The nightmares. Oh goodness. So last night I spent all night dreaming that Noah has gotten furiously angry with me and he started being nasty and hateful all the time. I read a thread on Twitter yesterday that a disabled woman wrote about her partner being nasty to her because of her disability needs. So of course I dream that Noah has gotten sick of helping me and he became contemptuous of me not doing everything around our house by myself.

Noah has only ever gotten that angry with me when I cheated on him and spent a bunch of time paying attention to lovers instead of him. (And when he was that angry with me he didn’t start insulting my lack of ability to do everything. He was pissed about a certain set of behaviors and he yelled at me over them. We had a really bad few months.)

Ok, I did that because using my words nicely didn’t change what I needed to change and that sucked.

But my subconscious thinks that is what I deserve all the time no matter what.

I don’t do everything for us the way that some women do. I know women who do fucking everything. All the cleaning, cooking, childcare, and they earn an income. I do about half of the cleaning and the kids do the other half. Noah does most of the cooking and I help when I feel like it. I do the vast majority of the childcare but Noah does more than many fathers I know (having them 24/7 means our ratio isn’t very average). I haven’t earned an income in over ten years.

So of course my subconscious thinks Noah is going to lose his shit and get really mean to me. Even though he isn’t like that. Even though he is fantastically kind to me and has been in a sustained way for 15+ years. Fuck my brain.

Traveling from misery to misery. Well, I am deeply concerned about my lack of access to pot. I use it for a reason, well…. many reasons… Not having it is going to make my life harder on every level.

Since I stopped devoting all of my dumping-the-kids-on-Noah scheduled time on Sarah I have been reaching out directly to a lot more friends and that’s been going well.

Part of the reason the bay area was absolutely done working for me is that most of my “social opportunities” involved needing childcare. Most of the places I hung out before having kids: bdsm community, Burner raves/camping events, late night dance events, clubbing…. they all necessitate me going alone or requiring childcare. Neither Noah nor I were all that comfortable with me going alone so…. I just dropped out of social communities basically entirely. I know folks who are comfortable bringing their kid to gatherings of kinky people in non-play settings. I know people who bring their kids to all the Burner events. I know people who bring their kids to the late night dance events.

I won’t.

I spent a lot of time in each of those communities helping my women friends deal with proximity to their rapists because none of those communities would eject predatory men. The bdsm community kind of tries sometimes if someone is bad enough but the bar is really extreme.

I can’t bring my kids to environments where I absolutely know that there are a bunch of predators present. I am not comfortable with my ability to protect my children in such environments because I was not good at protecting myself and I do not want to teach my children my bad habits.

I was friends with a lot of predators.

It isn’t that I am stupid enough to think that there aren’t predators out in the vanilla world. (I associate the Burner events with being kink-adjacent because of the quantity of public sex displayed.) It is that I am a lot more confident dealing with a new-to-me predator through shunning and avoidance than I am trying to teach my kids to do that to people I am clearly comfortable with.

So I stayed home for ten years. Cheers. I went to home schooling events. I hung out with other families.

I want to go find somewhere that treats family inclusion as the norm, not the exception.

It isn’t that I think my friends are wrong for including their kids in events that I won’t bring my kids to. That’s not the point of saying this. *I* can’t do it. *I* don’t trust *my* ability to keep my kids safe.

My kids will get to adulthood feeling like their sex life is personal and not to be exploited by asshole adult men if I have to live in isolation to do it. I just don’t want to live in isolation to do it.

I want to find a place to live where we don’t have to drive all the time. Even if I had moved to San Francisco (The Capitol City) or Oakland so that I could walk more… my friends in the bay were spread from Aptos to San Pablo. I would have had to tell my friends they weren’t worth my time or attention anymore to stop driving in the bay.

I couldn’t do that.

Maybe I can move somewhere else and work on not making so many GU friends. (Geographically Undesirable)

Driving was hurting me. I have the x-rays to show my spinal degeneration. Woo! Speaking of which, today I get to go pick up a rental car. Ha. Haha. Hahaha. *cough* I need to start making these reservations in Noah’s name and sending him to do all the driving. The thing is: I do a lot of the driving to do errands while he works and I don’t feel all that good about saddling him with all the chores in his outside-work hours. (See opening paragraphs about him already doing a lot to support my disabled ass.)

We went walking on the beach last night after dark because it was too fucking hot to move all day. It was a lot of fun. We will probably do it again before we leave.

But I don’t want to live near a beach permanently. Oh cheese toast the grit. The black feet. Ugh.

I am a little agitated this morning because I am anticipating driving… (it fucking hurts) but I’m still doing better. My sleep is intermittent. I am doing the best I can without pot.

I ran out of fancy face lotion. I won’t get more here. I will bring the curly hair leave-in coconut oil treatment because I assume that will be hard to get in Japan. It’s interesting sorting through to find out what things I feel are important and worth carrying from country to country. I am really liking the Function of Beauty shampoo and conditioner and I didn’t expect to. Given the price… I’m glad I love it. I feel my hair looks nicer than it has in a long time. So, I’m glad I kept experimenting.

We watched an episode of Queer Eye last night. I’ve never really watched it before. It was neat and we enjoyed it.

Ok I am out of physical ability to keep my kids off my computer. Guess I’m done for the morning.