Well… I’m not pregnant any more. I am perking up. We went to Lupin Lodge today. The kids couldn’t stop saying, “Oh my god we get to be NAKED.” It was funny. The random adults there were shockingly cool. There was a long game of volleyball in the pool with all the kids and adults playing. It was really lovely. We had a fantastic time. I talked to a lady who is pretty sure she remembers J from way back when.

I am going to miss all the connections I have in this valley.

We spent the time with a friend and her daughter. It was great to see them. My friend enjoyed snuggling the baby and the kids all had a great time together.

Last weekend we went to the waterpark. Today one of my kids is going back to the water park with a friend. A different friend is coming over to see the rest of us. Tomorrow I get to go see Sarah.

Life is picking back up. I have more energy than I have had in years. I am not sure (I might be misremembering… my memory is a funny place) but I suspect this is the most energy I’ve had since marathon training. I haven’t had this since before the road trip. I’ve been dead with exhaustion for years. I had a brief stint of almost manic energy when I was cheating and working on the bathroom remodel, but it wasn’t like this.

This is being sustainable and feeling good.

One of my former students (definitely one of my favorites, she was one of the ones who came over to paint my house and she visited post-graduation) contacted me after a long break. It’s so nice to hear from her again. She was one of the queer/poly kids I carefully kept my mouth shut around while broadcasting Complete Non-Judgement. She moved out of state and is doing really well. I’m so happy for her.

She tells me that I should get on finishing the second book and publishing it. She said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been able to relate to a narrative voice the way I do to yours. I hope you never stop writing, you are so good at it.” I’m going to cry now. That’s so gosh darned nice. Wonderful people like you being out there are a lot of why I write so much. I love you. I share what I have with you… mostly that’s my brain. It’s a bit weird… but it’s fun sometimes.

I am trying to figure out how to chill on my crankiness. It has improved in the past almost four months from the pregnancy extreme but I’m not 100% back to where I was pre-pregnancy. For some reason having an infant who wakes me up all night long to insist on nursing even though it fucking hurts my shoulder to nurse in bed is harder than just having big kids. Who knew.

(ME! I FUCKING KNEW THAT.)

I asked the kiddos to schedule their next week. Look at what we have planned and *you* make the decision for how you are going to get all your stuff done in that time. I will refer you back to *your* schedule over and over but I’m not going to discuss what you should do next. I need to bounce that responsibility back onto the kids. I’m going bananas trying to make the schedule then enforce it. Something has to give somewhere. If you want me to make the schedule, fine–but you have to bloody follow it. If you want to make the schedule and I just remind you to check it over and over again, fine.

But I cannot and will not do both. I get so god damn mean and it sucks for everyone involved. That isn’t working. Something has to give somewhere. This week… the give is the children doing the planning.

Let’s see how this goes. hahahahahahahahaha ahem.

Planning to try things and fail and see how it goes is how I got my first teaching job. Those kids are still contacting me so not every part of it failed. Hopefully it will go ok with these children too.

All I can do is pray.