Right now my head and my heart are full. I’m going around and around in circles thinking about people, relationships, needs, sustainability, balance, effort, intensity, desire.

I’m thinking about pain. I’m thinking about energy.

I’m thinking about owing people and deserving things.

I’m thinking about choices and about execution. I’m thinking about long-term, medium-term, and long-term planning.

Sometimes you have to choose to make today uncomfortable in favor of having a comfortable medium or long term.

What does it mean to love someone? What does it mean to build them up? What does it mean to tear them down? What is harm anyway?

Why do we want these things from one another. I don’t know. But I feel like I drown in want. But my wants are so complicated and contradictory…

I want. I want to feel connected and interesting and like I help people and I’m needed. Not in a “let me fix you” sort of way.

In the “my neighbor is still dropping by every few days to ask for help studying for a test” and I feel like a really good person for dropping what I’m doing to talk to her. She doesn’t have many people to talk to. She’s really nice and living far from everyone and everything she really knows. She’s a brave woman. I’m glad I can help her with keeping her independence at this stage of life for a little bit longer.

I’m not fixing her. I’m helping her develop the tools she needs to help herself.

Teaching doesn’t always go from eldest to youngest. The best teachers are children who share how they understand the world. In my jaundiced view of the world nothing beats a four year old saying, “You don’t know how to do that? (patient sigh) Here, let me show you.”

Melts my heart every time. Thank you for showing me. I will pay careful attention. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me.

I will never have a four year old again. My sadness is epic. But only in that teenage bummer kind of way. Frankly, I’m already like “How about if we have a few years of going away to college? Wouldn’t that be fun?”

I honestly hope they will boomerang. But a few years of break from being mommy before a transition to figuring out cohousing as adults would be awesome.

So I can say things like, “Can you go stay at a friend’s house for the whole weekend? Thanks!”

Too many words to say. Hands hurt. Must lay tile later. Bye y’all.

Well I’m thinking again. Recently, a wise soul told me that I needed to think about who I am and come back to a place within myself where I can accept who I am. That means thinking about whiteness. That’s complicated. I have a lot more white guilt than is good for me but I do not think I ever want to get to a place where I have none at all.

I have had several white men tell me in the last couple of weeks that I should narrow my focus in life. I should stop paying attention to what is happening to other people; I can’t help them anyway. Wow.

Well actually, I help people on a regular basis. I help people every month. I probably help people every week. I don’t help people every single day.

But I should stop paying attention. I should stop noticing that those people are having problems. It would be good for me.

What do you mean by good?

Sometimes it is a little weird to me, to take responsibility for America’s history of slave ownership because I don’t think any of my ancestors actually owned slaves. Sometimes it seems a little weird to me that I feel burden for something neither I nor my family did. But I do. We as a culture, as a country hurt our citizens. We hurt them very badly and we did it over and over for generations.

No one has ever wanted to take responsibility for what was going on in my family either.

I can’t save everyone. I have a specific budget. Okay it goes up every year, but so has my income. I am selfish too, I am putting money away every single month for our future. I am selfish. But I have so much extra. I know how budgeting works. I am meeting and exceeding my goals.

There has to be balance and I don’t think that very many people get to a place of balance. I feel very humble. I would not be meeting my goals if the universe did not choose to be kind to me. Many years ago when I was younger I had a brief, tempestuous affair with a young man who is pursuing an education in Ayurvedic medicine. He asked to do my chart, meaning my birth chart based on when I was born. I thought that was pretty funny. But he did it and when he came back to me to give me the reading he looked at me really funny.

He said,” you are never going to have to worry about money. And you will always win when you go against somebody in court.”

That has been weird for me in my adult life. Money has fallen into my lap like rain. It is just true. I get it from so many places. I don’t really understand sometimes. When I was younger this often took the form of getting rebates on things. I had budgeted for the full price of something not knowing that there was a rebate and I ended up getting mailed money. Every time spontaneous money pops into my lap I make progress on whatever goal is currently most important to me. I don’t ever use it for splurging.

These days, most extra money gets put towards my mortgage. Some of the investments that Noah owned before we were married send out occasional checks. His parents sometimes feel guilty. And good golly can that man make money. I did not really intend to make my financial fortune through marriage. To be fair, when I married him, his debt significantly outweighed his net worth. So it isn’t like he started out rich. What he started out with was a lot of privilege that he didn’t know how to use. What I brought to the marriage was a financial sense and an iron fist.

Who made who?

But this is how it works for white people. Noah comes from a background of wealth, wealth mostly only grows if you are smart enough to marry somebody who can help you manage that process. Guess what else happens mostly to people? Marriage.

There are privileges for white people from top to bottom in our society. I think I only see this because I’ve experienced so many different levels of society. Most of the people I talk to have a hard time understanding why I care so much about people who are not like me right now.

I have a long memory. I have come really far. You have no idea what kind of people are like me. So many people are like me. They just don’t know it yet. They aren’t like all of me. No one can be like all of me without walking all the roads I have walked. No one was with me. I was alone for so long. Not any more though.

I do not seek to be a good white person. Or rather, I do not think I can ever arrive at being such. It is a well studied phenomena that most human beings only know people within their racial group. I don’t want that. If I put my head down it might happen. I am not going to put my head down. I do need to find some kind of balance. I need to be aware of people around me who need help. I need to do so because I need to pay back the child I was who needed so much help. I need to pay forward all of the karma I have received. I do not believe that doing this will make me love myself more. But I believe it is the right thing to do.

I believe that there is no meaning in life other than the meaning we create by ourselves. I do not believe I am going to be saved. I do not believe anyone has died for my sins. I believe there have been many many people throughout history who have wanted to atone. Yet my sins are still my own. I cannot undo my past but I can make damn sure that my future is something different.

When I was a teacher I had a sign above the whiteboard in my room. It said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”. I told the kids that I believe that. When you walk into my classroom whatever you did yesterday is irrelevant. I did not know you then. I did not see any of your transgressions. We have a clean slate. What do you want to do with it?

I do not seek to be good. I do not think I can be. What I do is seek to lessen the pain that is in the world because I want to be a creator instead of a destroyer. I do not help these people because I know them personally. I am distantly friendly afterwords, sometimes. I do not assume friendship. Needing help is a touchy thing. Pride is a really big deal. I do not help people because I am better than them; I help because I have extra.  I want to live in a world where everyone has enough. I don’t think I can get there on my own, but I do what I can. I hope that if a whole lot more people felt the same way, we could move the needle. We could change what it means to be poor in America.

I think that being poor in America should mean that you have a safe place to live and food and heat and clean water and people who love you. I think that every person should be able to get an education for free that will enable them to no longer be poor and instead be middle class or upper class. I don’t think we will ever get away from a class system. I do think that we should change how people get into the class they are in.

I think that being upper class should mean something very different than what it means now. I hope we will get to the end of consumptive wealth displays soon. Just a few people are going to kill all the rest of us. But I am part of the problem. I travel too much. I consume too much. I definitely have a high carbon foot print.

My culture is in everything I do. And my culture is killing the planet.

P. S. This post brought to you by Dragon. I am trying to not type. This was moderately less frustrating than it has been so far. Maybe I will learn.

A t-break is a tolerance break. It is taking time off from using cannabis to let the cannabinoid receptors in your brain take a break so you lower how much you need. Reading up on this phenomena is hilarious because… we haven’t ever been allowed to really study marijuana so no one truly knows what they are talking about.

Most folks believe that if you are a heavy user (I am) you should take a break of several months. I can’t do that. I am not a recreational user. I use this medication to manage my debilitating psychological and physical symptoms. I’ve barely slept or eaten. I’m not getting a meal worth of calories in a day because if I try to force myself to eat more I throw up. How do I know? Ask my poor, sore throat. It’s kinda tired of stomach acid.

Not to mention that my mood fluctuation is truly not acceptable.

Another recommendation I’ve seen is to take a week off every three months. That sounds more realistic for me than multiple months off.

I’m not trying to lower my tolerance so I can get high. I’m trying to lower my tolerance so it isn’t quite so expensive. At this point in time I don’t get high. Instead what I get is normal feelings of hunger and the ability to eat. I gain the ability to control my racing thoughts. I gain the ability to pause after something happens and decide how I want to react. Without pot I lack that pause. I react instantly. Usually in a wrong fashion.

I only had one really bad hour yesterday. But it sucked and it isn’t fair to my kids.

I mean, I wasn’t screaming at them or punishing them or anything like that. But I was crying and going on and on about how terrible and bad I am. That’s… not ok.

I have to be able to control my raging self hatred around my children. I cannot model that for them. I have not ever found a way to like myself. But with pot I am more apathetic about everything so my self-hatred gets turned down many notches and I don’t verbally spew it on other people.

Yes, it still comes here. To this nice safe container. I love you, internet.

Yesterday I was told I blog because I want to feel victimized by people reading my writing. I find that hilarious. Especially because my stated complaint was, “Go ahead and read but don’t go congregate in a specific place and throw up a link to my blog so you can gather like chickens to talk about what a piece of shit I am.”

I don’t give a shit about people reading. I give a shit about groups gathering to talk about how shitty I am.

If you can’t tell the difference between those things… well… you are the reason I can now block IP addresses and referrer sites. Thank you for teaching me new skills.

It’s kind of funny how the rising panic I had is abated. If I start seeing a surge from a place I can block it. That feels great.

And then anyone else who wants to read is still totally welcome. Everyone else didn’t walk in and shit on my couch.

I don’t reject people for existing. I reject people for acting like assholes. If you don’t have the nuance for that… I’m better off without you.

I find it interesting how people like to shame the mentally ill. “You are going to ruin your childrens’ lives if you talk about these things publicly.” Oh really? You think that admitting things publicly is what ruins lives? In my experience keeping secrets ruins as many or more lives. But what do I know. I’ve only been reading medical textbooks on treating trauma for decades.

Given that the vast majority of what I write that is really objectionable are about ways I was victimized… bite me.

I honestly believe that my children are best served by me trying to work this shit out. I’ve been in therapy for 31 + years and doing my processing in private at $150/hour is… not enough for me. I have to talk to myself. That is most of how I work shit out. And writing publicly has ensured that my children have a fantastically well educated safety net.

I’m ridiculously defensive. I think it is stupid of me.

Yesterday a nice woman told me that it is ok for me to believe in myself. But I don’t. I mean, I’m not Santa Claus. I exist. But I don’t have much faith in myself. My shrink tells me I have enormous faith in myself or I wouldn’t be where I am. I’m not sure I agree. I don’t think you have to believe in yourself in order to put your head down and just keep moving. I’m big on picking a direction and going that way whether I think it’ll work or not. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I run headfirst into a glass door and it hurts like a motherfucker. So I rub my head, turn, and run in a different direction.

Not because I believe in myself. But because I am running blind from the demons behind me. I don’t know where I’m going. I’m not operating on faith. I’m just running.

I suppose you can say that when I sat down and outlined my marathon training plan I was having faith in myself. Not really. I didn’t know if I could do it or not. But if I put something on the damn calendar I do it.

That’s why stretching is on the calendar. It has to be or I won’t do it.

Moving 50 times before you are 18 teaches you to keep moving. Even if you don’t know where you are going.

It is a little weird being back in Wonderland yet it feels… so comfortable. I look out the picture window in the living room to see the play structure and arbor and plants. I did that. Ok, not all of it. My friend’s husband did most of the construction. (I will feel eternal gratitude.) I painted the rainbow on the play structure. I put the plants in the ground. I had the ideas. I designed stuff. I just didn’t do 100% of the execution on my own.

Is that like having faith?

The kids and I were talking about climate change yesterday. Rising ocean levels and such. They asked if we would need to move. We all expressed how hard it would be to leave Wonderland. Eldest Child said, “Well… maybe we could move to a bigger house somewhere when it is time for me to have kids. That might solve the problem of having to add a second story.”

I am eternally amused by them.

I said, “Maybe we could instead wait and see where you two want to go to college and we could all move.”

So far they think that sounds like an ideal plan. I sure like this “liking your parents” stage.

I wonder how long we can keep it up.

I wonder if we will move some day. I wonder if I will die here. So far my crystal ball doesn’t know.

I tell you one thing, if I don’t get back on pot the dying will be sooner than later. This is not sustainable for me. I feel guilty and ashamed but it is true. I use pot to manage so many problems and I just can’t handle the weight of them alone.

I am not enough.

Today I have an acupuncture appointment and a chiropractic appointment. I feel guilty for cheating on my two acupuncturist friends. But I can’t drive to Alameda or San Pablo right now. I just can’t. I found a local person I’m trying.

Only six hours to go.

Just breathe Krissy.

Want to know something funny? I loathe my name and I always have. Krissy is pissy. But I hate Kristine more. It has always felt like accurate branding. Pissy, pompous douchebag. That’s me. I fucking hate my name.

I’ve always wondered how much that is an extension of just being angry I was born at all. I shouldn’t have been born. I wasn’t wanted. So they stuck me with a shitty name.

Yeah, yeah other people like it and I’m not knocking other people having it. (I really mean to cast no aspersions upon my beloved niece who was named after me.)

The only thing I want to do right now is go in my bathroom, lock the door, and sit down with my scalpel.

Instead I finished my banana. I’m eating mandarins and string cheese and whining on the internet. God my fucking arms burn.

I feel like some stranger telling me that if I don’t password lock my journal I deserve any bad thing I get is the same thing as saying you can’t rape a sex worker. You have a tragic understanding of consent and violence.

Me existing in a way that people can see me is not consent for them to do anything they like to me.

I need to stop typing.

(Know why I’m using ‘i don’t have time to tag’ so much? The extra presses of check boxes hurt my hands.)

Sometimes I reflect on the fact that my brain is wired to experience all times as now. I often feel as present with the self I was at three as I will be at sixty-eight. I’m every age all at once. Sometimes I feel like all of my experiences, all of the self I will ever have is loudly banging on the inside of my head demanding attention.

Which self will I manifest in this moment?

This is very present for me when I think about how word meanings have shifted.

When I was a kid I was told I was gonna get licked all the damn time. It meant a variety of things. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t hilarious. It was… a problem. It meant I was going to be hit. It meant someone was going to have sex with me. Getting licked wasn’t a great thing.

I never really liked the ones who insisted on going down on me before fucking me. I sorta knew without knowing that part of the reason they did that was so the saliva could mask the lack of arousal.

The things you know as an adult on the other side.

I’m way more ok with a spit wad in the hand being rubbed on my cunt than fakey foreplay from someone who bloody well knows this isn’t going to be good for me.

How how how can you believe that fucking a fifteen year old is good when you are forty-three? Guess what? That wasn’t rape. It really wasn’t. I know it is “statutory rape” and I know that legally I wasn’t allowed to consent. It wasn’t rape.

I know the difference.

Why is this self coming up today? Why is this bothering me so much right now? Why am I crying over this now?

I don’t know. Noah has been going down on me more. It has been rather awesome, actually. It’s not like what it was. He doesn’t do it to hurry up and get some spit down to ease the friction.

Well. Ok, sometimes he does. But when he does he is also talking very dirty and it is fucking hot and that’s ok. It’s different.

Why is it different?

Because this man takes care of me when I’m sick. Because he only does that to me on days when I’m in the mood and I’m nodding and giggling and he knows that I will catch up to being as ready as him any second now.

It’s different.

I think it is funny that I have learned as much from married monogamous sex as I ever did from being a slut. I’ve learned a lot more about weathering the storms of life. Because life does that.

Let me tell you there is a difference between someone who wants to get off using your pussy and someone who wants to get you off while he (or she or they or…) is in your pussy.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not upset about the folks who used my pussy to get off. At least not the times I consented to being there. I learned a lot. I’m really glad I made the choices I made. Even the ones that weren’t stellar. Even the things that really kinda sucked.

I had a tremendously shitty childhood. Now it is over. Now I can do other fucking things.

But sometimes after playing with my kids and saying in an ogre voice I’m going to lick you I have to stop and consciously stomp on my desire to burst into tears. Because my kids aren’t afraid of me. They don’t think I will hurt them.

They think I am going to be gross and put saliva on their arm. Just like they have always done to me. It’s kinda hilarious in a really gross way.

I am not who I was. But I am. I always am. I always will be.

But I can be something different too.

I’m sick. I have a sore throat. My nose is running. I’m cold and hot at the same time. So fun.

Of course I got sick. I’m supposed to start a new schedule tomorrow. (Graduating into the day planner pages.) Duh I’m sick. That’s ok. A lot of the point of this schedule is to increase the rest in my life. Maybe the timing is even positive.

Ok I wouldn’t go that far.

Must stop. Hands say done.

I’m going to try to use Dragon this morning. Let’s see how bad this is.

I was thinking about something. I was thinking about the connection between cultural values and what it means to be a functional adult. One of the many things that was valuable on this trip was getting to see that it means so many different things to be functional in different parts of the country. There really and truly is not one way to be a functional adult.

What does it mean to be prepared for life?

Noah spends a lot of time telling me that I shouldn’t care so much about what other people want to think. Then again Noah appreciates the perspectives I have because I have spent so much time doing exactly that. It is easy for me to figure out what somebody else might feel in any given situation. I don’t always care. I don’t always change how I act based on what somebody else might want. But if I sit down and try hard I can figure out what somebody else might feel. It is a skill.

I know that this type of emotional labor is considered somewhat standard for women; I have had to work very hard for the level of skill I have earned. My life has not been much like other people’s lives. As a result I have had to work very hard to understand the depth and breadth of human experiences. If I had just stayed focused on myself I am pretty sure I would have ended up a monster.

I spend a lot of time looking out, looking at the wondrous variety of people in the world. I have an enormous problem with having contempt towards my own group but I have a very hard time seeing how other groups could earn the same level of contempt from me. I don’t understand the way most human beings do group loyalty based on what they look like. Pretty much everyone who has hurt me has been white. The structural support system that has created white supremacy has not really worked well for me. That system depends upon having people who are on the very bottom upon whom everyone can take out their frustrations.

There are people in this world who are treated like they are important and there are people in this world who are treated like they are disposable. White superiority treats all white life as superior to lives of other races. But there is still the bottom fraction of white people who are considered expendable in the process of the people on the top getting what they want to get from life. We are considered collateral damage.

I have had the incredibly unusual experience of surviving being treated like I was worthless. Most of us die.

I have a lot of survivors guilt. There is no deserve in this life and I know that part of the reason I survived was because of that fucking white privilege. I don’t pretend that I can say I know what it means to be a person of color in this country. I can read and read and read and that will still never actually teach me what it means to be that kind of person.

I can only have the experiences I have had. My experiences have shown me quite a range of human possibility.

I want to drag everyone up with me. I did not deserve where I ended up. No, I do not deserve where I have ended up. No one could deserve the degree of luxury I experience. But I get it anyway. Is it fair? No. But it is.

I spend a lot of time telling my children that with great privilege comes responsibility. If you were born blessed in this world if you were born with a full hand then you have an obligation to share. There are many people in this world born into extreme want through no fault of their own. No one asks to be born. Many of us were not wanted at all. It is not our fault that our parents could not provide a way (I said adequately. Dragon heard a way. That is an interesting contrast.) for us.

(Side note: I have been talking for half an hour. I feel like I could have written 10 times that much if I were typing. I only had to stop and fix a few things. There is a part of me that wonders if maybe it might actually be good for me to slow my thinking down anyway. The experience of talking to the computer today was really weird. It felt a lot more like trying to translate my emotional experience into a second language. It is kind of funny to me the way that I have found a voice through my fingers in a way that hurts me very badly because using my actual voice is so very hard to use.

Literal speaking out loud it’s harder. It is terrifying. Speaking my opinion has often caused a lot of problems for me in this life. In my experience, Noah is literally the only person with whom I have been able to have a consequence free relationship when it comes to having opinions he doesn’t want to hear.)

I wanted to not type today. Ha.

My poor hands.

Well, Noah is asleep. So I’m sitting here going round and round in my head. If I write the things down, maybe it’ll be less.

I need to stop looking at site stats. I need to put that on my “can’t” list. It is driving me bananas.

I need to figure out how to get consistent rest on a daily basis. That’s going to be very hard for me. I don’t like resting. I feel very bad about myself when I do it.

Noah and I rolled through yesterday. It was lovely. We talked with very brief breaks for alone time for over twelve hours straight. We spent a lot of time in our mutual admiration society.

Let me tell you why I love you so very much. Now you tell me.

Noah makes me feel… capable of accomplishing anything.

All I have to do is want it bad enough.

There’s something really big and heavy I’m sitting on. It’s hurting me a lot to think about. I’ve told Noah about it. But that’s as much as I’ve been able to verbalize. I don’t make promises I won’t keep. That is absolutely core to who I am. I treat a broken promise like an absolute failure of the highest order deserving of great punishment and shame.

I’m sitting on something big and heavy. It’s hard. What is enough?

I am very glad that Noah is supportive of the fact that I believe once we meet our financial needs it is our moral obligation to pass on the extra. I cannot begin to properly express what that means to me. It’s noblesse oblige, I know. But I believe with all my heart and soul that the way to have a great country is for those with the most to hand as much as necessary to those with the least until we can all rise together.

I believe this. I act on it. This is absolutely integral to how I view the world. I’m feeling a wee bit terrified of the financial accounting at the end of the year. I’m going to get quite a run down on my activities this year. Ugh. I don’t start that till Boxing Day. It is hanging over my head like a lead ballon. Ugh. Money. Whyyyyyyyyyy do I persist in talking about money? Blurg. Because in talking about it, especially publicly, I know that throughout the year I will keep my goals in mind and be more honest in my accounting. I will have more self control when it comes to random purchases because I have to fess up to the god damn internet about it.

This is a lot of how I control myself. Like, next year is a no-book-buying year. Because I do better with binary on/off switches like that. I’ll probably go out and get a few more in the next week. Ha.

Next year is a reading year. Ahhhh. It’ll be great.

I have so much to learn. I buy some fiction, of course, but I buy a lot of non-fiction. I read to learn. I read to grow and change and add tools to my tool belt. Even most of my fiction reading is conscious aimed at stuff that will show me different ways that people react to situations.

I am aware that I have a lot of deficiencies in my development. I’m working on that as fast as I am able.

I need to go have some serious words with my neighbor soon. He’s… ok there was another thing. He was lying on the ground looking at the undercarriage of my van (who the hell knew there was a spare tire under there?!?!?! AWESOME!) he grabbed my leg and wouldn’t let go and started getting creepy. I told him to let go several times. Then I started kicking him in the ribs until he let go of me. He started to complain that I was so mean and I told him if he ever grabs me again I will make him bleed. Leave me alone.

But I need to go back and have a serious conversation about this. I need to lay out my trauma history and tell him point fucking blank that as much as I enjoy talking to him about gardening and cars and travel and culture and mechanical issues and and and… I need him to stop treating me like I am sexually available. I’m not. I will physically force you to leave me alone if I must. I don’t want to. I really don’t want to. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you and I’d be very sad to hurt you like that. But I will.

I’m done being the victim, motherfucker.

I have serious conflict about my resolve to force my terms of relationship agreements on people. But do I or don’t I have the right to say no? If I do, how much force am I entitled to use as someone escalates their refusal to acknowledge my no?

Is it ok to defend myself? Do I have a self that is worthy of defense?

I would feel like this is all my fault somehow because I send “mixed signals” but this happens to so many fucking women who don’t have my background that it is horse shit to blame it on me. He’s an old bastard who wants to feel young again and he’s trying to do that by forcing me into what role he wants. Fuck. Right. Off.

I could just go out of my way to avoid him. But frankly, we’ve had hundreds of hours of positive interactions versus about 20 minutes of accumulated sexual harassment. People are always complicated.

But is it worth it to me to destroy the friendship if he won’t back off? Oh abso-fucking-lutely.

I get to have limits. I’m done having my body be at the discretion of old fucking men. I’m done. Done. Done. Done.

Have to stop typing. Ow.

I suspect it will be months before I should seriously be typing. Fire. Fire. Burning fire. My arms hurt.

The house is coming along! My neighbors are showering me with love. My friends are driving from near and far.

I have complaints (cause I can always complain) but I’m really happy just now.

Day 49 of my cycle though. Tapping my toes waiting to start bleeding. It’s starting to feel like my body is waiting till the house is clean so I can rest when I’m bleeding. Like, full on sit around and bleed on a towel cause you are so still rest.

I read about it in Cunt and I’ve never ….. actually just spent a week bleeding on a towel to see if it is more comfortable than other stuff. So I don’t know for sure.

Eight hours of sleep last night. I think that is either the first or second time since I got back. I’m grateful I’m starting to relax.

I have this idea. I think I should continue working with my Oakland therapist on trauma stuff. She doesn’t flinch. That’s….. hard to find.

I think I’m going to start interviewing people who live close to me. I want to find someone who is a parent, who has more understanding of parenting issues to see more often.

I think some of my current coping skills are not great and bordering on a real problem without quite arriving there yet. But they could. I think I need some behavioral guidance on figuring out some of the reactions I need to have. This is hard for me. I read and read and read but without feedback from adults… it is hard to know how to implement what I read. I’m trying. But whoopdie doo da.

Things have already improved dramatically in terms of my behavior. I’m more calm. My tone of voice is easier to control. It is easier to have gentle hands. I don’t have to force them through a mountain sized list of tasks when they hurt like a mother fucker. It’s easier to be gentle.

Pam said she was worried I was being too hard on the kids. I was worried I was being too hard on the kids. I was too hard on the kids in the way that children raised on the prairie had hard lives. You have to work.

And I was too loud. And I was too harsh in my tone sometimes when the kids were being slow and I wanted to go pass out. It wasn’t nice, kind, nor the right thing to do. It was my best in that moment, pathetic as the delivery was. Was the trade worth it?

Eldest Child says I am not that mean at home. I take more space. I create more of a bubble around myself to absorb that nasty temper so I don’t inflict it on anyone. I have that luxury at home. But I’ll take my kids with me on adventures where I lose that bubble. Even though I’m rather an asshole.

Why?

Because being nice 24/7 isn’t really much good preparation for life, now is it?

But I don’t think I’m capable of perceiving the balance I want to get to. I don’t think I can be objective enough. I think I want to work with someone who has more specific focus on children.

And I still want to get EC evaluated. I just… haven’t done it yet. Everything is crashing down on my head. Neighbors keep bringing me cards to get started on the remodel. The company I fired showed up yesterday to be obnoxious so I slammed my door in his face. (When I tell you it isn’t a good time because I’m not fully dressed… do not start a fucking sales pitch you asshole. Inappropriate power dynamics much?!)

I don’t give a shit if my baby sitter did tell you I was coming home. I fired your fucking company because y’all had shitty boundaries and lots of blame issues. You are not convincing me I should give you a second chance. Quite the opposite.

But I’m overwhelmed on getting everything done. The kids are still settling into the house. I haven’t felt able to shove them through everything already.

Still defragging the trip.

You know, people outside the valley usually don’t know what I mean when I say defragging.

Whether I am part of the Technology Era or not…. I am.

I quit NextDoor because hearing that much about the opinions of my racist/classist neighbors is making me hate my community very much and I’d prefer not to feel that way. Also, I keep getting “flagged as inappropriate for the community” every time I argue that maybe the folks stealing cans aren’t actually mega-rich people looking to scam the community. Fuck you, NextDoor.

On one hand Noah spends a lot of time telling me I should care less about the opinions of other people. On the other hand… looking outward kept me alive. These things are so complicated.

I had a very restful day yesterday. Two of my kind friends conspired to keep all the children out of the house from 10-3:30. It was literally blissful. It let me see, just a bit more clearly, how much physical effort it is for me to Alpha the house. I’m tired. I’m tired of giving opinions and caring about the opinions of others.

It isn’t that I don’t want to care it is that I am finding out what literal exhaustion and “I literally can’t” feel like.

My shrink had opinions about how the house is going. See, I’m not supposed to care. Only I pay for her opinion. Sometimes her opinion is biased in a way that doesn’t work for me and I have to manage the fact that I’m paying for an opinion that is really not useful to me. That’s complicated.

I really want to feel more centered. I’m not there yet.

Body wise things are kind of surprising and wacky. I used my measuring tape yesterday, because I feel a weird cognitive dissonance about my body. Apparently either my measuring tape has stretched over time or I am larger in every measurement. I’ve been 38″-31″-41″ for a few years, almost regardless of weight. Right now it says 41″-35″-45″. That should feel like a big difference in terms of being bigger. Instead I feel smaller than usual. My “skinny” clothes are fitting well. My “heavy” clothes are weirdly baggy but still wearable. I don’t feel like I am the size I am. On the trip I bought clothes as small as a size 10. I guess this is vanity sizing gone to hell.

Also: Eldest Child has cavities. The dentist sternly admonished that she shouldn’t be brushing her own teeth. I know. On the trip I literally just couldn’t do everything. Yes, they brushed their own damn teeth. Not well enough, I know. I know.

It has occurred to me that one of the biggest reasons that Noah and I gel so well is because we are both essentially workaholics. If Noah isn’t working on his primary job he is working on his second job. If he isn’t doing that he is directly interacting with the kids (which is work) or cooking (which is also work).

He doesn’t rest much more than I do, maybe less. True his work is mostly less physically taxing than mine… but we really do work a similar number of hours a day. This has been interesting to come home to. I spent months traveling being reminded that most people don’t enjoy working the way we do. Yes, I watch a lot of Netflix. 99% of the time I watch it while I’m working to keep my mind from getting frazzled because doing one thing at a time is hard. I can clean more effectively and for a longer time if I have a show on. If I’m not watching anything I get distracted by six projects in the middle of the day and the cleaning is dubiously done.

I’ve been thinking really hard about “neglect” when it comes to parenting. Am I neglecting my children?

The harder I think about it the harder it is for me to figure out what I really “know” on this topic. Neglect is when a child has needs and the parents don’t meet them. Do you know why parents usually neglect their children? Necessity. It isn’t usually malicious. The parent is giving all the parent has to give and it… isn’t enough. Then we start getting into, well, what are the rights of citizens? If their parents can’t meet their needs should the community step up for the good of their future status as a citizen? It’s complicated. What kinds of neglect matter? Is spiritual neglect worse or more important than the kind of neglect where your children are literally physically dirty? I don’t know.

I think a lot about neglect. I think about what happened to me and I think about what is happening to my kids. My mom did her best. She really and truly failed me on so many levels it blows my mind. If I was never taught, can I turn around and teach what my children need to know? Am I absolutely required to neglect them because I am incapable of seeing what I can’t see? I don’t know.

I don’t think they are neglected on a long-term basis. But there have been days in their lives when my hands hurt so bad I couldn’t hold a toothbrush to brush their teeth for them. I oversee them brushing… is that enough? Apparently not. I’m not supposed to care about other peoples opinions. But the dentist thinks I should care about his opinion very much. If I’m not personally doing every step of work he thinks I should be doing… is that neglect?

I’ve been thinking about how the size and shape of ones life decides a lot about how much you can do for your kids. I could sit home and save up spoons to be the personal nursemaid for my children for a few more years.

Somehow I feel like EC will learn more from being expected to do it with supervision so she can find out that half-assed isn’t good enough. If I save her from every consequence, how will she learn?

Isn’t that part of parenting too? Not protecting your kid from every every every mistake? Kids have to learn. If you shield them from consequences 100%, how can they learn to deal with problems?

I met this guy on the trip. His father wanted to teach him about responsibility so the dad got a dog for him when he was a kid. He loved that dog. He cared for it diligently and well. Then the dad made him dig a hole. Then shoot the dog. The father wanted the kid to understand death.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that the mistakes I let my kids experience are so bad. But then I think my calibration is probably really fucked up. Where is the god damn line?

I have no plans to do such a thing. I’m just saying.

I’m not supposed to care about peoples opinions, but if I don’t care about my housemates opinions I could wreck our friendship, I could hurt her, I could fuck up her kids. Her kids have very different needs from my children. There are a variety of foods they can’t eat that are normal parts of our diet. I have to think hard every day about almost every interaction because their needs matter and their needs are different from mine.

It is worth it, but it is tiring.

I think the “potty training” stage is basically over. Bonus Kid gets how it works. She is even managing during many hour outings out of the house. Yes, there will be more accidents in the future. (Life is like that.) But she’s doing great. It didn’t take two weeks. Yay!

It is hard trying to get enough 1-1 time with everyone in my house. Every kid wants attention. Every adult. They all want a piece of me. I feel like there are no pieces left for me. So yesterday was lovely. I got to spend time in the bath then I slathered myself with so much moisturizer I glistened. My skin is hellaciously dry after the travel. I put oil on my hair and let it sit for a long time. Whoa. I don’t usually have time for such shenanigans.

Right this minute I feel both incredibly competent and like a complete failure who will fuck up everything in the whole world.

I hate that feeling.

Tomorrow is our tea party. This will be the messiest my house has been for a party in years and years and years. Know how much I care? Not one little itty bit. I ain’t found everything yet and fuck it. Oh well. I’m too tired to give a shit. It’ll be a fine party.

Let’s be clear that this will mostly go off without a hitch because my ridiculously kind roommate said, “Oh I’ll do food.”

Bless you.

I went up to Sarah’s and stole I mean kindly took off her hands many many many boxes of books. Another dozen or so boxes? She doesn’t have storage space, hasn’t for years, probably won’t for years… if things come to my house she can visit and go shopping in my bookcase whenever she wants. With things in boxes it is hard to find anything so she buys a new digital copy. Really, I’m providing a service. Ahem.

And this way I can bribe her into dropping by a bit more often. Win/win/win.

My housemate might be leaving this weekend. Their house renovation isn’t done, but families are complicated. I get that.

It is very important to me that I be a friend to their marriage instead of a self-involved, selfish twat. Even though I’ll be sad to have my Bonus Kids leave so soon after I get to see them again… it’ll be ok.

It’s not all about me, yo.

I wonder if part of my difficulty sleeping is because I’m trying to lower my tolerance. So I’m using less medication. My tolerance is way higher than I want it to be. Gosh, recently I read an article about Willie Nelson’s pot consumption. I aspire to being as god damn cool when I’m in my 80’s. Maybe by then I’ll have gotten over being ashamed of myself for needing meds. Maybe.

I definitely understand Willie’s lack of preference for strain. Being high is awesome. I wish it felt more recreational at this point but that’s just over. I have patience when I’m stoned. Acres of patience. Mountains of patience. I don’t feel like I’m at a party. I feel like I don’t get mad when toddlers scream in my face. It’s… not as “fun” as I wish it were. Oh well. It’s just… helpful.

Being stoned more during the day instead of being stoned to passing out at night is different. On the road there were mostly days I couldn’t medicate, so I used a lot at night to ensure I slept. Now my body doesn’t know which way is up. Ugh.

Now I’m back to using it more during the day and less at night. Here I am at 3am. I’ve been awake for hours.

Patience with the kids matters right now. I have repair work to do. If it is to be excusable that someone cracks under extreme stress, that means the rest of the time I need to lower my stress so I’m not cracking a lot of the time. My kids were… maybe more patient with my volatility on the trip than is strictly speaking optimal. The kids were good at saying, “Are you tired?” when I started ranting. I tried to button my lip once I noticed I was doing it. Yes, I’m tired. I’m so tired I feel like I am barely alive. Yes, I’m tired.

That plays into my monsters/heroes thing I’m thinking about a lot lately. The SFPD is arguing that they shouldn’t have to wear body cameras because they are being treated like criminals. At a time when they also just shot an unarmed man… yesterday. That’s not their first time shooting an unarmed person this year. Maybe we’d stop treating you like criminals if you stopped acting like criminals.

In our society we have all kinds of safety nets to protect monsters. If they have enough money, just about any kind of behavior is excused and forgiven. Race plays into this but money is a bigger factor.

How do we decide what should be forgiven and how do we decide what should be punished? If you look at the jail rosters… clearly we decide that what should be punished is people daring to be objectionable, poor, too black in front of people who don’t like that kind of thing.

White people commit crimes at the same rates (or higher rates) on just about every criminal axis. We are not proportionally in prison.

I think hard about the spectrum from neglect to abuse to assault. How in the hell do we really decide where to divide these topics?

I’m working on scripts for a few things that are buzzing in my brain. It’s hard because I can’t/won’t write them down at this point for a complicated list of reasons. I’m not good at working through these things without writing.

Writing is how I teach myself what I want to say.

Noah is literally the only person I can practice with right now. That’s feeling hard. He doesn’t really have 5 extra minutes.

Need to stop typing. Stupid arms.

“I don’t have time to tag” is turning into “fuck you life I won’t categorize JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT ME TO, MOTHERFUCKER”.

My hands hurt. So I won’t write much.

My shrink is unhappy with the hair pulling stuff. She says we are probably going to spend the whole next session talking about that. Fair enough. It came up at the end of session and we didn’t really get into all of the specifics. I’m not looking forward to this conversation, but maybe I need to have it.

I kinda exploded at friends and Noah last night. Not exploded at them. Expressed specifics of my triggers out loud, which I normally try to avoid doing. I’m having a hard time with the fact that I need to be in my room to have privacy/quiet space. That’s causing me problems. I’m not unhappy about people being here, but I’m experiencing some triggering. It’s hard.

I try to avoid this because I did some yelling. Folks told me it wasn’t that bad and it was clear I was… more hitting a boiling point in myself than really being angry at anyone. I’m just freaking out.

Having no where but my bedroom to go is hard for me. Intellectually and emotionally I feel like I am still that awful, horrible 12 year old bitch who had to spend most of my time in my room because no one wants to see my ugly, stupid, hateful face.

I’m not upset about anyone in this house about this trigger. But it’s happening and I’m struggling. I’m keeping it from the kids (I think) but it’s there for me.

Overall my shrink was surprised I’m keeping things together as well as I am. I’m doing well with being in the role of “support for Bonus Kids”. It’s going well. Everyone is getting along well. The house is improving dramatically with every day.

I’m tired. I’m sorta wondering if I can handle taking January off. Can I talk me into it? I’m so tired.