I think it is funny that my kids have “early riser” as part of their self identity. We think sleeping till 7am is sleeping in and my kids refer to themselves as slug-a-beds on days they sleep that late. “Whoo. I was so tired. Maybe I’m not feeling well or I’m growing.” It’s funny because so many of our friends are night owls.

I feel so much gratitude for getting to have three kids. I don’t have to sit around waiting on other people wanting to pay attention to me anymore. I have a lot of work and attention I have to provide every day. I go to bed tired and I wake up knowing that even if I don’t talk to other people I have a full day. I mean, I still desperately want connection with my friends… but it’s different.

Today we are not going ice skating with Jenny’s family because my kids don’t enjoy it and that’s ok. I don’t feel anxious or bad or like I am missing out on time with my friend. We will see each other a bunch and it’s ok to skip events that won’t be much fun for us. When I was younger I would go do things I hated (I don’t hate ice skating, for the record) just because I didn’t want to be alone. Now I can fill a day with my family and have fun without extra people.

Eldest Child asked if we could please go out to breakfast as a treat. Then we will go grocery shopping. Then we will go to the park because it’s their last day of spring break before academics start up again.

That sounds fun to me.

The park down the hill from us is awesome. It’s huge and set up for running and there’s lots to climb and spin on. Parks in the US look so boring compared to this. There are trampolines in the ground and a bunch of merry go round stuff and huge climbing walls and standard bars (like for gymnastics) for spinning and a zip line and good swings and…. It’s a really great park. It’s like all the best part of all the parks in the bay area put in one huge place where all the kids were yelling and being loud.

That’s so fucking cool.

Not to mention that we are loving the food in Scotland so far. I’m cooking a bunch and every meal I make the kids are like “Oh my goodness this is so good.”

But I hear that Brexit is going to fuck the food situation because the UK hasn’t been able to grow enough food for their folk in 100 years. Maybe we should be building a Brexit box too… there is the possibility that food will become a problem starting two weeks before we plan to leave this country. Cheers. I would donate my storage stuff to Jenny’s family upon leaving.

I really hope that Scotland votes to leave the UK. But, it’s none of my nevermind. My country is fucking itself.

Keeping this apartment tidy is feeling easy. There aren’t enough dishes or space in the washing machine to put things off, I have to keep on top of it. But that also means there is never that much work at a time. It’s feeling like a nice sweet spot. With how much cooking I’m doing it is constant small scale tidying, but the kids are helping and it’s going well.

I have some of that white-guy anxiety here. I can feel it. But I feel enough like an outsider that I don’t feel like much of a potential target. I have that whole veil-of-white-motherhood thing. Nobody is going to touch me. I have such mixed feelings about that. I feel comforted and upset that this isn’t available to everyone.

It is weird only seeing white faces at the park. After Japan where we saw something like 20 white people the whole time… this is odd.

Heh. We barely feel like we are visiting an English speaking country. We can’t understand a lot of the talk here. That’s hilarious.They speak Scottish and we speak US-English. Then there is English-English that is divided into like eight accents.

Night weaning has not regressed this time. I’m just flippin done. Both younger kids are sleeping with me. Middle Child loves this. He wishes that we could have two queen mattresses on the floor so that I could have him in bed with me once Noah comes back. It’s a little frustrating that he likes to get a leg out of the blanket by ripping the blanket off of me and throwing it on the floor. Luckily that mostly feels funny.

I’m feeling really happy. The only thing missing is Noah.

Oh gloriousness. Yesterday Jenny brought over the last box I shipped to Scotland. We have so many books now! A bunch of things we set aside for school. Mostly religion study, but also Spanish and math. The math… we may or may not do. But the religion study books we enjoy and my kids are feeling motivated to study Spanish more after the night in Bar Corazon. Maybe I can catch them up to where I am. That would be really fun.

I am having a lot of mixed feeling about my hair. It is solidly to my waist now; it’s as long as it was when I shaved my hair when MC was a baby. I can understand why I did that then out of frustration. It’s gorgeous but so much work. I also don’t know what to do about my wispy fly-aways. I always have a halo of frizzy hair around my face. I could do Regency hairstyles so easily with my new-growth. Mostly I just let the hairs stick straight up and move on with my life. I feel almost Helena Bonham Carter with the wild hairs.

Speaking of which, I should start braiding my hair for the day. Toodles.

So I told the big kids I needed to not do much for a day and they needed to play with their sister all day long. They did! It was great! I was paged when I was needed and I cooked some vegetables for supper because otherwise we wouldn’t have had any all day (cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprout roasted). I added goat cheese to mine. Mmmmmm

I sat in bed and played travel agent. So many flights and hotels and AirBnBs and travel are booked up through January 3rd. Then I’m staring off the edge of a cliff. I partially did this because a lot of countries are pissy about you entering without an exit date. So I don’t have to feel anxious about people glaring at me for “not going home” at the end. I was grilled like fuck coming into the UK. “When are you leaving? Why are you staying so long? Do you even have a job?”

I am not here for the dole, yo.

I spent $13,000 yesterday. But, my rent is paid up through January.

I feel like this is part of why I am feeling phobic about looking at Mint lately. How do I know how in budget I am when I am paying for stuff so far in advance?!

By the end of this calendar year I may have 300,000 frequent flier points. Not bad. If I add in the points my family is earning, definitely.

That’s going to pay for a lot of trips in 2020.

I miss Noah. Kid touch isn’t the same. I went and counted. Noah will be separated from us for 48 days this year. That’s a lot. We will cope, obviously, but it’s a lot.

Today we are going to meet Jenny and kids at a park. It will be fun. 🙂 We will get rained on in the lovely Scottish weather. Ha. Luckily we all have jackets to spare now.

I am feeling so blessed by all the food in my house right now. Japan and Hawaii were emotionally hard on me because I couldn’t stock up. But we keep talking about how much we already miss Japan. No one misses Hawaii. It’s not our paradise.

We only went to Hawaii because we wanted to see people. Who were then shitty and selfish. Oh well. That’s life.

My kids are having an interesting time watching what happens when you pull taut the threads of friendship. They see who is reaching back still despite the distance. They see that there are definitely *friends* in the world for them. They wish they had more, and local friends, of course… but they are feeling better about themselves just lately. They also struggled in the bay with not being able to tell who was really their friend and who was willing to come over and let us pay for entertainment.

We do have people who care about us very deeply. It’s nice. We continue to reach back. And our door will always be open to folks who want a spot on their own wanderings. We love you very much. California just wasn’t working anymore.

It’s not your fault and it isn’t my fault either.

I worry a lot about the future. There is no peace anywhere. There is no ease anywhere. We are heading for a cataclysmic event on a global scale.

Hold on to your tits.

Why do we have children when we are just damning them to a planet on the brink of collapse. Well, hope.

We have breakfasted (goodness it was good), had a morning snack, bathed, dressed, brushed hair, watched some Anne with an E, and now… blessed rest. Today will be easy.

My kids have actually adapted to being quieter more than I expected they would be able to. They need occasional gentle reminders but they are so much quieter than they were in California that it kind of feels like they had personality transplants.

They are both talking about how much they miss about Japan already. With a bigger kitchen we would have been very happy there for a lot longer. Good to know.

We are all excited about cooking again. Even with no salt everyone was very happy about our breakfast eggs. The beans were fabulous–less sweet than in the US but super tomato-y and lovely.

Also, scones for the win.

Both kids are being incredibly helpful and wonderful. They feel a renewed sense of purpose for maintaining a house. Japan was too much. This feels like the right amount of work. They asked if we could draw up a chore chart and figure out how to rotate the chores between us because that’s fun.

They both absolutely squeed with glee at getting to download more library books and they have both reread the kids books we sent to Scotland already. They are visiting old friends.

I now understand why Japanese nappies have such a great reputation. Scottish nappies… oh these blow chunks. (Which isn’t entirely positive, but it shows me how good I had it there.)

It was fun waking up to a boy in my bed because he wanted to be close to us.

My big kids have already done many hours of playing together after tidying their stuff. They are enjoying each other a lot.

Eldest Child heard from an old friend on Scratch (a website that teaches how to program and build video games). She had been talking about how much she misses him and she was super happy to hear from him. I told her she should write him a letter and her eyes lit up. She has known this boy since she was three. I told her she really doesn’t have to lose him just because we moved and she’s feeling thrilled. He clearly wants to keep in touch with her.

Both kids are feeling fairly connected to their friends even with the distance. That’s beautiful to see.

Her Sweetness painted her entire face and head with her breakfast beans while cackling madly. It was glorious.

I keep hearing from Dad’s girlfriend. I am feeling a lot of hope about the visit to Portland. I have touched base with several friends there already and we have all expressed desire to get together 1-3 times in the span I am there. If I am not setting aside 90% of my kid-free time for Sarah I get to actually see my other friends.

People do love me, even if I don’t always love myself. I continue to read the CPTSD book. I can only handle a few pages at a time because it is incredibly distressing and activating while also making me feel better about myself. I’m weird. But I was going to be weird. It’s interesting how this book is confirming something I have wondered for a while: the neglect/lack of love was probably far more damaging long-term than the sexual abuse or being hit. When your mother hates you from birth and teaches you that your existence is an unwanted burden… that’s hard to shake off. It’s not appropriate for later relationships to be unconditional and people who are neglected really hard in their first few years spend their whole life desperately wanting people to love them unconditionally and that fails because it’s not how adult relationships work.

My friends have to tell me no. My friends have to say “I can’t do that for you.” My friends have to say “If you do x I can’t be around you.” That is not an attack or a withdrawal of friendship that is appropriate boundary setting. But in my brain it doesn’t always read that way and I need to learn how to love myself enough to make up for those boundaries feeling like a statement that I do not deserve love and I should die.

That’s not what people are trying to say. But my brain was programmed to read things that way.

It’s inspiring reading a book by someone much older than me who says “Yeah this is shit work that we will never be finished with. It’s ok. You are worth doing all this work for.” I have to think I am worth putting in the effort to reprogram my brain. I have to try to interpret my friends behavior as healthy boundary setting because they are awesome autonomous people with their own lives.

That’s my work.

It is going to take me a while though.

Half an hour till the grocery store opens. Woo. Tomorrow I will figure out delivery. Today I just need to get food. Setting up internet accounts is hard when I’m this tired, I don’t have patience to spare. It is all going to my children. I’m doing well with that though. I’m talking about *why* we have to learn skills for our benefit and their future. I’m trying very hard to frame things as “We do this so we will be healthy/have strength/feel good” instead of “Stop doing x because you suck.” (I don’t tell my kids they suck.) I do sometimes tell them that I don’t have more patience to absorb inconvenience and still be nice. That’s true. Ok, baby requires entertainment now.

I don’t think we’ve had bad food here. I mean, even the spicy ramen that burned my asshole for three days tasted fantastic. Last night we went to the cat restaurant. We call it that because there is a picture of a cat on the door. What is the actual name of the restaurant? Fuck if I know, it’s only written in Japanese. But they actually have a resident cat who came out to greet us so I will lodge it in memory as the cat restaurant. The beef was dreamy. But let me back up.

It started with a fantastic soup that had a bunch of root vegetables, some beef, and some fish. Luckily Noah ate the soup the fastest so he found the fish and volunteered to take it from my bowl. Such a good husband. Then Noah and I got lovely large salads that were super delicious. Very well dressed and everything. Then came rice and miso soup. The kids also got the intro soup. Then the kids got plates of chicken. We found the word chicken on the menu with the app and the word beef and pointed at two random things. We had no real idea what we ordered.

The kids got a salt and pepper chicken and a basil chicken with a nice salad on the side, no rice. Noah and I got sizzling beef platter piled upon a bed of sprouts and cabbage with chunks of well cooked potatoes and carrots.

We shared this glorious bounty with no particular respect to who got what. It was great. I loved the food. That was some of the most glorious beef I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. It was also one of the most expensive meals we’ve had in this country, clocking in at $90. Worth every penny. But I can understand why the restaurant was empty when there are other restaurants right near by where we can feed our family to being stuffed on a mere $25.

Yesterday Noah had his first day of his conference. We woke up fairly early (we are waking up at about 5) and I nursed the baby so that she would go back to sleep for a while. I primped Noah. For Christmas he got a bunch of beard care fancy schtuff and I used most of it on him and I hand trimmed his beard because there is not a single plug in this apartment near a mirror. I also rubbed a bunch of lotion into him so that he smelled nice. Mmm pineapple. I applied deodorant because I am a nice person and he had a 45 minute walk ahead of him on his way to the conference. I have met my smelly mammal.

The kids and I had a pretty chill day. I went to the grocery store as usual. Her Sweetness is now demanding that we hold her hands and walk her around for large stretches of the day. Luckily the big kids like to help so we were tapping in and out of that job. We did that while watching a show together. It was fun.

The kids are doing writing stuff for academics and occasional loosey goosey math. We are finishing up notebooks so we have less to carry. I love that Eldest Child is mostly writing fanfic about Warriors (It’s about cat clans) and Middle Child is writing opinion pieces on where he thinks Girl Genius is going. He thinks Zeetha will win over Bangladesh Dupree and he had a lot of specific reasons in his essay. That was really fun to read.

He also drew a comic illustrating his most recent argument with his sister. I found it pretty funny.

I spent a bunch of time sitting with myself and trying to process how much I am over reacting vs how much I am having necessary feelings about different situations in my life. I am feeling a lot better about myself reading this CPTSD book. He stresses that the goal isn’t to feel joy all of the tme because that is unrealistic, unattainable, and a really stressful thing to put on yourself. The goal is to stop beating yourself up for existing and having a range of feelings.

He also talks a lot about regressing (he calls it emotional flashbacks) to emotional states from childhood as being something that can go on for months or years. That dovetails into what I am observing about myself during the early parts of my children’s lives. He talks about how doing the things you need to do the most will often trigger overwhelming shame and anxiety because you were trained as a child that you should not take care of yourself.

It’s like Sarah telling me that I can’t talk about the ways I felt bad about our relationship because I was publicly shaming her. That’s exactly like my mom telling me that I can’t talk about the shit in our family because it is airing dirty laundry.

Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

I don’t think Sarah is a bad person. I don’t think she intended to hurt me. She was protecting herself. We all need to do that, right?

But it’s kind of like how I need to stop treating other people like they are more important than me. They aren’t. I don’t need to keep showing up to help people who will drive past me to help someone else. I don’t need to keep hosting events so that other people can have a sense of community but people won’t show up to hang out with me one on one because really… they are just at my events so they can have the other people in the group.

I can’t do that any more.

I can’t keep contributing to the home schooling groups that are absolutely rigidly controlled by the leader, but everyone is welcome to work for her benefit as much as they want.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

I’m not anti-work. I’m against people expecting me to always give for the joy of giving while not getting anything back because I am supposed to not need support. I’m a fucked up person with a lot of problems of my own. Most of my support comes from people I pay… but I’m expected to help other people for free.

I can’t do this anymore. I’m not a “Fuck you, pay me” person. But I wanted exchanges not being bled dry.

My shrink asked me to think about what I want to get from people in Portland and I have not been able to respond to her because thinking about that makes me want to throw up. I am not allowed to want anything. If I want something it won’t happen and I will be disappointed and then I will be a bad person because I will act disappointed. My expectations get me in trouble all over the place. I want to leave Portland with my friendships intact and not feeling bad about myself.

And I can’t write anymore because my kids won’t leave the room. ok.

Noah is walking to the store. I have a sleeping baby on my lap. Big kids are in their apartment folding their clean laundry.

It’s been a tiring day. We walked a bit over 5 miles today. We went to thrift stores but no one wanted some of the stuff I wanted to donate. Shit. I was able to get rid of clothing at H&M. That did help but some of this stuff is going to end up in the garbage and that makes me sad.

I’m getting a lot out of this book (Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A GUIDE AND MAP FOR RECOVERING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA). A few friends have commented that they felt I was regressing since Her Sweetness was born. I think that is true. I think I have done so with each of my kids. I think that my early life (like the first 2 years) was probably a lot more traumatic than I even understand. I think that’s part of why I am such a basket case when I have tiny children. I feel like their needs matter and mine don’t and I drive myself to utter exhaustion and depletion trying to be there for them around the clock with inadequate support. 

I definitely perceive some of the lack of support as being my fault. Noah and I have shoved our parents away and that’s who helps most people.

I’ve been thinking about something in context of the online therapy and reading this book: why does being alone feel like such punishment? Well, I suspect that is related to a lot of my foster homes. A lot of the places where I was sent to live would tell me that I had to stay alone in a room for all of the hours I was in the house because I was bad. So being alone makes me feel like I am still in that place. Like I don’t deserve to be around people. Because I am bad and bad and bad.

The online shrink asked how I handle tasks like going to get massage or brushing my teeth as self-care. Can I handle them? Well, I have had to mostly learn to perceive these activities as saving Noah money in the long run. I feel a lot of shame over how much money he has already spent fixing my shitty body. (God my mouth is expensive.) I don’t want to cost him any more than I absolutely have to and that means I have to do maintenance work. I can’t be penny wise and pound foolish on him. That’s not fair. I have to do this stuff or I am going to be way more expensive in the future. I’m disabled and it is getting worse. It will get a lot worse in the future if I don’t do everything I can to fight against the flow now.

But if I don’t have time alone I go crazy and get really fucking mean. So this balance of not wanting to be alone is a problem.

It’s useful to be reminded that I am basically in a large scale flash back and that’s why I am not coping as well as I was before I got pregnant again. It’s neat having Eldest Child remember that I was a lot more calm and patient and good at dealing with problems before I got pregnant. She said it was like a switch flipped.

Oh baby. And it was easier this time.

It’s nice that I can at least see that for myself. This time was easier and it was still hard. It was easier mostly because of the big kids and that feels complicated. I’ve tried hard not to lean on them too much, but I definitely have times when I say things like “Hold your baby I have to grab x”. (Like I did today when I was carrying stuff up and down stairs.)

I don’t feel possessive of her. We all wanted her to be made. She is our baby. Which is neat and complicated. I don’t feel like the kids are sub-parents. But we take the family pod thing pretty seriously. We belong to each other. They are only mine in as much as I am theirs. My kids talk pretty regularly about how lucky they feel to have each other as friends. “I’m so glad I like you so much.” We have periods where they struggle with each other, of course, but overall the balance for us is so heavily weighed towards finding solutions and nobody being More Important that I feel really happy.

I wanted this with my “chosen family” and that didn’t work out.

I am struggling with trying to view the chosen family stuff not working out the same way that I view my previous romantic relationships not working out. It’s not that I failed at those relationships: they ran their course and I learned a lot and they were good. I wouldn’t have been able to have as healthy of a relationship with Noah if I had not had those experiences and I am glad I am this level of healthy for him. I would not be able to be as good for/with my kids as I am if not for the relationships I had with my chosen family people.

We are reading a book called Philosophy for Kids and it presents a bunch of philosophical arguments and then prompts discussion. There was a question about what makes a friend. It was an Aristotelian sort of lens. It was interesting to me how my definition of friendship culls a lot of people and yet… it doesn’t? I maintain a lot of relationships because people are important to me. I can be in my blog screaming “Fuck you” because I have big feelings and then write you a long letter about what I appreciate about you. Because both feelings are true and present.

The fuck yous are mostly about me trying to come to grips with my expectations for you being out of whack with reality.

My expectations really fuck me over.

They ruin friendships. They ruin situations that should be good for me. Because I have this picture in my head of what I want things to be like and other people… don’t share those pictures.

It’s part of why I ask my kids so many questions about what they want from me and what they want in relationships. I can’t guess. I will fuck it up. I can’t try to force our relationship to be what I want… I will fuck it up. I hurt Noah so much with my bullshit expectations.

I can’t figure it out and manage to get it right with every friend I have. But I need to get it right with these four people. My friendships will have to morph or die and that has to be ok and healthy and appropriate.

Today I read something about how when you have CPTSD sometimes the most correct actions in a given moment make you feel ashamed and terrified because those behaviors were not acceptable during your childhood.

I feel like Sarah and I traumatized each other. We were neither of us the most healthy of people with the best boundaries and we used our individual neediness as a weapon against the other. That completely sucks because we really do love each other. Sometimes love is not enough. If I don’t feel like breaking up with my Owner was a failure because we needed different things from a partnership, why do I feel like a failure because my relationship with Sarah ended? Why do I use that feeling of failure as a bludgeon on myself to “prove” that I am pathetic and bad at relationships and incapable of being a good friend?

Fucking brains, yo.

I mean, I keep talking about how I will only focus on my family. But I’m running to Jenny. When I leave Jenny I go to see a whole bunch of people I love very much in the PNW. I have folks I will be seeing in Portland and Seattle and Eugene. Because they are important. Because when I have that physical distance most of the time it is easier for me to feel grateful about 3 hours of talking every few years being enough. I don’t have bigger expectations of people when we don’t live near each other on the regular.

Ok, that’s a lie too. It hurts that Dad only invites me to leather events when I bloody well don’t have childcare and that’s just not an option for me. He doesn’t invite me into his family where my children would be appropriate.

But I cope with that by putting him in a little box and not ever asking for anything from him. I get what I get and I shouldn’t be upset.

Fuck should.

But I love him. I want what I get so I am not allowed to complain about not getting more. I fucked things up with Sarah wanting more and I don’t want to do that with everyone. So I will smile and hug him and enjoy the moments I get to have and that’ll be that.

Life is so complicated. I have so much good going for me. I really don’t get to feel like my life is unfairly bad at this stage. But I’m a selfish twat waffle and I want ALL THE GOOD. Geez woman. There isn’t enough time in the day for all the good. You get a lot.

Really, I do get a lot.

Life doesn’t always bring this much good to a person.

Show some damn gratitude.

Breathe deep. Things will be ok.

We will find a forever home. We have friends and we will make more. We do that. Now I have a family. If I can make a family this awesome…. I can do anything.

I am enjoying the book on CPTSD I’m reading. It’s very useful framing for a lot of what is going on in my brain. I will always struggle with this shit. Every time I struggle I will feel like I have made no progress at all and I am a failure.

This is part of the norm for people like me.

I feel like night weaning is going well-ish again. She is still waking up a ton but I am far more patient with it when I’m not in pain. Her ever increasing number of teeth are brutal.

We had an accident today on the rug. A marker broke. I was hungry and I worried about exploding so I went and ate something before I talked to a kid about it. Mistakes happen. We all break things. We all have times when we mess up. I am creating my children’s inside voice when I react to things like this. I said, “Hey! Know how you have a whole bunch of short term savings in case you need to fix a mistake? You have literally prepared for this happening. Because life is hard and things happen. It’s ok. It’s just a thing. Nobody died.”

*pat self on back*

I feel like I was a complete basket case for the first 18 months of having the two big kids. As much as I am still struggling (fucking nightmares) things are better than they were at the same age with the big kids. Her Sweetness is only 14 months old and I can eat something and respond calmly to an issue. I don’t think I was capable of that 8 years ago.

As much as I feel like I will never be anything other than a monster… I am improving with age. I just have to be willing to look at things in perspective. I am still not who I want to be.

I think often of what Jenny put in my birthday book. I look at myself and see how far I still want to get. She looks at me and sees how far I have come.

I get to see Jenny in a week. I’m so excited.

I am working hard on trying to get my emotions under control. I need to absorb the tranquility of Japan even with the frustrations of the limitations of this space. I have to. I want to make a good impression on Jenny’s kids. If I fuck up the first impression this time… I won’t be able to get that back. The older girl will remember me this time. I don’t want to be “that bitch” in her memory.

Come on Krissy, get it together.

Not to mention that I’m thinking really hard about how my behavior impacts Noah and I’m thinking about how I want to be impacting Noah. I actually got fairly lucky in my dating life. I was treated pretty darn well by most of the people I dated. Noah is a shining star above all of them. Noah has given me consistency (even though that is super hard for him) and kindness (that the world has never given him) and love (that no one ever gave him).

I want to be the partner he deserves. Because he tells me that he is the partner I deserve and he is so great.

I am really frustrated. This apartment size is getting to me. There is literally no where to be out of the way unless you shove into a corner of the room. Most of those corners mean you can’t eat because the god damn rug is electric and we all spill our food so we have to stand/sit/crouch around the tiny bit of bare floor. And then if anyone wants to get up and get something else everyone has to god damn shift over. I am losing my mind.

Eldest Child’s knee is almost better. She has cabin fever. But we are up three flights of stairs and she was irritating it a lot and I need her to be all the way better before we go through another airport so we have to sit around and wait until it is FULLY healed, not almost healed. I am so bored.

I am tired of my entire days being laundry, cleaning, go get food, clean, interspersed with constant nursing and diaper changes.

I went out on a self date the other night. I got 2 whole hours away. The restaurant I picked had great food and shitty attitude. The host and another customer asked where I was from then had a loud sneering conversation in Japanese about “California” and “English only”. Given that they have a Japanese word that doesn’t sound like English they were pretty clearly making sure I understood they were talking shit. It wasn’t peaceful or fun.

I don’t get to go explore the city. Even if I did go I would have to take the two younger kids and Middle Child would loudly complain the whole time if I did anything other than go to a children’s play area.

I don’t get to have down time.

I don’t get to sleep.

Dealing with food is a nightmare. I am so frustrated. We have to walk to the store every day to get preprepared food that varies day by day and my kids are being really snotty about anything being weird and I am fucking out of patience. YES. THEY EAT FUCKING CHICKEN SKIN HERE. SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT AND GOD DAMN EAT BECAUSE I AM NOT WALKING ANOTHER TWO MILES TO TRY TO FIND SOMETHING OTHER THAN THESE GOD DAMN SKEWERS. THIS WAS THE NON SEAFOOD OPTION. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!!?!?!?!

Obviously I have not said that. But I am gritting my teeth a lot and I’m getting really short with their complaints. At first I told them they didn’t have to eat anything they didn’t like. Then that turned into living on fruit and sugary bread. Guess what, you have to eat the fucking protein I can find. I am sorry they don’t exclusively have chicken breasts for you. Suck. It. Up.

I have had to eat more than one thing that probably had seafood in it because that’s what there was. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

We can’t only have familiar food. And no you can’t live on cream buns. That’s not ok.

I am really glad the kids told me they only wanted to be here for three weeks instead of longer. They show great wisdom.

Every other apartment for the next few months will have an easier kitchen. That’s turning out to be an even bigger deal than I could have imagined. We need a table. We need a place where we can sit down and eat together. It’s important. We need a way to cook so that we are not dependent on whatever the store puts together that day from mostly seafood.

This country is both more polite than my experience of Paris and less polite. It’s fascinating. I don’t want to “go home” but I don’t want to be here anymore.

Thank you, next.

I miss scrambles. Eating raw fruit and vegetables every day for breakfast probably isn’t helping. I’m hungry. The meals in restaurants here usually leave me feeling hungry and I need to go supplement. The people here are smaller and their calorie needs are lower. But I also kind of feel like a pig when I buy 5-6 preprepared “meals” for our family of 4 adult sized people and a baby. But we eat them.

And the baby is sick. I am frustrated. I am probably getting sick too. But I sucked a looooooot of snot out of her nose. The nose Frida is simultaneously awesome and truly disgusting.

I just want to rest. I want a bed day. I want to not have to clean for a day. I want to not have to go take care of anyone or anything.

That won’t be happening any year soon and today I feel super bitter and angry about it.