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.