Monthly Archives: December 2019

When did that bit change?

I used to be absolutely frothingly nasty about people giving me unsolicited advice. At some point after being married I softened. I started giving people the benefit of the doubt. I started trying to soften my reaction so I wasn’t so “mean”. I think I took a wrong turn.

Recently the kids and I were at a store doing a bit of shopping and a lady heard us talking. She asked us where we were from because she couldn’t place the accent. We had a charming conversation for a while. Then she started proselytising to us. The kids were fairly confused why she kept trying to talk to us about going to church. I was evasive and soft as I tried to say that I was not interested in monotheism and I don’t really care that she thinks Jesus is waiting for me with open arms.

I need to start saying I’m a witch and when someone tells me that I can always turn to Jesus with my troubles I should tell them that the Gods and Goddesses of their ancestors are really hoping they will say hi sometime.

Fuck being polite. It is not polite to shove your world view down my throat so why do I need to be polite to you? I have this weird thing about not wanting to step on people’s toes about religion. But they don’t extend me the same courtesy so I need to get over it.

I need to get over a whole lot of thinking about other people’s feelings. It is not serving me. My anxiety is high and it is partially related to me not wanting to be rude about telling people I don’t want to hear their opinion about what I’m doing.

Unless I say something like, “Hey what do you think about me doing _____” or “May I ask you for advice about _______” it’s pretty safe to assume I am not interested in your opinion on my behavior, life choices, or plans.

I learned a while ago that it was not good for me to give other people my unsolicited opinion about their life choices. I’m not sure why people think I deserve less courtesy. But they really really really do.

It is to the point where I am deliberately censoring a bunch of topics I might otherwise write about because then someone will feel free to tell me their opinion about me doing it. That’s bothering me. I don’t have pot as a crutch for emotional management. I don’t think I will go on other psych meds. Starting tomorrow I’m on a pretty strict budget and I can’t keep drinking.

That means I need to get a lot more free with “Stop telling me your opinion of my actions” and I need to go back to writing more. I have lost friendships (partially) because I was free with putting in writing why I was upset with people. I need to start seeing those friendship endings as a necessary cost of me being healthy. I mean, I shouldn’t rant about how I think other people are stupid or making bad decisions… but I need to be able to talk about myself and my feelings. Not all of my judgments… but my feelings about my life.

Because let me tell you, whether I share them or not I have judgments about how you are living. Notice how I don’t just show up to share them with you? That’s called being polite.

I did not have children because I wanted a convenient, easy life. I am not looking for more time to watch Netflix or sit around being idle. That is not appealing to me in any way shape or form. But I’m also not real driven to just “find a job” to fill my time.

My kids will go back to school when/if they choose to. It’s ok with me that they are done for the foreseeable future. I asked EC what made her decide that she was done and she said, “Mom the most important thing I am going to have in my life is my time. School wastes a lot of my time and I won’t be able to get it back.”

How can I argue with that?

I have decided I am not publicising a financial review because someone will feel the need to make comments and I might blow up a friendship over it right now.

I’m really over advice.

I want to spend 2020 making art, reading books about witchcraft, cooking, learning about the local ecosystem, and meeting people who can teach us about Scottish culture. I want to live as frugally as I possibly can. I want to spend time alone and time with my kids. I want to work on setting up outdoor play spaces for my children and I want to start shaping my garden even though I’m not spending money on plants yet.

I want to spend a lot less time worrying about other people’s feelings. If people don’t like me snapping at them to not share their opinions… maybe they should not share their unsolicited opinions.

I have survived the loss of many important people. I can survive the loss of other relationships. Life hurts. I will cope.

Today is fired.

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Yesterday we did our flu jabs so my arm aches. The surgery was alright (the doctors here are super nice) but my back is sore and tight. Then I came home to evidence that my period just started.

I’m going to bed. I can’t do anymore today.

Today I am the turkey

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Time to go get carved up. Woo.

Drips, drabs, and careening towards the end of the year

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I spent a while today writing the letter for withdrawing our children from school. It feels like I must be bragging/lying/exaggerating when I list off our qualifications, materials, and philosophy… but uhm… yeah that’s just true. We are, in fact, unusually qualified to home educate our children. We did this on purpose.

The kids are relaxed in a way I haven’t seen them relax in a long time. That’s nice.

I am currently somewhere in the middle of five books and only because I finished one a few minutes ago. Reading about being an intensive person, another PTSD book, a grimoire for kitchen witchery, and fruits and vegetables for Scotland. I finished the rereading of a fantasy book focused on friendships. For every twenty pages I plow through of the other four books I get through a whole fantasy book. Learning feels hard again. But I’m trying.

I made the kids negotiate what a school schedule is going to look like for them for the rest of this school year. It’s… a lot more relaxed than it was in the past. Partially because they are at grade level so I don’t need to be fussy. That feeling of panic I had about them not doing enough is gone. That is a gift we got from school.

EC now has a bunch of “funny” stories about the teacher accusing her of making up words because ECs vocabulary is so broad. Sure, there are some maths skills we didn’t perfectly nail but that would be true from any curriculum in existence. MC will have a bit of extra maths for a while but I’m not concerned and we will indeed work on handwriting. I am glad she can take off on reading without waiting for her handwriting to be good enough, She read the entire book series I gave her for Christmas (that I bought because I was told it was “the thing” for her grade level) on Christmas before mid-afternoon. Well. It’s kind of like when my mom refused to buy me any more of The Babysitters Club books. She’s not at grade level anymore, Toto.

Noah and I are having some feelings about the lack of opportunities to date, but here we are late at night on our own computers just… blurgh. He would respond with vigor if I wanted to pay attention to him. It’s not that I don’t want to. But I don’t want to. I’m tired. It’s not the kids it’s life.

It’s kind of funny that the school thinks that they need to be in school to get a proper education; I’ve planned 12 hours a week of direct instruction and they will progress as fast or faster than their peers do. So far the kids say the thing they will miss the most is not getting to do the dance section of PE. ONCE THE FUCKING BOAT ARRIVES I am going to dig out my copy of Irish dance instructions from the Plough and we can do kitchen dancing. Noah knows the basics, I can quickly pick stuff up again and teach it. It will be fun. Yes, we will be limited to stuff that needs four people, but that’s alright.

I’m struggling with being deep in my feels about life. I feel so much (internally imposed) pressure to try harder on reaching out to people but I also feel depleted. What does friendship mean?

Does friendship mean that you are obligated to show up a certain number of hours? That you are obliged to place a certain number of phone calls or send a certain quantity of emails or letters? I carry a lot of my friendships and I don’t know how to feel about that. I don’t carry every relationship. Some people reach out to me more than I do them… not many… but a couple.

I feel like I’m at this interesting point in my internal cycles. I am utterly over pouring out energy into relationships. I’m over feeling I have to earn people or love or a place. If I have to work that hard to be loved I don’t fucking care about being loved. Is that awful? Is it healthy? I don’t know. I feel like this period of apathy is part of needing to separate, part of needing to figure out what I actually NEED as opposed to wants. I do need to be loved but I don’t need to be the life of the party.

Christmas was great. I don’t know if my kids were playacting for my benefit (will I ever trust that they feel safe enough to display their authentic emotions?) but they seemed euphoric and delighted about their presents. They got things they need and things they want and they are being given the gift of time and perspective going forward. I’m really glad we tried school. I don’t know that either child will want to try school again before university. We’ll see. I have zero desire to push them and that feels good today.

I am glad that they like me and I like them and we don’t really need the approval of other people. My kids give me a sort of validation no one else can give me, not even Noah. They want to be around me and they choose my teaching over that of other people. They see me as being the best opportunity on offer.

Damn.

The kids have noticed that their “friends” at school need them to be a very curated version of themselves in order to be tolerated. I mean, I have guidelines too–you will have table manners or else but when we are not in a restaurant… be whatever feels ok to you. I don’t need you to pretend all the time. I just need you to care about how you are impacting the people around you when they are trapped in a small space with you. Don’t be a selfish asshole. You can be loud and rude and obnoxious at other times when it is totally appropriate. Context dependent rules are a big deal. We talk a lot about how different settings require different things from our behavior.

School requires you to accept that authority cares more about minimizing the amount of work they have to do than keeping you safe. School would much rather have you shut up and accept being hit rather than stand up to bullies–if you do so you are now the problem.

My brother came up in conversation. (He can fart on command, this was relevant to our topic.) The kids asked why I don’t talk to him. I told them for a bunch of reasons that are detailed in the book they can’t read until they are adults. They said, “Oh you did bad things to him?” Nope, no I didn’t. “Did he do bad things to you?” Not really. “Then… why?” Because he is angry that I made other people stop doing bad things to me. “HE SOUNDS LIKE THE HEAD TEACHER AT SCHOOL.”

Yeah. We can withdraw from school.

I am by no means a perfect person. I fuck up. I do things I shouldn’t. I also work hard at not hurting people. I have learned to keep my opinion to myself when I think people are doing things wrong for the most part. I haven’t given anyone else parenting feedback in a very long time. We all get to parent as we see fit. Only our children get to evaluate us.

I like my kids and so far they like me more than any other teacher on offer. We will make friendships with people who share our interests (I heard about a nearby home educating family who really wants to try D&D…. Noah is great at DMing for kids…) and hobbies. Frankly the school kids here don’t do the stuff we do for fun.

I’m going to keep trying to go to the toddler activities. When I’m out of the house the big kids are going to work on programming. That’s a Noah subject and I don’t need to be present for it. If they finish their target for the day they will switch to art/music/reading. We have lots to do.

We don’t get bored. Well, I alternate between thinking boredom is a necessary part of life and thinking that only boring people get bored. We have a lot of unstructured time. We never run out of ways to fill it. Is that being bored? We make our own entertainment and we really prefer it that way. I’m taking some tips from the horse trainer lady on how to handle kid accountability on home schooling. (Her kids are in and out of school as it suits the needs of her family.)

The future is coming. Right now I’m not worried it will eat me. I’m pretty sure it will be less painful than what I have already experienced.

He’s not wrong…

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Yeah. We are “trying” to keep going to school for another month but our hearts aren’t in it. The kids are doing a lot of talking about what they plan to do when we start home schooling again. They each have solid plans. They are quite certain how they want to be spending their time and they are not happy with how much time school wastes.

EC is setting herself a whole bunch of art projects. She has a fairly specific list of skills she wants to master and styles she wants to practice. She would not be able to work on any of that with how many hours a day she has free while going to school.

MC is ecstatic about the keyboard and plans to spend a bunch of time playing every day along with working on computer programming and more maths. She says she will work on handwriting–it will be more fun to do when she gets to pick her topic. She is excited that she will be allowed to read at her level instead of being forced into a lower level reading group because her handwriting isn’t good enough.

I mean, I know we will run into problems again at some point. They are children and their sense of motivation runs out. We all have some executive functioning problems and that’s a serious concern. I need to transition a lot more of that management onto their shoulders; that was one big net positive of school. When EC forgot her computer she had to deal with the mess up, not me. When they forgot to pack the lunch that I made them… they had to cope without me.

They are both noticeably less stressed and upset than they have been over the past month. They asked if we could go ahead and start home schooling stuff over break; do we have to wait? Well–most of the things you want to work on for your personal benefit aren’t the things I police. Yes you can do as much of that as you want over break.

We have meet ups scheduled with home educators. The kids are enrolled in an acting/dancing/singing course that starts in January. We will get connected to the local community. We will make friends. But school isn’t going to be it. I’m sort of glad I didn’t bother getting more involved with the PTA. It would be harder to tell the school/other parents “Yeah this place sucks and we are opting out” than to just tell the Head “My children aren’t happy here and I see no point in making them miserable for the sake of ‘conforming to the system’. I believe with my whole heart that schools are trying to force children into 20th century modes of living and the 20th century is over.”

And the bullying. I’m going to document all of the bullying through January and say that I don’t see a good reason to continue subjecting my children to it when the school isn’t handling it.

I don’t send them to school to get hit. But they are getting hit. That sounds like school to me…

It really doesn’t help that the “feelings” teacher doesn’t like my kids and she thinks there is something wrong with them because they prefer adults to children. Dude, that was 100% how I felt. It is utterly normal for gifted kids.

My kids are 2E. They are more challenging than average; believe me I know. For a wide variety of reasons I am more qualified than most to accept and handle their needs.

And if you think that home schooling means they will never fit into society, apparently you don’t know very many people who have been home educated. They grow up into quite normal, wonderful people who don’t resent the idea of learning the way that a lot of other people do.

Do I want to home school again? Not really. I’m tired. But I want my children to be happy and self motivated. I want my children to not be hit. I want my children to not grow up being told that they are fucking morons or that they should go on a diet. I want my children to think that playing with dolls is more fun than worrying about their selfie game. I want my children to have an intense and deep knowledge of their surroundings. I want them to feel safe and to spend a lot of time outside. People who spend a lot of time on social media (based on statistics and studies) feel more lonely and tend to be more paranoid about what bad things can happen to them.

I’ve had a lot more negative experiences than average in this life. I’m still not afraid of being outside or doing things alone. I’m incredibly confident. I can survive and thrive even if a lot of bad things happen. I want my kids to feel like that.

I want my kids to feel like there is a big wide world made up of mostly good people and they should go out and explore it. I want them to feel like there are a lot of problems that they didn’t make but they can help solve. I want them to feel like a life where you give back feels better than a life where you complain about not being given enough. I mean, yes…. eat the rich. But we are very lucky. We are some of the luckiest people on this planet and that means we should use that luck and try to spread it around. How?

Kiddos, in this life people rarely give you responsibility in a way that matters. You take responsibility for things. You take responsibility for your own actions and fixing the mistakes of others. You take responsibility for finding ways of helping people large scale hurt the planet less.

No one will come up to you and gift wrap an opportunity to be a good person.

You have to just do it.

And maybe, if you waste less of your time in school you will come up with more ways to do that sooner. It’s not that school is all bad–it isn’t. Most parents are not in my position with regards to educate their children and I don’t mean to denigrate or mock that. School is a necessary institution for the vast majority of children.

But it isn’t necessary for my kids. I made sure of that. I worked very hard to make that true.

I don’t need to force them to be in a situation that is to my benefit and their detriment. I can do better.

Stop and appreciate the moments of joy

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I’ve done ALL THE THERAPY and one of the things I’ve learned is that when you are depressed or anxious or both at once… it’s extra important to stop and take moments to notice a job well done. Even if you feel like a fuck up all the time, that’s probably not true. Sometimes you get it right. Stop then. Notice. Try to let your brain experience a few moments of feeling something other than self hatred.

Right now I am watching the cats climb around on the climbing gym in the middle of the lounge. It is one of the most charming sights I’ve ever seen.

Our lounge is definitely the largest room I have ever had in a house I have lived in. It’s easily twice the size of the living room we had in California and it has a sloping roof that goes up to about 12 or 15 feet. (I have to measure soon. I will know for sure then.) The room is pretty packed right now. I spent all day moving stuff around. My family never once challenged me on why I wanted to do all the shifting, they just helped.

The Christmas tree is massive and the pile of presents is kind of ridiculous. Well, ridiculously large looking but an awful lot of it are things we genuinely need. EC has a bed frame in there. We all got stuff for dealing with the climate–that’s a big deal! There are kitchen things in the pile that we will use for making family food. There are hair supplies and soaps and bath bombs (not a necessity) and face cleaners.

Ok, there are some purely frivolous things too. My kids didn’t ship their toys to Scotland; they got rid of almost everything they owned. There’s a doll house and dolls and toddler learning toys. There are some bath toys. Lots of art supplies; both of the big kids have completely used up their stock of art paper so now they each have a new sketchbook. There is a sewing machine; EC has asked for one for a few years now. It seems like a great time. MC begged for a keyboard. Given that every time my children get the chance to bang on a piano they spend hours doing that… it seems like a pretty reasonable gift.

And books. Of course there are books. More books than I would normally buy in one holiday but A) they were phenomenally cheap and B) we are absolutely book starved. No regrets.

It’s a lot. I won’t do a Christmas this big again, probably in my whole life. We are still just starting and after this we won’t have room for so much.

The play gym can fit down in the apartment when the lounge needs to be used for another purpose. It also folds up for handy storage! I love it. I could never have gotten something like this in California. Here an outdoor play structure like I had there would be fairly unusable a big chunk of the year.

Circumstances change.

Our strict budget starts in a week. I’m ready.

When I turn off the seizure causing blinking lights (the kids love them) and just have the still lights to illuminate this room, it looks pretty magical. I will leave on some lights all night long so that when the kids wake up they will come in to a lighted room. The sun isn’t up till after 9am right now. I told them they couldn’t come out till 5am. They have watches! Monitor your own behavior! But the light are necessary.

The future is unknowable. I don’t know what challenges will come. But right now, we are all set for a magical Christmas.

Stop. Notice. This is something I helped create too. We did it.

I think I can go to sleep now, at a reasonable hour. I have a fun day ahead of me.

You don’t know what you can do until you have no choice

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I did really want to be done with homeschooling. It sounded positively dreamy. But at this point Noah is commenting, “You’ve already made up your mind. You are going to take them out. You are just fussing over when.” I will give the school a bit more rope to hang itself; I will spend a month building a paper trail… then…

We have a home ed meetup planned for later in the week. I’m working on getting the kids to meet folks through home ed. They’ve both made exactly two friends through school in the past few month so if I can help them find two or three friends through home ed… it won’t be a lot less. They are both aware that they get less than two hours a week to really talk to their school friends because of how school is structured. If home ed means spending four or so hours a week talking to friends…

It’s Christmas Eve and I feel like a disappointment. Noah’s non-broken replacement Christmas present is held at the delivery depot. Awesome. It was dispatched weeks ago. I originally ordered it early November and the maker didn’t package it very well. Awesome. Our stockings and Christmas stuff are in a warehouse outside of London. But at least I’m pretty sure it is on the island!

My knee hurts quite a bit. So does my foot. I was riding my bike and I hit a patch of ice. The fall was not nearly as bad as it could be, but I’m in a fair bit of pain. It got much worse after I went for a long walk yesterday. It’s kind of like EC messing up her knee in the airport on the way into Japan. Every time she walked for weeks her knee swelled up like whoa. My turn.

Noah and I watched the first part of The Marriage Story on Netflix last night as we stayed up too late doing chores. It should be called The Divorce Story. It’s sad. It’s realistic. They are both ok people who make bad choices sometimes and what happens to them is incredibly devastatingly sad. We haven’t finished the last half hour but I anticipate crying a lot.

Noah and I are trying to be gentle with each other right now. We are both not doing so hot and we both need to have low expectations of the other person being able to “make” us happy. We can’t. We both feel sad. It’s for a whole lot of reasons and that’s just… going to stay true for a bit.

In milestone news, YC is most of the way to being able to say and sign the whole alphabet and do numbers up to ten. She still makes some mistakes… but she’s not two yet. She’s going to be a firecracker. I should probably stop working on ASL in a country that doesn’t use it, but I haven’t. She enjoys it. I could not begin to count her vocabulary. I think it is in the thousands. She’s super obsessed with these jungle-school videos Noah has shown her. She is deeply concerned about a baby monkey that fell out of a tree. She asks about it being ok every day. I kind of wish there were more follow up videos about that monkey. She likes talking about all the food she likes that the monkeys like. She is fascinated that she wears diapers like the monkeys wear diapers.

We are most of the way through my first Terry Pratchett book ever. Ok, I get why people like him so much. I found a random handful at the local used bookstore and Noah has been saying he wants them so I bought them. My older kids have fallen in love with Agatha Raisin books. My buddy who visited recommended them.

In January our stuff will arrive. In January the nice joiner will show up and build us tree bookshelves. In January Noah won’t be working for the first month in like a decade. I’m going to rest as much as I can this week because I want to be able to walk with him.

At night when preparing for bed YC likes to curl up and browse through Gardener’s World magazine. She tells me all about the stuff she finds. It is really cute.

I’m struggling with having a year I shouldn’t do any projects. Noah has already tried to recant it because not being allowed to start a project means I’m being an asshole who obsesses about how clean the house is. I don’t have control over much else. I can’t control the school letting people hit my kids. I can’t control when our stuff arrives. I can’t control my mood or my attitude… but by golly I can make sure that fucking floor isn’t dirty.

I get the impression Noah would appreciate it if I obsessed over making food so he didn’t have to do it. But that’s harder for some reason I don’t understand. My kids like to talk about how Noah is the cook in our family. But I did almost all of the cooking (like 19-20 meals a week) for around 8 years and then Noah started helping with breakfast and I only had 14 meals a week for a few more years. It’s only been in the last couple of years that I barely cook at all. I’m not sure why I’m so burned out on cooking. I need to start helping more.

I’m just… I feel like an asshole. I feel tired. I feel devoid of joy. When Noah cooks I clean up after it. When I cook… I clean up after it. It’s really hard for me to handle that dynamic. If I make him cook at least I am not doing ALL of it.

Sigh. I’m tired.

I would do anything for love, but I just won’t do that

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I feel like I am trapped in a Meatloaf song. I want to do things to be pleasing. I want to show my love. But I don’t want to do that. What is that? I don’t know. What do I want? I don’t know. I want to not feel how I feel right now.

I keep thinking I didn’t have kids because I wanted a convenient life. If I insist on my kids staying in school it means I am ok with their classmates hitting them, spitting on them, elbowing them, telling them that they are fucking morons–shits–stupid–pathetic. It means I am ok with little girls telling my little girls that when they gain weight in preparation for puberty they should really go on a diet. It means I am ok with the authorities having a bigger problem with my children standing up to bullies than with the bullying behavior. It means I believe that my children should have to put up with low level harassment a lot of the time because it doesn’t rise to the level that a teacher considers worth paying attention to so stop complaining.

“It is preparation for the real world.” Bitch, if someone did that to me in the real motherfucking world I would either punch them or press charges. I wouldn’t shut up, put my head down, and take it.

You aren’t preparing them for a healthy adult life. You are preparing them to be victims and you feel quite sanctimonious about how it needs to happen.

I’m not yanking them out immediately. I am going to start emailing the fucking head every day with a report of what bullshit happens. Then when I deregister the kids I will have a paper trail of allllllllll the shit the school doesn’t think is important enough to deal with.

If I had a full time job and I had to work I would tell my kids to start punching people. But I don’t and I don’t and I don’t really want my children to have to toughen up in that manner. I have not put this much time and effort into helping them verbalize problems instead of hitting to give it up now. Sure, they are annoying to authority figures in a school who don’t want to hear it. But fuck the fucking school authorities. Their priorities are shit.

And really, there are a lot of things I miss. I miss not wasting so many hours on “Get up. Do your chores. Eat faster. Get ready to go. Pack your bag. Go. Hurry up and unpack. Do your chores. Eat faster. Go to bed because we have to wake up early and do this all again.”

We can get a lot done home schooling. But we do it at odd hours and when we feel like it. Is it a lot of stress? Absofuckinglutely. I feel less like I need to ride the kids super hard though. They are doing more than fine compared to their peers (Except for hand writing and fuck hand writing. Ok, we will work on it…. but seriously. Fuck hand writing.) and that was what kept me up at night worrying. Yeah, I hate having to push them through work.

But I love having hours a day to read together. I love having time to sit around and draw together. I love watching the neat projects they build with all of the time they have. I love knowing that they get to play with dolls and be imaginative when kids their age in school have already given it up because they are trying so hard to be “big”.

I am making contact with the home education community. I’m finding kids their age who are into Minecraft and Scratch and art and reading. Do you know what they aren’t finding at school? Kids who play Minecraft or who use Scratch or kids who are as obsessed with art and reading as they are. At school kids call them names because they don’t play Fortnight. At school kids mock them for not having an expensive brand new phone. At school the kids make fun of them for not being on social media.

Fuck school.

A mother told me the other day that she is getting her 7 year old an iPhone 6 for Christmas because the kid is getting mocked at school for not having one. What the absolute fuck? She said that she doesn’t want to waste money on toys because her daughter is only interested in perfecting her selfies anyway. Uhhh my 9 year old is getting a doll house and the thing will be played with constantly.

Yeah. Different strokes.

We are working on some fairly big changes in our marriage. It’s complicated. I don’t want to bitch about it here. I just want to write down for myself that this is when the contract ended.

I don’t know how to properly advocate for myself without throwing tantrums. I don’t know how to feel like I am being treated how I want to be treated. I don’t fucking know how I want to be treated.

I keep thinking about that doctor who told me that I just need to focus on keeping the bus on the road. (It’s a long metaphor.) He said Noah knew what he was getting into with marrying me because I was honest about my trauma history so he doesn’t get to bitch about it being hard. I don’t agree. I think Noah gets to bitch.

But sometimes keeping the bus on the road is hard even when I don’t have a good reason to point at. Sometimes just being me is hard. I feel like a whiner. I feel annoying and high maintenance and a whole lot of other rude descriptors. I definitely definitely definitely don’t think I am worth the effort.

But I throw tantrums if the effort isn’t put in because I am a fucking bitch. Apparently I have an incredibly high sense of what I deserve.

I think I am depressed. Noah thinks he is depressed. We aren’t the sorts of depressives who stop working. We put our heads down and plough on feeling little to no joy in anything. I don’t think it is SAD. I think we have been working so hard for so long without resting that our bodies are collapsing. Our spirits are collapsing.

Both of us feel like the other isn’t doing very much for us even as we can rattle off the ridiculously long chore list that we know our partner is doing… it just… feels inadequate. We are productive, just not content or happy or satisfied. We keep waiting for a long enough break to breathe.

I now have definite confirmation that our stuff is in the UK. It’s going to sit in a warehouse till December 30th when a company will go pick it up and a few days after that they will call me to arrange delivery. Our stuff will be in transit for 19 or so weeks. The estimate was 4-12 weeks. I feel glad that I can stop worrying that our stuff is lost. That’s been really bothering me.

I want my socks. And my long johns. And my books. And and and and and. I WANT THE GOD DAMN BIKE TRAILER.

This is my third night in a row of not really sleeping until absurdly late. It’s almost 1. This isn’t helping my mental health. Tomorrow I need to take a sleeping pill.

Fork.

Always more

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Yesterday I was looking at the “body battery” function on my watch. I know it isn’t perfectly accurate or anything, but it measures how my heart rate is doing, compares it to how much exercise I’m getting and how my sleep I get and it sort of figures out when I need more rest and when I should probably get off my ass and exercise some more because I have extra body reserves. It was really low. I got down to 3 by the time I went to sleep. This is not a battery you are supposed to use up every day. It’s a negative thing to keep it under 20 on the regular.

Yesterday was a high heart rate, stress the fuck out sort of day. I don’t think it had to be and I don’t really know how to calm down. I opened the box of Christmas card (I’m never using Minted again because they ship the cards straight to you instead of to all the fucking addresses we entered) and learned I had to put return addresses on every envelope and stuff the fuckers. Just what I want to see when I really need to get those bitches in the mail. Surprise! Fussy work! Noah helped and it got done in a bit under two hours. Our address is a pain to write that many times.

I walked over to the Tesco and mailed off the Christmas cards, a letter to the grandparents from MC, the birth certificates we neglected to bring to the Consulate, and the notarized documents for selling our DVC property. Even with extra fast shipping and tracking on a lot of it… postage was a whopping £40. I sent all the US cards to a buddy and she’s opening the box and taking it to the post office to have them all stamped and sent out. If we had sent them all individually from here it would have been in the neighborhood of £140 all told. We are getting a deal. Thank you, kind friend.

I’m having some big feelings about freakin Christmas presents. A whole bunch of presents were in the boat stuff that is… I don’t know where. I am starting to feel really paranoid that they lost everything and just haven’t told us yet. I haven’t heard a word from the UK company in 11 days and that’s a bad sign. The last time I was told a UK shipping company would be contacting us for delivery it turned out the company was given our contact information in error and our stuff wasn’t on the god damn boat it was supposed to be on. This is incredibly distressing and I don’t know how to get my heart rate to stop skyrocketing every time I think about it.

Noah’s Santa present arrived broken in November. I’m glad I ordered the blasted thing as early as I did. The replacement is sitting in customs in town and has been for 3 days. I don’t know why since it already spent several days in customs in a different part of the country. My stomach hurts.

The parent of a kid who has been whacking on MC came to the school yesterday to intimidate/threaten my children (EC had told the boy to stop hurting MC or she would tattle… she didn’t threaten to hit him or anything) and that’s causing some rage and panic. The school needs to handle this mother-fucking today or I am going to cause a massive stink. I don’t give a flying fuck that it is the last day until after Christmas holidays. I’m not giving the school a lot of leeway here. I will go to the Council first and if it can’t be resolved to my satisfaction then I’m withdrawing my children. Fuck school. Other parents do not get to harass my children.

No wonder my heart rate is sky high.

My body feels like I am gearing up for a big fight and I hate it. I feel sick.

Oh, and YC is sick. Life is awesome.

No stockings

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The boat sucks. Transparent International sucks. Putting our stuff in storage for months sucks. Our stuff supposedly arrived nine days ago but the company on this end hasn’t contacted me. Either customs is taking absurdly long (it generally takes 48 hours) or it didn’t arrive for the second time. Or the company who is delivering it just… doesn’t feel like working effectively and quickly. Who knows.

A whole bunch of the stocking stuffers are on that damn boat too. Well… I guess some of them can wait for Easter? Others will just be given late. We will still have magic. Frankly… the kids will get plenty.

The trip to Edinburgh went fine. We did our paperwork. Now some bits have to be mailed off. I think that will happen tomorrow. Every day a bit more gets done, we take a few more steps towards being fully settled. I’m told that once our stuff arrives we will be offered compensation for how terribly over-estimate this has gone. If it takes till after Christmas (looking likely) it will be more than 18 weeks, on an 8-12 week estimate. Awesome.

I’m starting to feel scared they lost our stuff and just don’t want to admit it yet.

I’m trying to find joy though. Today a tree surgeon came and took out some non-natives and we now have a giant pile of stumps and tree chunks and wood chips. We will have a lot of fun with that. I am really looking forward to setting up a proper mud kitchen out there with rough materials instead of something store bought. That makes me feel… really happy. That speaks to my values.

It’s weird figuring out what things are part of your values. I want my kids to be happier playing with a pile of logs than sitting and watching a screen and I teach them that this is the way to be by going out and doing it with them. I want my kids to turn to me when they have emotional distress instead of eating their feelings or hurting themselves or finding awful romantic partners and so far… they do. They talk about the things that upset them and they try to find ways to solve their problems that are fairly constructive for little kids.

I want my children to be doers, not people who sit around being entertained as a lifestyle. I model that. I live that. And so far… they are running into slight troubles at school because they are not people who sit and wait for life to happen. They get up and do things. Will this make them suitable for every job? No. But it will help them find the right one for them someday.

A long time ago I was drawn to people who were very certain of their own “rightness”. I was like a moth to a flame. I wanted to be near people who felt confident and sure of their own path. I became that kind of person and it makes some of my old connections trickier. I am absolutely certain that those paths do not work for me. Is there anything wrong with them? No. We all get to be however works for us. I’m just grateful that (so far) my children have very complementary personalities to my own.

When I go check on Youngest Child lately, she is more and more often in the lounge sprawled out reading a book. She’s going to fit right in. She talks up a storm. She demands to go outside and play. I like her so much. Sure it’s going to take her a few weeks to wean off of demanding the iPad every single time she opens her eyes… that’s a hazard of travel. We can’t bring books with us in large quantities. E-readers are not the same in the eyes of a toddler. I am buying books. Not tons. Well… a fairly surprising amount considering we have been here three months. I think if I include Christmas presents I have bought 6-10 books for each person in the house already. Once the boat arrives that won’t feel as important. We already have books… we just don’t have our books and the pain is becoming unbearable. We are readers and our books have been in storage for a year. We have all used e-books… it’s not the same. It doesn’t fill the same need in our souls.

I found the local used book store and I’m already making friends with the proprietor. I think we will get to know each other quite well.

The guy who did our tree removal asked about getting our families together for dinner. He wants me to hurry up and make more friends locally. I think he sounds delightful. He spent several decades riding his bike around foreign countries. We will have lots to talk about.

I have a whole bunch of tendrils out into the community. The beginnings of beginnings… but I’m not following through very much yet. I talk to people when they touch my life incidentally but I’m not following up with more close contact. I’m still so tired. I still feel so overwhelmed. I don’t know how long it will take me to feel like I have anything to give a real relationship but I’m not there. I still go to sleep and wake up feeling so weary I want to fall over. I still feel like my days are completely packed with chores… I don’t know when this will change. I don’t know if or when this will ease and until it does I should not lead anyone on with the belief that I have something to give.

My bucket is empty.

I haven’t had 24 hours of down time in over two years. I know that is pretty par for the course for parents… but not many parents do continual travel and interact with their kids 24/7 the way I do. Shorter breaks don’t feel very refreshing because my level of over work is so extreme.

If I get four whole hours off in a week… it feels like a drop of rain in the ocean. I don’t notice it. I don’t settle or relax. I have not yet figured out how to recharge, not really. I just keep pushing through.

I am reading the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence that is the basis for all of their education theory. It’s really quite refreshing and more in line with my overall belief system and educational theory than I would have expected. I really hope I can help MC pop a wheelie and get over the hurdle of school feeling just that teensiest bit too hard (fucking handwriting) so that she can go back to full time school next year. This is about the best school is going to get.

I’m going to make “lines” with sticks and then we are going to shape letters with wood chips and talk about why the proportions are the way they are. Why do you space things this much. Why do you need the arches and the curves in these places. Why do you need these kinds of gaps between words to be readable.

Kinaesthetic education, yo.

Because when we are all done we can use a broom and sweep up the results and then try again. It’s perfect. I’m actually really excited about this.

I have so much confidence in my children that it sometimes feels unreal to me that anyone can feel this way about anyone else.

The other day I was wandering somewhere with EC and we saw some of these abstract statues of a mother curled around a child. She said that when we get the house more properly settled she wants to find something like that for us to have in the house because that is how she thinks of me. My heart exploded. I had so many feelings at once. I wanted to create children who felt tenderly held. I wanted to create relationships where my children felt adored and respected and appreciated… I did it and I will keep doing it. I said, “Ok. We can do that.”

I kind of love that my baby will say her name all day long “_____ hat. ______ bear. ______ shirt.” but when a stranger asks her what her name is… she smiles at them and refuses to answer. It feels like she only wants to share her identity with us. I know that isn’t it. I know this is just a normal developmental stage… but it feels really lovely anyway. This baby feels really lovely in general.

On the train home last night a guy was sitting at the table next to ours. For the first hour or so he kept his airbuds in and I worried about disturbing him. Then we ended up in line at the snack stand together and he started talking to me. He told me that he has rarely ever seen three children as well behaved as mine. Yes sir, I’ll take your random approval… Our train was over an hour delayed and we just talked and played and read and drew and had a good time together without being fussy. Even though we arrived home more than two hours past our bed time. My kids are tough cookies. They rarely whine and when they do it is generally a sign that something pretty serious is wrong. I trust them.

That’s part of why I am going to listen to MC and flexi school for the rest of the year. She is good at telling me where she needs to be and what she needs to have happen for a given period of time. She has sure changed a lot over the course of her life. She has tried out some pretty intense things… but she tells me when she needs me to shift and that’s the best I can ask for.

We will figure out this journey together.

This is where I want to be. I am with the people I want to be with. Sure, there are bumps and inconveniences… that’s because life is an adventure. And sometimes adventures make you cry.

Deep in my feels

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Do you ever get that feeling where you feel uncomfortable and unhappy and you wish you could just scrape your skin off? I’m there. I have so many thoughts, so many feelings, so much I don’t know how to talk about.

My children are learning about just how unkind people are. I am sorry. I wish I could spare you. I wish I could bubble wrap you. But I can’t. People are unkind. People hate you for existing without ever meeting you. It’s us vs them always and forever. You won’t like a lot of the “us” camps you are put into but this isn’t a democracy. You are assigned. It’s a lot like gym class. You don’t get a choice.

Now my kids understand what I mean when I say that. They hate gym class.

So does pretty much everyone else, kiddos.

Asking for support is a mixed bag. It fails more often than it goes well. It’s not anyone else’s fault. If you can’t articulate what you want, that is how things go. If what you want is to be in an “us” that sees you and cherishes you and believes you are good enough as you are… hahahahahahahahahahaha.

People will tell you that you are there chosen family. That fails. Blood will not be enough to bind people to you. People will choose their own self interest over and over. If you hurt yourself to help other people… all you will be left with is a mountain of pain.

I don’t know what the future will bring. But I’m off to Edinburgh and I’m not bringing a computer. That way maybe I will actually look at the people in my “us” without distraction. Maybe it will help.

Clothes

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I have been hearing more about how people don’t wear most of their clothes and the clothes they do wear they only wear a couple of times before getting rid of it. This blows my mind. Today my toddler is wearing a shirt I bought for EC. MC wore it. Then we sent it off to the cousins and I think they each wore it at least a couple of times? I’m going to have this kid wear it until I can’t button it across her chest anymore.

One of the many blessings of moving to Scotland is I am getting a rather noticeable percentage of hand me downs back that started with EC. I’m getting all of my favorites back. And the other hand me downs are more weather/location appropriate than anything I sent over so it’s working out really well.

Because our stuff still isn’t here (GAH! I think the boat arrived last night! Progress!) I am living mostly in hand-me-downs from Jenny. I have also purchased two pairs of trousers that are more weather appropriate than anything else I owned for this area. (And a water proof pair of over-trousers.) I have a few jackets, one of which was purchased new here because I literally didn’t have anything weather appropriate. I have already worn it more times than the average number of wears for clothing?

I am very confused. How do people find the money and the time to shop? I feel dramatically inconvenienced by how often I have to enter a clothing store. I can’t imagine doing it 4 or 5 times as often. Baffling. Where do people get the money?

I do need to stop by a charity shop because YC is outgrowing the 2T stuff really quickly and her cousin is still wearing the 3T stuff. Soon they will be the same size and I can’t count on hand me downs to provide her entire wardrobe.

So I will go buy used clothing. Who in the heck needs all-new clothing?! I don’t get it. I’m also developing an interest in figuring out how to sew so that I can recycle used clothing into stuff that fits/is more my style. I can’t buy what I want off the shelf and I don’t need brand new fabric.

I want to figure out how to make skirts that are very adjustable in size. I go up and down and up and down and up and down. I don’t really want sized clothing. I used to have a wrap skirt I got from a Mennonite company. It was incredibly adjustable. The only trouble with it was that it was about 6″ too long to be serviceable for daily wear. I was not brave enough to figure out how to shorten it at that time.

Maybe I don’t want to make friends and instead I want to stay home and figure out how to do more things. I need time.

I’m not getting any younger and I totally don’t have all the skills I wish I had. Sigh. That’s life, right? Always more to learn.

Ugh, dreaming is terrible

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I woke up rather early from an awful dream where I moved to Canada to marry this horrible man I went on two dates with from the dance community. There is zero chance I would do this. Even dreaming about the possibility makes me sick to my stomach. His second wife, the mother of his child, is one of my least favorite people on the planet and I don’t want to ever be in a room with either of them again because how they parent is so repugnant to me. So dreaming that I would be marrying into that shit show… blurgh. Stupid brain. I hate you stupid brain. Why do you even consider such gross options in life? I miss pot and the lack of dreaming it facilitated. I’m a complete moron in my dreams.

Middle Child is having nightmares about school. There’s a boy in her class who tried to knock her down the stairs. On the first week of her being in school she watched him drag younger children around by their hood. Eldest Child says she’s afraid of this kid too because he’s pretty violent.

I told the Head that my children were having bullying problems. She asked me for names. I said I could not give the names but she should ask my children. My children went to school and asked to speak to her. She acted confused why they would think she would make time to speak to them. I’m not happy about that part of how things are going. In my next round of emails I will mention it again. She needs to talk to them about the bullying they are experiencing.

She wants my children to stay in school but she doesn’t want to have to put in effort to find out who is giving them problems. I mean, I know I wrote positive things about the fact that they seem like a better group to work with than other teachers I have known… but it is still school. School is shit and I understand why MC is feeling over it after two months.

EC is feeling pretty annoyed because her class’ performance for the Christmas show involves the kids having to sing very loudly over a recorded song with a loud singer. Most of the kids in her class won’t sing at all because they are not interested in performing. She started off being angry with the kids because their lack of intensity leaves her feeling like she must sing twice as loud to make up for them and she is damaging her throat. She’s been doing some name calling of the kids and insulting their work ethics. I told her that she has not had seven years of being beaten down and constantly forced to do bullshit for school that she doesn’t want to do so she doesn’t understand their position. None of them opted in to this activity and they don’t want to be there. Why are you calling them names because they are engaging in the only form of protest available to them?

I asked her if it would be appropriate for me to call her names when she doesn’t feel like doing all the chores my greedy little heart might like to assign her. Her eyes went wide. Then she said, “Ok well it totally sucks that the teacher picked a song where we have to sing really loudly to drown out the singer–that’s not fair.” I agreed that the teacher made a rude choice. That’s totally fair to criticize. But criticizing people for not going along on an activity they don’t want to do? Meh. I can’t get on board.

It is utterly striking to me what a rule follower EC is. She wants to conform to the demands of authority left, right, and center and she thinks it is shameful when others don’t want to do it. But she’s also starting to notice that authority in school is not at all like the authority she grew up with. In school the authorities set rules based on their convenience or on arbitrary standards and the teachers really don’t care if the rules are appropriate in a given context. Such as: all children must carry a coat out to the playground for breaks and lunch because it is Scotland and it could rain. It frequently doesn’t rain and the children overheat in jackets so the kids leave the jackets sitting around and then they get lost and the children are in trouble. EC has been complaining about constantly feeling overheated and uncomfortable and she can’t understand why the staff wants her to feel that way.

Because the staff doesn’t care about your personal comfort. The staff cares about enforcing “the rule”.

Whether it is raining or not you have to have a jacket on.

Apparently the staff is giving her lip for showing up in shorts and short sleeved polo shirts because it isn’t “weather appropriate” but she is constantly overheated. They don’t think this is possible for someone who is from California because it is colder here. Dude. She lived in her underpants in California because she was always uncomfortably warm. I promise you that she can overheat here. She doesn’t understand why the school doesn’t care that they are making her miserable.

Welcome to school. You wanted to find out what it was like.

There are eight more school days for my kids in before Christmas break due to our trip to the Consulate. I put the chances of MC going to part-time school in January at about 80%. Do I want to do it? Not particularly. But I did not force EC to go to school when she wasn’t ready and I don’t feel ok about forcing MC to go. I am more than capable of teaching the subjects she is struggling with and the teacher is literally unable to provide the one on one attention I can provide. Of course the teacher thinks that MC would learn much better by being in a group of peers and normalizing off of other students. I don’t agree. I find that dynamic pretty fucked up.

The teacher did not look like she appreciated it when I said, “As someone who has been a public school classroom teacher the thing I appreciated the most about home educating is the lack of wasted time for transitions. In a class room you are lucky to get ten productive minutes out of each hour because getting all of the children to focus at once is practically a miracle. With home educating that whole hour can be productive and that’s why I don’t start academics until many years later and we blast through many years of progress in a short period of time with far less effort.” School is invested in believing that it must take many years to force large groups through a given set of knowledge. It literally doesn’t have to be that way. It is how school does it. But it is not a necessary part of the learning process.

Home educating (I’m trying to adapt my language because the local crowd is hostile to the “Americanism” of saying home school) is much more concise and effective than school. I can understand school feeling insecure about that. But I don’t care about your feelings any more than you care about my children’s feelings. And thus the world goes round.

I do not exist to provide you with little people to affirm your feelings about yourself. I am here to support my children.

I will have to ask for a formal explanation of the layout expectations so that I can help kiddo figure out how to do it. We’ve been talking about presentation differences for years. It is utterly hilarious to me the way the teachers here are super smug about their layout being standardized in primary schools so every child must be held to it. As if I haven’t already had to learn APA and MLA and a variety of other standards for different earlier schools. This standard isn’t somehow more magically wonderful and correct. It is just what you prefer. Whatever.

Do I want to keep home educating? No. I don’t. I’m exhausted and I’d like to be selfish and have more time for myself. But if it is what my child needs I am going to do it. This is her decision, not mine. And I’m about 80% sure at this moment that she is going to pick home educating because she learned that school sucks.

Yup. I hated school. Your father hated school. School is a miserable experience. I don’t blame you for wanting to opt out now that you have had a taste. The more I think about it the more I feel a little sick about the school trying to say that she should have to spend six more months there before I let her decide. It feels like “We haven’t had enough time to break her spirit and convince her that she’s not allowed to opt-out of abuse. Please keep letting us work on it.” The assertion that you must learn to conform to an arbitrary, abusive environment or you will never be able to have a job is so repugnant and repulsive. I don’t believe that.

My shitty hand writing has never prevented me from getting a job I applied for, no matter what the schools like to tell me. I mean, I didn’t apply for being a college professor… so I guess the timed handwriting aspect of the final exam for my masters did limit my potential… but I absolutely loathed being an adjunct instructor. I hated teaching college students. So was there really a loss of life potential there? I don’t think so.

My hand writing kept me teaching the kids I wanted to teach. Was that really a limitation? I don’t honestly believe my hand writing is going to keep me from future work I want to do. So how about if you fuck right off with your nasty attitude about how hand writing is the measure of intelligence.

“It is clear that MC should be in the highest reading group based on comprehension but her hand writing isn’t good enough so I won’t allow her to be in it.”

And you wonder why she is bored, acting out, and doesn’t want to be in school. Hm. It’s a fucking mystery. You think I should work with you to convince her that she has no option other than comply with your demands or be punished by being forced to work below her intellectual potential. She has to jump through an arbitrary hoop before she is allowed to learn anything interesting.

Or she could stay home.

Yeah. That’s school for you. MC wants to set project goals and work towards them. She knows that she is currently in the grade where EC got to work on a music video (to learn programming) and a big comic (with lots of supportive research because the comic was about California history), she did a couple of big fun real-life based maths projects, there were countless hours spent on art history as a passion project, and we went through three different fun science curriculums. EC spent this year working on learning more like how college classes are run. MC is being told she has to read baby books that are boring as shit because she doesn’t write well enough to learn anything interesting.

I FUCKING WONDER WHY SHE WANTS TO LEAVE SCHOOL.

Home educating is both a real education and fun. School has fun elements too–I can’t provide all of the group access that school can and they have resources I don’t have… but it comes in a whole package with kids who want to knock you down the stairs. It comes packaged with people spitting on you. It comes with constant name calling because you dare to be proud of being intelligent and bookish. Nerd is a constant refrain. And these kids don’t mean it as a compliment. They are trying to be derisive. Luckily my children have not been in school their entire lives so they respond with confusion, “Of course I am a nerd. Why wouldn’t I be? Nerds grow up to be rich and have good lives?” The other kids are not getting the power they would like to have from this exchange.

I am happy to the core of my being that my children are not building their sense of self-identity on the other children at school. Kids suck. Kids are assholes. Kids want to keep each other at low levels so that no one will be expected to work that hard. Fuck the expectations of kids. Keep reaching. Keep growing. Keep having high standards for yourself. You will be ok in the long run.

Sometimes people make comments about how if I have an abrasive personality I won’t have friends so I should conform more. Hahahahahahahahaha. I am abrasive as fuck. I have absolutely all the contact with friends I can possibly handle and sometimes too much. Our first overseas visitor is here and it’s going super well. It’s absolutely perfect that she can have space in the apartment to herself when she wants it and she can opt-in to conversation and food and companionship when she wants it. I’m really glad she is spending so much time sleeping. She desperately needs it. When she wants to come out our topics are ranging from education to philosophy to psychology to remodeling projects to books to cooking/food to animal training to parenting to cultural mores to group dynamics to stress management to nutrition to exercise to limiting our children having access to time wasting entertainment. I’m utterly thrilled.

But sure. If I don’t learn how to be more conformist and people pleasing I won’t have friends. Right. That has sure been demonstrated over my lifetime. Not. Yeah my 98 person Christmas card list is evidence that my behavior is totally off-putting to all people. Why don’t I get my shit together so maybe someone will like me.

Dude I need to be more abrasive so that I cull the damn list of people in my life because I’m overwhelmed trying to pay attention to so many people. Shut up.

I am going to do fine making more friends in Scotland. I am always fine at making new friends. The adults I talk to here tell me that rather than conforming to authority the expectation here is that you will just lie to any authority that questions you. I get that.

I already have a list of local people I need to follow up with for our next round of contact. But I’m tired and I haven’t wanted to get to it yet so I haven’t. It’s not a requirement that I hurry up. I plan to be here for a while. I’ll get to it. Maybe I will get distracted because it will be more important that I devote my limited energy to building connections to the home education community. We’ll see.

I’m tired and I should be asleep. But dreaming about following that annoying douchebag to another country is so obnoxious that maybe not sleeping is better. Stupid brain. ugh. He wasn’t even a good lay, what are you doing stupid brain? He’s a terrible parent. He’s whiny and self important and self aggrandizing and ugh. No. All the no. Ew. Never. Blurgh. It makes my stomach recoil in utter panic. Not for all the tea in China.

My brain is an asshole.

It’s kind of funny: having this lovely guest and having MC tell me fervently that my company is better than anyone else’s company… it reminds me that yes, my company is lovely and I would like to have more of it. Hahahaha

Ok. And now my frequent flier miles are gone because I have booked three friends coming to see us. Schweet. I’m really happy that all of our traveling has been rewarded with such a delightful outcome.

Souper impressive

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Tonight EC asked to make dinner. She started with a base of turkey stock and water (I make my bone broth super concentrated and diluting it is wise) then she added in tomato, beets, carrots, and potatoes. Herbs and spices followed. She cooked that for a bit and decided it needed a bit of something more and added sausage followed by cream. It was faaaaaabulous.

She’s so big and capable. I’m absolutely thrilled.

OF COURSE

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In the process of fixing the broken tiles that lead to needing to replace the walls behind the shower… we discovered that the cable for the shower (it’s an electric one… long story) is totally inadequate and I’m fairly likely to cause a fire if I keep using it.

Insert lots of swearing.

Luckily, the awesome electrician who has done a bunch of work for us is willing to come fix it while we are in Edinburgh so we won’t even be significantly inconvenienced by him ripping up carpets and cutting holes in the floor. Woo. And it’s going to cost about 1/8 of what I initially was worried about so that’s not so hideous.

When are we going to run out of broken bits in this house? *sob*

Also: it occured to me today that I need to line up a pet sitter for our “need to be fed three times a day” kittens. It’s not like living with puff where less than 72 hours away just meant top up the food bowl extra much and leave an extra bowl of water.

Right. Ok. Messaged companies about that.

On the upside today we filled out the paperwork for updating our last US bank account to an international bank account and we filled out the paperwork for the kid passports. I don’t know how much work Noah has been able to do… but uhh we are getting stuff done? This is such a rough balance.

This afternoon we are going to go get passport pictures taken of the kids.

Do all of the things. I keep hoping our to do list will get shorter.

One of my online buddies is coming to visit us. She arrives on Saturday and she’ll be here for a week. She needs an escape from her life for a bit. If I think my life is stressful all I have to do is think about what she’s facing. She has been dealing with the aftermath of her house burning down and trying to get one rebuilt for three years. Temporary lodging. Multiple children in different schools and lots of issues there because one of them got a concussion at school doing sports and and and…

Tomorrow the kitties have another vet appointment to check on how they are healing. (They are little fireballs of energy. I think they are doing fine.) On the way to that I am going to return the stuff that Jenny graciously lent us because I need one less thing on my mental to do list. I need to check things off. I need to stop going through the long ass list of “I can’t forget to do_____”. I am really grateful we had help landing.

If the company isn’t FUCKING LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH AGAIN the ship with our stuff will arrive in the UK in four days. It’s on an icki anniversary of course: my bio-father’s birthday. Ugh. I don’t know how long past then it will take for our stuff to be delivered to our house. It has to go through customs then get trucked to our house. Given where we live, it might take as little eight days from now to get our stuff and it might take as much as two weeks because NO ONE WILL ANSWER MY FUCKING QUESTION about what port our stuff is coming through but based on the home base of the delivery company I assume London. That sucks. People act like London to the Highlands is harder than fucking New York to California. Ridiculous.

Ok, there are upsides to the States. The longer I stay out of the US the more I appreciate some aspects. The very different attitude about customer service. How long it takes things to get delivered. How people handle living “remotely” compared to an urban center.

We are three fucking hours outside the capital city of this country. Folks act like it is closer to thirty hours. Ugh.

Ah well. We do love this city. I just want my stuff. Whine. It’s been almost four months, y’all. I want my long johns. I want my books. I want health records. I want my silverware. I want more blankets. I want the god damn bike trailer. I want my dresses. I want more trousers and sweaters. I want my art. I want the kids to have all of their stuff because they are running out of good cheer too.

We want to be settled already. This feels horrible. It’s just dragging on and on and on. If it takes two weeks to deliver our stuff it will have taken more than four months. For a 5-12 week estimate. I’m so pissed.

Transparent International sucks. They put our stuff in a warehouse for two months. The minute I have my stuff I am leaving negative reviews everywhere.

I have cut my fingers up so much recently that my phone can’t recognize any fingerprints. My hands hurt. I want to be settled so very much.

Less work. I need less work any day now.

Oh hey, I hear that the Highlands will get up to 10″ of snow in the next week or two…. That’ll make shipping our stuff go So Much Faster! There’s flooding. And ice.

Shit.

That happened.

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I had a meeting with the school, specifically with the Head and with the main classroom teacher. (It’s a complicated set up.) I feel that those two women both listened and advocated really well for their agenda. They want my kids in school. They were fairly eloquent and patient as they explained their reasoning.

They asked a lot of questions about how I homeschool and what my philosophy is for education. They asked about methodology and why I have the preferences I have. They explained their methods and what they are held to when it comes to transferring children on to secondary school in this country. It was an incredibly productive conversation. The Head was stunned when we said that the kids are almost never on video games unless they are programming them to create their own. That was not a concept she had ever really considered as an option before.

The next couple of weeks are mainly prepping for the winter concert, parties, movies, and fun stuff. We are going to ride out the end of this month in school. The Head is emailing the Council (like the district) about setting up the paperwork for part time schooling; there are already several other kids in the school doing part time so they are both familiar and comfortable with this process. I appreciated how much the Head stressed that I have the legal right to require part time schooling or home education any time I see fit. That was really awesome. I felt quite supported in that way. In the states a principal would have danced around that conversation and not explained my rights in such a straightforward manner. That was really nice. That builds trust.

We are going to have another meeting in January to decide for sure if we are going forward with part time schooling. Frankly I would prefer to have my kid in school. I am so utterly exhausted. I was shown writing samples for the entire last two months and kiddo is making big strides of progress. I’m not sure she would make much faster progress at home.

We had words about the aid who is using inappropriate words and both the Head and the classroom teacher apologized and said they would handle it. They have already spoken with her about never using that word about a child again. There is another aid who works in that classroom and she will be the one who handles my kid going forward. That’s a really good sign.

I actually really like most of the staff as professionals, I would be quite happy to work with them if I were still teaching. I like their attitudes, I like their methods, and I like the way they listen. I really hope we can figure out the growing pains and just keep kiddo in school. To be completely selfish: it would be better for me right now. I don’t know about what is best for my kid. I suspect that she fondly remembers the pair of them wearing me down and getting out of a lot of work and getting a lot of free time. If we part time schooled we would have to spend the mornings sitting at the table doing school work before she went off to school for more work. I could not use any of that time for work around the house and the baby would pretty much get left with the iPad, which I strongly dislike as a coping method. To be fair literally the only thing available to watch is Signing Time and she has picked up a huge ASL vocabulary from the iPad so it’s not all bad. It’s not like she is just watching generic shows that will make me crazy.

We will have another meeting in January and see how things go. I am starting kiddo up on Khan Academy for math in after school time (the teacher said she would stop sending homework home) because she doesn’t feel she is making the kind of progress she wants to make right now and it’s a really great extra curriculum; in my experience it is a poor primary curriculum. I always use it as a supplement anyway. I am going to start making her write every morning while she’s sitting around waiting on breakfast. I really hope this much supplementation is sufficient for her to feel like she is getting the support she needs from home on these subjects. She wants to be in the advanced groups across the board. Her teacher said that intellectually she is clearly at the top level… but her writing is so many grades below that she can’t be put in any of those tracked groups and I get it. I have said approximately 5,203, 839 times to my children “If I can’t read it I can’t grade it” and now they are hearing it at school and acting like it is news. Insert eye roll. I know that middle child is still really struggling with letter and number orientation. It’s a process. We are playing with Play Doh and we are talking about it a lot. We need to make up stories about why the letters face the ways they do to create mnemonics. That is the worst god dang word to spell.

I do want the kids to transition to needing less from me. It’s complicated. I think we are getting close to the time when I am going to request that they try ADHD medications because I am struggling with how much they want me to be their entire executive functioning process for them. I am pretty sure that EC is doing fine with the transition to school expectations. MC is… still in the gray area where it’s a struggle. I know we are more dependent on one another than average. The Head commented that she is really surprised my children like being home with me so much given the way we live (no tv, minimal screen time, lots of enforced exercise and healthy eating habits) because she doesn’t think most kids would be open to how we live. It was a somewhat funny thing to say. We really like each other. We really like all the time we get to be together.

We pay attention to our kids and talk to them for hours and hours every day. Our children feel heard, seen, and respected and they believe we make the choices we make because we are trying to shoot for longevity so we can have as much time together as we can possibly have. It’s a bit sad that the Head thinks most children would hate this.

I got pushy

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The school keeps hinting that they will call for a meeting… then not doing it. So yesterday i said I would like one and it is happening today.

I am going to ask for flexi-schooling. In the US it would be part-time schooling. There are aspects of being in school that my child will benefit from experiencing, I agree. There are aspects of being in school that are not going very well and I would like to opt-out. I have done my research and whereas it’s not common in Scotland (only about .5% of students flexi-school compared with something like 1%-2% who home educate) but there are students in our Council who do it.

Not surprisingly the overwhelming evidence is that flexi-schooling is most common among students who need extra help who cannot get it in schools.

The aid who is supposed to provide such assistance in my child’s classroom is fairly clear in her dislike of my child and frequently refers to her as deficient. I would like her to spend the morning at home working with me one on one towards developing the skills I want her to work on in the manner I have already stream lined with my oldest child. The school cannot argue that there is a problem with my methodology given that my oldest child is at the top of her grade. I did not have the crucial two year period my middle child is now entering. I’m going to take it. Fuck school.

But I do want her to go to school part-time. I think it would be best if she arrived at lunch time to do the afternoon with her peers. The morning is when her class does reading, writing, and math. Those are subjects I am more than qualified to teach and I have been wildly successful with my older child. It is not benefiting my middle child’s reading ability to be told she has to read books that are way below her level and only read 1/3 of the quantity you are capable of reading then stare at the wall while your peers catch up.

I understand that the classroom teachers would prefer if my child were less animated. I am mindful of the fact that on a global scale we will need people who are self-starters, people who are able to find their own motivation to accomplish things, and people who are generally willing to disrupt the social order and demand change. I do not want her to be less animated. But I can offer up less disruption to school time as a compromise.

Of course, I am waking up with a very sore throat. By afternoon my voice is going to be raspy, I can feel it. What optimal timing for a school meeting.

One of the few things I liked about the US school system was the ambition to have an IEP for every child. It is never going to happen for reasons of scale, expense, and lack of support but it is a beautiful ambition. I know my middle child needs a lot of one on one help. Believe me I am aware. I don’t believe this to be permanent, but at this stage she genuinely does need it. If I am getting the support of the school for part of the day I can supply it. I do need some help at this stage. I am really tired. But I can see that my child needs me to once again dig deep and just figure it out.

I’m capable. I’m willing.

It’s time to go negotiate for my child. Alright. Bitchy nice. Implacable. Decisive. Commanding. This is how it is going to be because my child needs it. She needs time to practice writing. She needs kinesthetic support for learning to spell. She needs time to seriously actually read instead of bite sized chunks of not getting much out of the experience. She can come home and get a much better environment for supporting her in gaining those skills. She is following the typical learning curve for her bloodline. I will not tolerate her being insulted in that process.

An offer….

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I have 60 days until my American Airlines credit card will shut off. I have a HUGE number of frequent flier miles associated with it. I can gift those miles to other people (with some slight fees involved) so anyone who wants to come visit me… if you would like me to pay for the ticket (with miles, I’d need you to cover the extra fees… but it’s way the fork lower than a full ticket) I need to buy it in the next two months.

You don’t have to fly in the next two months. I just have to buy the ticket. Or the miles expire and float away into nothing. I shoulda just put all my stupid purchase points on the other card for cash back. That was poor planning.

But my poor planning could be (nearly) free airline tickets for you… Really if you want/need to fly anywhere and you just want to pay the fees talk to me real quick. Otherwise they expire. I suppose you don’t have to come see me.

But I do have a spiffy apartment with a very comfortable bed.

I need to calm the fuck down and organize my thoughts.

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I have been researching educational theory and child development for nearly twenty years. In that time I have come to some very firm opinions. It is never appropriate to refer to a child as deficient. Deficient is a very final word. It means not good enough. When you describe a child this way, even when you feel you are describing behavior and not the personhood of said child, you damage the child’s sense of self. I’m not even saying self esteem; the child learns that who they are is not good enough. When you tell a child that they are deficient they learn that there isn’t a lot of point in them working hard to improve because they are not good enough.

All human beings have areas where they struggle. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and areas where they could improve if they worked hard enough. If you shame people for this natural variation it does damage that can be permanent. They can learn that there is no purpose in attempting self improvement because they are simply less than.

When you tell a child coming from a different culture that the way that they are, based on their culture, is rude you are shaming them. Shame does not motivate change nor improvement it teaches a child to shut down and feel wrong.

It is absolutely possible to work with children who come from varying backgrounds and encourage them to change in ways you feel are appropriate. The best way to do this is through emphasizing where you see them behaving or reacting in ways that are in alignment with your values and praising them. Telling them that they are rude Americans and correcting them is not actually helpful. If you must correct them saying things like, “Ah, here we really like hearing _____ instead of ______” is both more effective and more kind. You do not need to shame their culture of origin to encourage them in how to change. It is unhelpful and harmful. They cannot help being American. Telling them that being American is wrong, less than, or rude is damaging.

I home schooled my children because I spent a lot of time and energy researching best practices for educating children while knowing that very few educators actually believe it is worth the time and effort it takes to do it right. When I was a teacher I worked 70 hour weeks because I stayed late with my students who needed extra help. If they hadn’t learned something yet it was a failure on the part of the teachers not a failure on the part of the students. All of my students made substantial progress, often multiple grades in one year. It is not that hard to help students learn if you get them to feel like you care about them and you genuinely believe that it is worth your time and effort to help them.

If your mannerisms, tone, and words convince a child that you do not care about them then no matter how much you profess to “caring” a child will not learn from you. That is not a failure on the part of the child.

At this point my children believe that if they breathe wrong the teachers are going to reprimand them. Middle Child in particular thinks that the teachers actively dislike her.

This is not becoming an atmosphere in which my children are going to be able to make much learning progress. They are going to stall. I have touched base with the local home education community and I believe we would be able to get to know the community pretty well through those people. There is a lot going on.

I would prefer to have my children in school. I really would. I am tired. Educating little people takes a lot of time and energy and effort and frankly I would like to turn it over to people who are being paid to provide such a service. If my children are going to suffer because the people who are being paid to provide such a service are not able to work with my kids, then it doesn’t matter what I would prefer I will educate my children.

This is a time of great potential for my kids. They could be growing by leaps and bounds. They could be massively expanding their abilities and skills. Or they could deal with adults who want to focus on their few weaknesses and decide that those weaknesses mean they are deficient and subpar.

I am not going to allow my children to suffer because of the stereotypes, biases, bigotry, and judgments of adults. Not when it is fully legal for me to withdraw them and just see to it that they have what they need to be successful. I am not trying to raise compliant, obedient children. I am trying to raise successful adults.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Monthly Archives: December 2019

When did that bit change?

Today is fired.

Today I am the turkey

Drips, drabs, and careening towards the end of the year

He’s not wrong…

Stop and appreciate the moments of joy

You don’t know what you can do until you have no choice

I would do anything for love, but I just won’t do that

Always more

No stockings

Deep in my feels

Clothes

Ugh, dreaming is terrible

Souper impressive

OF COURSE

That happened.

I got pushy

An offer….

I need to calm the fuck down and organize my thoughts.