements over the past few years only to end up with no detectable load of these fucking nutrients in my body.

That’s just… ugh.

I feel like I am draining my family’s coffers to try and build up my body and it’s failing so I’m wasting these resources that could be better spent…

Ugh.

It’s hard that I have doctors telling me that the only way I can prove that I’m trying to get better is to come to every appointment and take every supplement and jump through every hoop and then other doctors tell me I’m a horrible person if I drive to the appointments because I’m so dangerous I shouldn’t get behind the wheel of a car.

But who the fuck can afford hundreds of dollars a day or 5+ hours a day of time? I can’t do what I need to do and not drive.

So I’m evil if I do and I’m bad and not trying if I don’t.

Sigh.

I’m so fucking tired.

Kid conflicts are interesting. Today I noticed that I have probably done a bad thing with my children. I have trained them that to believe that people will apologize and take responsibility for what they do unintentionally. In the vein of: “I stepped on your foot and I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry.” Most people aren’t going to apologize. And my kids are really struggling with that. I feel like it is my fault they don’t already know that the world is going to batter them and not care.

I didn’t prepare them for this. That feels like a failure on my part.

This week will be spent on roleplaying opportunities to use our words to say no instead of depending on nonverbal communication. Ok it works in this house with your family because we know your signals and we love you and we WANT to be hearing this information. That won’t be true out in the world. I need to help you get ready for the fact that folks are going to insist long and loud that they had “no way to know you didn’t want it to happen”.

No. No. No. No.

I’m going to be an asshole and bedevil her. We are going to negotiate in advance that I am going to specifically push past her non-verbal signals so she HAS to say no.

In a way that kind of creeps me out… this reminds me of a scene I did with a lovely friend many years ago. She couldn’t safeword. Not to save her own life. Literally. She did not have the verbal ability to protect her body because she didn’t believe she deserved it. So I beat her and talked to her and begged her to tell me no until she did.

I will not be punching my child the way I hurt my friend. Oh boy that would result in losing her forever.

But I can be irritating as shit. I can pester. I can be annoying and intrusive with my energy until she just HAS to SAY NO.

It’s funny how there are shadows of life experiences that come back. You have to be able to say no my darling. You have to believe that your body is worthy of defense and you can do it.

You have to. I won’t be there during the most important moments. It’ll be you and the bad thing happening.

You have to protect you.

Even though I did a piss poor job of it most of the time and I really don’t have the right to judge. I’m not good at self defense. Not when it counted the most. I crumbled like a mud sculpture in the rain.

But you, you my baby. You must be stronger than me. You must have the belief that you are worthy of defense.

You are not a worthless whore and you never fucking will be.

And so we practice. How do you say no. And NO. And I SAID NO ARE YOU DEAF?!

Ok… I just negotiated with her. She says she is going to be very unhappy about this exercise but she sees why it is important. Ok fine. FOR ONE WEEK. That seems reasonable. Boundaries are awesome.

I wish I had a better idea of how I’m fucking my kids up in the long term….