The best part about getting older is I have more patience for my patterns and seasons and shit. I’ve had a rough couple of days emotionally. The people in my house tell me I’m not freaking out at them so that’s good. Internally I am completely fucking freaking out.

I’ve been wanting to mutilate myself a lot. I want to remind myself that I don’t deserve anything and I am not important and I need to just shut up because no one fucking cares what I think.

It’s kind of hard to maintain those thought patterns in this house though. My family thinks I deserve everything. My family thinks I am super ridiculously important. My family wants me to talk and they like hearing what I think.

Sometimes they inadvertently do something that doesn’t land how they mean it and I get upset and I feel like maybe they don’t feel about me the way they do.

But they really do and it’s not ok to force them to jump through hoops to prove it. I have to just believe it.

That’s hard.

I have to grow up to be a nice white lady and except for glowing in the dark I’m not a great candidate. I’m an asshole and a monster and I’m not interested in being nice for you. Only due to racism and structural problems and the fact that I’m a rich motherfucker…

I have to be aware of power differentials and *I* have to be nice. Or I’m the problem.

It’s funny how that’s always been true but now I care more. I don’t want to be this problem. I want to not be this problem. I don’t want to hurt people and that means I have to soften my affect and I have to learn how to communicate without scaring people and I have to compromise.

Fuck all this.

Art. Video games. Respect. Worthiness. Time. Appreciation.

It’s complicated that I have several jobs that take up an enormous amount of my time and brain but folks think of me as just sitting around not doing much.

What does it mean to value someone?

I want to be able to set these boundaries without kicking and screaming and being nasty. I did a fairly good job of backing out of the house deal. I expressed that it wasn’t going to work for me and I needed to back out and I stopped responding.

I don’t need to tell them that I feel like I was punched in the gut and spit on so I want to get nasty. They didn’t punch me in the gut nor spit on me and I don’t need to get nasty. They want what they want and that’s ok. It’s not what I want to offer. That’s ok too.

No one needs to be nasty. It just didn’t work out.

But my insides want to be nasty. I don’t even have anything good to be nasty about. It was a possible deal that didn’t work out. We started out as friends but distant ones and I suspect we will be as close as we would have stayed anyway when I move. Which is to say… we won’t be close and that’s ok.

I am allowed to need color. You are allowed to need cream walls. Totes legit. All cool. Paint any other house, k?

My family wants to be respectful of me with video games. They’ve been doing great at meals on their own. I noped out of a conversation with Eldest Child where she wanted to extensively detail what she wants to do on a video game. I patted myself on the back. I was civil and calm and shit.

And the baby is starting to fuss again.

• had protein heavy breakfast
• dropped kid off at camp
• 1/2 hour meeting with staff folks
• took books to Half Price Books
• acquired Mighty Suitcase for cheap as per Sarah’s instructions
• ate salad lunch
• Dr appt to consolidate blood test info with GP & request titer checks
• scheduled blood draw appt
• scheduled DMV appt for Real ID
• followed up with pediatrician office about billing mix up
• loaded dishwasher
• changed many diapers, pottied the baby
• walked 3.3 miles already
• I even braided my damn hair all fancy
• wore the baby for almost the whole time we weren’t in the car so oof weight

I’m tired.

Yesterday I caught up on Mint.

If Noah didn’t have such a good job we’d be in trouble. My self discipline has been shit. I am not feeling proud of me.

Noah followed up on the evaluation for Middle Child! Oh I’m so happy he did.

Camp this far away sucks. Sometimes the drive takes 30 minutes, sometimes over an hour. Around 3 hours of driving back and forth for 6 hours of camp? My back hurts.

I need to respond to a bunch of emails. My inbox is at 50. Ugh.

I am both happy and frustrated. Life. Just…. ugh.

We are making forward progress in about a dozen areas. School continues at a great clip (Personally I’m loving the botany stuff we are doing for science) and by mid-way through this academic year both of my children will be at grade level or above in all subjects. Given that EC started her academic career three years late and had to make up… I’m glad that she’s fully caught up in the third year she is doing academics. So she did a little over two full years of academics for each of her first three years of “school”.

I’m not worried about her abilities in the future.

MC (because of the charter school) didn’t get as behind to start with. We decided to let him start in second instead of third grade because of my pregnancy. He’s probably still a month, maybe two months behind in reading but he is almost caught up and he’s doing great in every other area.

If they continue this rate of progress they will finish elementary school work early. That’d be convenient for me.

We have made a few steps towards the legal stuff we need to take care of. I should call our lawyer tomorrow to schedule updating the will. Always more to do.

We’ve made significant progress towards all of us being vaccinated for the travel that’s coming up. I feel like a walking plague carrier. Cause I kind of am today. Typhoid, Cholera, Hepatitis A, Rabies…. I’m fully loaded baby. We also got a booster update on MMR.

I said when delaying vaccinations for my first child that if our lives were different I would vaccinate differently. Now my third child is absolutely on schedule or getting shots early. BECAUSE WHEN I SAY I WILL MAKE DIFFERENT DECISIONS UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES I AIN’T JUST MAKING SHIT UP.

We continue to get rid of stuff at a dramatic rate.

I need to go get packing tape so I can pack more boxes. I ran out. I have the boxes… but not the tape. We should walk to the dollar store in the morning. We like that walk.

I have been stupid lately and I’ve eaten too much wheat. I had diarrhea. After many many months of the most perfect poop that has ever come out of my butt. I stopped with the stupid wheat and my poop went back to being beautiful displays of properly processed food. I don’t have celiac disease… but wheat fucks me up.

I am getting closer to a travel solution I like for electronic devices.

I’m almost completely to where I need to be on packing stuff like medications and random other “just for travel” accessories. Of course our clothes and other shit aren’t packed and won’t be for a while.

I’m in the middle of four books and I’m having trouble putting the internet down to finish them. Come on Krissy.

I haven’t made more progress on country research this week. I’m feeling overwhelmed.

My children continue to be people with imperfect behavior. Trying to figure out how to encourage them towards the people they want to be as grown ups is hard. It would be so much easier to just say, “Hey… you’re an asshole. Fine. I’ll be mean to you until you decide to stop being an asshole.” But that doesn’t work. WHY NOT?! IT WOULD MAKE MY LIFE EASIER, DAMNIT. Parenting is really hard. We continue to try ways of helping each other be more loving. Some work and some fail.

I’ve been having this weird feeling lately. I can complain about pretty much everyone and everything. It’s a talent. But that doesn’t mean I think that people are bad or doing everything wrong or that I’m better than them.

If I can point out a problem I see in your marriage or in your child’s behavior… in no way shape or form does that mean that I think my marriage or child is better. We suck. I see my fuck ups as clearly or more clearly than I see yours. I ain’t better than anybody. I’m not a better parent.

Ok, I do believe…. that I am more willing to get outside support for my family than most people. But that’s not a “better than” thing exactly.

Just because I think your kid needs something they aren’t getting that doesn’t mean you are a bad parent. You are a parent who hasn’t yet handled a particular issue.

Do you know how many fucking issues I haven’t solved yet? It’s not issues it’s subscriptions.

I know you are trying. When I point out something I see it isn’t to bludgeon you with what a failure you are because you haven’t already fixed this thing. If you had already fixed everything you would be perfect and boring and who would want to know you? Damn we’d all feel inferior and resent the fuck out of you.

Instead you are beautifully, wonderfully imperfect. You inspire me to be better because you are better than me and worse than me and you keep going and trying. I love you.

I wouldn’t be who I am without you. I’m so glad you are here.

Even if I do think you really ought to help your kid deal with ________ issue.

Shit dude. We are all works in progress. We are perfect works in progress.

Slack continues to make me feel giddy like a school girl. I feel like I have NRE with my friends. Also a stranger on the forums invited me to her private group (where she could discuss the sensitive nature of the scary stuff happening in her life) and I swear to god I almost cried getting that stupid invitation. A stranger saying, “Girl! Of course you need to get in here! I need to hear your point of view!” makes me feel like my crazy codependent fucked up need to talk to strangers isn’t all bad.

Sometimes, I even help. I’m not a superhero or a rescuer or anything stupid like that. I am not saving anyone. I’m just some girl who is telling you that you are important and loved.

Sometimes… that’s enough.

Sometimes it takes me a few minutes of feeling around to get my fingers properly on the home row. Those little nubs are my friends. They gently caress my fingertips and say, “Here I am! Your journey to feeling ok is this way!” From those little nubs I can find anything and I don’t have to look.

Her sweetness doesn’t love me typing around her as she sleeps on my chest. But I’m exploding with feelings.

I want to move around, but I’ve already walked over five miles today and I’m tired.

I want to have sex but I don’t feel even a little bit comfortable leaving her sweetness alone in a room with her shiny new rolling ability.

I want parties and people.

I want to go far, far away.

I want to invite Y to be my date to my 20th high school reunion. She didn’t go to that high school but she went to middle school with us and there is this one dude who has been unable to leave her alone all these years. It would be interesting to see if he has grown up enough to be nice to her finally. Though I have my doubts.

I don’t think I’ll be in town next summer. I will have other things to do.

I want to crave sugar less and I want to have control over my temper.

I want to understand what my children want for their futures so I can help the prepare. Middle Child has some conflicted feelings about home schooling. This is funny to me because he seems to believe that his life would be easier if people made him learn things earlier.

So at this point he’s about 2 months behind “grade level” on English according to the final test done by the charter school and he’s bang on schedule for everything else. It’s not even like the child who is behind feels like they would benefit from school. But the kid who is caught up… he kinda wishes I made him go to school. Every year when it’s time to sign up for school he says no. Then at the end of the year he yells at me that he should have gone to school.

I need to not take on feeling bad because I cannot please my child. Some people don’t want to be pleased. That needs to be ok. Sometimes, he’s truly not in the damn mood to be pleased and that’s ok. It’s not about me. I don’t need to let it wreck my day. He can have his own feelings and I can have my own feelings and we can sit back to back and sigh loudly about how annoying feelings are.

I tell my children that they are perfect *and* they are works in progress because that is how being human works. You are always perfectly yourself and there are always aspects of you that could use some improvement. There is no such thing as a finished person. Keep growing.

I want to go far far away and meet people who have never lived how people live here. I want to ask questions and listen to answers. I don’t want to change people; I want to learn. Yo quiero aprender. I need to not be embarrassed about all the mistakes I’m going to make. It’s ok to sound stupid. It’s kind of unavoidable.

I want to learn how my assumptions are wrong. I want to learn why what I want is and is not possible.

I want to watch my children lean on each other and laugh. The way they enjoy one another overflows my heart with joy.

My life is not fair. It is so ridiculously good that I cannot wrap my head around it. There’s a lot to schedule… but I like a challenge.

My kids ate my ice cream–but they left the kind they bought for themselves.

They think they like variety. Then they come home and eat all of my vanilla.

Because fuck everything, vanilla is the best.

But we have to buy the other flavors! So that they can eat the vanilla.

Whiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

KIDS ARE NOT ALWAYS POLITE. GOSH DARN IT TO HECK AND BACK.

*cat butt face*

AND THE GOD DAMN FANCY DONUT STORE IS CLOSED TOMORROW.

This is how I know I don’t have real problems and I laugh at myself. This is my irritation for the day. This is the problem.

I mean, my entire body hurts like fire and standing up is sometimes really really hard…

But I’m safe. I’m loved. My family is mostly really considerate and wonderful and loving.

I think I’m going to stop letting them buy other fucking flavors of ice cream. All vanilla. Because then I have no reason to be angry when you finish up a container of ice cream. There will be another vanilla sitting there instead of lime sherbet.

It’s not that lime sherbet is bad. It’s not. There are times when it is perfectly acceptable. But I have to be in the mood. 99% of the time ice cream should be vanilla or get the fuck out. Maybe little pieces of chocolate are allowed to decorate the vanilla goodness.

Maybe.

Ok, so vanilla and vanilla with chocolate chunks.

Acceptable choices to always always always have. WHY DID YOU BRING HOME PISTACHIO AND LIME SHERBET?!?! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?????

If I actually yelled any of this I would be an abusive nasty bully. Instead I’m silently typing it and giggling at myself.

I did talk to Noah first, earlier in the kitchen. He’s very patient with me. He’s good at saying that it’s ok for me to feel irritation even if the kids are behaving fine and I’m fine and…. life is irritating. That’s ok.

I wouldn’t trade them for all the vanilla ice cream that ever was. And even though they are my entire forking world…

THOSE LITTLE TURKEYS STOLE MY ICE CREAM. And left me lime sherbet.

Damnit. That sucks.

This is like that damn Rocky Road that sat in the freezer for months until Noah finally ate it for the kids. Sheesh.

Stooooooop buying other ice creams. You don’t actually like them very much… I don’t like them very much…

It’s not like I was deprived. I could have had a candy bar. I could have had brioche. My life is not hard when it comes to food. Fuck, if I wanted to go to the damn ice cream store this minute I could.

If I wanted to send Noah to the store for ice cream I could. I’d rather be pissy; I guess. And now the baby is trying to suck on my thigh. Guess I’m done being able to type. Fuss.

7.5 months till night weening. I can’t wait.

Ok. If I want to be loving and respectful towards the people who have already given me commitments around helping me I need to get my head around what that timeline means. And soon.

Do I have ten years to get everything in place and build the network? What does that mean? My baby girl isn’t going to be safe/ok if I start field research in the next ten years. But that means in the next ten years I need to get to the point where I can cite chapter and verse on all the current incest research. I am going to travel and meet people and make friends in distant and diverse lands.

Because that *is* part of my skill set.

So I think I’m shooting for 2030. That’s probably when I want to have a big group organizational meeting and actually get IDB going as a “Everyone is assigned tasks and we build the network and figure out who is doing what and…”

I have just over ten years to go meet the people who will be on a team with me.

I had to stop and rewrite that sentence. It won’t be *my* team. Perspective matters. I will go meet folks who want to form a team. But I will not be looking to be their boss.

What is it that I am still referring to?

I need to get hygiene, physical maintenance (exercise and eating), and my god damn temper under control.

I can’t keep yelling under stress or I am going to be the abusive bully who wrecks the whole project. That’s sure as the sun coming up tomorrow.

It isn’t that I have to stop having or expressing emotions. It is that I have to figure out constructive ways of dealing with my emotions. *That* is a lot of what I mean when I say I will grow up. I have continuously made progress over the past 18 years of legal adulthood. But I am not where I want to be.

And that’s… yeah. I’m running out of time on this stage. This work is complicated.

I need to get my personal schedule figured out so I can write the books I need to write. I need to re-edit Outrunning and start selling it. The folks who have read it have given me mostly positive reviews… beyond saying it is really hard to read because it is so intense. I think I have figured out that there need to be more than book about the 18-25 period of my life. One part is going to be Part 2 and it will be written with my children as the Ideal Readers and it will not be juicy and sexy and tawdry. But it will be honest about my behavior and it will talk about what I learned and why.

And more than anything I hope I get my ass in gear to write about the education I received at the hands of the Middle Aged Guard. Gosh. I want to write about the Wednesday munch and the Saturday parties and what function they had in my life. Because you were all so important and I love you so much and I don’t know how to honor the gift I was given better than to show its beauty.

I *was* taught a lot of lessons very directly. I’m lucky.

So I want to edit Outrunning but keep it as a book for adults. I need to write the 12 year old version of the same book…. but I think I need both editions. I want to write Part 2. I want to write about the Middle Aged Guard. Then I can write about Wonderland.

I feel both like I am disgustingly self obsessed and like I am trying to get a handle on my own complexity so that I can give more and that’s really not about self obsession.

So that’s what I want to get done in the next ten years, I suppose. Write those books. Figure out how to sell them. Meet The People. My Youngest Child is not going to get 18 years of Mom-Companion in the same way the big kids have. I need to go do this work.

No one gets everything.

I need to get busy.

I’ve read the books (on incest). I’ve read the studies. But I didn’t practice with the titles and details until I can recite them chapter and verse. I have to. Even though that’s going to be depressing as shit.

The work I pick is depressing. It’s a good thing I have so much sunshine in my personal life.