I will definitely finish the 50K words for NaNoWriMo, but my hands hurt a lot. I am not going to die of cancer in the next year. I don’t need to finish the whole book this month. I don’t think trying to do that is good for my mental or physical health right now.

I’m struggling with vulnerability and emotional stability. When I lived in California I struggled with this. These are things I don’t handle well. I am having a hard time with the lack of pot, the knowledge that I really should stop drinking entirely (linked to 9 kinds of cancer), and I’m on duty around the clock with a lot of stress.

The house is a money pit. Once we get everything fixed (it feels like fucking everything) hopefully it will get easier, but it’s really stressful. Getting things here is super stressful. I’ve been waiting ALL FUCKING DAY for the delivery of baby gates to help with boundaries for multiple days but the company just isn’t getting around to me and they tell me I have to be available from 7:30am-9pm just in case they feel like getting to me that day.

If I write about my kids and what is going on with them there is potential judgment there that is a bigger problem than just shutting the fuck up and not getting support.

Boundaries are hard. Where do boundaries need to be placed to preserve relationships and where will boundaries mess up a relationship? I don’t know.

I don’t have a lot of adult contact in my life. There are a bunch of reasons for this and I’m not complaining about it–I’m just noticing that it’s part of the constellation of stress and anxious. I don’t feel very safe reaching out and that’s complicated. I am not blaming anyone else. I am not reaching out. I am not reaching out for eleventybillion reasons. I suspect that a bunch of my friends would be happy to talk to me more, but I feel like a needy burden and that means I need to just shut the fuck up and wait it out until I can listen and be a supportive friend again. I don’t feel ok in any way with needing support.

I found out yesterday that there is a family from Sacramento in our school; they moved here at Easter. We talked about live shooter drills and how much of a problem they were for her kids. She understands why I home schooled there. She said that in her experience there really is zero support or understanding for it here. All home schooling here is termed “interrupted learning”.

I’m feeling a lot of hostility towards the idea that home schooling means that kids are inevitably damaged. As if the fucking kids who go to school are all alright.

The longer period of darkness means my family is sleeping a lot more. That’s good. There is this well of existential exhaustion we are all trying to cope with. It’s good but it means there are fewer hours in the day for us to do our work and that causes anxiety too.

I’m going to start shooting for more like 1,000-1,500 words/day for the rest of the month. I won’t finish the book, but I will rest my hands more. I am so tired and I hurt and I feel bad about myself.

Writing the book is incredibly hard emotionally. It feels like a trip down Krissy-is-a-fuck-up-lane. I have fucked up a lot of relationships. I make a lot of bad decisions. I don’t feel good about myself almost at all. It is really hard to stay present with “I should be making choices that extend my longevity” when it feels like the world would be so much better if I were dead. I’m not feeling suicidal, but it’s hard to think about “I should cut back on meat, dairy, eggs, sugar, eliminate alcohol, watch my exercise very carefully, get frequent full body scans for cancer, cut back on stress (hahahahahaha), etc” all so I can… live longer and spend more time as a shitty person who fucks up all the god damn time.

And Noah is off for nine days. He’s visiting with his besties (this is a great thing!) and going to a conference (this… is important too). I know he needs to go. I support him going. Being alone with the kids is going to feel like a lot. Taking delivery of the boat stuff alone is going to feel like a lot.

Installing the baby gates alone (if I can ever get them delivered) is going to feel like a lot.

Today it is hard to feel hope.

In brighter, money-pit news, the lovely joiner dude who is helping us with stuff looked at my drawings for the book shelves and thinks they look fun to build. He was a little worried at first about cost “I wouldn’t even know how to estimate how long this will take and I’m nervous about the cost of materials.” I said, “Well let me tell you how I did my bathroom. (show pictures–watch eyes bug out) I bought all of the materials and I paid for hours every week. The construction company started out saying ‘It’ll take three months tops!’ I laughed and said it would take a minimum of six months. It took seven months. I paid wages every single week like clockwork. This is my project. I know it is huge and complicated and not something that can be estimated. I will pay for the time it takes. I would prefer if I can count on something like one or two days a week of dedicated labor (you have other clients to take care of on other days, I get that) and it takes how many weeks it takes.”

He said that sounds really neat and he’s looking forward to all the research he will have to do to put this together. He won’t start till the new year, which is great because I’d rather not have the mess during Christmas. We are talking about types of wood, both whether to use treated wood (lumber in the US, timber here), where to use untreated raw wood for aesthetic purposes, hard woods vs soft woods… this is going to be a really fun project.

But exhausting. Whyyyyyyyyy must I do this.

I don’t have forever. If I want to have time to enjoy things, get it done. I am not Pam. I won’t live till I am 100.