We went to SFMOMA today. On the train. With the stroller.

My elbows are in much better shape than they were after the grocery store run. I think I figured out a better angle. We walked 4.5 miles. Not as much as the last trip to SF but… plenty I think. That was all we needed today.

It was fun.

The baby did great in the stroller. She complained when she had a poopy diaper or she needed to eat. Seems legit. I carried her sometimes because she was politely asking for a snuggle. But the stroller definitely made the day better.

Why do I want to keep trying with this stroller? My back doesn’t ache like fire and I don’t want to hit someone because I’m angry about being in pain. That’s a big deal. This stroller in particular has some up sides to go with the many many down sides.

The biggest upside that means absolutely the world to me is that if I have to I can put my baby in the carrier on the front and my backpack-diaper bag on and this stroller folds into a compact little thing I can carry on my stroller. Everything can be carried on my body up multiple flights of stairs. Would it be fun? Nope. But it wouldn’t be that hard.

I couldn’t do that with a bigger/sturdier stroller. I’m not strong enough at this point. So even though something like a jogging stroller would be way more sturdy and hurt my arms less…

I don’t know why being able to carry 100% of my shit is the final decision line. But it is for me. I have always hated strollers because I get panicked at the idea of getting stuck with them. I can’t really get stuck with this one. It is psychologically comforting.

It’s working because the baby is happy in there and it’s not overall more damaging than carrying everything on my body at all times. It’s all a balancing act.

I don’t always wake up feeling this way, it’s lovely. We are almost halfway through Noah’s time in Japan and it has gone well. We have a nice early bedtime together and things aren’t so bad. I didn’t sleep well the first night but since I’ve been tired enough to pass out immediately.

Today we are going to SFMOMA. I feel kind of bad. In my head… I asked my kids to research the museums in the bay area. Looking back through the emails I’ve sent them… nope. I only asked them to look at LA museums. Well. Ok then I’ve been an asshole asking them to hurry up and pick a local one. Shit. I apologize for the holes in my memory. I think I wrote a list of them here instead of an email to the kids. Fuck and fuck and fuck.

Ok well… they didn’t get to pick this week. But I’ll send the kids the list and they can help pick for next week. *cough*

The reason they got the email about the LA museums is because there are a ton of them and we won’t be able to see very many. Noah has a work trip to LA in December I think and we are going to be in LA for a week in October. In October we will only spend one day in a museum because the rest of the trip is Disneyland with Sarah. But I think we are coming along in December and we’ll be able to hit two or three other museums. But if there are over a dozen museums in the LA area… we need to narrow down our interest. Thus emailing the kids.

But I thought I sent a separate email about the bay area and nope. Damnit.

I will fix that today. Easy-peasy.

But seeing as EC is seriously motivated by the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA…. SFMOMA seems like another good choice. I am very interested in the art my kids are interested in. I like seeing what they are drawn to and what repels them. I learn so much from them.

Last night EC stayed up reading when the other three of us went to sleep. She used her hiking headlamp so she could stay in the room with us. Everything about this girl is wonderful. I like the way she has this low key preference for being vaguely near us but it isn’t cloying or controlling or demanding. She just enjoys us being together. She doesn’t freak out at separation. She doesn’t resist obvious reasons to be apart. But she likes us so much.

I grew up in a family of people who hated each other. When they sit in a room together they do little other than insult and degrade one another.

My babies would be shocked if they witnessed the behavior that was standard in my family of origin. They would argue back and kindly rebuke the insults.”Don’t say that to someone! You will make them sad!” They care about their impact on people and they really want to be positive. I like my children.

I like the family Noah and I have made.

My larva woke up for a teeny snack and is now sleeping on my arm. That slows down typing.

Rotated diaper laundry cause I fell asleep last night. Whoops. We need them today.

Ok, I did try the massively discounted travel stroller from Babies R Us since the window of being able to buy it for cheap is small. I have gone out on one long outing and one short outing so far with it.

Well… it’s not as hard on my wrists. I’m not sure how or why but it’s fucking brutal on my elbows. I am going to try some tricks today to see if I can change that. It is both more and less stable feeling if that makes sense. The wheels turn very smoothly but having so many joints to be very foldable means you have to exert pressure in exactly the proper places. I don’t love it immensely but it is incredibly handy. It can be helpful on a reasonable sized grocery trip.

And it seriously folds up small enough to be carried like a messenger bag. It’s lighter than my damn diaper bag and can hold 50 lbs. So… is it amazing and wonderful? No. Is it useful? Grudgingly… yes. Maybe. We’ll see. I hope so.

My life is unreal it is so good. I feel like I’m waking up in a fairy story about someone else. *My* life couldn’t be this awesome…

Only it really is.

Have to get ready to talk to my Jenny. Because life is awesome.

I am so grateful Noah didn’t travel for work when the big kids were small. They were much harder babies. This baby can fall asleep while nursing and then be transferred to the swing and sleep for another hour.

This is a miracle previously unseen in this house.

I am ecstatic.

I can make food. I can run around and do chores. I can feel productive. It’s glorious.

EC and I are continuing to have a hard time with reminders and nagging and such. We both have executive functioning issues. (Reading books about this is hilarious because we are overlapping but not identical in where we fall down.) Trying to figure out how to manage hers and manage mine and not parentify her for my issues as I’m trying to manage them both while teaching her to manage herself…

gah.

It’s a good thing we like each other so much or this would just be unbearable.

We both struggle with focus and sticking with a task but I’m an old person who has more practice bringing my attention back around. That’s the only reason I do slightly better. I suspect I was worse than she is when I was 9/10.

…. maybe. As I think about it… no. I was already making checklists of how to do shit for my mom before then. Ok I wasn’t worse than EC. But I had a non-functioning parent and that’s different.

Sometimes I stop and feel kind of choked up when I think about the fact that part of my children’s problems is that I help too much. When I’m being an asshole and telling a friend that they should stop helping their child so much because it is infantilizing… I SEE THE BIG HOLE I MADE IN MY OWN GLASS HOUSE AS I THREW THAT ROCK, OK?

I think I am intensely an asshole when I give advice I shouldn’t give partially because I know I’m fucking up exactly like that and I’m yelling at other people hoping the advice will sink into my own thick skull.

I do that way more often than might be apparent. Boss other people as a means of trying to give myself good advice.

Side note: Noah had a minor emergency as he traveled. He communicated with me via IM and when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the toilet I found his messages and fixed his problem. I am awesome. Now my honey can eat.

Back to executive functioning stuff. (Listing out so I can organize my own brain.)

Focus really is a rough one for EC. MC doesn’t have quite the same difficulty with this one. MC can tune out distractions. EC sees a shiny and can’t keep her mind on her task. I mostly manage focus because I scare myself with the consequences of distraction. I also periodically get loud and mean and scary telling everyone to leave me the fuck alone or I can’t focus. There were days of tile lay out where I could not have anyone in the room or I wouldn’t make progress. So yeah. Focus is tough. I suspect but don’t know for sure that this is harder for Noah than it is for me but it’s hecka hard to evaluate. I can focus through distractions more easily than he can. But I think of that partially as being temperament: I’m a teacher; he’s an engineer. I like a loud busy room and he wants silence and being alone.

Deciding what is important. This is… not easy but I wouldn’t put it in the top three problems for any of us. None of us tend to get sidetracked into truly stupid projects. *pat all of us on the back*

Set goals. I think if there is a bright shining executive function skill that we all knock out of the park… this is it. This is the cherry on top of our hill to slide down. Can I bring in a few more unrelated silly metaphors? We like setting goals. I WANT TO SAY I AM THE BEST AT THIS BECAUSE I AM A VAIN MOTHERFUCKER. But that may or may not be true. MC isn’t being tested on this one very much yet. EC had some serious push for this over the last school year and she did really well. Noah’s goal setting makes me dreamy and shmoopy. He’s good at goal setting. *deep sigh of joy*

(For the record I am going through the book The Impulsive, Disorganized Child by James Forgan and Mary Anne Richey.)

Use prior knowledge. You know… this one is hard for me to evaluate. I think that the degree to which I look for repeats of old patterns is maybe too rigid and a problem. I am nothing near under functioning in this department but I seem to be over functioning in a way that might be bad. It’s hard for me to evaluate my family members on this. With Noah…if I have ever had a bad day and exploded at him for something minor he will be ginger around that topic forever. Which is… also kind of over performing on this one. It’s so complicated. He’s trying so hard. He wants to never trigger me. The horrible thing is that in order to make that happen you need to just kill me. He doesn’t want that. So we muddle through and I get set off and he feels bad and to blame even though it truly isn’t his fault. Sigh. I feel like I’m fucking this up for the kids too. I’m trying to change. They are trying to learn from experience and benefit from making a mistake and not make it again. But next time… I might need something different from them. I don’t know how to evaluate this metric at all.

Initiate action. Once again I’m a fucking rock star. *cough* (A humble one.) I can’t say I’m better than Noah though. He’s really really good at this too. It’s one of the things that caught my eye about him. Other folks will be hanging back not sure what to do and he’s already moving to get something going. He always has possible plans on offer. God I love that about him. It is so hawt. Our kids have less experience than us but I wouldn’t say they are slouches. Ok, not an area to work on. I’ve been starting to talk to my newly minted 10 year old about waiting to act so you can read the room. So I’m kind of actively working to slow this one down because we are so effective. More over functioning.

Manage time. This one is a mixed bag. I am fanatical about managing time. (Years of therapy followed by being a teacher means I’m sensitive to stuff going 3 minutes too long.) No one else in my house is good at it. Noah has worked really hard to improve and he has learned how to use technology to fill in the gaps in his natural ability. We are trying to get the kids to start learning his hacks but it is hard. Neither of them have my internal clock. My internal clock is so strong that it is commented on by other people constantly. This is a huge thing for me. If I have 55 minutes for my appointment I will be wrapping up starting at 52 minutes because I will not go over. This made me a terrible stage manager because I cannot wait five minutes until the audience finishes arriving. Motherfucker the curtain is supposed to go up at 8? We will be in place and rising that motherfucker at 7:59:45. I have issues. And I absolutely can bully a whole crowd through arriving on time. I’ve done it.

Self monitor performance. Ok I suck at this. I think almost everything I do is shit. I’m not more attached to the bathroom because I could tell you how much I fucked up and I should have done a-x differently and better and… Perfectionism sucks. My kids constantly ask me to evaluate them and I try not to. I ask them to evaluate themselves. So this is one where I suspect I am teaching it better than I am capable of doing it. I think the kids do pretty well. Noah seems from this angle to be excellent at this skill.

Use self restraint. Sigh. Depends on what it is. I am all over the map on this skill. Sometimes I am good to an unholy level because I’m very good at denying myself things as punishment. That’s not actually positive. But it is a skill. If I do not perceive myself as needing punishment… whoa this is hard. Hard. Hard, Hard, Hard, Hard, Hard, Hard. I fail a lot. Don’t ask me how many fucking donuts I’ve eaten this week. (I’m 2 lbs under my pre-pregnancy weight. Don’t judge me.) I would say my kids are not so great at this. Noah appears to be pretty damn good at this most of the time with occasional lapses.

Remain flexible. Meh. Mixed bag. My kids are good at this. I can be if I am sleeping/eating/exercising enough. If those metrics are out of whack I will absolutely flip out at the most minor change. It’s absurd and childish. I’ve improved over the years… but I still struggle. Noah needs a few seconds/minutes to process but he’s cheerful about this in general. Good thing because I’m an asshole who completely reorganizes his stuff in the house all the time.

After writing this out…. focus stands out as the area with a problem. I mean, other than my overweening vanity we are ok in most areas. Not perfect but ok. But focus is where we all drift with the currents.

I’m glad I sat down to write this out. Knowing that even if it is hard we do ok with most executive functioning. We just really fall down on focus. That makes it seem like a much more solvable problem. Everyone has stuff they suck at. If there’s one big area… we can work on that. We can do research and see what the experts say about focus. I’ll finish reading this book. Next is a book for kids with ADHD and strategies they can employ. I will focus (haha) on the focus sections.

It makes it a lot easier to frame the problem with laughter in my head. “Despite all of this being harder than it might otherwise be… we do pretty well in most ways. But we are a pack of squirrels when it comes to attention.”

heh. This kind of thing is why I ask places like Stanford to evaluate us. This is where I’m failing.

IT WOULD MAKE MY LIFE EASIER IF SOMEONE WANTED TO WATCH ME AND FIGURE OUT WHEN AND HOW I’M FUCKING UP AND TELL ME HOW TO CORRECT IT SO I DON’T HAVE TO DO SO MUCH DAMN WORK.

But that has never happened. *le sigh*

Why in the fuck am I sighing so much today? That’s weird.

I just told our gardener that September is his last month. He’s been working for us for over ten years.

This is really happening. Within five months our house will be on the market. We will be ready to start the next leg of our journey.

I’m telling everyone I know that if they have a friend who would appreciate an art house… come to me! Houses in my neighborhood are going for $1.2 or $1.3 million. I don’t need all that. This is the absolute once in a lifetime chance to get a bay area house at a discount.

Coooooooome to me art lovers….

Once upon a time when I fizzled like this I would go look for trouble. Not now. Now I have babies. Now I sit at my kitchen table and this song is in my head. For most of the day I’ve had this one going. These songs make me think that being a parent and wife is complicated for her too.

I tried to express something to a friend this week and I feel weirdly jittery about it.

I’m really sad that my attempts to build community here have not been successful enough that I want to stay no matter the frustrations. I have put a lot of time and energy into people and communities. I didn’t ever manage to feel like that connection was “important enough” whatever that means. I am not important enough.

I’m sad that people who gosh darned know I’m in their community don’t poke me and say, “Hey I’m having a problem.” Cause the thing if… if folks militantly won’t ask for help… I don’t exactly feel like I should ask for help either. Which makes the bonds of community hard.

Do I reach out? Sometimes. In a blind, flailing way most of the time. “Will someone help?” It is so much scarier to ask a specific person. But lemme tell you… if someone offers help I say yes.

But my life has been my life. We all have different experiences.

My way is not The Way. sigh.

It is funny that I have moved my intense feelings towards “community” because the chosen family thing didn’t work for me in a large scale way. I take my community seriously and I show up any time someone pokes me and requests my presence. I’m that weird bastard cousin who shows up at family reunions to piss everyone off. Ha.

I am going to get through this week and today had better be my lowest day. I was a butt. My kids deserve so much better. And in the end EC still wanted to stay up late to chat alone. Even though I am a butt.

Sometimes the intimacy of our relationship astounds me. This is the most intimate non-sexual relationship I’ve ever had. With all of my children… but it’s seriously more intense with EC. (I’m not playing favorites! It’s just… those two years of being alone together made a difference. There’s a level of knowing that is harder to get to with distractions around.)

I know I know I know that no one can “make” me feel anything…. but EC makes me feel more loved than any other person on this planet and I need to not fuck her up because that’s true. I have to guard my black hole of need.

Sometimes I fear that I send signals that make her think I don’t like her in my urgent desire to not overly pressure her.

We are going through a thing and nagging (in both directions) is at a fevered pitch. I’m reading books on ADHD and impulsivity and executive function issues…

My dearest daughter. When I talk about how deeply frustrated I am that I have to tell you literally six times to set the table because you keep walking away mid-task to go read a book… that doesn’t mean I dislike you.

Oh my baby. I like you so much.

MC heard me ranting to Noah. I said, “This is when I hate my kids.” This is going to take weeks, maybe months or years of processing. Sigh.

You know how you sometimes tell your sister that you hate her but you don’t really you are just really frustrated in a moment and you used a hurtful word? Yeah. Like that. Only you weren’t supposed to hear me. I was supposed to be venting behind your back. Is that polite? It’s human. I don’t hate you. I phrased it so poorly.

There are times when I hate how hard parenting is. Usually those times overlap with one or both of you running headlong into an issue I struggle with myself. Yeah. I seriously hate some of these moments. But I take them on all day every day because I like you so much.

Beloved baby… if I really hated you do you think I would treat you like I do? Do you think I would dedicate most of my fucking waking hours to being a performing monkey for you? You might have a weird ass opinion about how I treat people I hate…

But that was an awful thing to hear and you feel sad. That’s so valid.

You need to have something to tell your shrink.

I’m kidding. Kind of. Actually… their shrink said something to me in a hand wavey way on the way out the door. I’m not sure what that was about.

On the way home MC said that they want to head back up to UCSF to talk to the gender folks about puberty again. They are starting to feel like they don’t want to go through puberty as a girl and that means we should figure out hormones, like, soon.

It will also make moving more complicated.

But if that is what my baby needs that is what we will do. One way or another. Amusingly I know at least two trans-folk who have been semi-nomadic during transition. I might ask them how that went. Maybe. I’ll see how the chat with UCSF goes.

When Noah is here to hear all of my bubbling thoughts I feel a lot less crazy. He acts like my thoughts make sense, even if they are discordant.

Talking to my massage therapist is interesting. She’s really struggling with the loss of her mother. In the past 30 years she hasn’t gone longer than 3 days without seeing her mother. It’s been that long since she went on a vacation. Other than going on a handful of vacations… she’s seen her mother a minimum of three times a week all her life.

But she doesn’t have a partner to share her life or her burden with.

Life is hard for everyone.

baby!

Recently I was noticing that I felt great. Better than I can remember feeling in a very long time. It’s not that I have no pain (owowowowowowow) but I am increasing in strength and competence. I am feeling less like a pathetic, worthless burden. I am feeling less sick. So this is loaded and complicated. This plays into “are disabled people worth supporting”. Because sometimes I am disabled. I am not able to get up and do my chores. I literally did nothing in my yard for more than six months. I would look out the window and cry because I couldn’t manage weeding or watering or pruning or… anything. And it’s not like those jobs are so hard.

There are times when I am unable to carry my workload. I have been picking it back up and feeling better about myself.

I don’t think this is an entirely positive dynamic. I don’t think people actually have more value if they work more. Only I want to kill myself when I can’t work because I’m useless. This is a problem.

What does having value mean? Value to whom? In what way?

So much of relationships is having a person around to project yourself onto. How many people maintain toxic relationships because “they are family”? You feel like you don’t exist without these people to be in relation to.

I can so clearly see how I have been doing this with my friendships. I notice that I value myself in part based on how I can be in contact with them. It’s mixed. I will probably do this more as my kids get older. Right now they aren’t opting into relationships with me so I feel like I need to limit how much I define myself based on their approval. I ain’t their friend–I’m their mother. They won’t always like me and that’s my job.

And yet… I change myself so much because I need to be a certain way for them.

One of our neighbors commented the other day that we are such a happy family. I am not sure folks thought of me as just being so happy 15 years ago.

I am happy because I am allowed to be here. Because I am allowed to have a family and be part of a family and take care of people and be taken care of. If that isn’t fucking defining yourself based on your relationships I don’t know what is.

At least this will work for a little while.

But today I feel exhausted. It’s physical and emotional. Yesterday we walked so far. Today I’ve barely hit 2 miles. I’m trying hard to keep a minimum of 2 miles per day for a bit here. Seems prudent. In a few weeks my daily minimum will be 3 miles. Then 4. Ugh. Next week I hope we can do 4 miles once, 3 miles once, and every other day 2 miles.

The 6 mile spike was an outing. We don’t have them every week like that.

Realistically, because Noah won’t be here on Friday…We should try for another outing and that might mean another 6 mile day. Ouch. Which museum should we go to? Anyone want to meet for dinner somewhere? If we go north we will take public transit. If we go south we will probably drive.

So many things in the bay I want to do with the kids before we go.

• Alcatraz
• SFMOMA (I know about your membership, Sarah. I’ll be poking you when we go.)
• The Walt Disney Museum (no, I have never been)
• de Young Museum
• Asian Art Museum
• Legion of Honor
• Contemporary Jewish Museum
• Museum of the African Diaspora
• San Jose Museum of Art
• Computer History Museum
• Rosicrucian Museum
• Oakland Museum

…. I’m sure there is stuff I’m missing. Things like the Discovery Museums and Exploratorium… we’ve been a lot. If we go again, ok, but I don’t care that much.

I’m not sure if I’m feeling less “ok” because I’m tired. I feel kind of overwhelmed. I want to do so much and I want someone else to do it for me and I want it to never be done.

feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings

A few friends have moved away from California and come back for various reasons. When I say that *I* might fail and slink back with my tail between my legs I ain’t talking about y’all. None of you spent months writing pissy things about why it sucks here and you want to leave. None of you made a big production out of flouncing off.

I kind of am. Sort of. A little. Enough that if my grand journey flops entirely… it would make sense for folks to kind of make fun of me for it.

Coming back for access to jobs or health care isn’t the same thing.

Maybe I will come back because I simply cannot do without the health care I can get here. That wouldn’t really be failing and slinking back with my tail between my legs. If I just can’t find friends and I spend all my time crying about how lonely and sad I am… that’ll be failing.

It’s kind of like how it is hard to say that I LOVE FAT BABIES without it sounding like I’m dissing the less chubby inclined.

Sigh. All babies are good. All baby levels of chunk are good.

BUT I LOVE THE FUCK OUT OF MY FAT BABIES, OK.

I don’t get to enjoy tiny delicate squishes very long so nothing is perfect.

I am being paged in the direction of a party.  Bye. stupid space bar is sucking

Today I will live in video game hell. *sigh* My little girl is having a birthday party. What she wants is a party full of folks playing video games with her. I can see why she will have fun. Once again… I will sit around and talk to my friend’s mother. (EC’s friend’s grandmother.) It’s ok. She will coo over the baby she helped bring into the world and that’ll be nice.

I will be glad to see Ma. I’m not actually complaining. I will enjoy the visit. But… video games. Meh. To each their own.

My wonderful MC just woke up so I’m not sure how much I’ll get to type. Kiddo only slept 8 hours. I wonder how today will go…

If I keep YC off the boob between dinner and bed time she can sleep 8+ hours without a genuine wake up. She sleep nurses once or twice but no full wake up. That’s awesome. I am appreciating everything about this baby.

We went to the Cal Academy of Science yesterday on public transit. Holy shit that took fucking forever. This is why I don’t go more places. The bay area is fucking huge. It was seriously 3 hours round trip because there was a bunch of police activity on BART. I don’t know what was happening and frankly it’s not my business. I hope it wasn’t an officer shooting someone but frankly I don’t have the spoons to check.

I am so tired. Being in this country is so tiring. Feeling like I really should check to see if this was another government sponsored murder fucking sucks. I want to know and I don’t want to know. I should protest everything. I should work against the people who have control.

Or I could run. Like a fucking coward.

I have fought so much. I am so tired. I fought for myself and that’s not enough. That’s not right. But I don’t know what I have to give.

I am trying to learn how to be less of an asshole. My kids are the reason I am trying to learn to be a better person and frankly nobody else is worth the effort. Either I’m good enough for a relationship or I will walk away and be alone. I can’t/won’t do that with my children. I have to be good enough which means I have to change absolutely anything necessary. My babies are jet fuel for me.

The museum was fun and the kids did great. We walked six miles through the course of the day. I feel vindicated that we need to be ready for six miles as just a part of our lives. We have to be that fit. It must be something that doesn’t wear us out extra.

Want to hear something funny? MC spent the train ride home buzzing with energy and driving me nuts with bouncing. They asked to pick up a third sport again. They asked to drop their third sport a few weeks back because with the walking they were feeling worn out. Now that they have acclimated they want a third sports class again. Not gymnastics again, ballet. This kid has energy to burn. I don’t know how a body can move so much. I mean. Clearly they get it from me. lol. I was like this as a kid but I had no money so I couldn’t go to classes. And playing outside was dangerous because I ran my mouth and ended up with folks hating me and wanting to beat the crap out of me.

Good times!

I suspect that if my kids were as unsupervised as I was… people would want to beat the shit out of them for running their mouths too. They both have exactly that much tact.

Oh, side note. It won’t be all video games all day. EC is awake and has reminded me. Instead she has come up with an RPG system for Warrior Cats and we have all been assigned characters. I am Mud Spot. Because I am the one who is always playing in the mud. Sure, sounds good. That’s accurate. Ok this part will be silly and fun. She comes up with good stories.

Another note of clarification. I have apparently been unclear about travel plans because folks are asking me “Wait does that mean x or y?” Upcoming travel: September we are going to Mexico for a week long vacation. October is Sarah’s birthday at Disneyland. October is when we are putting the house on the market. Whenever the house sells we are heading to Washington DC for 3-4 months then the UK. Of course we will mostly base out of Inverness so that I can see Jenny’s family.

So October is Sarah, November-February (if we sell the house this quick) is Pam, and then I run off to Jenny.

That’s so much blessed luck and love I feel like my heart will burst. Ok fine. If my favorite people won’t all come to me… that’s ok. I’m portable.

Noah… you really do tolerate something close to polyamory. But the sex is a bridge too far. Ok.

Speaking of sex! Dang it’s been nice lately. I think there is something to that sexual maturity thing. Sex is easier now than it used to be. Easier emotionally. I’m feeling less of the fuzzy burning anxiety about how I don’t get to back out or change the deal. Having the experiences of the mutual masturbation lately has been so good for me. I don’t feel like if things get uncomfortable I should just go blank. It’s feeling a lot more ok to ask for change/things to stop. I don’t know why it is shifting now and it didn’t shift 10 years ago.

I’ve been with Noah non-consistently for 15 years now and married for almost 12 years. Why is it changing now?

Dinno. It is.

I even asked him to spank me last time because the kids were all solidly asleep and we in the garage and they couldn’t hear us. It was kind of old-person-funny because I kept having to be careful to not fuck up my back. lol. Hit me! Ack! Not at that angle or I’ll throw out my back! *giggle*

I amuse me.

breakfast beckons

When I think of leaving the bay one of the things I wonder about is how technology actually works for people outside of this bubble. Everyone is in a bubble. But what color and flavor varies. I have traveled since tech became a thing… but I’ve not lived outside the valley in 20 years.

I wake up and reach for my God-box, my externalized brain, my friends. Most mornings I wake up to a message that a friend left after I went to sleep. My community lives in here. I don’t see my community in person much.

If I flew back to California for a week a year I could probably schedule as much in person time with most of my friends as I get living here.

I wonder how Noah and I will do at making friends together when we leave. Here we don’t really share friends. That’s complicated. I’ve tried and it didn’t go that well. My friends mostly like him fine. His friends mostly don’t care for me. I don’t know what we are going to do when we meet new people. I have this chip on my shoulder that is going to make everything hard. I assume that geeks are going to judge me and think they are better/smarter/more worthy and I’m a bitch to start with.

I can’t get over fucking K telling me that I should expect to have people think I’m stupid because I am a woman and I don’t work in tech. That was what, 15 years ago?

I still hate you and everyone in your profession for that comment. Woo.

Will I do better with geeks outside this bubble? Will I feel more like tribe for them because I know all the stupid references even if I don’t care about them? Or will I feel hostile?

I don’t know yet.

Youngest Child has outgrown the last of the newborn size diapers. She’s just shy of 14 weeks old. That seems right. I’m going to miss them. They were so adorable. One more step. One more thing to move on from.

Oh hey, EC did get another box from her grandmother. She got a bracelet and a necklace. I’m not sure why the grandmother thought they needed their own box… that’s odd. See, it’s good I didn’t do anything with my pissiness. Another box came. I feel like an ungrateful piece of shit but that’s not it.

It’s that on Eldest Child’s birthday it’s crappy to send things for her siblings (and the box came for her dad before hers as well) before her so that she feels like everyone but her is getting a present for her birthday. That part isn’t kind.

I’m trying to present this to EC as lessons in patience and the vagaries of the post office. Even if she put all the boxes in the mail on the same day there is no guarantee how they will arrive.

So I can have my feelings in my head and shut up about them and that’s fine. I can wait. I can send a perfectly polite thank you card in the end that doesn’t acknowledge that I felt ungrateful and bitchy. She doesn’t need to know that.

I do still wish she wouldn’t have sent so much more for the baby than the birthday girl. I mean, really. I will feel the same on each kid’s birthday.

I am enjoying fantasizing about packing. How to organize. How much is necessary. Why things might be a good idea and what things why not. We do a lot of food prep on the go. In the normal course of things I carry around a ridiculous amount of shit in my van.

ack. must stop dithering and take baby

I keep trying to figure out why I have this intense burning need to go.

Didn’t I make a beautiful house and garden?

I did.

But you know what? Uhhh… I made them. If you think I can’t do it again you can fuck right off.

My home is Noah and my kids.

The bay turned out to be too big. I wanted to find a way to make my friends my family. That was not something I could figure out in a sustainable way that worked to fill my needs. That makes sense.

I wish I didn’t feel like a failure for that. I have really wonderful friends. They are friends. They are super awesome as friends.

I created a network that exceeded anything I had any right to hope for. And it’s not enough. That’s about me. This need inside of me is too big.

I don’t think I’ll find it with friends somewhere else. That’s not it.

I think I will be a great community member somewhere else. I will not be looking for family. I mean, some day we want to foster. But I don’t think I have it in me to trust any friends to get all that close though. I’m scared.

The Quiet One told me that I may have broken… but I broke open.

I don’t know if that is allowed to be true. It’s complicated.

I can’t be that open. I mean, I will probably always have my intense friendships. But I don’t know that I will ever permit anyone to ask for a family designation/title again. That well is poisoned.

We have the aunties. All of the uncles have opted out or been expelled for good reasons. My adopted Dad is still grandpa. He’s been really kind to my kids. He visits us and we visit him and he spends time with my them. I’m really grateful that he cares enough to reach out and try to see my children.

But… all the others have fallen away. That’s ok. But I’m not going to be able to stay here and slap a happy smile on my face and pretend that I never tried and failed. I am not good at playing that game.

I am capable of resetting the board and not having the history.But I can’t keep doing this over and over forever or I’ll do to my kids what was done to me. And I won’t actually cut contact with everyone. I have neat friends and my friends live on the internet anyway.

I want to go back to just being grateful when someone spends 30 minutes talking to me once or twice a year. I don’t want to feel like all the moments in between are a rejection. They aren’t. I tried too hard here. I poured too much of myself into the begging. I didn’t pace myself for the marathon of living here.

I didn’t even know what it might mean or that it might really happen.

Doing the marathon that is. I’m 100% in uncharted territory with this whole forever family thing. I am rapidly on my way to having been a mother for as long as I was a child. My mom didn’t treat life like a marathon. She’s sprinting until she dies. And some of that is kind of her fault and some of it is the consequence of a really shitty life.

My life is so easy. I will never be able to understand my mother.

And if my kids turn out to suck maybe I’m a worse mother than my mother after all. We’ll see.

For the first time in almost twelve years of marriage I hope my mother in law sends another fucking box of presents. She sent a box of presents for Eldest Child’s tenth birthday that happens next week. (Woo! Big kid! So Exciting!!!)

Guess what she sent? She sent clothes for the baby. She sent two identical boxes (one for EC and one for MC) that are intended to be memory boxes for the infant period. It would be an appropriate gift for Youngest Child because I’d stand a chance of still having most of the things for this box… but uhhh…. ten years later I don’t have a lot of these things. I didn’t save the first bib or first binky. So uhm…

And another dang blanket. Clearly baby sized.

This is the first time I have ever hoped she’ll send another box. Not one thing in there was an appropriate/nice birthday present and she’s not usually a complete failure in the gift department.

The third time is the charm is this delightful baby. We went for a walk yesterday and she hung out cheerfully in a stroller for an hour. Not a peep out of her. She smiled at the big kids while we were walking. She seemed to like that each big kid took a turn pushing her and she was excited.

My Youngest Child is such a glorious person. Getting to spend time with her feels like a present from the universe. I’m so happy about hanging out with her. Even though it is also exhausting.

That’s life, buddy.

We are going to try the stroller a few more times before I make any sort of commitment there. We currently have one that a neighbor left out on the sidewalk free (my favorite reason to try something new) but it’s a terrible design. By the time we got back all three of us had very sore wrists. I know that better/more ergonomic handle set ups exist… but it’s not worth investing in until I know the baby likes a stroller so much that we might actually use it.

I hate strollers in general… but my back hurts so badly right now I feel like someone slammed me backwards into a wall. I hurt from neck to hips. It burns. I saw my chiropractor yesterday and my massage therapist tomorrow. I should go back to acupuncture. I could probably also benefit from trying to see the personal trainer again.

Where is that money tree when I need it.

How in the world am I going to manage when I leave all my medical support? This is going to be terrifying as fuck.

I had an interesting chat with the kids last night before bed. Middle Child asked me about why I yelled earlier in the day. Because it hadn’t been necessary. I said, “Well. Let me tell you a story.” I told them (as if it weren’t me) about a little girl who was moved around a lot and learned to be very nasty to people because people always say, “If you are good enough you can stay” but they never mean it and there is no way for her to be good enough. She always has to leave every home. After a while she was just mean to people to start off with because that way she doesn’t hope and get hurt extra anymore. I talked about why she would learn to hate herself and be very very mean to herself every time she makes any kind of mistake. Those are the only kind of words she has really heard.

Then what do you think would happen if she grew up and had children and had to learn how to talk to herself and other people as if they all loved each other.

Would there be bumps in that road as she learns how to love herself and other people?

I learn how to love myself by interacting with my children. I replace my inside voice with their voices over time very carefully and deliberately.

I fucking love that my children tell me not to call myself or my mistakes stupid. They are silly.

So I said, “Notice how the mistake you made was the exact same pattern of mistake I do?” Middle Child being the plucky soul they are said, “YES! That’s why it seemed so mean!!! You mess up just like that all the time!”

“I do. And what you don’t know is that inside my head I am always screaming at myself the way I screamed at you. Sometimes in my head I get confused and I forget that you aren’t me because you are my me-not-me and inside my body when you mess up the same way I do… I get agitated. Because my body freaks out when you mess up like it messes up when I mess up. I shouldn’t. It’s not fair. It means I over react. I yell because I’m treating you like me. And that sucks.”

“Oh. Wow. That really sucks. You shouldn’t ever talk to yourself like you yelled at me.”

“I know. I’m working on it. It has gotten a lot better… but it’s hard to unlearn everything you learn as a very young child. It’s why I drill you so much on habits you want to have as a grown up. Changing as a grown up sucks so much.”

Separately, Middle Child asked me to take a week off the forums and spend more time with them. That sounds like a lovely “End of school” present.

I love that my children love me. They show me how to love people. They show me how to forgive and work harder. Because they deserve every speck of energy I can muster for them. Someday I hope I will really be the mother they deserve.

Noah, I wouldn’t have absolutely any of this without you. I wouldn’t have these people without you. I wouldn’t have had this privileged walled garden experience without you.

And, randomly… it’s nice that every single person in our network locally is talking about how much they will miss us from the neighbors to the grocery store clerks to our car mechanic. They all say they understand and they hope they won’t fall off the Christmas card list.

Oh I won’t forget you wonderful people. I hope you will write back and tell me about your own adventures. I love you and I want to know how your story continues. I know it will.

Got rid of two dressers today. Packed several more boxes. Shifted around books and clothes again. Other than books we are very close to having all the kid stuff in the play room. That helps the kids visualize how much they have. With it spread through the whole house they can’t keep doing the “Oh I’ll just bring this with me” dance. They are looking around and feeling a bit overwhelmed.

We have serious art supplies. We should have an art party this summer. We have soooo many kinds of materials.

I think I have either packed or gotten rid of half of our books so far. I’m leaving out the ones I want to encourage the kids to read before it goes into storage.

Tomorrow I’m going to shift the pantry. Open up the garage a bit. Be ready to get rid of one of those shelving units.

I have a vision in my head of how I want the house to look for staged pictures. I hope to take them in September. Rather, I hope to hire someone who is talented at taking pictures and have them come take a bunch of pictures of my house and yard.

The yard is absolutely beautiful. It has finally started arriving where I wanted it to be. I have made magic. I’m a god damn good gardener. *pat self on back*

Right now for science the kids are drawing detailed pictures of the plants in our yard. We are going to make a series of drawings to show how they change this summer. We are carefully labeling the pictures. I am going to have the kids write information about the plants. By the time we move the children will be able to instantly name all these plants forever.

In our heads these plants will mean Wonderland.

I should take more pictures of the plants. The hanging baskets are blooming and they make my heart sing. I will miss this yard.

In my head there is a picture waiting to happen. It will be taken from behind the bench swing in the back yard. It’ll be the back of mine and Noah’s heads. We will be looking through the window at our children playing in the house.

The view I love the most is my front porch looking in.

I have so much tidying and organizing left to do in the yard. I’m looking forward to it.

I feel like I should shave off the blue potato vine. It’s eating the patio area. It’s hard to have enough sunlight for the pots of vegetables.

So much in the ground. We have permanent: apple (3 kinds), plum, cherry, orange, blueberry, strawberry, sage, grape, spearmint, chocolate mint, asparagus, oregano, and tons of non-food plants. This season we have bell peppers, potatoes, corn, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, a few kinds of beans, sunflowers, and artichokes.

I will miss our little harvest.

Time to brush teeth and go to bed with my baby. Gosh I like her.

Pam was here on Thursday and I stayed up very late because I wanted to hear all the words she was willing to say to me. I haven’t slept well since. I just… I feel like I’m doing that vibrating with energy thing. I want to separate from my family and be an individual person. Not be a milking machine. Only 2-4 years to go…

I feel like I’m very overly focused on negativity. I want to complain about every one and every thing. Even though I feel pretty happy. It’s like being happy makes me more irritated by the things that aren’t perfect yet.

How very very codependent I am with my friends is bothering me. Many of the people I spend time with are abused or traumatized people. Many of them are not that great at adulting. I let these friends take up a lot of space in my head and then I waste hours and hours and hours being frustrated by the steps these folks won’t take to change their lives.

As if I have room to talk.

BUT THAT DOESN’T STOP ME FROM JUDGING IN MY HEAD. BECAUSE I’M A FUCKING ASSHOLE.

One lady I like a lot. She’s so nice and kind and gentle. So nice and kind and gentle she is letting her kid walk all over her. I’m deeply worried about both of them.

Another lady I like a lot. She’s deep in grief. I worry a lot about how she is balancing what she owes the dead with what she owes the living.

Another lady I like a lot. She’s struggling to cope with her grief over losing a connection she never ever thought she could even want. I worry that she is going to fall into that hole and not ever be willing to try again.

Life is nothing but trying again.

I think I frequently make wrong choices. I think I waste so much time and effort and energy on stupid things I shouldn’t do. I am sitting in a glass house with a big pile of rocks. Does it make it any better that I’m not saying almost anything to these people about what I think they should do?

Dude I know that my opinion ain’t worth nothing. Nobody ought to listen to me.

Except my kids. And that sucks for them. Ha.

I wouldn’t want control over these peoples lives if I could have it. I am not actually wise enough or omnipotent enough to know what they really should do. I don’t have Noah’s hubris that I can think through all the possible repercussions and make the Right Choice. I think I’m going to make the wrong choices over and over and stumble towards a path that is right enough for me.

I see my friends hurting and I want them to hurt less. Sometimes the ways in which they are hurting are ways in which I instantly feel and believe that I know something that might help. I’m mostly wrong. I’m mostly lying to myself. I’m mostly keeping these thoughts in my head and not sharing them because fuck me and my stupid ass advice.

Seriously dude. Fuck me.

But I can’t get my brain to shut off. I don’t want to have these elaborate thoughts about other peoples lives. I don’t want to strategize someone else’s divorce. I don’t want to be constantly weighing and measuring in my head what kinds of services my friends should be getting for their kids.

It’s exhausting.

I hide at home partially because the weight of “keeping an eye on people” wears me the fuck out. What do I do with this keeping an eye on? Mostly nothing. But it feels like what my inner child requires of me so that I won’t turn out to be one more piece of shit who just didn’t notice some egregious problems.

I’m not calling CPS left and right so clearly I think people are doing well enough. But I’m always scared. Who is going to go off the rails? I don’t trust that anyone is so awesome they could never fuck up.

I don’t trust anyone. There’s a piece of me that feels so grateful that CPS came to check on my family. I get my kids evaluated by Teh Authoritays pretty frequently because I want to be checked up on because I’m totally capable of going off the rails and abusing the shit out of my kids. I don’t want to though. So I put tons of checks and balances in place so my babies don’t have to be at the mercy of my kindness. I’m not that kind. What I have instead is an incredibly well developed Super-Ego and the desire to keep my forever family.

I dislike this negativity in my head.

I want to think about the good parts. The parts I admire. The parts I am striving to emulate. There’s not one person I want to give advice to that I don’t try to copy in some way at some times. Generally speaking I think they are all much better people than me. But good people don’t always think strategically about their own benefit. Sometimes they care too much about the feelings of assholes.

I want to teach my friends how to be bigger assholes like me so they won’t get kicked so hard. But it doesn’t work like that. My schtick works for me for complicated reasons that won’t work for other people and I know it. But it still hurts to see my friends be hurt and I’m a selfish piece of shit and I want to hurt less. So I want my friends to get hurt less. But I don’t have much control over this since I’m not the one hurting them to start with.

So I inappropriately think controlling thoughts in their direction. WITH THE POWER OF MY MIND I WILL HELP YOU TO BE A BIGGER ASSHOLE SO THAT YOU GET SHIT ON LESS BECAUSE YOU ARE AN AWESOME PERSON AND PEOPLE WHO PICK ON YOU DESERVE TO HAVE A RASH THAT MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO EVER SIT DOWN AGAIN.

I am at my absolute limit for how much control I can exert over Noah and the kids. The kids are getting old enough that I need to start backing off more seriously. In some ways I already have. So to replace the codependent relationships I want to be having with my mother and my cousin and my aunt… I think too much about my friends.

I’m trying to both curb my codependency and forgive myself for the impulses. I limit how much time I spend with the friends I want to “take care of” on purpose because I get inappropriate. I don’t need to go clean anyone’s damn house. I don’t need to get into another situation where I’m providing respite/therapeutic care to special needs kids to help their parents out. I love and miss the Bonus Kids but my stress levels have gone down so much it isn’t funny. Trying to learn what I needed to learn to help them… that was hard. And I was fighting their mother’s impulses the whole way because helping them would require her changing and she didn’t want to.

I can’t do that any more. I need to stop fighting other people to change. It isn’t my place. It’s wrong of me. And it’s ineffective and I don’t have time for ineffective behavior. It’s hilarious to me how much “being effective” has become a more important metric than “being nice”. Fuck nice.

If someone else wants to sit still with their mental illness and not fix big glaring problems in their life… I have enough shit of my own to fix. fuck.

ugh

At dinner I commented that I couldn’t actually remember… but I think this has been my best Mother’s Day ever. EC said that she remembers that last year was… not good. I said I don’t remember and I don’t want to. Moving on! Today was great!

Noah and EC both gave me cards. EC and MC both gave me little presents of stuff… I bought and they gave back to me. Sure. Why not. It’s the thought that counts. I’m happy. Noah did his normal breakfast/lunch cooking, We had Thai takeout for dinner. Lovely day. I bought myself flowers because I wanted them at the farmers market.

Noah and I had an interesting conversation today. I am… probably closer to what I understand as a political progressive than Noah is. Noah notices things like most revolutions don’t work and not thinking through the long-term consequences means that when you do things sometimes they blow up spectacularly.

I can’t get past the example of my own life. If I had done the things other people called “smart” if I had “gone along” I would be dead. I am breaking all these rules and refusing to think through the consequences in a country where a successful revolution was fought because a bunch of folks who were mostly 17-22 decided to blow some shit up.

If I had “thought through” the consequences of my brother and father killing themselves would I have prosecuted? Would my current life be possible if I hadn’t?

It isn’t that he’s wrong.

Depending on how you define “success” there is no human culture or belief or way of being that has ever been successful because everything has changed. What we are doing today is no more permanent than slavery under the Roman Empire.

I’m still trying to figure out how/where I am going to grow with regards to sex. Coercive sex that hurts me is not something I can keep doing forever. I tried. I really did. I tried to do what I was told. I tried to do what was wanted of me.

There turn out to be consequences that neither I nor Noah could predict super well when we got married. We were both trying to make considerate choices. But I was negotiating from a very broken point of view. I was actively negotiating and pushing for things that were abusive to me. I’m not in any way saying it was all Noah’s fault. It wasn’t. *I* hurt me.

Why didn’t I just negotiate for something different, something healthier…

I negotiated for what I was told I was supposed to get from when I was a toddler. I’m sorry that I’m not as healthy as someone who had a different life. I’m trying. I’m improving. But the progress is slow and uneven and fucked up.

Did Noah and I really think through all the consequences of our sexual choices?

Maybe it’s really hard to think through all the possible consequences of anything.

I don’t have very many answers today. But I’m glad I get to keep talking to Noah about it.

My only complaint is the day would have been smoother if the kids had unloaded the dishwasher last night.

That means it is a great day. My family has been lovely and kind.