We were just about over jet lag. Then illness strikes. Her Sweetness has a fever and she is super cranky; I assume she is in pain too. Eldest Child is having intestinal problems. I have full body pain (as someone with chronic pain this is enough pain to make me want to sit very still in a chair and cry–I am medicating for pain with tylenol and ibuprofen alternated), a low grade fever, and I am producing a river of snot with the associated coughing, sneezing, and sore throat. If you have followed me for long you know it has to get BAD before I medicate with these drugs because I am so afraid of my tolerance level going up.

I don’t think we will see much of Bangkok and I am very disappointed.

The food has tasted great. The garbage is omnipresent and overwhelming. The traffic patterns are reminding me of Kuala Lumpur only they are very different? It’s closer to KL than Japanese traffic patterns. The gridlock is massive. I can understand why the advice around driving here is don’t.

We are right next to RCA (Royal City Avenue) which is the designated clubbing/entertainment/tourist area. It’s a short walk down a relatively safe stretch of sidewalk. Relatively safe because the motorcycle taxi service has a stand in front of our building so they have to go back and forth on that stretch of sidewalk. If you pay attention and get out of their way it’s ok. And all the motorcycle drivers love Her Sweetness. They want to cuddle and hang out with her.

Her Sweetness is my most reserved child. I used to think Middle Child was incredibly reserved because I compared them to Eldest Child. Holy sauce buckets was I underestimating the amount of reserve a child of my blood can display. When people try to touch HS she cries. She wants her people and that’s it.

I am going to have to stagger downstairs and do laundry today because I am about out of hankies. Dude. I travel with more than a dozen hankies. Hankies are life. (We also have a full laundry basket. But the hankies will be the motivation.)

I was a serious bitch yesterday and I feel kind of embarrassed. I am sick and the kids were pushing me for attention and to do work for them. I blew up about how unfair it is that when they are sick I let them lie still and do nothing until they feel like doing things and I am not allowed any rest. I sort of feel like I “should” have found a nicer way to express this. But I tried a variety of “I’m not feeling well” and “I can’t do that” before I started getting harsh. There is this complicated balancing act where I try to be as nice as I can be to them until they just refuse to recognize that I have boundaries too and then I’m really not so nice. Because fuck that. I get to have rest when I am fucking sick and you can go in your room and play and stop bothering me. No I don’t have to pay attention to you today. You can bloody well cope with me taking care of myself today.

It’s weird. I feel guilty and proud of myself? I need to set these boundaries. I set them as softly as I could. I escalated ,when they completely refused to allow me boundaries, to being more forceful in my language. I did use the word fuck a lot. “I am fucking sick and I need to fucking rest. You don’t fucking need me to play with you. You can fucking play by yourself.” That was after a couple of hours of using soft language and having MC continue to head butt me and be rude and demanding and aggressive about wanting to play.

MC has asked me to use the word fuck less and I’ve been doing pretty well so this flood of fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck was definitely a sign of degrading ability to communicate. But I feel like my head is in a vice and if you don’t leave me alone and stop talking to me I am going to literally melt down and start screaming which would really suck in this tiny apartment. I have limits. I don’t talk to you like this even once a year. But I am sick and I need to be left alone to take care of me.

My kids genuinely think I am a river of love and support and work and they can’t understand when I can’t do that. It’s a weird dynamic. I feel both good and bad about it. I am not sure I am presenting them with a healthy, balanced view of what parents should be like. My mother under-responded and neglected me. So I half kill myself doing the martyr schtick so they never know a minute of boredom or want. I am hurting myself so they never have to be bored. That’s not healthy either.

I really can’t wait to have my own bedroom and for them to go to school. We need to start separating. I feel like a mother bird who is exerting more and more pressure to get the baby birds to get the fork out of the nest. I need some space, kiddos. I love you. I need some space for me too. I matter too. I am not the most important person in our family but I am not the least important person either. We need balance. If we sacrifice my health on the altar of “Happy Family” then this family is going to fall apart soon. I have to be healthy enough to carry my side of things.

I suspect this is related to just how hard I pushed my body over the past few months culminating in the last week. I have done a lot of work. We leave Bangkok on the 9th and we arrive on the 10th because it is another 30 hour travel day with getting to and from airports. Today is the 5th. So close yet so far.

The former owner of the house and Jenny’s Super Spiffy Husband (JSSH) both sent us long explanations of how to set up utilities and services. We are so incredibly lucky that we are following Jenny. She has helped in ways big and small that blow my mind. I feel like we are sliding into Scotland on greased rails. This could have been a nightmare. Instead it is a series of steps. Yes, we feel tension and stress as we go through the steps because lots of things are out of our control… but things are actually going as fast as they possibly could. We made the decision to move to Scotland, got absolutely everything done, and now we are returning in less than three months. That is miraculous in terms of government bureaucracy. Greased. Forkin. Rails.

And once we arrive… we have no deadlines to hurry up and get anything done. There are no foreseeable sprints in my future. We don’t need to hurry up and get anything done. We need to get things done as quickly as we get them done. I mean, utilities getting set up might be the most “Uhhh do that now” step. But furniture and cookware and all that stuff can trickle in. We will probably go shopping on the 11th to get some things, but not a lot. Realistically we will go to the store every day for a while and we will get what we get. Sometime in the first week we will probably hire a van and clean out the charity shop of anything we can use and do a massive grocery shop but it’s not a big rush. If it happens on our second day or our fourth day or the seventh day… whatever. We are right between three stores that are all dandy for supplying us with food we can eat without stress. I’m just not worried. It’s a lovely feeling. I will slowly acquire the things we need to keep house. Drips and drabs. It will be easier to do most of this shopping after the shipment of our belongings arrive so I have the big double stroller.

I got a double bike trailer that can be used as a stroller so that I can pull the baby AND groceries. This is my compromise on not having a car. I am already aware of how awesome Tesco’s delivery service is (THANK YOU JSSH!) but I really like going to the store. And I want to experiment between Tesco and Aldi and Asda. I will get a little notebook for comparing prices. We are going to be trying to be that tight with our budget.

I’m not sure if I told y’all this. Noah’s current obscene California salary is going to last till January. Then he’s going to work on books, teaching, and maybe a wee bit of contracting on the side. We have enough money in petty cash for 2-3 years of run time if we are very conservative and we hope we can figure out him working for himself. This is part of why we decided Taipei is not wise at the moment. If we are trying to live on £40,000/year all of a sudden spending $6000 on a trip to Taipei seems… uhhh not in the budget.

I have lived on much less. While snowballing our debt we lived on a similar amount of money at the beginning of our marriage. We will see!

On the money front: I was watching a session of Scottish Parliament yesterday and there was a lot of hand wringing over how they can’t get enough people to work with mental health care for children. The waiting lists are long and they are incredibly stressed out about it. Do you know what I have a unique background on? Helping kids with mental health problems. Sure, I’ll have to hit up the local university for some specific training and degree hoop jumping but that doesn’t scare me. Maybe when Her Sweetness starts nursery in a year and a half we will have four people in school in the house. That would be kind of cool.

I would like to have a job. I would like to have a job specifically because I dream of a conservatory added to the house and if I don’t figure out how to earn the money for it myself Noah will feel like he needs to get a remote job from California for ridiculous money and then he will work 60 hours a week and I will be very sad.

I don’t need to earn the money in the first couple of years. In my head I wouldn’t be ready to start that kind of project for at least 3-5 years. That gives me time to go to school and get started in the field. I will be 100% hiring out the work and the former owner gave me the name of the person who could probably build it for me because he did all the other remodeling in the house.

This is not abandoning the idea of IDB (Incest Database) but it is helping to keep me busy until then and helps me gain qualifications that will help with the research and it helps pay for retirement stuff so Noah doesn’t have to supply 100% of our retirement safety on his own. I still think I couldn’t really get going on IDB for almost 20 years. Not the way I want to. 20 years is a long time and I could do a lot of valuable work between now and then.

I want to be part of the community. This would be a really great way for me to meet people and find a place for myself.

I don’t have a plan yet. I am not rushing. I am waiting to see how things shake out. I am coming up with ideas, potentials, hopes, and dreams.

And nothing is in a big rush. No sprints. Settle in slowly. Exercise. Establish house. Help the kids adjust to school. Wait for HS to be old enough for nursery. Enjoy the next year and a half of extra alone time with my precious last baby. I feel lucky and blessed.

I won’t be doing much today. Noah has a speakers dinner tonight. We have instant noodles in the apartment that will probably be most of our food while he is doing his conference. I should go down to the 7-11 (holy shit these things are ubiquitous internationally) and get some yogurt and juice and maybe other snacky foods. Maybe I’ll do that run while I’m dealing with laundry.

I feel so bad. I did more yesterday than I probably should have. Today I can’t. As I plan to go to the laundromat and do grocery shopping. I am such a twit.

These things have to get done. It’s not optional. Being the mom is not always fun. But it is always worth it. I did not have children because I wanted convenience. I am so very loved. It’s worth it.

Even if sometimes I have to say fuck fuck fuck fuck to be allowed to rest.

I think it is kind of useful that EC is reading these Warriors books because the mama cats take no shit and that is causing her to change how she views me. It’s hilarious.

I have been dizzy on and off for days. My body is so unhappy. Her Sweetness is waking up every two hours to nurse and I don’t feel like it is fair to complain given how sick she is.

Miss Jenny picked up our keys. The solicitor has been paid off. We have a home to go back to. A home that pretty closely matches drawings I’ve been making about my dream home for years. I am so lucky.

We are going to be highlanders! We start this next phase of our lives on the day I turn 38. Seems like a good time for a rebirth.