I found my phone. I guess it fell out of my purse in the van. *phew* That’s way better than it could be.

I’m going to type slow and funny because yesterday I took a piece out of my finger with the blade for the blender. Whoops. And other finger tips hurt a lot too.

Today involves martial arts for the kids, acupuncture from me (all my health care providers are happy to see me again after taking a few months off because I was freaking out about money with this stupid remodel), a trip to Home Desperate to deal with some broken fixtures (damnit), pick up a little bit of paint in colors I used to have for fixing the drywall all over the house, and go to Winter Bash. I really like touching base with the crowd I met through Renaissance Faires. The only trouble with the party is it is so far away. But once a year I can suck it. Driving and the party will fill most of the day.

I stopped typing there to snuggle and pay attention to people. I appreciate getting the body contact plus conversation plus rest. Kinda awesome if you ask me.

I am at a weird point with social contact and work. I scheduled a really intense 16 days and then I got sick and had to reschedule people and then others got sick and got overwhelmed with life and… that just didn’t happen. Out of the 13 scheduled dates with friends only 5 or 6 (depending on how you count) wound up happening. Oh. Well that’s ok.

Some folks are rescheduled. Some folks… I guess I’ll just miss seeing them this year.

I’m getting to the tile and paint section of this remodel. The part I need to be around for. When I am completely burned out on being in the house around noise, judgment, and hostility. I’m weary.

Yesterday I listened to the dudes be rude for a while then it occurred to me to turn on an audio recorder, and they mostly changed the subject. Damnit.

I certainly am aware that they shit talk a lot of people, not just me. I don’t think I am the only thing they talk about. But I’m tired of being a topic.

I find it interesting that they think I am so awful for making my kids work. My kids do some chores (unload the dish drainer/dish washer/ fold and put away your laundry/ pick up your toys/ help with cat maintenance) and they do 30 minutes to 2 hours of academics a day. (Eldest Child isn’t 100% caught up, but she is probably only about two months behind so I’m slowing down our pace dramatically. I have been pushing hard and she’ll enjoy learning more long-term if I don’t always act like we should be accelerating. I don’t have to treat her like she should do four grades in a year to get to the point of being advanced. At this point we are going to need to change our approach soon. She’s done some drill and kill and she can regurgitate a lot of data she didn’t have at the beginning of the year… but it’s time to figure out a more holistic data drop method. Change faster, Krissy.)

And I’m a mean terrible person for insisting on this work? Really? Wha?

STOP TALKING ABOUT ME IN MY HOUSE. YES, I KNOW YOU THINK IT IS WEIRD THAT WE HAVE SO MANY BOOKS. I DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK. LEAVE ME ALONE.

Having these dudes here is really fucking up my paranoia. I know they aren’t talking about me all the time, I understand enough to hear a wide diversity of topics… but they think I can’t understand them so they are free to be really disrespectful of freaking everyone and everything. It’s making me crazy.

I just want my home to be peaceful again.

I’m feeling weird about how much I want my house to be peaceful. I have to consciously and deliberately shut out influences and people if I want peace. There is no way to be all inclusive and have peace. Inclusivity means conflict and discussion and negotiation and compromise.

I have never really felt like my moral compass, values, ethics, and behavior were “ok” in almost any environment. Guess what? My house. My rules. I’m starting to understand what this feels like and I understand why other people have always been so angry about me not understanding what they expected in their space.

I really couldn’t understand that before.

It isn’t that I expect everyone to agree with me in my space. But I feel like I do a lot of deciding which topics are and are not ok. We do a lot of constructive criticism in this house. Kind of an obscene amount. But I’m just not ok with the shit talk for the sake of shit talk. We don’t… do that.

I’m not made bigger by making you feel smaller. I’m not saying I’m perfect about judging… I’m a judgey mother fucker. I’m very honest about that. I have a lot of fucking opinions. But I’m not going to walk into your house and tell you how fucked up your life is.

If I love you I might say, “Ok, this one thing… doesn’t seem like it is working” which is over stepping and a rude as fuck thing to do. I need to stop that too. Unless someone asks for my feedback, just shut up.

I’m going to stay home and shut up for a while. I’m not hanging out on Twitter. I’m having a hard time with what I am internalizing. I’m getting a little too much validation for the idea that there is nothing I can do in my whole life to make up for what a despicable waste of resources I am. It might be true. But I still have to try. I may fail. I may never do anything that makes me worth the air I breathe. But I have to try instead of giving up and curling into a ball and crying until I die.

Which means I’m doing too much spying on facebook through Noah’s account. I feel like I can’t leave comments that way so it saves my blood pressure. But it increases how lonely I feel.

I got my niece’s Christmas presents in the mail. *phew* By “I got” I mean that I packaged it and Noah took it to the actual mailing location because he had something to drop off too. Team work.

Noah bought the Christmas presents for his family this year and I didn’t. I feel proud of us. Good job on this one. I’ve done it for years and felt very resentful. So I didn’t do it this year and I don’t feel resentful and he did send presents to the people who are loving and supportive in our direction. I call that a mother fucking win.

I feel weird about how much my relationship with my in-laws is about letters and gifts. We don’t have an IRL relationship. Don’t fucking tell me that my internet friends aren’t real. They are as real as my in-laws.

Christmas this year is… surprisingly wonderful. Decorating has been slow and chill. I haven’t felt any anxiety at all. Noah hasn’t had time to make cookies… which is maybe not the end of the world. We have a lot of sugar around. We’ve had a very mellow December all things considered. Not frighteningly social. We aren’t hosting much at all. I’m not trying to decorate much because so much of the house is not accessible. So Christmas threw up on my living room. The kids had a blast.

They did their gingerbread house building with the baby sitter. We’ve done walks to look at Christmas lights. We went to Dickens Fair. That’s the Christmas season. We’re good.

I haven’t gardened this week. I don’t know if I will again till January. Fuss.

Today is Winter Bash. Tomorrow the kids get to go visit some friends. So I get to see my friends too. We had lunch with some of Noah’s friends last weekends. We’ve seen some of his other friends a couple of times recently. Our friend came over for a visit.

I try really hard to make sure there is a balance. We are all supported in different ways by different people. We get different kinds of recognition and understanding from very different people. It is as much about them as it is about us. We all have different things to give. I feel so very blessed to know the variety of people I know.

What would it be like to have to make due with only knowing a dozen or so people and having to just not acknowledge needs that my group couldn’t meet.

Wow. That’s not an experience I can easily understand.

I bet that is much more common than my experience. I bet most people normalize off of maybe two or three dozen people and just… don’t… expand their network much to really understand why people are different.

See, here I am judging again. What an asshole.

But it’s the whole monkey sphere phenomenon. I mean, I’m assuming a fairly low number of people. I think folks know lots more folks than that, but I think most people don’t assume they can take needs to most of the people I know. I’m a transactional motherfucker. I’ll ask folks for a trade of needs. “I have this range of skills to offer as a person; I have this range of needs. Do you see any overlap for trades?” Sometimes this is just the ability to have a conversation with someone who can talk about some weird ass topic that not everyone in the world is very nice about. Sometimes it is providing emotional support in trade for physical labor.

I think that it’s all reasonable to trade for. We all have needs.

This is part of why I completely understand sex work as a job and think it is as honorable as anything else.

We all have needs. Some are complicated and some are simple. That’s ok.

For example: we all need to eat food. But my body in particular needs a fairly high quantity of meat with a lot of vegetables. I need starches, but I do better when wheat is a less than about a quarter of my starch consumption.

So sometimes the need is simple: need food. Sometimes the need is complicated: in order to achieve maximal health I need this kind of food in this kind of way.

I think everything can be looked at like this.

I think a lot about abuse and intimidation and bullying. What is abuse?

How can someone say with a straight face that hitting their children is not violence but a man looking at a woman is violence. Violence that deserves starting a fist fight over.

I believe that some of my behavior is abusive. How much of that is really abusive and how much of it is outside the culturally mandated perception of how a woman should behave? I’m genuinely not sure. I default to the point of view that I’m a fucking monster and if someone says I’m hurting them I need to assume they are correct and do whatever I can to mitigate hurting that person. Whether that means breaking off contact because I am the problem or changing my behavior or changing what circumstances in which I interact with someone or… the possibilities are pretty wide ranging.

I do not know how to both assert myself as an individual and never risk hurting someone.

I’m sure someone has managed this but I don’t know how.

It’s different writing now. I used to do a lot more hiding and crying. These days it is pretty common for me to sit in the room with the kids and just make sure that they can’t see my screen. Damn those literate children.

Our lives feel both more and less integrated. It’s fascinating. There is more room for me to be me sitting on the couch because I’m not nursing or watching them or absorbed in trying to help them. I can be in the room with them and ignore them. It’s glorious. I don’t ignore them all the time or anything, but there are more healthy boundaries. I have moved far from helicopter parenting and it is healthy. I’m still around, available, and often interrupted. But I’m allowed to have a mind that thinks about something other than my children.

Oh fuck. I’m going to have another baby. I kind of want to weep. I’m going to lose myself again. For years. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I have enjoyed coming out of the early childhood period. It is brutal.

If only I didn’t feel so completely not done. I want to meet the rest of the children I’m supposed to make.

I really really do.