My baby is currently eating a rattle and reading a book. Big kids are in the bath. Noah is out. I have… peace? I should be sorting paperwork. But I have a moment to be in my own brain! Fuck paperwork!

I am not behaving well. I swore *at* a kid today. I don’t think I have ever done that before. I said lazy fucker. That was not ok. That was really not ok and over a line. Literally the next sentence out of my mouth after saying it was, “Shit that was over the line.” And then I spent the next several hours talking about how the problem isn’t even that they are lazy. It is lazy of me to complain that they are lazy. The problem isn’t that they don’t bother trying. The problem is that we are all struggling like mad for focus. We are all hurting. We are all having every feeling every day and we are all done. The kids are on academic break and I’m not asking them to do that much work and doing anything is like pulling teeth. It’s that situation where if they had  a 90 item to do list they could probably get it all done but if they have a 2 item to do list they won’t do either thing.

I fucked up.

I don’t get to explain the full circumstance of why. It’s not an excuse nor a justification and I don’t have permission. But I can say that I did that and it was wrong.

I am not defending myself in proactive, healthy ways. I don’t have space lately. Even when I try it goes sideways. I genuinely NEED more rest than I am getting. I don’t know how to get it. I try. I do. I am nightweaning the baby in an effort to gain more rest at night. That means I am getting far less rest for a while. Sigh. Last night was particularly rough. The roughest in I couldn’t tell you when. I am so exhausted.

It hurts so much that I love people in the bay so much and I could not make it work here to fill my needs.

I am feeling like a giant gaping wound.

I am glad that both Washington DC and Japan (the first two hops) are not places we are seriously considering for long-term. I need to have a rest time where I’m not trying to reach out and create relationships. I can’t bring this bitterness with me. I can’t be the poison in the well. Or everything I touch will fail.

I need to have a time where I’m doing less. Travel isn’t as much work for me as being home. I think people dramatically underestimate how much effort I put into being friends with people. I am looking forward to a time where I don’t have to wonder if I am currently letting anyone down by not calling them at just the right time. I need to have a time in my life where I am not trying as hard I can to create space to go see my friends only to have them cancel on me over and over and over and over until I feel completely worthless.

I need to leave this place where it is more important that I not hurt anyone’s feelings by saying that my feelings are hurt.

Geez. Those other women aren’t talking bad about me. Why don’t I stop saying anything about them. I was assaulted and I did literally nothing in return. You want me to act like I should shut up because they aren’t bad mouthing me? For what?

Avoidance.

I don’t want to be on the home school mailing lists for activities in the bay area because they actively promote my rapist. One of my rapists. Do you know how much it sucks that there are a whole bunch of places and events I don’t want to do because of rapists?

Friends. Rapists. Former friends. Old lovers.

Ugh.

Just get over it. Just get over it. Just get over it. Naw. I’ll move.

There is so much going on in wanting to move.

The inside of the house needs to be clean in six days. In seven days we will be staging and doing photos. On the market in eleven days. Then…. we’ll see….

I pray we get fairly quick bids. Although…. I also… wouldn’t mind another three weeks to slowly get rid of stuff. Hm. I need to stop with the table in seven days. I need to look like a picture postcard outside.

All the yard stuff has six more days to finish. Ugh. My back is… not doing well. I feel better when I do my exercises…. which I haven’t today. Today we got the tree taken down and the floor is swept and mopped through the whole house. It’s not good enough…. but it’s a first pass of construction filth. I am going to be spending hours on my hands and knees; our mop sucks.

I am cleaning the bathroom. Really deep cleaning it in a way I should have done six months ago but sweet cheese where do I find the time.

Six months ago I had a four month old and a cleaning service that was ok but not amazing. It needed a deep  clean.

Houses suck. Cleaning is endless.

We have been going to homeschool park days with the splinter group. The lady who started it is funny to me because we have so much in common. Of course she would be the one to leave and say fuck this. And of course her kids would be targeted.

If you are sitting on the fence I hope a fence post ruptures your rectum.

I was not willing to do a “me vs them” group. Instead I’ll just leave.

People will be abusive everywhere. It’s not just here. I must change; I’ve gotta stop being such a bully. Part of that needs to be managing constant disappointment in the form of people who make and break promises. And I’ve gotta find a way to rest. I will not be able to be nice without rest. And exercise.

2019 is going to be selfish as fuck.

I am really struggling with my feelings. On so many levels. I am struggling with wondering if I am physically capable of expressing them in appropriate ways. I am struggling with wondering if any of my feelings are appropriate anyway. I am struggling with my behavior and the behavior of my children. Being human is really hard.

I genuinely don’t know the right way to handle a lot of things. My friends. My kids. My life. I am feeling so sad. I am so tired of being sick. I am so sick of being tired. I hurt. I am exhausted. I am angry. I don’t want to do any more work. We put the house on the market in 12 days. I don’t know how much work I will get done by then…. but I bet a lot.

I am so weary.

No. No I can’t get into any of the details. If I did… I would go too far. So I can’t talk about this. Not really.

We put the house on the market in 19 days. We need to get pictures done before that. I have about 10 days of work to do. Contractor said they would be done today. I have my doubts. I am starting to suspect they may be here for at least part of tomorrow. They should have been here doing the small side work pieces while the painting happened, but oh well. I feel bad for my contractor. Dude has been sick for all of December and he doesn’t get to stop working because his business partner is leaving the state. He’s doing the work of 2-3 people and he’s visibly suffering. I worry about him. He’s trying to stay afloat in a horribly abusive environment.

I’m going to stop and take a moment to shout out to my lovely neighbors. They are unburdening me of my possessions and thanking me for the opportunity. We’ve had a lot of great conversations with folks who have never bothered to introduce themselves until now. It’s funny.

The kids and I are sifting our way towards an understanding of how next semester is going to go. This semester has been rough on a couple of levels. Some of it was the result of their choices and I don’t feel so bad. Some of it was because I got into a cycle of flipping out and getting out of that cycle is tough. Some of it was because I got my brain into the mode that we were “catching up” to a particular point in the cycle even though…. uhhhh we aren’t really? EC is super excited that she’s starting 5th grade math because 4th grade math is getting repetitive and boring. Perfect. MC is backed off of the textbook because he needs to be spending a lot more time working on reading for functionality before he can be seriously reading directions to learn. I am feeling very upset with myself that I pushed him in a way I never pushed EC. He needed to wait too and I didn’t. Instead he now has the complex I wanted to avoid in public school. Damnit. It’s my fault for cooperating last year with the charter school. It’s my fault for trying to keep going merrily along from our end point last year. He needs a different sort of schedule.

MC’s next semester is going to be a lot more focus on learning the fundamentals of reading. He’s not behind in math. It’s ok if he falls a semester or so “behind” as he’s getting to the point of being able to fluently read the textbook.

Also: I didn’t nurse frequently enough yesterday and my boob hurts. Ugh. Being a dairy cow is so annoying. Nursing is, in general, going pretty well with this baby. When Her Sweetness has bit me I react with hostility, she feels rejected, then I comfort her and she stops biting. It is what it is. My “hostile reaction” is generally a hostile facial expression combined with turning my body away so I don’t look open to her. That’s enough to break her poor little heart. I can live with breaking your little heart. Don’t bite me. It’s a rare day when she bites me so it’s not common for me to look at her with hostility. I do occasionally say (as I’m meeting her needs) “I don’t WANT to meet your needs. I am VERY INCONVENIENCED by your needs.”

Lots to do today. Home Desperate: I need a toilet seat, 30 concrete stepping stones, rocks, and mulch. Seeing two friends. Dropping off stuff at a thrift store and at the storage unit. I get to spend a bunch of time with landscaping fabric/weed blocker and laying out some walkways in my yard. It’ll be perty. Tomorrow morning before picking up a friend I get to clean the house from top to bottom. If I have time before PT I should also do more landscaping. I have a lot of work and a very short amount of time to do it.

Right now I want to go back and give Past Me the biggest hug ever. A whole bunch of people told me to relax and work more slowly. They were all Wrong And Bad Advice Givers. I would be dying now if I had listened to any of those people. Instead I am plugging along and this is hard but not impossible. I have a lot to do but I am not completely breaking down. I am racing to the finish line of picture day. Then I just hang out and wait until my house is sold. I don’t have anything else big to do at that point.

God that sounds awesome.

I mean… I’ll be down to home schooling my kids and the work of perpetual travel. That’s hardly anything.

My life is unreal and I feel kinda jealous of myself.

I haven’t been blogging as much for a long while now. Mostly because I am trying to respect their frequent off-hand comments about wanting privacy. They don’t know what they want. They don’t know which topics bug them to have people know about. So they are just saying no. And I’m treating that as a blanket prohibition that I can’t talk about myself any more. This is not going to work out.

If I can’t organize my thoughts I get mean. I get vicious. I get incredibly unable to manage my behavior and then I’m a problem; a real one.

Penultimate day of the remodel before we put the house on the market. Ostensibly we are shooting for putting the house on the market in 20 days. No pressure. I plan to spend Monday (Christmas Eve) cleaning the house from top to bottom. No spider webs or dust can remain. Then I need to negotiate with my realtor about what is moving back into the house for staging purposes. A house is for sale down the street and the staging is super nice. They just dropped the price after being on the market for two months. That’s literally why I waited until January. My realtor said that would happen October-December.

I filled 5 green waste bins last night. My neighbors are awesome. Thanks for letting me use your bins. Leaves and blackberry trimmings and redwood logs. Gone. I think I’m 3-5 days of hard work away from the yard being gasp-worthy. It’s rough around the edges (because I prefer it that way) but I’m going to come through and add hard scaping and shape it. I have made a beautiful meadowy garden. I hope I find the right person to love it.

Good lord. I’m 3-5 days away on the yards and 1-2 days away on the house and I have 20 days and in between now and then is Christmas. Woof. That feels so real.

Let’s just call it a solid 10 days of work between now and leaving. Whoa. That’s intense feeling. Guess how many days I have of not driving out of Fremont between now and putting the house on the market? 10. That’s it. That includes Christmas and NYE. It’s convenient not being invited to parties this year.

To be fair, I refuse to work every day I don’t drive so mostly I’m going to be doing the work in between driving. *sigh*

I just can’t start cleaning or organizing again until they finish because the dust is prohibitive. I want a house full of functioning doors. This will be awesome. I haven’t ever had a house full of functioning doors here. There have always been broken doors and doors that were removed because they were so broken. I feel rich as fuck.

Last night Eldest Child and I had a great date. She got her ears pierced (YAY! So big!) and we had a lovely chat over dinner about school priorities. I asked her how she thinks this school year is going (poorly) and what she wants to change (almost everything). We figured out a few ways for her to change it up. And I don’t really have permission to document. This is driving me crazy. Because you expect me to remember shit without writing it down and I don’t know how you think somebody else with a different brain is your mother. I don’t remember shit if I don’t write it down. Ugh.

We are drifting away from highly schooly and back towards unschooling. Still not Radical Unschooling because…. no. But far more unschooly in terms of timing and topics. I need to stop screaming. I have to. This is just mandatory for everyone’s mental health. And part of that will need to be that I’m not kicking and pulling them through fairly standard curriculum. It’s been a shitty year and a half of trying to be at grade level across the board in subjects. My kids have caught up and proven that they can. Now let’s stop because this shit sucks. This program is fairly abusive and why are we trying to conform to it? Because I’m stupid. Because I get afraid that if I don’t force you closer to lock step that at some point your life will be hard. Harder than you can imagine.

That doesn’t mean I’m doing the right thing.

I told EC that she wants me to go back to blogging daily because I scream less when it is embarrassing that I have to go write down every single day that I’m screaming. As long as she doesn’t want me blogging…. I don’t have that public humiliation stop gap and I just go nuts. She’s thinking about it. It’s literally true though. I scream way less when I feel more monitored. I put these monitors in place on myself because it’s a way to work around my shitty impulses.

The baby was up every 1-2 hours last night. I’m so cranky.

Today I need to go buy a toilet seat that isn’t broken. Tomorrow they are doing all the flight of the bumblebee last minute adjustments. I’m looking forward to that. Like: installing doorknobs.

Emotionally I feel like I’m all over the place. I’m touching base with a lot of friends. That’s so fraught. I love these people intensely and I want to be the source of good feelings in their lives. I don’t want them to feel bad about our relationship. If I talk about not getting enough from my friends here… people feel like I’m saying that *they* let me down. Oh honey.

I’m so anxious about this.

I need so much. And I’ve tried so hard here. And balanced between hundreds of people it isn’t working. It can’t be any one person’s fault.

I think this feels so viscerally painful because of losing Sarah and touching base with the home school group. I failed at the bay area. I need to go.

Because it isn’t just Sarah. It’s the Bonus Family and the Godmamas. It’s all feeling so incredibly painful right now. I want to go. I want to go away from this place where I have begged and pleaded for people to be my family.

I have emails in my inbox I ought to respond to. I can’t. I feel so flattened. I have so little to give. I gave my friends everything I had. I’m empty.

I am seriously struggling with how much the kids don’t want me to write about them any more. It makes sense. They are allowed to not want all their business on the internet. But I’m with them just about 24/7. Effectively that means I’m not allowed to write about myself much anymore because I don’t have that many interactions in a day that are not 100% centered around them. This is feeling really hard.

Trying to figure out how to talk to people about why I am leaving is tricky. I don’t want to make people feel bad or rejected or inadequate. Folks are generous with me. Folks share what they can. But I’ve had to carefully construct a web of hundreds of people in order to get a small fraction of the support and attention I want. I can no longer deal with having to go to that many people to get my needs met because everyone has so little going spare.

It’s kind of like the difference between moving the beehive around or expecting the bee to travel through an entire forest to pollinate. I need to move my beehive. I’m tired. I can’t keep traveling this far to get what I need from folks. The bay area is too spread out. The distance is brutal. In the bay there is always at least 3 things competing for folks’ time and attention. It’s too big and too much.

Which doesn’t mean people are doing anything wrong. Just that this is no longer the place for me.

Three weeks till we list the house for sale.

I want to write about home schooling stuff and what I’m doing and why. But I don’t have permission.

It’s hard not to feel angry and irritated and fussy. My kids talk over me all day long. They constantly tell me that I’m wrong about everything (WHEN I’M FUCKING RIGHT). They correct my language. And I’m not allowed to write about my life anymore.

I’m having some fucking feelings.

So the mother of the boy who kicked me in the throat doesn’t spend a lot of time trash talking me and neither do her friends. Ok. Do you want me to give them a cookie? Literally the only thing I did to that mother was get kicked by her son and then tell her there was a problem. That’s what I fucking did.

But I’m supposed to give her a pat on the back for not talking shit about me?

Really? You think that? Oh my. Well. Guess what, honey. I am fresh out of fucking cookies.

You told me that you can’t take a side because you didn’t see the assault. Well. You know how I’ve been sympathetic for years and years as you tell me about the abuse you suffered? I no longer believe you. I didn’t see any of it; therefore I can’t take your side or be supportive. How about if I go sit with the people who hurt you. After all, they haven’t been trash talking you to me so clearly I should sit on the fence and hang out with them a lot.

That hurts you?

Oh well.

I walked away from the group because I didn’t want to face people like you. People who would tell me that they are my friend…. but they really want to still be friends with the person who kicked me in the fucking throat.

Go! Be friends with them!

And stop telling yourself that we are friends. We aren’t fucking friends. You are the mother of someone my kid likes. That’s what we are to each other. So I’ll send you fucking Christmas cards and you can feel liked and whatever bullshit you want to say to yourself about our relationship. But the fact is: we aren’t friends. We stopped being friends when you couldn’t take a side and instead you expected me to play nice at your kids birthday party when you invited both families. Guess what, bitch. That was taking a fucking side. And it wasn’t my side.

You picked the side that said, “My son did not do that and if he did it is your fault.”

If you feel sad about being called out for your behavior…. tell someone who gives a shit. I don’t fucking care if you are sad.

You can keep your daughter around him. I will get my children the fuck away from him. Given that he is just hitting the teen years and he’s putting knives up to girls eyes when they have the audacity to argue with him? Yeah. It’s gonna get bad.

And I will be thousands of fucking miles away. Because if I were within 50 miles you would probably want my god damn sympathy when your kid is the next target. I wouldn’t like myself very much if I said to your face “Ahhhhh, do you want sympathy now? Do you want to be believed? Well I didn’t see anything. Sorry.”

When I went to the fucking park and someone told me the story of the altercation on the camping trip I didn’t tell her that I didn’t see it so it didn’t happen. I said, “I believe you. That’s horrifying.”

But I’m the big terrible meanie because I talk about this. Because I express strongly that this is a fucked up situation and this mother is creating a monster. I can live with that.

You think that being nice means not making waves, not pointing out issues, not making people feel uncomfortable. Fuck your comfort.

I’ve been wildly uncomfortable for years now. I have known that weak ass bitches like you claim that you are my friend. With friends like you, who needs enemies. (I’m pretty sure I don’t have an enemy. There are people I won’t talk to… but I wouldn’t fight them. I don’t care enough.)

I have grown up a lot. I might snark here in my blog… but I haven’t started a fight in a very long time. I have ended relationships. I have walked away from a lot of people. I won’t bother to fight. Whatever it is that you are doing that bothers me: the best solution is to not be near you. Because I don’t need you.

It’s really weird having this bone deep confidence. I will be ok without any of the people I know. Like, I would cry like a little bitch of Jenny or Pam broke up with me. Like I’m crying like a little bitch over Sarah. It fucking hurts. But I will be ok. As ok or better than I would have been with her. Why? Because I’m a bad ass motherfucker. Because I have a family now. Because after the loss of my mother basically no ending can hurt that much. Because I can make more friends.

My kids have been expressing sadness about leaving the neighborhood. I keep telling them: I built this community and I can do it again. It will take me time and effort, but I will have both. I am a community-oriented person. I will always find a way to make relationships.

It’s a gift.

I know this about myself. I am extremely gifted at making new relationships. I put myself out there. I’m a trier. I am codependent as fuck and I love people. I will be able to form new relationships as sure as the sun will come up.

If I have 99 problems, inability to make friends isn’t on the list. I like to look at people. Folks like being looked at. I mean, I have my favorite people to look at.

I wonder if I will stop crying for Sarah before I stop crying for my mother. Maybe not. But we are hurting each other.I don’t want to hurt Sarah. I really don’t. And I do. I hurt her with my anger. I hurt her with my impatience. I hurt her with my expectations. I hurt her with being inflexible and rigid. I hurt her by absolutely requiring a kind of consistency she isn’t suited for.

I take so much responsibility because I am not big on blaming other people for my problems. Could I rant about ways that Sarah let me down? I could. But it wouldn’t make me feel better. It wouldn’t heal my heart. It might trickle down and hurt her more.

I have hurt Sarah enough for one lifetime. She gave me a second chance after I scared the shit out of her. I didn’t deserve it. And I lost it. I don’t believe in third chances.

Noah got a second chance. So did my first fiancé. I tried a second time with both of them. It didn’t work out with Steve. Noah is hanging on.

I focus on what I did wrong because I can’t control anyone else. And I will keep existing. If I want to do it differently in the future I need to be real honest about what I did this time. If I lie to myself I will just do it again. That’s inevitable.

I am trying with this expectation problem. I am not doing well. I am being too much of an asshole with the kids. I don’t have faith. I don’t trust. I’m grouchy and suspicious. I am dismissive and negative.

I’m not like Sarah’s mother. That doesn’t mean I’m doing well enough. That doesn’t mean I am giving my children what they deserve from me. Sarah’s mother is not the bar. The bar is not refraining from hitting them with weapons. The bar is not screaming for weeks.

I did scream for weeks. Months. Stupid, fucking math. I am worried that I am going to care so much about this that I create big permanent problems. That could totally happen. Parents do that shit.

I *did* hurt Sarah with my screaming.

Am I hurting my kids? They still say no. Their shrinks still say that it isn’t great but the kids seem ok.

Which thing that I do is going to break them?

I backed off on math for Middle Child. I found a different set of books for him. He’s pretty excited about this set up. He is doing well so far. I found three different workbooks, none of which are vaguely adequate alone. One is a step down (2nd grade) so that he can establish a bit more confidence for a few weeks. He’s upset that he keeps failing whole weeks of work. It has happened a few times this year. He’s not reading the directions and that makes it hard to do the right thing. It’s not an arithmetic problem. It’s a reading comprehension problem. He is still working on reading. His decoding skills have increased substantially; that’s most of what he got from the reading program that the school enforced last year. He learned decoding and copying. This will take years to fix. I’m not happy.

But it’ll be fine. He will spend a lot more time reading and he’ll learn to understand and he will learn how to express his own ideas in writing instead of just copying someone else’s writing. It may not be how his sister learned, but it’s ok. It’s pretty normal. It just…. wasn’t part of my fantasy. I wanted to wait until he was old enough to write the way I did with EC. I blame myself. I shouldn’t have signed him up for the charter even if I did EC. Bad call.

I regret that.

Nothing to be done for it now. Except to get off his g.d. back.

I can’t control other people and I can’t chase friendships that aren’t working. I have to concentrate on the people I brought into the world.

This is my job.