I was done. My share of the project was finished. I had no more painting to look forward to. Then I noticed… Middle Child is really and truly not ready to do her own room. She tried. She did a lot! She did great! She can’t edge to save her life. And she takes the dark edging color and smears the brush all over the super light colored wall when she thinks she has too much paint on it. Insert head smacking emoji.

My hands are in a bad place. Holding a paint brush sucks. I’ve got about three hours of pinchy movement in my hands in a day before I have shooting pains. I did three hours of trim today. I will do three hours of painting on Sunday. And on Monday. Hopefully I will finish on Tuesday. I am both looking forward to and not looking forward to this process.

Eldest Child says she is done and her mural looks fabulous.

Now we get to wait for carpet fitting to be done. ECs room smells strongly of nicotine–that was part of the motivation for her paint job and the carpet is gross too. I don’t like the idea of her having to breathe that crap through another winter so we are making the room less nasty. Apparently the teenage boy who used to live in the room was a heavy smoker. Ugh.

MCs room had a shower/sink wash room taken out of the corner so there is a big patch with no carpet at all and that’s not going to work in the long run.

Neither bedroom has carpeting on the redone closet and they should have. The sub flooring is not meant to see the light of day.

In 34 days we have been in this house for a year. I’d really like to be done with the big fixing jobs. I’d like to spend a lot more time puttering in the yard but by the time I’m done with inside chores I’m so wiped out. I’m still trying to deal with the sleep deprivation I put myself through for the dining room. In 27 days I missed 8 full nights of sleep. That’s too much. Ah well.

I have new glasses! They are amazing! I can see better than I have in such a long time. I like the cool grey metal.

I’m having more interactions with young people here than I am used to. In California my friends group skewed noticeably older and here I seem to be finding a lot of folks in their 20’s. I suspect it is related to people my age being busy and not having time to go meet new people. This is leading to a lot of feelings. Some of the folks are really stellar–don’t get me wrong. I’m truly thrilled about some of the folks I have met. Ironically the ones that please me the most are the in person ones.

I’m having a fair number of online interactions that I’m struggling with. I am a judgy motherfucker. When I was 19 I had this interaction with a 39 year old woman who told me I shouldn’t be in the scene and I should go off and have normal people sex for a decade or so. Now I get it. These kids scare the hell out of me. They… sigh.

They scare the hell out of me. I’m not going to get into what they are doing.

I worry a lot about them as individuals and how their behavior will contribute to their community. I worry about the girls and young enbys in the community and what they have to put up with from the macho “lad” crew. I feel like I can watch this chat room for a couple of days and go “Ah. You either already have or will have a bad reputation because you are dangerous.”

These are instincts I totally lacked 20 years ago.

I have so many mixed feelings about myself these days. I have come so far.

Recently I pissed someone off when I said that I didn’t feel like 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, or this pandemic are going to be the central life changing traumas of my life. I was told that saying that meant I was rubbing my good luck and privilege in other peoples faces. 9/11 happened across the country and I was at least two or more degrees of separation away from people who were really effected. I would feel like a poseur if I said it really changed my life.

I mean, this explosion in Beirut isn’t going to be a formative trauma for me either even though it is absolutely a horrifying trauma. It isn’t mine.

Most of my friends were either above or below the 2008 financial crash. I was in the process of quitting teaching when it happened. Teaching was a career that was insulated from the results. Is that all luck or privilege? A lot of my friends were in marginal jobs or retail or child care and they weren’t impacted. Is that luck or privilege? I lived in a house that had been purchased long before the crash so my housing was secure. That was both luck and privilege.

I feel weird about having white people who started out in the exact same place as me at the brink of adulthood tell me that my life is different from theirs now because of privilege. I think almost everything that has happened to me since I got married has been about privilege. But there was this gap period that I have funny feelings about. I lived a hair above the national poverty line for the first seven years of being an adult in one of the most expensive places in the country. I definitely had times I went on dates in order to eat. Being told that everything that happened to me in that time period was because I was so privileged is complicated. I’m not saying it is wrong.

Sometimes I’m not sure what privilege means.

I’m ready for slower days. I’m ready for shorter days. I’m ready to stop with the fucking pinchy work. I am pretty sure I can finish the painting this week. When I do I think we are entirely done painting for a long while. That’s good. This year has been so slammed and I am so utterly exhausted. I feel half dead.

I want this toddler to stop waking up three times a night and climbing in my damn bed.

Oh, toddler sayings I want to remember: “I have a pooty” for I have a poopy booty. “Clean the pipes!” is emphatically screamed when I am cleaning her up after a pipe. It’s time to go to sleep.