I think a lot about how I want to frame the world for my daughters. I try to think very carefully about what I say. I am going to be their inside voice. What they know and what they don’t know is mostly my fault.

Before you become a parent you need to make sure that you are able to meet the needs of your child. That either means being prepared to stay home yourself, having a partner who will stay home while you work, or both of you working and your kids will go to some sort of day care. All choices are good and worthy choices. It depends on what you want to do with your days.

I like what I do during the day. I often feel kind of ashamed of liking what I do so much. I spend a lot of time talking to very smart people. Many of them have very interesting and complicated jobs. They think I am smart too. They think I must be under-stimulated as a stay at home mom. I must be so bored.

I’m not. I am learning so many things. I enjoy the freedom I have so much. I have time. I have luxury and privilege. Sure my house is small and not in a “Nice” neighborhood and I will never have nice cars. I’ve never had those things any way and I would feel wildly uncomfortable.

The more time goes by the happier I am with where I am. I like my neighbors. We get to know one another. We talk and hang out. We just sit around shooting the shit. People make comments about feeling sorry for us for not having a tv and offer to let us come watch tv with them if we are that poor.

It is bizarre to me how often this happens. Really, people? You assume I am just too poor to buy a tv?! No. Not so much.

But in my neighborhood I think it happens. I hear that enough that I am starting to think that some of my neighbors are actually that poor.

Which kind of makes me feel like an asshole for watching Netflix on one laptop while I semi-browse Pinterest on another laptop and play Plants Vs. Zombies on the iPad.

I really have a surfeit of privilege. I look around my messy house and think that I should probably do a pass of getting rid of more stuff. Because we have a birthday next month. This will expand.

I live in a world that tells me that the answer is to buy a bigger house. I don’t want to clean a bigger house. I can’t keep up with this one. I feel very overwhelmed sometimes. And I can get my house party clean in under three hours at any moment. (Not true of my yard right now. Hoo boy.)

I feel very weird about how much time I think about potential entertaining. I like having people over. Doesn’t everyone want to feel that they are liked? When I am invited to someone else’s house I still don’t feel liked. I don’t know why. I don’t feel comfortable. I feel scared. I feel like I need to be careful to not be bad.

But it feels good when people want to come to me. I feel important. I feel appreciated.

When I was a child I didn’t invite people over much. I knew that it wasn’t a good idea for people to come to my house.

I have such intense need to make a safe house. I like my Wonderland. I like that I have flashing stars over my head and I get to look out at the palm trees. I am so excited about how my yard is progressing that I feel giddy.

I get to grow up in the house I always wanted to grow up in.

I didn’t have grandiose dreams as a child. A house like this would have been potentially above what I dreamed of. I never felt comfortable when I visited Britney. I was always in trouble at her house. When I am in a fine house with nice things I feel tense and uncomfortable. I am going to be screamed at any second now. I am so sorry I am bad.

I don’t think I will ever hire professionals to “finish” my whole house. I think that even if I do pieces of it I will leave things fairly funky. I want to feel like I am allowed to be here. I know what happens to girls like me who try to rise too far above their station.

In July I am committed to being out of the house for at least twenty hours each week and for half the month more than thirty.  Inside the house I have at least an additional twenty hours of work per week.

And I’m not running. And I’m not working on the books much. And I’m not getting all of my chores done. I’m behind on fucking everything.

I’m tired. I am over-committed. I feel ashamed of my limits but there they are.

What am I doing with this phase of my life?

I feel bad that my efforts to reach out and make community involvement a priority are met with the brick wall of my limits of sustainable work.

I don’t honestly think that teaching English is worth the work on my end. Most of the students aren’t doing much work, like an average of 20% of the work. The kids are so disparate in age that it is basically impossible to usefully challenge everyone. Additionally the oldest girl is quite advanced for their age and the younger ones are, well, young for their ages.

But it feels good to be badgering children towards finding their own voices again. I don’t do that with my kids in the same way. At this point I try not to say any of those things to my kids any more because I get them back on a loop tape.

I like that I get to just sit and watch my kids. Sometimes Shanna asks me what I am thinking (I ask her that all the time–I am really annoying.) and I tell her (err, some approximation of), “I am wondering how your story is going to go. You are the main character of your story. I want to know what happens to you. I am fascinated by watching you change.”

I want my kids to think of each person as being on a highly individualized journey. What do you want to do with your life? What things do you want to accomplish? What kind of grown up do you want to grow up and be?

I think I’m not even close to being done growing up. I feel like my life is, in some bizarre way, giving me resets. My Owner gave me a safe place to grow up. He was a Daddy. I have so many.

After I wrote the book Noah said he “got” the “daddy thing”.

It isn’t like it was.