That was a nasty fall! Good grief. I have seen my chiropractor and my massage therapist. I’m doing better but I still don’t feel good.

My thoughts are swirling round in a blender.

When I talk about things I’m upset about the least offending people think I’m talking about them and get upset. So instead of processing being upset about person A I am comforting person B.

I understand why POC have no time for white nonsense.

Looks like there will be a break in the rain today. I should get some yard work done. If the kids get their academics done (it is looking like a maybe) we can go to the park this afternoon. I’m seeing the contractor today because hopefully work starts on Monday.

The kids aren’t behind but they are struggling to learn pacing and I’m not being as nice about this process as I should be. I need to give an apology during breakfast. They are going to fuck up. If they were in school they would have to fuck up in order to find out all the bits and pieces. I take this shit so personally and it really isn’t about me. *sigh*

We are so very close to an empty house. I will probably do another cull today because the kitchen drawers are going to have to be emptied out. There are only two drawers of stuff plus the refrigerator plus a container that sits on the counter left in the kitchen. All the cabinets are empty.

I placed an order this morning. I think I’m done Christmas shopping. If I’m good I will take boxes to the post office this morning and then I won’t have to feel so guilty about my niblings. I’m getting presents for my children, my niblings, and my spouse. No one else this year. I just can’t.

I keep thinking about things like cooking and sewing. I’m not sure why.

I keep having these whispers of stories run through my head.

I keep thinking I need to get a graduate degree in psych stuff so that I can manage my imposter syndrome better. I don’t think I’ll learn that much more than I know. I think I’ll have a piece of paper to point at.

So tired. I slept pretty well. I’m healing. In an 8 hour stretch I think Her Sweetness only woke up once.

She’s close to night weaning. Muahahahaha

Today’s tasks:

1. yard work
2. take boxes to the post office
3. box up the porn and take another run to the storage unit (want to dig out Lego’s) (So this is like three tasks in one)
4. finish getting the last bits out of bedrooms and the kitchen
5. more tidying in the garage
6. take pictures of the furniture to put on Craigslist
7. create CL ads
8. maybe schedule another date with the neighbor who wants to babysit Her Sweetness before we move
9. finish PT exercises
10. meeting with contractor
11. laundry
12. oh yeah, help my kids with school
13. write a postcard or three
14. figure out what I am making for dinner while Noah has the night off
15. make it to the park? we reallllllllllllly should
16. snuggle my baby and let her know that she is the most important creature in the history of ever
17. help Her Sweetness learn how to stand

gosh that’s enough.

I don’t feel like I did much yesterday. I went to PT and had a hard conversation in the morning. I fell and hurt myself on the way out. My arms are doing quite poorly today as a result of the fall.

Yesterday:

• PT exercises (yes these are up to a fucking hour)
• Went to PT (including driving this is a 2+ hour experience)
• Took the next pile of stuff for storage out to the van to clear space in the garage
• Did dishes and loaded the dishwasher (once? Twice?)
• Spent 2+ hours providing emotional support to the kids (puberty is sucking)
• Made breakfast (a deeeeeelicious scramble: eggs, garlic, butter, jalapeño, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, ham. It was excellent.)
• More general tidying and shifting stuff around
• My online shit. Some of which feels like work and some doesn’t.

Why does that feel like a day where I did nothing? That simple list shows at least six hours of work and realistically many more. That’s not laziness.

My standards for myself are very unhealthy.

Today we have had two breakfasts already. I made the first: steel cut oats, apples, cinnamon, vanilla, and brown sugar with cream. Nom. Second breakfast was apple pie. mmmm

I need to do laundry again (I did five damn loads on Monday). Tidy the kitchen. Her Sweetness is teething. Top two front teeth are coming in and she’s an unhappy baby because of it. In between bursts of rain I should probably try to do a little bit in the yard.

I’m feeling sad and low and depressed. I am hurting a fair bit. I’m thinking about Sarah all the time. Usually I talk to her all the time so it makes sense. At first this break up was feeling almost like a relief (we put way too much on ourselves trying to be there for the other and having less that I feel I owe someone *is* a relief) but it’s feeling less of a relief already.

I will miss Sarah forever. But I seriously don’t know that we are capable of being healthy for one another. She needs a level of not-angry that I can’t provide given how much she promises and drops. That’s not a dynamic I can be in and be nice and healthy. I will fail. I will fail over and over and over. I get angry when I’m disappointed. That’s a fact. Sarah makes promises she can’t keep. That’s a fact. If I am not allowed to get angry with Sarah as part of the contract of our relationship then we can’t have a relationship. Because she can’t keep the promises she makes and I am not capable of not reaction.

So here we are. And it hurts like a motherfucker because I love her with all my heart and soul.

I can’t keep having someone tell me that they will do things for/with me and then tell me that I am just like their abusive mother when I’m upset about them flaking. Nope. Can’t have that in my life. I can’t be your proxy to be mad at your mother forever. I can’t. Just like it isn’t fair to be mad at you for being the latest person to make and break promises, like my mother.

Baggage is real, yo.

My friends tell me I take too much responsibility on myself. But that’s all I have control over. If something is all someone else’s fault the only lesson in the situation for me is “Avoid that person” and that’s not a great lesson in general. I want to know what I can do/change to have better outcomes in the future.

I can’t ever let myself fall in love this hard with someone inconsistent again. Not because they aren’t worthy or lovable. Sarah is worthy and lovable in the extreme. She’s great. She’s a wonderful, fantastic person and I admire her deeply.

But we aren’t compatible and that’s really hard.

I’ve been worrying a lot about how this is going to impact my relationships with Pam and Jenny. Will I pull away because I’m afraid of leaning on people? Will I lean too hard and break the bond? Mostly I’m not reaching out because I’m afraid that absolutely any action on my part will be the wrong one. That’s hard. That’s scary.

My tripod of support lost a leg. What do I do about that now?

I have to be selfish about this to a degree. I have a lot of support to provide in this life. I need to figure out how to support myself enough to provide the support I have agreed to. That’s reality.

I love Sarah. That’s not going to change.

How do I get up and start walking away from this wound and focusing on the people who are still here? That’s hard.

My arms hurt so bad. My elbows and wrists and upper arms and shoulders are all aching really badly.

We have approximately 5ish weeks until we put the house on the market. I do not have the mental nor physical energy to chase all the hundreds of people I know in the bay area. If you want to see us before we go… it would be wise to reach out. Or you won’t see us before we go. Cause that’s how the cookie crumbles.

I love you. It’s not about lack of love.

I just… I’m trying to pull in the pieces of me that I have flung to the wind. I’m trying to sew them up into a canopy that will slow my fall as I jump off this cliff. I want to survive this jump and that’s going to need a well sewn canopy. I’m going to need every piece of me back that I can get back.

And that means I need to stop begging people to love me.

I am feeling utterly overwhelmed. Just talking to the PT about the vaginal dilation stuff she wants me to do is flipping me out and I’m coming home unsettled and kind of fragile and bitchy and that sucks. And I don’t even know how to talk to my kids about the fact that I kind of want to scream and break things because I am overwhelmed by talking to someone who is so emphatic about wanting me to change how my cunt works.

This shit is intense. I feel scared and nervous and upset. I feel like I need to shut down and tighten every muscle in my body for a fight.

Because I’m supposed to put some god damn plastic not-a-dildo up against my vaginal opening and not move it around.

I can’t begin to express how viscerally and existentially upsetting that is right now. Like, I’m literally clenching my legs closed as I type because I feel so upset.

It’s not supposed to be sexy. It’s supposed to be teaching the muscles to recognize being touched as not an attack. My PT stressed repeatedly that the clients who fail to make progress are the clients who say, “I can shove things in even if it hurts.”

Dat me.

I’m supposed to find 20 minutes every day in peace and calm stillness to gently stimulate my vagina. And now I’m crying.

Right this minute I’m feeling very overwhelmed about all the shit on my plate.

Home schooling continues. For the past couple of days I have been having the kids make up their own daily schedules and it has reduced my yelling in very useful ways. The kids are managing their time a little, but it’s a lot of time and brain power from me still. I weirdly enjoyed all the grading I got to do this week.

Packing and getting rid of our stuff is a job.

I have to start doing yard work more seriously to prep for sale. I put in a few hours yesterday and I should be doing an hour or two every day for a while. This is only annoying because the baby is hard core in separation anxiety and she doesn’t want to be put down much while I work.

My kids are needing a lot of emotional coaching right now. It’s a normal part of parenting, but we are having intense therapy level talks almost every day and sometimes multiple times a day. Processing how to appropriately explain the stuff they want to hear about puberty and sex and mental health is hard. Professionals train for years to be able to give the lectures I’m giving and most parents just refuse to answer these questions.

The baby is 9.5 months old and the whole first year is always overwhelming and hard. I’m not sleeping enough and my shoulders are wrecked from night nursing again. But it’s better than it used to be.

And I’m not going to chiro or acupuncture or much massage. Why? Money. Time. Energy. It is hard to do all the work to support my body feeling better. That’s a fucking job and I just don’t have time.

I have been….. partly through idiocy (choice) and partially through absent-mindedness not medicating on a regular schedule. I’m taking pills occasionally but not consistently. I might have to learn how to function without meds when we move. This is hard. I use this drug for a fucking reason.

The PT exercises other than the vaginal stimulation aren’t that hard but they do take time. At least 30 minutes. And now I’m supposed to add 20 minutes/day of vaginal pressure. And I should be out walking a lot. So at this point I should be spending a minimum of two hours/day on exercise. Oh that’s easy to do.

I’m trying as hard as I can to cook more. Noah needs less work on his plate. I keep thinking I’m almost done with packing and things will get easier. Hasn’t quite happened yet. I am praying that when we move and I don’t have as many house and outside chores this will be easier.

Is that it?

I feel a lot of pull to write more. Both fiction (oddly, because that’s not my normal thing…. but I have a couple of stories kicking around in my head and I want to see where they go) and non-fiction. I want to fix the second damn book. Ugh. Frustrating.

I’m still trying to establish a routine with hygiene stuff. Whyyyyyyyyyyyy is this so hard? Because I’m autistic and I have ADHD and PTSD and it’s very well documented that folks with any singular one of these diagnoses struggle with hygiene. IT’S NOT JUST ME.

And then there are all the relationships I feel like I should be doing a bunch of work to maintain. This is feeling so hard.

I’m overwhelmed and trying not to over react. I think that mostly for the past few days I’ve done ok. Today is hard. My kids don’t understand why I want to cry.

Noah would really like sex. He’s being super polite about it. He hasn’t pressured me or bugged me in any way. And we haven’t had sex. I have so many feelings about this.

I don’t know how to center myself right this minute.

Also: administrative note: I am going to try to post more from my phone because the talk to text works best there. It hates the adult-only tag and that makes my blog entries kind of annoying to track. I’m trying to figure it out.

I had dinner with a buddy’s family last night. The couple/grown ups are former students and I adore them. We haven’t gotten together in almost a year because of how overwhelming life has been. It was great seeing them.

They are getting ready to move out of state too. They are just done. I asked her if she feels a little bit mad at her friends and she was taken aback. For her, her friendships are what are carrying her through. I told her that I’m struggling with feeling a little bit mad at my friends. Not because they’ve done anything wrong, not because they deserve it. Because life is so hard and everyone I love has such a small amount to give. That’s feeling so hard. It feels like I don’t deserve to be around my friends because I am not solely overwhelmed with gratitude that people bother to see me at all. That’s a rough combination of feelings. I can tell I am to some degree avoiding people because it’s not ok for me to express my frustration.

I’m scared I will open my big stupid mouth and say something that reveals the frustration I feel.

I mean, I am losing one important relationship this year because I got angry about how I was being treated. That’s a lesson.

People don’t want my authentic self. I’m loud, aggressive, demanding, bitchy, and absolutely unwilling to compromise. Instead people want the high effort front I put on of being kind and gentle. Bah.

I feel like my end result of leaving the bay is knowing that no matter how hard I try I am not capable of fitting in to a group even if some of the people love me. I will always be the problem. I’m having really big feelings about always being the problem.

I feel pathetic that I still worry so fucking much about other people liking me or not. Grow the fuck up, already.

But this is part of the cycle. Me showing anger means I do not deserve friendship. I am not going to be capable of never showing anger. That means I deserve nothing, forever.

This is why Noah is so consciously tolerant of my anger. If I’m not allowed to be angry I’m not allowed to set boundaries and then I’ll just explode in other ways and that’s all bad. But it’s not great that he lets me get angry at him. I suspect “Must Be Respectful” as a rule slightly helps. It definitely restrains me from calling him an asshole more often.

Blah. Blurg.

I didn’t hear Beautiful at the door so we missed a visit. That sucks. I feel so embarrassed.

The remodel is supposed to start tomorrow and I haven’t finished the house. We have plans today so that’s going to be festive. Given that they need to fix our bedroom walls before the other stuff I think it’ll be fine if I’m still moving out of the house on Monday.

We have found three classes on Outschool for Eldest Child that will involve her meeting other children remotely and doing lessons together. It’s not a perfect solution but it might be a step in the right direction.

The kids and I are going to struggle with the speed of academics over the next few weeks. Not because it is too much, but because figuring out the flow and speed and order of operations is rough. It might be too much too. But the kids can get it all done in 2-3 hours when they feel motivated. The fact that when they aren’t motivated it takes all day…. yeah. Tricky.

My kids would love to spend all day playing. They have great imaginations and they never get bored. I am boring though. I’ll take your good time and interrupt it with math. And spelling. Neiner. It’s still more fun than going to school would be. Maybe. Maybe it isn’t and they should be in school. I’m open to this idea. Let’s see where we land.

I’m doing the PT exercises and I feel like they are kicking my butt. And we restarted walking after a break for the terrible air quality and my legs forking hurt. My whole body is pissed right now, from the core out. I’d say that I’m at a 4. It is interrupting and rude but I can function. It’s just distracting in every minute.

I am craving sugary bread like an addiction. It’s not cool.

I’m processing my feelings about my friends still. Trying to compartmentalize. I’ve been getting the same advice over and over and when that starts happening I like to pay attention. Paraphrased from the half a dozen people who have expressed this sentiment in the past few weeks: “You are good at taking responsibility for the problems in your relationships with people. That’s bad. Stop it. Ok, maybe sometimes you bear part of the responsibility, but you never bear all the responsibility and you act like you do.” Yeah that’s true. I act like the problems are all my fault. If only I had tap danced faster. If only I had managed to suck up my disappointment and never expressed anger. If only I had a shorter memory and I didn’t notice promises that were never intended to be kept….

I can tie that back to my step father screaming at me that if I didn’t make something happen it was because I didn’t want it bad enough. My failure to influence other people into behaving how I want them to behave is my fault.

Always my fault.

So if everything is all my fault because I am such a terrible angry person I will just walk away with my terribleness.

For all of my flaws, and there are many, I do not tend to inflict my presence where it is not wanted.

It’s been a lot easier to sigh and relax into Noah lately. Noah may run down like a watch that needs to be wound but he doesn’t make 15 other promises that cut into his ability to keep the first promise he made. He just… really wishes he got to have sex more. It’s complicated. It’s complicated in so many ways, many of which are feeling shockingly healthy. I am not forcing myself to have sex. I’m nervous about the vaginal dilators on my counter. The physical therapist spent a while fingering me. Not an experience I felt super thrilled about but it was ok. Her experience was that the longer she had anything inside of me the more tense and tight and rigid my cunt became. (Clearly she used clinical language.) I don’t relax how I am supposed to. This makes me want to go find the first Users Guide I wrote. I documented pain and tearing from sex as unavoidable all the way back then. I think it was 15 years ago.

That’s just what sex is like for me. Pain and tearing and bleeding. Super fun, yo.

But maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. Maybe there is another way. It’s going to be hard though.I feel sad and overwhelmed. I feel broken and unfixable. I feel like I will let Noah down because it is never going to get easier.

All I can do is try.

I’m starving. I feel like I’ve been starving for days. Freakin cold.

There’s a whole bunch of stuff I feel like I’m bursting to write about because I’m trying to get my head around it but I’m afraid of hurting people. So I’m hurting myself. Like I do. Balance is not easy.

How do you handle it when you aren’t good for someone? I’m not good for Sarah. This is true in a myriad of ways in a myriad of areas. There is no shortage of love in our relationship…. but there’s a lot of hurt. We turn to one another (in my judgey as fuck opinion) to be the mother that the other lacks. Sarah genuinely needs me to not get angry and not show disappointment. She needs me to be unfailingly accepting and loving. I can’t do that. I need her to be dependable in a way that she’s not physically capable of being and she can not emotionally handle admitting that she can’t do.

We bash ourselves against one another.

I have harmed my children because I believed promises that weren’t really made in good faith. I knew the promises weren’t made in good faith (this is not my first rodeo) but I wanted to believe so much that I made plans around the promises. Then I hurt myself trying to keep up my end of the deal and that’s a problem.

Why do I keep trying to believe these promises? Oh it’s complicated. Partially for the love. Partially for the same reason she believes I will be able to hold my temper enough to be safe for her–we want it to be true.

And in my mercenary as fuck way I can admit… she was the only person who made noise about actively pursuing a relationship with my kids independently. She didn’t always/usually follow up on the noise she made… but she made the noise. Which is more than others do. My friends mostly acknowledge my children in a limited way as an extension of me. Sarah loved them for themselves.

I don’t feel real good about what I have to offer my children in this life in terms of support or community. I just have to be better/more to compensate. That’s hard.

But just like I can never ever believe “I will take you to Magic Mountain” again I can no longer listen to “Let’s make a standing date” because I will hurt myself if I believe that. It won’t come true. I have to face the reality and not what I wish would happen. No matter how much I wish it would happen.

Love is not enough.

Which doesn’t mean that anyone is being bad or failing. But it can show a lack of compatibility. Compatibility is real and hard.

And now my daughter wants to sit next to me to show me how snowflakes are made.

Side note: I’m super thrilled that academics feel like they are finally coming together. The kids are doing more math than they feel thrilled about, but it’s a manageable level to get the kids 100% up to grade level by the end of this school year. EC is going to have a very easy next year in comparison. She’s excited. But we now have enough time and mental bandwidth to add in grammar work and more history and spelling again and more religion… the kids are writing several days a week and I like the stuff they are producing.

EC has to produce fan fic every other week and religion writing every week and she’s working on a larger essay about Malaysia. MC is just on the religion writing and a story about Malaysia. Frankly he’s still working on practicing putting words on paper so they are legible. It’s a process.

They have some grammar workbooks they are plugging along with. Science is creeping back in (Thank you air quality index for returning to just the yellow zone today) and there feels like lots of room in our week for doing other things again. Chores are happening more seamlessly again. We are getting back towards a routine. We aren’t exercising enough (not our fault!) but we will get back to it.

Always more to work on.

In looking around at various places to stay and spots we want to try out… my kids were very open to trying the Shetlands. Truly remote is interesting to them. We can try it.

I am looking forward to next year.

Inverness is not that cheap for rented digs. The Shetland Islands have some very cheap places to stay. But Scotland is only a permanent option if they pull out of the UK. We’ll see.

We’ll see about a lot of things.

We are concerned about access to pot, as we should be. But the kids said that they would be interested in a tiny little local school. I don’t know what we need.

Let’s go find out.

I read the first chapter of the Buddhist book. I caught up on Mint. I loaded the table in the front yard.

Tidying the house is never ending.

I’m looking into the travel for the next year. Woof. The kids only want to be in Japan for three weeks in between Washington DC and Noah needing to go to Minneapolis. I am wondering if when he goes back to Minnesota if the kids and I will just go straight to the UK. I’m looking into it.

So many factors. How expensive is rent in a given area. How much does it cost to get to that place. How long can I handle not being medicated? How many hops should I do alone with the kids while Noah is off doing work hops?

Lots to consider.

Today I am going to move more stuff out to the driveway. And I will police my children’s behavior. And we will drive to Mountain View, of course. Like we do.

I am having mixed feelings about all the stuff going. It’s both freeing and terrifying. I find it funny how many people want to know why I’m not obsessively trying to get every dollar back that I can. That would take so much time and energy and I will get so little back.

The kids are caught up on academics! We can plan an advent season! I’m thrilled! We debated if we wanted to have anything on the calendar that centers around friends. We elected not to. If we see friends, great. If we don’t–that needs to not be something that makes us sad. I expect to not see people much before we go.

I am struggling with wanting to make noise about breaking ties and wanting things to just blow over quietly. I’m feeling sad but not in ways that I feel justified for. I feel like this breakup is largely my fault so I don’t get to be sad. But every breakup is sad. I notice the gap when I want to talk to someone effusively about Christmas presents. There isn’t anyone else for that. So I kind of sort of talk to myself and move on with my day.

There is going to be a big hole in my heart.

It has to be ok because it is going to happen no matter what.

I am glad I have Noah.

I should get moving. I’m so tired.

The kids are caught up. We have a weekend free of academics. It feels like magic.

Today I have done a whole bunch of Christmas shopping because a bunch of websites are having sales. I think I might be done with Noah. I think I might be done with Eldest Child. I have most of what I want for Middle Child but I feel like he needs one more thing; I just have no idea what. Her Sweetness has a few things and I’m not too worried about her getting more. If she does, cool. If she doesn’t… oh well.

I have now ordered vaginal dilators for my PT. I have also done my exercises for the day. I will figure out how to have a stronger body. Damnit. I’m still shocked by how intensely painful these slight exercises are. The awful spot in my lower right back is throbbing. That’s where I get the awful spasms and I have for decades. She (the PT) said that it is almost certainly the end result of my body compensating for not using the proper movements/muscles. That seems quite probable.

I have feelings about ordering from vaginismus.com though.

Noah is home! I have taken a few hours off because it seems super wise right now.

Ok. Time to go see my family again.

Because otherwise I’m going to start listing Christmas presents and that’s not wise.

I read a great article on suicide today (here) and it made me think about how I use this blog. I don’t get a lot of comments. They come in weird spurts then my friends stop responding again. So I’m not throwing these words into the void because I get a direct response.

I’m trying to talk myself into hope. No one else can talk me into hope. Into feeling like there is a point in my life… goodness knows some well paid professionals have spent decades trying. Instead here I am, trying to make my own hope.

My emotions aren’t someone else’s fault. They can’t be. My emotions aren’t things that other people can control. Other people can have influence…. but that’s the limit. For the past year I have been bouncing off my friend and getting more and more distraught… then it hit a fevered pitch and it’s all my fault and now I need to pick up the pieces and keep going.

I did this to myself. I look to my friends to provide a form of stability that is very hard for anyone to maintain for themselves… let alone for a tie that is so distant as friendship. That’s not fair. I mean, there is no fair in this life…. but it wasn’t fair of me to need so much from her. But I will never stop needing that form of consistency so I need to back away from the relationship entirely because consistency is the thing she is least capable of in this life. Keeping promises just isn’t an option.

So what do I do now? Do I get harder and more bitter because I feel let down? Do I turn my grief to other people and hope that other people can be what she could not be?

No.

There will never ever be anyone who touches my heart the way she does. She is special and wonderful and I will love her until I die.

I love my mother, too.

Sometimes, love is not enough.

But I am grown now. I keep saying “When I grow up” and I have to admit to myself…. I am grown up. This is it. I am as grown as I am going to get. I will deepen and mature. I will spread and become more…. but I’m grown.

I am grown up and now I do not need to have other people reflect constantly to me that I should be alive. I know it for myself. I can point at reasons big and small. I know my purpose. I have a few different roles. It’s not that I am just a tool that can be used and discarded. I am special and useful and necessary in a way that is not easy to replace. The things I know, the collection of experiences I have had… cannot be duplicated. My usefulness is not like other peoples. Not because I am better! Because there are a million different niches of need and it’s hard for anyone to be replaced in their usefulness.

Incest. Suicide. These are things I am good at talking about when other people can’t. I have a strong interest and a lot of tools in my tool belt for coping when others can’t. I like troubled children. They don’t bother me with their outbursts.

But even aside from these things, it would be ok if I were just a wife and mother with friends. That would be ok. I don’t owe the world more than that. Not really.

I will have other friendships. I have other friendships. I give in varying amounts. I receive in varying amounts and that’s ok. It becomes a problem when the relationship promises far more than it can deliver on. This is why I am so adamant about not wanting people to promise me anything. I understand that most people won’t deliver. Then I will get upset. Then it will be my own fault that I am upset. And things don’t improve from there.

I feel absolutely overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to have the relationships I’m having with my kids. Are there hard parts? Yes. Oh goodness…. yes. But hard is ok.

How I let people treat me teaches my children how the world should work. When I am deciding what is good enough for me… I am modeling relationships.

That stops me in my tracks.

The only clothing that isn’t in the garage are the adult day-to-day hanging clothes, and the jackets in the hall closet. Everything else is in here now. Really… just about everything is in here now. We’ve really gotten rid of a lot of stuff. I am enjoying burning candles right now because when I use up the ones that are lit it is time to get rid of a bunch of candle holders and two more shelving units.

I think the only stuff left in the kitchen are the two drawers of stuff (silverware and the odd cooking supplies random assortment), the fridge, the microwave, and the tea. Because tea is accessed waaaaaay too often for me to move it to the garage already.

Middle Child has moved his bed into the garage. I like this mattress more than the one in my bedroom so Her Sweetness and I have been sleeping out here too. Once everyone is out here we can run the little space heater to keep the chill off (it’s electric) and not use the gas heater much (super expensive) which will be a nice bonus.

I have updated AA with our frequent flier stuff. Which is good because I’m sick of thinking about it.

I have not yet done my PT exercises and I need to.

I haven’t even the tiniest tiny bit yelled today. I pulled back instead.

Middle Child is no longer scheduled to do 3 pages/4 days a week. He gets to do 4 pages/5 days a week. That will have him finish his book on time. I will be checking daily so he literally isn’t capable of falling behind again because he isn’t catching up and he isn’t showing signs that he can handle it. I have to adjust my expectations.

At this same age EC was doing like 1 hour of homework a day and she had not yet ever looked at a real textbook. Two years later she can easily do 8-15 pages a day and rarely make an error. I don’t think my approach is wrong. I think I’m not giving him quite enough grace. But it’s complicated. I don’t know.

He is making progress. He’s at grade level. If he transferred into a public school next week he would be fine. That was absolutely not true for his sister at the same age. She was dramatically behind. I should have more faith in him. I believed she would catch up and she’s doing so rapidly. She’s most of the way through the 4th grade textbook now. She just started her third notebook because she’s done so much math already.

They are both writing about what they learned in Malaysia. I wish they didn’t want me to dictate their topics, but I think it’s normal.

They are both doing more religion writing. MC is still doing a lot closer to copywriting. He was forced to start reading and writing before he wanted to with the charter school. I wonder how much his reliance on copywriting is part of not getting to it with his own voice and timing. I’ll never know.

The religion study is feeling so relevant these days.

Guess how many cubes of books we still have in the house? (We started off with over a hundred?) 9. 3 will be packed up and put into storage (language learning and religion) but the other 6 are things we are going to hurry up and read then pass along.

Time’s running out….

I should stay off the computer in the next few months and read some dang books.

I have three boxes ready to mail to Jenny. I’m glad I didn’t send them earlier because I found more stuff.

I need to wrap up a few more pictures and take a handful of boxes to storage, but it’s maybe a trunk load.

This garage is looking remarkably like a studio apartment. Because we don’t want to deal with staging a house we are going to mostly leave it bare. We will leave the coffee table and use that for meals until we go.

That’s going to be a really fun Christmas.

For Christmas planning this year we are looking into all sorts of fun food gifts. And I think we will donate a bit more than usual.

I am not moving the boxes already by myself because my back is sore and if I hurt myself while Noah is gone it’ll be really rough on the kids. It’s fascinating how much I base my decisions on other peoples need for me.

We need to exercise more. But today has been wonderfully restful and maybe that’s a good thing too. I have made two meals. Washed two loads of laundry (about to go start a third). Watered the yards.

Oh, that’s another thing that’s eating at me: I haven’t been working in the yard because the air quality is so bad I really shouldn’t bring the baby with me and I can’t leave the baby inside with the big kids because they don’t feel comfortable being responsible quite yet. They think another 6 months or so.

I’ve been thinking about sex a lot more. That’s fascinating. I haven’t thought about it that much in years and it’s just… kind of there in my brain. I even reached out to the neighbor to ask about babysitting so maybe we can use these canes before they go away.

I want. I want something. I want…. I don’t even forking know.

I want Noah to come home. What was I thinking? (I booked him extra days in LA because good golly he needs a break.)

I am really enjoying my kids. I get irritated too…. but I still feel like I am living my best life right now. I’m tired. I’m in pain. So? Such is life. I get to hang out with people who explode with joy when they see me. My life is awesome.

I’m still getting a lot out of the private chat forum I’ve been hanging out in. My social anxiety is ramped up because of course I am feeling like all I am is an angry monster. I’m not. But I feel like that is the accusation that has been made. I don’t think that is something that anyone else said. I feel like that is the accusation.

Feelings.

Where is the middle path?

I need to get started on that Buddhist book for Pam’s reading group.

Oh! I sat down when I had some actual good moments of quiet and I did a bunch of catching up on Jenny’s vlog! I think I now understand why people tell me they binge catch up on my blog. I have, of course, been eager to know everything about Jenny for 25 years and counting so it was absolutely delightful and wonderful to get to listen to extended periods of her talking about herself. I don’t understand a lot of the knitting stuff, but I love that she will explain it to me. And I am a huge dork who was giggling and excited/amused about her going back and forth from centimeters to inches. I live that world.

Watching the vlog was neat because it made me wonder if other people get those waves of pleasure and delight as they read what I write. My friend wants to share her thoughts with me (and the rest of the world). It feels like such a gift and an honor. It’s like the epic emails Pam writes. They feel… like a mirror into a happier place.

I keep reminding myself that we probably have less than three months in this house. The rest of November, December, and as much of January as necessary to get an offer and get out. I really need to get started on the yards…..

Noah will come home. I’ll get it done. It will be truly smashing when I’m done.

Leaving is going to be hard. But I was up late last night crying about my mother. It’s time to leave. It’s time to not worry about running into my family any more.

I don’t think my nephew’s wife kept the baby. I have been a horrible stalking person and all the recent pictures of her show no signs of a pregnancy. The gossip I was told would indicate that she should be second or third trimester at this point and it’s pretty forking rare for someone’s body to stay that static so late in a pregnancy.

I feel really sad that both my niece and nephew have almost become parents recently and have been unable to actually do so. That has got to hurt them tremendously. Poverty is probably the main reason.

Life is not fair.

I have no idea what I’m going to do for dinner tonight. I should probably figure that out.

I am feeling bad for Middle Child. He can get through how many pages he is supposed to get through. Catch up… is brutal. He just doesn’t want to and his brain shuts down. He may be back to screen time by puberty.

Oh, after we got back from Mexico he stopped doing math. After watching his sister be in trouble for weeks. I just…

I need to be watching them more closely. This is my fault. I am getting overwhelmed and not babysitting their work enough. That’s totally my fault.

But! I’ve been watching closely for the past couple of weeks! I’m checking in constantly at this point. No more slipping. He missed like two weeks. But if he really refuses to do a single extra page in a day…. being only two weeks behind is a lot. So me missing two weeks when we got back I feel a little bad about but not that bad. I mean, if I really have to sit on your neck like a poisonous toad we have problems.

I am feeling pretty dang confident in “You can use the screen for mandatory school activities and no fun until you catch up.” It’s motivating because they want to play video games and they can’t right now. Not motivating enough for them to catch up…. but hey. They are working hard and doing a lot, I don’t want to make it sound like they are doing nothing. But not quite enough.

I am having a hard time with physical therapy needing to be an hour drive away twice a week. But, if I can make my body feel better it is worthwhile. Let’s just hope. Ugh. Don’t wanna drive.

I just got all the billing for the last year of chiropractic care for me, Noah, and EC. Over $600. I think it is professional to send these bills out a bit more often. Sheesh. (Noah, don’t you dare feel like you should stop. Your bill was $30.)

Beautiful asked if I was up for seeing people and I totally am. I’m lazy as fuck and I’m not sure how much I want to drag my kids all over the bay…. but I’d love to see people. We can’t get together at a park because we can’t breathe… so uhhh….. All bad.

So if you have any interest in coming over for dinner or something… you have till January. Then we are gone.

Time is running out.

Phew. That was a lot of work. I haven’t figured out how to deal with the clothes on hangers yet. I am eyeing the rail for the garage door and maybe some pieces of the palm tree bookcase for baby clothes. There’s a handful of food items in the house that need to come out. I kind of looked around and noticed tonight that I can probably move the books from the green bookcases to the black bookcases and get rid of two more pieces of furniture. That makes a slightly better place to put the coffee table, which will be where we work and eat once the kitchen gets ripped out.

Another day, more progress.

This week will be a gnarly work schedule. The kids and I will keep our noses to the grindstone: academics, sifting through stuff, getting every book shelf out of here we can before the remodel starts so we have as much floor space as possible. We are going to be basically living in a studio apartment for a few months. Eep. Not really. Once the painting and flooring is replaced I’ll be putting the kid mattresses back into their rooms so that I can have some forking space.

I am slowing down the rate of putting things on the table. I am not going to create a huge spread. A few things at a time over the next two months will be fast enough.

I need to update frequent flier miles. I need to go through paperwork again. I need to update Mint.

Tired. Go to sleep, Krissy.

Noah is driving away for a conference this afternoon. I’m sad that we get him for like 8 more hours then he disappears for another week. This is why we are going to follow his ass. Being without him sucks. I know that people do this living independently thing… but it’s no fun.

Today the bedrooms are all being stripped down to nothing but mattresses.

Tomorrow I meet with my contractor. Weeeee.

I went to the dispensary for the first time in a long time. The selection sucked. Oh well. I have marijuana. The industry is resettling after the new rules came in. Bummer.

Took a bath with Noah this morning while all three children slept. That felt lovely.

Ok. Gotta move furniture and make tea and eat breakfast and ALL THE THINGS

There are a bunch of things muffling my fingers. I want to express my feelings but I also don’t want to bag on people. I want to talk about what I see changing about myself but I don’t know how to do so without sounding like I’m blaming other people and that’s not the point. It really isn’t.

We all make choices about what we accept in life. We make those choices for a myriad of reasons. Things like accepting that I have to have daily sex even when it was shredding my vagina. I make stupid choices sometimes about what I accept. I make my decisions based on what I perceive to be important for other people and I don’t really look at the cost to myself. I am not saying that I pick people who hurt me. I am saying I pick situations where I tell someone that it’s ok to expect a certain kind of behavior from me that is quite a strain and quite difficult and I allow them (or encourage) to think of it as a base standard expectation they should have of me.

Then when I break down from strain and difficulty I can be angry with myself for failing. Cheers.

I lean on my friends too much. I want them to be my family and uhhhhh yeah. That doesn’t work out. I know people who claim that chosen family works out. The people I know who are most devoted to the concept are pretty much not leaning on the same people they were leaning on 20 years ago. Things and people shift. But I notice how most of those people keep going back to the same families. Because it is different.

With every day that passes that I have a real family I feel the difference.

It’s ok for me to stop leaving open huge gaps in my schedule and my heart for friends. It would be healthier for me to do so. I need to stop looking to other people to make me feel ok. They are busy. They have other concerns. That’s appropriate and right. And when they promise me that they will show up for me and they drop it at the last minute because they got busy I feel destroyed. I can’t stay on this cycle.

What is this going to mean going forward?

I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone since I got back. I have plans with T and maybe L (must confirm) and dinner with some former students.

My circle continues to get smaller and I feel pretty happy about it. I’m not chasing people. I know there are a bunch of people who are waiting for me to reach out and say I’m ready. I’m not ready. I don’t have anything to give and my friendships require me to give a lot. I set up my relationships like that. They all need a lot from me in terms of energy or time or work… I’m tired. I have nothing to give. I guess I don’t need to call up my friends.

This weekend will be spent shifting things to the garage and the table on the drive way. It’s becoming very real to the kids that they get a rolling back and a backpack and… that’s it. What toys do we want to bring? What toys are worth packing for storage? It’s a process of discovery.

We are having some changing feelings about Legos, apparently. Now the big kids are maintaining that we need a bag of toys for Her Sweetness and all the Duplos definitely need to come with us. I think they just say that because they want the dang Duplos. Ha.

I am starting to suspect I lost the ring sling because I can’t find it. There are a couple of other things I’ve been looking for and I can’t locate. Damnit. I’m going to do this over and over again. UGH!

I need to ship the box to Jenny. Erf.

I have a long list of things to do. But… I have a deadline. I’m selling the house. What gets done gets done. What doesn’t get done…. won’t be my problem much longer.

Realtor says forget updating the kitchen. It’s not worth $40k+. Paint the whole house, replace the flooring, replace the doors (this is a serious need and I agree), update the baseboards, fix the yards. Sell the house.

Ok. That’s the plan. I have a meeting with the contractor on Monday and my goal is to be able to say, “I’m ready. When are you ready to start?” Which means all of our shit has to be in the garage or in the storage unit or given away by Monday. Painting/molding/doors will only take a week or three. I hope. We’ll see. Sigh. But we have a very good chance of being done with remodeling stuff before Christmas, which would be nice.

I am, of course, collecting stuff for Christmas. I am feeling happy about needing to restrict my shopping to stuff for travel or immediate consumption (food). This is feeling very good right now. But everyone has a luggage bag of their color with stuff in it waiting. Because folks will still get stockings.

It’s weird that I don’t know how many weeks past Christmas we will still be here.

Noah comes home today and leaves again tomorrow or Monday, I forget which. We get him back for a while on the 16th. Back to back trips lasting over a week total are hard. We miss him a lot. I manage to keep the kids eating healthy food (so many vegetables) but life just feels less fun without him. Not that I expect him to hurry home and be entertaining. I expect that right now he’s going to be sad and slow. But I can snuggle him when he is home and I cannot when he is traveling.

I’m really glad that in general he wants us to go with him because it makes travel better. I know a lot of people who are grateful to get away from their families. Noah doesn’t feel like that. I’m so grateful I found this partner.

I have hit the lottery and I bloody well know it.

Middle Child slept in my room while Noah was gone. Solo rooms are not as exciting as they seemed on first blush. Seeing as Eldest Child had to get to 10 before it was truly a draw… that makes sense to me.

The kids think that my mood has improved since we got back from Malaysia… but I’m still being really insistent about school stuff. Yeah, that’s going to stay true for a few years. Complicated. I’m glad to hear that I am overall doing less screaming and fussing. EC says I am still yelling, but it’s not of elevated volume or fierce and it’s more of the “I’m tired of repeating this direction” variety. So the pot is definitely helping. I’m not angry about other situations in the same way and that’s helping. But I am going to sit on my hobby horse and repeat “Math. Math. Math” for a few years.

I’m having some fun because they are caught up on math enough that I’m assigning more writing work and that’s really fun to read. Grading math sucks. Grading writing is fun. I love seeing how they are progressing and changing in their thinking. EC is frustrated with how my standards are increasing. “This is not written as a fact it is written as a personal story. Let’s try again.” EC is working on writing on a few levels: she has the writing she’s doing about religion, her fan faction, she’s working on a report about Malaysia, and we do a bunch of supporting work on grammar and spelling. This is a fairly new work load for her. She’s had pieces of this at times before but having all of that worked on in a month is new. She’s both feeling overwhelmed (more work) and feeling really happy about having a variety of tasks on her plate instead of just one or two things that feel big. Task switching is improving her mood. I’m struggling with it.

Middle Child is still working on reading fluency and writing skill enough to turn in the same kinds of reports. He still leans heavily on copy writing for his stuff instead of producing his own… that’s what we are going to work on this year. But we are also going to work on the neatness of his writing because I literally can’t grade it without him reading it to me right now. That’s not sustainable.

Both kids have just in the past two weeks hit sections of math that are much harder. It’s interesting seeing how they cope with this. MC still doesn’t want to ask for help. EC is banging the drum of “Give me help so I don’t waste time.” She is tired of having to redo things. Ha.

I feel like they are both doing pretty well this year. It’s kind of loosey goosey but we’ve always been. I feel like we aren’t doing enough science lately but we have times when we mostly do science for weeks. Enh.

I get everything I have to get done…. done eventually. But I am struggling with timing and feeling efficient. Bah.

I’m researching what Slow Travel families believe to be essential travel stuff. So far no one really  packs a kitchen kit. Uhhhh I think we will. We cook a lot and the shoddy cookware we had in KL really cramped our style and made meal preparation unpleasant. I think this means that for our family…. some combination of pans and pots will be essential. I’m looking around at options that are both lightweight and not too bulky in size. This is not as simple as it seems. Backpacking stuff isn’t big enough–we don’t want to have to cook 4 volleys of each meal.

So far stuff in this collection is looking the most interesting to me. I don’t know that we need the whole set. I may try to get a couple of individual pieces.

We will need at least one sizeable frying pan. At least one stock pot because we make a lot of soup. Do we need another pot or pan? We probably should bring a modest cookie sheet? A knife? The squashy silicone food storage packs that I use for forking everything? One or two wooden spoons?

The full set of those pots and pans are about 7.5 lbs. We get 50 lbs in a checked bag. Maybe cookware needs to be under 10 lbs total?

Our bathroom supplies are currently pretty heavy. That’s a lot of weight.

The physical therapist I’ve seen has indicated that a TRX unit will be a really strong component of what she recommends going forward so it will stay in the bag. (It’s a strappy exercise thingamabob.)

We are hoping to go to the park today but air quality is bad. I will feel guilty if we don’t go because the kids busted their asses to get caught up on academics. They are both less than a day behind at this point.

That’s awesome. They are less than a day behind on math (after months of fussing that’s AMAZING) and they are back on track doing religion writing, fan fic writing (it counts!), and they are each working on a report about Malaysia. We restart yard work and all the botany/biology that goes along with it on Monday.

We’ve been doing pretty dang well at maintaining walking distance. We won’t be fussed about 7 mile days next time we head out. We are training to 6-7 miles/day at this point. I made the kids walk to Tae Kwon Do last night. That went pretty well all things considering. The kids really blossomed with having a pit stop at the local coffee shop for a cup of (non-sugared) tea. They felt energized and ready to come back and do a ton of homework.

Mood wise I feel like things are settling down a lot. A lot less fussing and fighting and bickering. Not nothing…. but not a lot.

We all miss Noah. It’s hard that he has to be so far away right when he was hit with a massive load of grief and he could use extra comforting.

We are doing ok and that feels good. I have spent a lot of the past few months feeling worthless and wracked with doubt. When I constantly set aside a big chunk of my spoons for someone who then disregards my effort, time, and energy… that hurts me.

Maybe it is time for me to consistently make choices around not hurting myself anymore. Maybe 37 is old enough.

I have hurt myself to cope with how I am treated in the past year. That’s maybe a sign I need to change what I tolerate.

Which isn’t to say that anyone is terrible or bad or wrong. I just… I need to deal with my shit.