Category Archives: home improvement

Think about what you have.

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I am happy. I have done a lot of work lately. I feel like I am in a good spot. Without hiring a large and vigorous staff it would be hard for me to get more done. I feel really good in my house. I feel like I have space for all of the things I want to own. I feel like I have space for playing and doing art and entertaining.

I have a husband who is so nice to me that my friends brag about him. I’m told. She says she tells younger women, “Marry a man who can cook. My friend’s husband makes her breakfast every morning then goes to work all day and comes home to make dinner.” Yup. I won the husband lottery. How this happened escapes me. But I did. He makes me food. Lots of food. I feel soooooooooooo lucky about this bit.

I hate making food a lot of the time. I really do hate it. Having to put together a meal that is more complicated than boiling ramen noodles can frequently reduce me to tears. I know this is lame and pathetic and all that. Whatever. The fact that Noah will cook for me is really huge.

I feel very happy about the colors I can see out my back window.

I feel like my life is plugging along. I’m doing things and going places and trying new experiences.

I’m so lucky.

The book is just about half done. Ok, it’s not half done. I’m almost halfway through the required number of words for NaNoWriMo. I’m 150 words away from halfway which is convenient because tomorrow is the halfway point of the month.

I hope to hell that I am not going to offend my friends. I think the book is solid. One of the things that is hard about writing this book is that it feels so obvious to me from the point of view I have now. I can’t imagine which parts will be revolutionary for other people. I’m pretty sure I will shock the shit out of people though. I have been me and I have been researching this stuff so long and so carefully that I can’t imagine people not knowing all that I’m saying. I’m scared I’m wasting peoples time. I don’t think I am though.

It is hard to feel confident that I am doing something worth doing. It’s just a month of effort. If it sucks, no big deal–right?

ugh.

I’m starting another mural. I asked for $8/hour and for her to cover my paint. That seems fair. I sure as heck don’t think I’m worth $20/hour. Not yet. Maybe some day.

The arbor will be painted today. Not by me. Because I am painting a mural for someone else I am rolling that money into paying someone to paint my arbor. I have been really dizzy lately. I am honestly afraid of trying to paint something 12′ off the ground right now. I’m pretty sure I would fall. It feels humiliating to say that but it’s true.

More and more birds are hanging out in my yard. They still haven’t found my bird feeder, which kind of irritates me. Oh well. I don’t feel that irritated. I am considering moving the bird feeder.

Today should be mellow and easy. I will clean the bathroom because it is nasty. I hope to vacuum and sweep and mop. I will fold five loads of laundry. It’s a light day. Ha.

I have three people who love me and love me and love me. I am very lucky.

parsing out blessings

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I am an extremely lucky person. I know people who are willing to schlep to my house to see me. I know people who thoughtfully invite themselves over. I appreciate this a lot. I know so many of them that I have something booked for just about every day all the way through the end of the year. We have ten unscheduled days between now and Christmas.

What do I want to have done and by when? What should I do today?

fyi: if you have never sent me an email I will probably not invite you to parties. It isn’t about rejecting you. It is that I sit down with my address book and I invite who I know. Just sayin’.

Already wrote a lot this morning. Tired arms. The day is about to begin. I predict it will be a long one. Tomorrow I have kids coming over. I want to have a lot of the mess cleaned up before they arrive. Oh goodness. The washing machine is being repaired today. I can almost start that backlog of work.

I have so many things I want to do. I am lucky.

busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest

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I am tracking too many projects at once. I feel like my head is about to explode. I do this to myself.

I am considering taking advantage of being a rich person and hiring someone to do a bunch of the tasks on my to do list because I spend a lot of time crying because I can only force my body through so many hours of physical labor in a day before I turn into a nasty bitch who screams a lot. I’m tired. I hurt everywhere. Could I keep doing all of my own work, sure. I could. If it was mandatory I could keep going like this forever. But I wouldn’t be nice.

I admire people who can deal with a lot of work and stay nice. I’m not one of them and I feel so ashamed of myself. Maybe it would be ok if someone else painted the arbor and sealed my garage door. Maybe.

I keep feeling enormous guilt because I know I am not focusing on the kids much lately. They get very little “attention” in the ways they are used to getting attention. I’m there with them. We are in the room talking, but I don’t do much of anything that is just for them right now. I haven’t been reading much. I don’t play games because I am tired, grumpy, and my body hurts. I’m not in the fucking mood to play. Play sounds horrible and like I want to hide in the closet.

This isn’t good. When am I going to learn balance? What is a sustainable work load for me?

I don’t know but I’m attaching all of my bookshelves to the walls for probably the first time in my life. (I do it partially so P can stop giving me a loving-hard-time when she comes over. She cares about our safety and she’s right so I should just listen to her.) But you see, I don’t attach bookshelves to the walls because I move furniture a lot. I used to just move house quickly and since I’ve been living with Noah I have completely changed the living room furniture around at least once a year since we have been married. (Err, not buying things–just moving around what I own.)

Now I won’t have alternative placements. I’m at max capacity because I bought more furniture. So I’m attaching to the wall.

I am kind of hoping that if I can no longer spend so much time rearranging furniture that I will move on to doing more kid-centric activities. Err, we’ll see.

Someone asked me to come to her house and paint a gate for money. An art commission for money is blowing my mind. Is this really my life? She won’t pay me a lot and it’s not like I need an extra painting project right now. But that feels like a huge step and I’m not going to turn it down. I will just pass on one of my own painting projects. Ha. Lame.

It isn’t lame though. I would use water based paint and a professional will use oil based paint. Water based paint only lasts about six years. Oil lasts closer to twenty. Maybe hiring a professional isn’t lazy it is smart. (I could use oil but it is more flammable and picky and fussy and… I’m used to water based paint. It makes a huge difference.)

Note to self: be done with “home improvement” shit by Calli’s next birthday. By the time she turns four Shanna will already be six and I have to stop working on the house all the time. I have to finish my interior painting projects. I need to stop having the house take up so much of my time and attention. I treat this like my job and it isn’t my job.

My job is home educating my kids. On one hand: Shanna is getting good at putting together furniture and figuring out how to do things. On the other hand: we could do something more fun once in a while too.

Stop with all the house-shit, Krissy. It’s an addiction, too.

(My house is getting much closer to being what I see in my head. I’m very happy about it. Probably in January-February I will repaint the kitchen. You’ll see. It’s going to be fucking awesome. Vines. Flowers. Yay!)

 

A shorter brain dump.

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I apologize for the terrible typos. Welcome to the world of first drafts. 🙂 I’m a generalist. Not a.. whatever I wrote instead. (I’ve already forgotten. Awesome.)

I spent a while yesterday fantasizing about my ideal next Ikea trip. I spent almost an hour with measuring tapes moving around my house. I asked Noah and he told me to go ahead. It will be almost $2,000. I choke on that number. Ok, I’m rounding up, closer to $1800?

It will involve a radical difference in the pantry and give me a lot more space to move around and more storage at the same time. It will also give me more bookshelf room in the living room. I will be getting a lot of drawer pull outs and door things. These things now come in hot pink and turquoise. Perfect.

It also involves getting two of these as my next non-pee-filled couch experience. If you put these facing each other you can get a 15′ runway for summersaults and wrestling. That sounds like rainy day awesome to me. And I won’t have to scream at the kids all the time to stop jumping on the couch. No springs to potentially injure them. Excellent. No, they aren’t very “grown up” but they will get me to stop yelling so much and that will be nice for everyone.

All told I would be getting 43 new cubes of storage space. That’s a lot. Less than just getting two new 5×5’s but I don’t have good places for 5×5’s. (Obviously I’m an Expedit girl.) Instead I will get sizes that fit better in my house. I didn’t like the floor to ceiling book shelf thing in the living room. I tried it for a few years and I always felt like I was hyperventilating from lack of space. I like having all the pictures on the walls.

I feel like my suicidal ideation has been at a low ebb since I put all the pictures up. Other parts of my life are going well too, so it’s not like I think that one thing made all the difference or anything. But it reminds me that people do still love me. They just aren’t in my house right now. I feel a kind of benevolence as I see them smiling on me every day.

I like having all the pictures up because it is so hard for me to believe that anyone even could like me. But I have pictures of Jenny that are twenty years old. And now I have pictures of her daughter, whom she named after me. Even I’m not deluded enough to think that there is a lack of emotion there. But it is so hard to feel. It is hard to remember that these connections really are what life is made up of. No, not everyone gets to have a family like Pam. Life just doesn’t work like that.

I have pictures of Pam that are fourteen years old. Now she makes videos for my kids because she isn’t here all the time and she wants to be able to read them stories.

I don’t really “believe” I am unloved. Not any more. But it is hard to feel like I deserve love. It is hard to believe that I can love people without damaging them in some major way. It is hard to believe that I am not a monster and all of these people are going to find out the truth about me and then they won’t love me any more.

So I compulsively admit every time I scream at my kids. I tell people that I have to be conscious of my stress levels because when things get too bad I kick holes in walls or kick the cabinets apart.

I don’t want to be in the closet. I think the closet would just magnify all of my shame. I wouldn’t have the knowledge that I have to admit in public how bad I am. My dad got away with so much. My siblings are compulsive liars. I don’t want to be a liar.

The money I spend at Ikea is about my knowledge that if you have a solve-able problem and you choose not to solve it you can’t take your frustration with the results out on anyone else.

In other words: if I don’t deal with the mess in the garage by really finding homes for all of it I can’t get mad at my kids for making huge messes with the stuff left on the floor.

Our boundaries are generally very clear. If stuff is on the top shelf, you have to ask an adult before you get it down. If stuff is down low then you can play with it.

Do you see how fucked I am?

Shanna is old enough and clever enough to know she is getting away with stuff. But I didn’t tell her that the boundaries still existed as these things were temporarily on the floor.

So here we are. And boy that is a big mess of Valentines crap.

But hey, we will only have to make one card in February.

Yesterday was a shouty-day. I differentiate between shouting, yelling, and screaming. Screaming is the stuff that hurts my throat. That’s too much, period. Yelling is about tone. Yelling sounds mean and doesn’t even have to be all that loud. You can “yell” at someone without raising your voice. It’s about berating and being harsh. Shouting is being a little louder than normal but not aggressive or punishing or shaming.

“Right! Another pile! No really, come over here next because we missed a lot!” Not fierce, more commanding?

I partially judge the difference based on their response. Screaming results in crying and freaking out. It’s just not ok. I always end up comforting them when I scream and apologizing a lot because it scares the shit out of them.

Yelling has a variety of results but it is differentiated by a shame overtone in some way. Yelling makes them defensive or they cringe.

Being shouty results in shrugs, eye rolling and back talk while they more or less do as I ask.

Isn’t that part of childhood?

Learning to do things even when you don’t want to is part of life. I fucking guarantee you I don’t feel like doing laundry as much as I do. I really don’t feel like cooking as much as I do. But it has to be done.

Sure I could structure my whole life around trying to get around those tasks but I don’t like any of the trades.

I’m trying to get better at even bringing shouting down. I may still be mad at K for telling a large group of people that I was the biggest bitch there but she has a point.

I think I’m ok with being the biggest bitch at the beach. I can live with that.

I don’t want to be a bitch to my daughters. They are special.

Why do my priorities matter so much? I need my children to understand that their physical actions have measurable impact on the world. If you leave something on the floor, someone else will step on it. If you don’t pick up your stuff either someone else has to do it or the space has to go unused.

We live in a fairly small house by modern American standards. Including the garage we have ~1400 sq ft. If you make space unusable by other people that’s a pretty selfish thing to do when you have moved on to taking up other space as well.

We have pest problems if we aren’t mindful. This has been proven repeatedly. These are not constraints I have just dreamed up.

We have people over a minimum of once a week and usually we have people over three or four times in a week. We are very lucky that people humor me. Leaving my house unusable is uhhh not an option I am ok with. We need to clean up after ourselves.

I can’t expect other peoples kids to understand fluctuating weird boundaries. My boundaries need to be simple and clear. Nothing off the top shelf without permission. Food on the linoleum. Stay out of the adult bedroom and the pantry and the side yard with the gate. I should probably paint signs on the door and the gate.

I want to create self teaching space. I could do it with the shelving I have but it would involve a lot more down sizing than I want to do or just messy piles left about.

I know that every single time I do something like this I am pushing back future goals. I think of the cute folks in “Up” who keep breaking into their savings. I know that a boat is a hole in the water you pour money into. A house is the same way. When do I stop?

Well I’d be out of room for furniture and I think that would set me up for the next 5-10 years for what I want.

But next year there will be something else. And the year after that. etc. You get my point. I can stop belaboring. Or can I?

Like the dishwashing machine; it’s breaking. The whole top rack comes off periodically. We will probably want to replace that because I tell you fucking what I don’t want to be responsible for hand washing all of our dishes.

Here we go, all what I want to pay for right about now:

  • Seal the garage door
  • gutters
  • bookshelves
  • couches that don’t smell like pee and that allow me to yell less
  • dishwasher
  • pipes in garage
  • washing machine

I think that is it. They would improve the feeling of being in the house tremendously. I notice as winter comes and the garage is unpleasant in the morning. Brrr.

But we also want to take vacations. I feel very guilty when I think of how much money I want Noah to spend. It isn’t a reasonable thing in the current economy. Not for the vast majority of the country. But he is doing it.

Why is what he knows how to do worth so much money? Clearly it is.

He’s really busy. The thing is, if he wasn’t trying to earn money in the time he would be playing video games. Or hunting. He wants a lot of time and space away from us. The intensity is hard. I get it. Ha ha ha I get it.

I met someone new at the park yesterday. We talked about how to deal with overwhelming people because parenting advice because. No specific details.

The conversation was fine but I had to take a break to use the bathroom. Like, duh. When I came back the response was a big grin and, “I’m sorry I need to stop talking to you because I feel overwhelmed.” I spun on my heel and walked away. I also forgot to gather up all of my belongings because I left as quickly as I could get the kids together.

I know it was “a joke”.

But I don’t really think that is a signal I should ignore. Not at all. Not in the slightest increment. Not if I want to be welcome back later.

I’m not there for me. I’m there for my kids. Next time I will make sure I say a whole lot less to anyone who isn’t more tested.

Maybe that isn’t fair. Maybe… maybe.

Be careful what you say to people you don’t know. I thought I censored pretty well. I didn’t say anything explicit beyond being involved in the queer and transgendered communities. I said that to indicate that the group does actually have queer families. And yet we have Mormons. It’s awesome. It takes all kinds. We are all very nice to one another at the park and on outings. I think it is great.

I’m sure it was a joke. And yet.

I am too sensitive. This is true. It’s not like I will shun this person permanently but I will be a lot more timid in the future.

Managing boundaries is hard. I didn’t talk about sex. I talked about entirely vanilla life experiences. I was G-rated if you don’t think “queer” is a dirty word.

Do you know that my mother put makeup on every single day? We were very poor so it was the cheapest and most garish makeup available. Every. Single. Fucking. Day.

No, no I don’t want to wear makeup. Thanks.

to do

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  • put glow in the dark stars under the play structure
  • attach climbing ropes with strategic knots
  • put up bird feeder
  • take broken bookcase apart into pieces for garbage (there is more but the garbage can is full)
  • finish cleaning up toys from back yard
  • make scare princess
  • decorate for Halloween
  • clean and prep arbor for painting
  • paint arbor (this will be wood stain and not bright colors.)
  • sift out concrete pieces
  • spread out mulch (rescheduled)

I’d like to finish most of that this week. Well, the concrete sifting won’t be finished. That may take years.

And I haven’t cleaned the bathroom in longer than I’d like to remember. And the kitchen needs cleaning several times a day. I feel tired and uninspired. I’m cold and all of my sweatshirts are dirty and the washing machine repairman is two hours into his four hour window and hasn’t arrived yet. I’m starting to worry we will miss gymnastics.

My head hurts.

 

empty brain, go work.

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I am not sure I will 100% finish the play structure today but I will finish painting. Damnit. I’m not painting the base boards because they are already nasty filthy. Oh well. The rest of it is Colorful. Pictures soon. Holy moly colorful. Structure of many colors. At least fifteen colors so far and I think I may use a couple more. Today I paint the rock wall. Woo! I will also make sure I get the roof on. Maybe I will do that before I start painting. Not many boards left!

After I finish the play structure I need to take a break from outside work and come inside and dismantle my laundry room. This is my sad face. Luckily I construct my projects with the idea that if I make 3,028 trips then everything is easy for me to carry by myself without destroying my back. Yay! So it will be annoying and time consuming but not painful. Cause I’m S_M_R_T.

Once that is done I need to paint the arbor. Then I can move on to other, currently more appealing, work. Like spreading mulch! I have so much wonderful mulch. *happy dance* My whole forking yard will be covered which is awesome sauce because I have this terrible clay.

I still haven’t moved the rocks. I should probably ask Noah to help me do that today. I’m more than a little afraid that if I get all macho and try to do it alone I *will* throw out my back. My back and I are not on the best of terms right this minute. Gentle work.

I opened negotiations with my two favorite running buddies for a half marathon next year out of state. Ten years of running deserves a celebration. And who doesn’t like a trip to Portland? We’ll get to see lots of fabulous people. Always a win.

I haven’t worked on the book in a week. I’m tired. My brain hurts. I need to finish the bloomin’ painting outside so I can come inside and start nice gentle inside winter work and let my forking back heal. But I need to be running. I think it is weird how much I crave the running now.

Something else I’ve been thinking about like crazy. One of the moms of many in our home school group made a comment this week to the effect that when her fifth child is born she is going to get rid of all hand-me-downs because she is done having kids. I almost burst into tears. She’s allowed to have as many kids as she wants and I’m only allowed to have two so why is she stopping?!!?!?!?!?!? Ahem. Obviously I didn’t say a word to her. But I had this explosion of feelings I’ve been processing since. I started bleeding yesterday which was welcomed by my now-standard sobbing because it feels like I just lost a wanted baby. Noah’s shooting blanks so I will never miscarry again. But every month feels like it.

On the upside I didn’t have an explosion of joint pain in the 24 hours before I started bleeding. Phew. That means it only happened two months in a row and I can ignore it and not see a doctor. My favorite kind of random pain.

On the downside my right arm hurts like a son-of-a-bitch. I woke up in the middle of the night with my elbow hurting. Painting is hard on my arm. I’ll be done soon. I’ll take a few months off at least. Then I’ll start painting the inside of my house. Mostly I want to be able to get rid of all the paint so I need to finish the projects I have in my head. I’d like to use the storage space for other things.

So far I have only learned a few minor points of argumentation from Sex at Dawn. I remain convinced that I went out and got a graduate level education on sex. I just know shit. It’s nice to feel that confirmed so strongly occasionally. “Oh look, a groundbreaking book that teaches me nothing new. Guess I’m already doing the groundbreaking.” Ha! Not that I have a big ego or anything. *cough*

I’m trying to not fret about money. I haven’t overspent our income. I have saved. I have paid down debt. I just also bought things I wanted. I bought things my family and friends will use and appreciate for many years. I wish I didn’t feel so much guilt. My shrink wants me to work on that guilt because it is specifically non-useful to me. Noah doesn’t feel I am extravagant in my spending and his opinion is the only one that matters, except for mine, when it comes to my spending. So stop feeling guilty. But so many Mint categories are red! (They will even out by the end of the year.) Clearly I am a bad person! Err, maybe I have some issues.

I keep busy because it is better than sitting still all day and crying. I’m trying to feel cheerful about the work instead of cranky. This is all self-imposed and self-created work. I do it just because I want to do it. That means I should be pleasant to be around. I am the cock crowing at the top of the dung heap of self-important work. Seriously. I should be in a good mood. But my body hurts.

Balance. I need more of this balance stuff. How do I use my body without causing it intense pain all the time? No clue. But I’m pretty sure it involves more yoga.

Some day when we don’t have a mortgage to pay for… if we are still so rich… I want to take weekly yoga classes and get massages twice a month. That would be so freakin rad. It could theoretically start in 2021 when we come back from travel. *cross fingers* I can hold out that long. Really it isn’t so long in the scheme of things. It is such a dreamy future. I can work for that.

When I am older and my kids don’t need as much from me I look forward to a much more selfish life. I will eventually do some kind of work with other people out of loneliness but I look forward to being able to care about my body a lot more than I do now. Maybe future self will be convinced to be nice to me? It’s a dream. Arms hurt. Stop typing, you fool.

it will be a busy weekend.

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Yesterday was the second of five kid social events that I have scheduled in two weeks. Because I was having feelings this was the first time I have deliberately sat away from the group and declined interaction. Normally I hang out and do the clucking chicken thing with the other ladies. (English sounds like clucking hens from a distance. It’s hilarious.) I have had no hint of interpersonal difficulties. So far this seems to be a freakishly kind group of people. We are coming up on three years in this group. Very soon this will be the school group I have spent the most time with in my life. I was at SJSU for seven years pursuing my masters but I wasn’t enrolled straight through. I missed at least two years in the center. But when I have feelings so sometimes I walk away from the group. Even though they are so kind.

I have actually felt rather overwhelmed by how nice they all are. I feel a lot of pressure to be similarly nice. Ha. The woman who runs the group causes me to feel like I am unlikely to be thrown out. When there is group drama people aren’t asked to leave unless they start name calling. I can live with those kinds of boundaries. I think that’s fair. You don’t call names. Totally cool. I agree with that as a limit.

The kids had a blast though. That pumpkin patch is definitely going to become part of our yearly rotation.

I would like to finish the play structure this weekend. Cross your fingers. I get to the point of feeling like I have too many ongoing projects. Then I feel so overwhelmed I can’t make progress on anything because I feel guilty for not making progress on anything else while I am working on one thing.

What is life about if not work? I know there are people who think life is more about having fun or experiencing pleasure or happiness. I get most of my serious joy from working. Sometimes this feels kind of broken and sometimes it seems like a good thing. It sure makes it fun to hang out with the kids doing work. The harder I work the more fun we have because my spirits come up. If I’m just sitting around resting all day then I don’t want to be talked to or asked to do anything. I am less patient with their constant interruptions. When I’m working I handle the detours for food with far more grace.

Today I saw something on Pinterest that made me happy. “Motherhood is not a battle against other mothers. Motherhood is your journey you are on with your children.”

I feel a lot like that. I’m not trying to talk anyone into anything. I don’t think I know how someone else’s journey should look. I’m just walking the path I see in front of me. Isn’t that what we all can do?

Yesterday I was talking with a lovely woman about what it means to be valued versus being valuable and how you feel those things. She is struggling in her life with not feeling either. She asked me how I manage to feel valuable or valued. A lot of my journey is not available to her. So I’m not trying to say that what I do is what she should do.

I became a teacher. I wanted to feel like I had things in my head that other people could benefit from knowing. I tirelessly research so that when someone asks a fairly mild question I can follow it with a dissertation. I know that people can benefit from having access to the knowledge I have in my brain. That helps me. I’ve had enough people effusively thank me for what I can tell them that I know it is true. Even when I haven’t been a good edu-tainment recently. It’ll happen again.

I became a mother. I am the most valued person in the world for my two kids. I kinda wish I had more kids… but life works how it does. I’m not sure I would do better if I had more but I want them. I think I would do worse. But man I sit there and look enviously at all the five children families in our group. I want more children so bad it hurts. I’m about to start bleeding any day. Every month this turns into a weep fest about the children I will not get to meet. I’m glad that Noah limited his child-bearing opportunities because I’m too stupid to do so.

I went and found a partner who is very codependently attached to me. Yay us! We have a kind of inter-dependence that most American couples seem to shun. We very consciously and deliberately trade a lot of “for myself” work because we like having the other do it. Noah treats me like I am valuable. Like I provide him support no one else ever has and he really needs it. It isn’t about cleaning the house. It is about needing him. I do need him. It feels nice to both of us. I’m not sure that it is healthy. We certainly aren’t two independent people shacking up any more.

I appreciate that Noah acts like the way I talk to him is as necessary for a happy life as food. How I talk to him is more important than how I fuck him and I think that my willingness to fuck him is high on the list of my overall value. So if the talking is better that says something.

Noah has no particular reason to feel the need for most of what I do during the day. But he’s glad I do it because he thinks the kids need what I do. He thinks that my labor has a serious purpose. He thinks the raising of our kids is a worthy life-task.

Today I paint and put the roof on the play structure.

It isn’t that I think that people are mean to me or hate me. Not really. I’m 32. I have been “out” for fourteen years. In general I think that people treat me the way I want to be treated or I get up and leave the room. I don’t listen to assholes any more. If someone is genuinely beyond my acceptability standards they don’t have a doubt in their mind. I scream at people and/or sometimes break things. I’m not subtle when someone crosses a line. So if you have never seen any kind of behavior like that… obviously you’ve always been on my good side.

No one likes living under the threat of having someone scream and break things though. That is abusive.

I try to avoid people when I have a problem with them. If I have ever come and sat next to you and talked to you then you aren’t someone I have a problem with. But that isn’t a guarantee that you will never be someone I have a problem with. And it isn’t all that fair that doing something I don’t like may result in that kind of treatment.

I don’t want to teach my children to be bullies. Screaming and breaking things when you don’t get your way is… not ok.

Most of how I manage this is I make sure I don’t need anything from someone and space. If I am starting to have too many emotional issues around a person I will just not see them for a bit. My feelings have expiration dates. I calm down. Sometimes it takes a while. A lot of people cause me to have strong feelings. I don’t think that is something they need to lose sleep over.

But why in the fuck do I feel like I have to be non-triggering but I don’t think other people have to be non-triggering towards me? Because I know I can’t control people or their behavior. I know that if I trigger people the way they can deal with that is to punish me or walk away from me, which ends up feeling the same.

Social dynamics are really hard.

I can like someone a great deal and still judge them. I try my hardest to treat people as I believe they should be treated. I consciously decide what sort of behavior someone has earned from me.

I will still scream at racists. I don’t care if it is an asshole thing to do. I will. I will not scream first. I will escalate gradually and if they keep arguing I sure as fuck am going to be the one still standing there while they walk away. That’s a line. Really I react that way in defense of a wide variety of persecuted groups. Ok, I’m fine being an asshole.

But I do that as a conscious choice in reaction to increasing and perseverating arguments from another person. It is not ok to just do that.

I’m also ok with punching someone as hard as I can if they grab my crotch. I don’t treat that as a behavior I should get rid of even if it does make some people uncomfortable. I don’t care.

I don’t think I should lose the desire and ability to fight hard.

But I want to be better at completely turning it off and knowing when I don’t need to be prepared to fight. What does relaxing look like?

People keep telling me I look calm and happy. Does calm and happy really feel like this though? I don’t feel calm or happy. But I am projecting it. (Ok, people only tell me that if they catch me on “on” days. I’ve been withdrawing a lot.)

When you die you leave behind you the way you made people feel. No one ever really knows what you are feeling yourself. No matter how much you tell them they never really know. They only know how you made them feel.

I want to make other people feel better. I want to make other people feel calm and happy. It is really immaterial how I feel.

And yet I really really REALLY also want to be able to scare the shit out of people with little more than a change of facial expression. It’s a cool talent. I’ve had it for a long time. I can’t scare everyone of course. But in general I win dominance challenges.

It seems crazy. But this is how I learned how to stop being prey. I had to go learn how to be one of the most intense predators in the room.

My therapist wants me to research Eastern religions. She thinks there is some useful stuff for me in learning about wrathful Gods/Daemons/Demons however the heck this will be phrased. Oh man. New lexicon.

Maybe it is useful and good that I can be evil but I choose not to be. I choose not to because I see so clearly the long-term hurt. I fight the fights that need fighting. I’m trying to learn how to actually wage a war. Mostly it isn’t about screaming or hitting. Mostly it is about changing minds.

I really and truly want to change how a lot of people think about things. I’d better stop writing blog entries and write something real.

Every book that has ever changed people started out as just words in someones head.

fake it.

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I worry about how much I worry about how I affect other people. I don’t work nearly as hard on being nice to my body. I pay a lot of attention to how my behavior impacts my kids. For a while now Shanna has had an occasional eye tic. It is a stress response. I feel that this is a sign that I am not behaving how I should.

It is hard having to pretend that I experience less stress than I do just because it hurts other people that I run so hot. Hot in the sense of high stress load.

I feel very guilty that I had kids because I wanted to have a relationship that was intense and all day every day. I wanted to have the company. I wanted to have to learn how to be nice. I wanted to learn what it means to teach people without shame and resentment. I want it still.

It feels like I created people just so I could perform a science experiment. That doesn’t seem like a nice thing to do. But I’m not sure that the reasons that other people have kids are “better”. I know that I feel guilty that I am not better. I am not fully arrived at behaving how I should for my kids. I don’t deserve them.

I tell myself that my kids are having a good childhood in the scheme of their species. I am nice to them. I do take care of them. They have a wide variety of healthy, good tasting food. They don’t get yelled at much. They have appropriate clothing for the weather. They are allowed to play all day almost every day. (By “allowed” I really mean “forced”.) They are given all the kisses and hugs they want every day. They are allowed to tell me to stop doing anything except for cleaning their bodies. And I don’t even do that much. Usually I default to “fine if you want to be dirty it is your body.” Once in a while the filth gets to be a bit much. And I’m fanatical about teeth care.

I’m doing “better” than I used to be able to do. But it really doesn’t matter. I need to be enough better to stop scaring my kids. If I am producing stress in my kids then my behavior is a problem. I am not behaving good enough. It’s not ok.

My kids should not have to watch me like a weather vane hoping to determine how difficult I will be to put up with that day. That’s not ok. That is a level of crazy I don’t get to inflict on them. I actually really appreciate that Shanna has such “tells”. She is not nearly old enough to talk to me about the stress she is feeling. But I can just look at her face and know whether I am “soft” enough. When she looks nervous I have to visibly calm down and retract the energy I am sending out into the room. It is hard to do. It is a very conscious decision to “look” like I am not angry or upset or anxious.

I can’t just decide to not feel angry or upset or anxious. I feel that way most of the time. I feel scared. I feel like everyone is going to be angry with me soon because I am going to break a rule and then they won’t want to know me any more. I am scared shitless my kids will grow up and not want to know me because I am such an asshole.

But I can’t act like I am having the feelings I am having. I have to fake it.

I saw a friend yesterday I don’t see much. Usually I contain my shit better. This time she saw me right after therapy. She got to see all the messy shame and crying because I don’t know to be “better” already. I feel pretty pathetic that I have been in therapy for almost three decades and I’m still crazy. I still spend a lot of my time shaking in fear. I still spend a lot of time hiding in dark rooms so I can sob uncontrollably. I hide it better. I keep it in a box better.

I fake it better.

Not well enough. My kids see the stress. It isn’t ok for my stress to impact them.

My shrink wants me to look for a meditation class to attend with my kids. I wish that such a thing would not involve a drive to Berkeley. I will look though. It is a good suggestion.

Shanna has been asking more questions about my mom. “Did your mom love you?” “What good things happened to you when you were a kid?” “What did your mom do that was so bad?”

I told her that I don’t actually know if my mom loved me or not. I think she did. I hope she did. I believe she loved me as well as she could and it is really hard when that isn’t enough. I wrack my brain trying to come up with positive stories. Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m just a whiny bitch and someone else would have been able to find a lot more joy in my childhood or if it was really bad enough that I should have trouble remembering anything positive. I tell her flat out that she isn’t going to know about the really bad stuff until she is an adult. I told her she doesn’t need to think of me that way.

I’m not always very rational about food so I talk about the food insecurity issues a lot. I feel relatively unashamed of them. The more I read about foster children the more I feel “ok” about having the food issues I have. They make sense in context.

I talk to Shanna about control. Like I ask her how she feels about being directed and forced to do what other people want during a specific period of time. I ask her how she would feel if she never got to pick what she was doing. I ask her how she would feel if she came home and ALL of her toys were gone. Stuff like that. I talk about how when I was a kid I felt very out of control so I controlled what I would put in my mouth.

I talk to her about how sad it is for me that I didn’t get to have any of these good foods when I was a kid. She pities me. I talk about the ways my body has problems because of the food I have eaten. My kids are very aware of nutrition and the things they need to eat. “You have to eat green stuff because it helps you poop!” We do talk about other aspects of nutrition but that is their favorite. Neither of my children have my constant-diarrhea problem (I am hoping this is because of lower stress). They instead are mildly prone to heading in the other direction so I repeat things I have learned from friends with constipation issues.

My shrink says I should answer every question and not dance around things. Well, she doesn’t think I should say I was raped until they are more like puberty age but she is less convinced I need to wait for the magic number of 18. We’ll see.

I cancelled park day for next week. Half of playgroup for next week cancelled. I won’t be sad if the other half cancels. Having five kid-social events in a two week period is too many for me.

I am doing too much. I can’t keep doing these 12+ hour work days. Social time counts as work time whether I like it or not.

I’m having a hard time with the balance of life thing. I have a lot of things I want done. I am having trouble with the fact that it takes a while to get all the things done. In order to put it in perspective I asked Noah about how many man-hours it takes to produce an iPhone for people to bitch about not working magically enough. He said probably in the neighborhood of 500 man-years not including factory work. That’s software/hardware design.

Stuff takes time. Not everything that can be done by a group of humans can be done by a singular human. No matter how much you want it. There just aren’t enough hours in a life. Figure out what you want to build and how you want to spend your time.

Sometimes Shanna asks me about my crying. I tell her that every body is different. When I feel too much emotion inside my body I cry no matter what the emotion is. Sometimes I’m happy; sometimes I’m sad; sometimes I’m angry; sometimes I’m frustrated. My body has just decided that all of these things come out as tears. Sometimes I am crying because bad things happened a long time ago and I was not allowed to cry then and my body needs to let go of that piece of being sad or scared so I’m doing it now. I’m safe now. It’s ok in my life now to just have feelings, so I do.

She gives me a lot of hugs. I am trying so hard not to turn her into a major source of emotional support. I don’t talk about specifics. I talk about how to be an adult and deal with the body you have. I’m very afraid of emotional incest. I know that it is a common “next generation” away from incest mistake.

I am an intensely overly sexualized person. More than that, I tend to not know how to be friends without sexualized touching. I have a lot of big needs that have gone unfilled for my entire life. I feel kind of desperately needy sometimes.

I can’t treat my kids like they are here for my support. I created these relationships because I need to learn how to give support, not because I think I can or should get much back. I’m here for the satisfaction of giving. I have to have the quiet glow that comes from a job well done. I am not going to get a lot else. Not from my kids. Well…. years of kisses and hugs. That’s nice. But at some point they will pull back and that has to be ok.

It is hard learning to be this kind of self-contained. It means I am talking to Noah a lot less about what is going on with me. I can’t breach the defenses at all. We don’t have time. What time we are together we mostly talk about his work and the basics of project stuff or kid stuff. I am very much hiding in the roles I created for myself. I don’t have room for my crazy there. I have to mostly take the crazy off-stage.

I can’t just make the crazy go away this way. But I can damn it up until I have a better space to deal with it. I had better let steam off once in a while or I will be sorry. Very sorry.

I woke up this morning dreaming about cutting. I don’t dream much any more. I rarely remember them at least. Not since I started pot. But this morning I woke up with my hand already moving along my other arm. I’m not sure where that came from. I stopped cutting my arms by early high school. I moved on to my legs because that was easier to hide.

My therapist wants me to go find more things to do as “self care” and I wake up wanting to cut. I do need more stress relief. That has always been my tool of serious self care. That is how I let the steam off. I go off in private and I make sure I am not anyone else’s problem. And I let myself feel how much I hurt all the time. But I have to hide it because it makes other people feel uncomfortable.

Fake it till you make it.

I’m not making it.

If I knew what I “needed” I would do whatever I had to go get it. I would do it. Even if it sucked. Really if you could arrange extra suck just for me that would make me feel better.

Sometimes it is hard knowing that the journey is the point. I am making it. I am nice to my kids and random people in restaurants and my neighbors when they aren’t being racist assholes. I only yell about things that need to be yelled about. Silence is consent. I am not going to leave people ambiguous about how I feel on some topics. Even if that means I’m not nice. If you have never upset anyone then you have never stood for anything.

I have nothing to lose at this stage.

Sometimes it is kind of weird knowing that Noah is the linchpin. All of the luxury and privilege of my life is based on his ability to earn money. I groom him like a friggin race horse. He has more than doubled, nearly tripled, his salary since we met. Because I’m pushy and I give him feedback on what he should or shouldn’t be doing. That’s kind of weird. We really are good for one another.

I’m having a lot of anxiety about spending all of the money Noah earns. I’m not looking forward to my end of year reckoning on Mint. I mean, in terms of petty cash we are higher than we were at the end of last year. We retired a lot of extra mortgage. But I did not save all that I wanted to save.

I kind of went nuts in the back yard instead. And this Texas trip isn’t cheap. I’m going to have to deal with my anxiety. I am fucking thrilled with my yard. Not a single dollar was wasted. I am ecstatic. The only thing between me and what I see in my head is a lot more work on my end. I’ll get there. It will be really pretty. But it is man-years ahead of me and that is sitting hard. It feels like I wasted the money because I didn’t finish the project and now it’s just kind of half-way and limbo sucks.

I do this. Don’t mind me.

At the end of the year I always feel like I am a bad person for spending money on things I wanted. I don’t deserve all the money I spend. I feel really bad that I am not more frugal with Noah’s money. I should make it spread farther. I should be saving more for the kids. I shouldn’t be so selfish.

But really… is building a playground in my back yard purely selfish? My anxiety yells at me that I shouldn’t be doing the work. I’m stupid for adding all the work.

But I want a pretty yard. I didn’t inherit one. I have to make it. Yeah, it will be back breaking work for a decade or so. Stop bitching and do the work. Don’t feel bitter you twit. This is a choice. Beauty doesn’t just happen automatically for most people. And most of what I want is stuff that wouldn’t have been in place anyway.

I’m just being a whiny bitch.

I’m thinking that there will be the Friday Funhouse version of Wonderland. I close my eyes and see kids running around in packs. I hear the laughter and shouting. I turn around and see grown ups playing games and talking and laughing.

I want the laughing so much. I want it so much I ache inside. Crying isn’t really the way to get people to feel good. Laughter doesn’t come from the places I dwell.

It is a little weird to me sometimes that my therapist knows so little about me. Ha. She continues to be shocked by how many people I know. People with as much trauma as me usually hide in their houses for the rest of their lives. They don’t go out and meet social group after social group. People like me usually can’t fake it well enough.

Am I faking it or am I “learning social skills”? I’m not sure they ever really feel natural for anyone.

One of the things I like the most about Noah is that he doesn’t flinch around me. I don’t scare him. I don’t intimidate him. I go back and forth between wanting my kids to have a similar level of toughness and knowing that it usually comes from trauma. And I just can’t traumatize them. I can’t.

Stop clenching your jaw, Krissy. Deep breaths. Whatever you are feeling is just a feeling. It will pass. This moment isn’t forever. You aren’t faking it. This is the process. The frustration is part of the process.

Time to stop typing.

House stuff and people who are still here.

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Well I broke my washing machine but good. I have to replace a belt and the whole damn inner basket. In order to facilitate this I have to move all the “walls” that form my pantry because they have to take the dryer off the washer in order to fix it. And I will be without a washing machine for more than fourteen days total. Guess I’m off to the laundry mat. Crap.

We had a good day any way. Four hours of painting followed by an hour of clean up and then another four hours of socializing with Sarah then another three hours of socializing with my shaman. I’m hella tired. This whole navigating relationships thing is very complicated. But nearly ten years and more than thirteen years later they are still here. Even though I have fucked up badly and hurt both of them.

This weekend I hope to finish the play structure. I want to finish painting. I want to put the roof on. I want to install the ropes for the climbing wall. I want to move the rocks so I stop injuring small children when they come down the slide. I want to install the pulley system. Put up the glow-in-the-dark stars. Then the play structure is “done”.

I want to put the paint cans put away. I want my house clean. I don’t want to be in the middle of a project. Yet I am already assessing the painting projects I want to do next year. Maybe someone should take my paint cans away… (I want to repaint my kitchen for a variety of reasons. I would like to cover some dry-wall patching. I’d like to put stars in the living room. I keep thinking about the outside of the house…)

Just a morning whinge

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I feel like living in one place is giving me the experience of seasons in a way I find odd year after year. Wait… this really happens? The changing of the seasons surprised the hell out of me for the first twenty-five years. I had nothing to anchor me to the changing of the year other than the start of the school year. This is different.

I am working on acquiring huge bags of mulch from a friend. I have brought five bags home so far and I think I should go back for more since she has a lot more. It will cover a lot of my yard–for free! Whoo! I’m going to start with putting it around the play structure. Mulch is at least slightly more absorbing of impact than plain dirt. I’ve already layered a lot of sand around the base.

I paid someone to fix my washing machine problem (it was flooding the garage) and now I have a different problem–the water won’t drain from the washing machine. I have a growing puddle in the machine. The internet tells me I need to call a Maytag repairman because a bunch of things can cause this and they are all internal.

This is a thing because the last time I tried to fix washing machine issues (the washing machine before this) I called a Maytag employee… they sorta fixed it but said mostly it was a plumbing problem. Then I called a plumber and the person said it wasn’t a him problem. Then I called someone else and they still couldn’t fix it. I had to pay all three service people for their time and I didn’t get the problem fixed. So I ended up getting a new one.

So the idea of escalating washing machine problems is kind of nervous making. Oh man. Not again. Owning a house is a pain in the ass.

Today I need to do some preparation work. Tomorrow is a home school gardening day. I invited folks from the group over to help plant tulip and daffodil bulbs. I plan to talk to the kids about soil enrichment and planting and plant biology and such. It should be fun. And now I get to extensively talk about mulch.

I’m killing the celosia. I love them but apparently I water too hard? I should do more research on these flowers because they are whiny, picky little bastards. Five minutes of internet research tells me the blooms usually last ten weeks and then they are annuals. So I’m not doing something terrible to them. Oh. Well that’s nice to hear. Now I can feel less guilty about them dying off. They are also known as cockscomb; now that makes me happy.

Yesterday I medicated less than usual and had a stomach ache that was distracting and harsh all day. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out why I use pot. At this point a lot of it is masking the constant stomach pain. That might be something to think about. I know that part of the stomach pain is anxiety. My body doesn’t like me very much.

I can tell I’m feeling lonely. The ways I use forums/social media changes a lot as I cycle through different levels of feeling lonely/sad/unwanted.

I’m trying really hard to continue seeing people and continue socializing. I continue to ask people for time. But fewer people. I’m scared of rejection. I’ve been asking a lot less. This article tells me I should keep asking. But what I want isn’t a casual favor from a stranger. I want people to like me.

I’m afraid that the more time people spend with me the more they dislike me. The more carefully they have to put up a lot of boundaries. So I stop asking people to come over. I feel sad. I feel like it is too much work to put up with me so I should stop making people feel like they have to acknowledge me. I should let them ignore me. I should make it absolutely non-effortful to pretend I am not in the world.

I’ve been reading about the Four F’s. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Survival methods. Things that animals do when they are confronted with stimuli that feels dangerous. I am absolutely an isolator. That’s a big standard PTSD thing. We like being alone in a room because then we know we won’t unconsciously lash out at our invisible demons and hit someone else on accident.

Noah says I want him to be obsessed with me. That’s probably true. But I also want him to work and play with our kids. I think I do a good job of making sure I am not so demanding that I cut into his work time or his time with our kids. I make sure I get the scraps. I make sure I get what is left over after he has done ALL THE THINGS because they are all more important than me. How obsessed does that make him? If I am what he gets to when he has magical “spare time”?

I’m having a hard time managing my feelings around being sad. I feel so pervasively sad and unwanted and like I will never really be part of anything.

When I was a kid we moved a lot. When we were living with bio-family my experience was that I was always in my room listening to everyone else talk and spend time together and laugh. They always sounded like they were having fun. If I walked into the room I would be yelled at within minutes and told to just go away because I was bothering them.

Sometimes when I experience the intensity of Shanna talking over me… I understand why I was sent to my room. I think most of the people in my family have PTSD and I can understand why my intensity was too much for them.

But I still can’t be in a room with people without feeling like at any second I will be told to leave because I am annoying and unpleasant. I’m bad. I’m wrong.

Right now it feels like the most important thing I will do with my life to not pass on this feeling. My children will not feel like me. They will not feel like them walking in the door ruins the party for everyone else.

But I don’t really get to decide how they feel. I only get to decide how I treat them.

I keep thinking about hosting a party because I miss people. Then I think about the fact that people mostly only come over when I invite them to a party. And I spend the party feeling like I should be quiet and not ruin it for everyone else. I’m not actually sure I can handle it.

I feel like I should hide for a while. I spend too much energy wishing people liked me more. I spend too much energy wishing that people wanted to spend more time with me. I need to only need me.

I have a lot of reading, a lot of painting, and a lot of writing I want to finish before December 31st. Maybe that should be enough.

I have to somehow work on this frantic feeling. It isn’t attractive to look or act desperate. I feel desperate. I feel like I want to fall to my knees in front of people and beg them to please like me. Please. Please be my friend. Please see me. Please choose to spend time with me just because you want to and not because I asked and you feel sorry for me.

Recently I read a very sad story about someone else’s incest experience. From when she was very tiny her abusive grandfather taught her to beg him to do it to her. She had to say, “Please love me” and encourage the sexual abuse or he hurt her.

I don’t want to ask people to love me any more. Either they do and they will show up or they don’t and I should walk away. I can’t influence how other people feel about me. I just need to accept it and move on.

They will either be here or they won’t.

I can’t ask right now. Even if that means I’m alone. Luckily I’m never alone any more. Not really. I can ask for visual privacy but I am almost never alone. This is my shot. I understand that they won’t have to be with me forever. Someday they will run off to chase their dreams and I will have to be ok with that. I will have to act like they aren’t abandoning me–because they aren’t. They are just following the progression of life.

I don’t really like to think about that day very much. It feels like looking forward to my obsolescence. Not that I think I will run out of things to do. I think I kind of hope that my reward for a life well lived is that Noah will get around to being obsessed with me and we can spend a ridiculous amount of time staring at each other.

The longer I live with Noah the weirder I feel about this whole “never feel liked” thing because he has it and he doesn’t have the same kind of trauma background. Ok, he was never liked by his family or his small hick town… but it wasn’t like my childhood. I feel deeply comforted by the fact that he feels no more liked by people than I do. Maybe this isn’t a broken thing. Maybe this is a common and semi-normal thing. Sometimes when I spontaneously do something nice to him, even as small as touching his hair, I can see him shudder. He isn’t used to people wanting to touch him.

It isn’t a sex thing. He looks so young. He looks so scared and relieved at the same time. Someone likes him. I really like living in a house that is a full-time mutual admiration society. It feels so good to be around three other people who are so constantly affirming. I don’t know why Noah is like this with us. My kids are largely because I model it.

I’m not one to be stinting with my criticism. But after years of research I understand what criticism and put-downs do to peoples self-esteem. I understand that for every negative thing you tell a person it takes ten positive statements to balance it out.

So given that I am unstinting in my criticism I have to be significantly more free with my praise. My children can point out where something is done wrong but they are way more likely to be encouraging and friendly and helpful because I am that way with them. I live in this insulated little bubble with them so I can keep calm and be nice.

Why do I feel so lonely if I am never alone? I see people. I’ve been incredibly social lately. But I always feel like I have to be very careful what I say. I never relax. I never feel like people actually like me. I feel like people might, maybe, like a very carefully edited and shaped version of me but they don’t actually like me.

Don’t offend anyone, Krissy.

In the past people used to regularly complain that talking to me was walking on eggshells. I haven’t had anyone say that in a long time. My mom said that to me a lot. “I just can’t say anything to you, Kristine.” She really couldn’t. By the end I hated her so much and I had so much need built up that she really couldn’t say anything. Every single god damn thing she promised me would turn into an argument because I didn’t believe her and I hated her for lying to me.

I heard a lot of complaints about how hard I was to talk to back in my munch days. A lot of the guys would complain that I couldn’t take a joke. Nope. I can’t fucking take a rape joke or a sexist joke and I very rarely tolerate racist jokes from anyone. (Err, I have a friend who is half Japanese (I’m pretty sure it is Japanese but I could be remembering incorrectly for a different Asian nationality) and half Mexican. She has some really funny jokes. They are all about her ethnicities. I giggle when she tells the jokes and don’t repeat them. That’s how you should roll when you are white as snow.)

Noah says that people feel like they are walking on eggshells because I don’t react in any of the ways they have patterns for how to handle. I react differently in one way or another and that difference is hard for people to stand near. I don’t really know.

I should probably reread some of the existentialist crap. That would probably be relevant to this ennui shit I’ve got going on. Not till I get through my list of books for the year. I helpfully borrowed a bunch from a friend yesterday. She happened to own a bunch of books on my “to read” list. How useful and kind of her to share.

See, it isn’t as if I am not seeing people. I clearly have friends. They aren’t telling me to go away. But we see each other mostly at my initiation. That’s how it works with almost all of my friends. We see one another when I go solicit their company. Sometimes that gets to me. It feels too much like forcing people to put up with my unpleasant company just because telling me “no” feels too socially complicated. Over my lifetime I’ve been aware that a few people let me come over just because they didn’t have the cojones to tell me to go away. I don’t want that any more.

I am no longer a kid who needs to get out of my house. I don’t want to force people to put up with my presence. It’s why I just can’t be a “regular” anywhere. I will never be someone who hangs out Cheers-style at a public gathering place. I’m too convinced that people wish I would leave.

I don’t know how to change this feeling. Whatever the answer is, it has to come from me. It can’t be about what other people do or don’t do. I can’t care. I can’t read peoples minds. I can’t be responsible for what is going on with them.

I ask when I can. I should stop asking when I feel too emotionally impacted by the process of asking. That’s “boundaries” right? I differentiate between asking I am doing “for me” and asking I am doing “for the kids” because they are in a different place with regards to friendship formation. But then I need to keep my god damn mouth shut when people are here for the kids.

I’m trying not to drive off the home school families. We’ll see how this goes. It is a help/hurt thing that everyone lives so far apart. I can always pretend that the literal physical distance is enough of a stumbling block and that is why we aren’t closer.

But I have no idea how close or not close anyone feels to me. I don’t know if this void is just in me.

Did you know that NIN’s “Head Like A Hole” can be played over the top of “Call Me Maybe”? That kind of broke my brain. I’m not sure if it is a good thing or not.

Enough navel gazing for one morning. I hear a kid stirring.

Not proud.

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In my continual efforts to not have secrets about which I feel shame, yesterday we had kind of an incident.

I had to dismantle the slide. An adult friend who was far above the weight limit decided to take a ride. It broke. No fucking shit. It ripped some of the bolts through the plastic and fucked up the wooden support under the slide. So it had to be taken apart. I could fix it with much larger washers, but it was a pain in my ass.

The entire time I was working on the slide, ok that isn’t fair–the first half of the time, the kids were not very happy with me. I tried to patiently explain what I was doing and why. I explained every tool and piece of equipment I was using. I showed them the damage and told them why I had to dismantle it in order to fix it.

The kids stood there and YELLED at me that I was mean for breaking their slide as I took it apart. Even though I had explained why and showed them how I would put it back together.

I fucking lost it. They have been yelling at me that I am mean a lot lately. Basically every time I do not instantly comply with their demands.

I turned around and started screaming at them that if I am so fucking mean go in the fucking house and leave me the fuck alone while I do this fucking work for your fucking play structure.

I don’t feel proud of myself.

I am not sure what the right thing to do there would be but I wasn’t capable of turning around and being nice. I just couldn’t. I am so fucking tired of being yelled at that I am mean while I am in the middle of doing demanding physical labor for someone else’s benefit. I just can’t sit there and tolerate that. I fucking can’t.

But I should figure out how to handle it without yelling “fuck” at children. On one hand I feel bad. On the other hand, wow have I never yelled fuck at my kids like that before. That was special. I’ve been remarkably good for me about swearing over the past few years.

I called K to calm me down. These days it feels like she is the only stress relief I have. The Godmamas are overwhelmed by familial need (that happens) and Noah is working a lot. A lot. A really really lot. He works his primary job, comes home for an hour or so then goes in the garage to do different work. This weekend he’s at a conference.

I used to get 3-5 hours of not-parenting every day. These days I’m under two hours. I do all of my work while managing the kids. Which isn’t something I deserve pity for. I wanted this and all. But it is hard to have enough patience for everything.

We did another hour or so of painting on the play structure. Calli has painted most of the stairs by herself. I was very impressed. I “helped” by doing a last few smoothing strokes on each board but she put the paint down and mostly spread it around by herself. Her paint clothes are now solidly covered in paint because she sat in it while she was painting. It was totally adorable.

Shanna painted the kid-side hand rail mostly on her own. I came along and did a little edging of the parts she had trouble seeing. That’s ok. There were a lot of little corners. Those are easy to miss.

I’m working on the rainbow. It’s a pain in my ass. But it’s coming along. I have used three fucking ladders in order to reach everything. I could have gotten away with two ladders if the thing was about three inches shorter. But it isn’t. So I needed a third ladder. C’est la vie.

I’m starting to have trouble sleeping again. Once I get six or so hours of sleep I feel like my sleep gets lighter–I come up to a lighter sleep cycle and then I just can’t really rest more. I get up to use the bathroom and then I fret. And fret. And fret.

Do you know what makes me feel worst about yelling at Shanna like I did? She came back to me and apologized for yelling at me about an hour after I yelled at them. I apologized to her too. I told her that I was sorry for yelling “fuck” at her because that isn’t very nice or respectful or loving. She said, “Well, we weren’t being very nice to you.”

I said, “No you weren’t. But you are kids. Kids push grown ups. It is my job to be the grown up and hold boundaries. It isn’t very cool of me to scream at you for being a kid.”

She told me she forgives me.

I don’t know how to be a better mother than I am. But I feel she deserves better. She is such a wonderful kid. It is kind of funny that I feel like I am mean to them. But never for the things they yell at me about. Those things are never the mean things. They yell at me that I am mean when I am doing nice things. If they yelled at me while I was actually being mean I think I would just nod and agree.

I think that when they start yelling at me I need to immediately separate us whenever possible. Not because they are “getting in trouble”. If you have feelings like that go express them somewhere else. You are allowed to have them. You aren’t allowed to yell at me like that. Hell, I barely yell at them the way they feel free to yell at me.

My kids are so fucking not abused. The cocky little… oh man. Clearly not abused. Abused children aren’t this god damned demanding.

I haven’t made progress on the book this week. I am thinking about it a lot. I know what I want to say. I just haven’t sat down to write. The minute I sit down the kids jump on top of me and demand that I do _________. (The list is long.)

I feel like we have phases where I can do independent work (like the mural on the fence) and then I just can’t for a while because they feel clingy and upset about being ignored and they won’t allow me to focus on anything. Right now I can’t do the dishes without them bugging the shit out of me to entertain them in some way.

I spend a lot of time saying, “It is not my job to entertain you. Go entertain yourself.” Sometimes it works. Sometimes not so much. That’s the process.

This is hard. I absolutely understand the impulse to just “put them in school”. I feel like there is stuff here to learn. There are lessons in this learning-to-put-up-with-people that I have to learn. I need it. NEED.

When I am an old woman I hope I will be proud of myself for doing the things that I knew were things *I* needed to do. I don’t in any way think that other people should mirror my path. I need to figure out how to be with kids.

When I lose it, which doesn’t happen very often–I do record pretty much all of them–I feel like I am proving that my children deserve to be removed from my care and given to someone who could treat them better. Only when I talk to so-called-“normal” (not diagnosed as crazy from a young age) mothers most of them spend a lot more time screaming at and/or punishing their kids. There is no way in hell I could treat my kids the way I hear/see other mothers doing it. I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror.

But I don’t think they are abusive. I don’t think their kids are damaged or fucked up in any way. So why do I feel so strongly that if *I* behaved that way I would be an abusive monster?

Is it the slippery slope argument? I can’t scream at my kids frequently because screaming just makes me more and more angry (being the one to scream means I am the one to escalate) and I have a really hard time controlling my urge to hit when I get too angry. And when I start screaming I am more or less incapable of screaming without cursing every other word. That is just part of the whole dynamic for me. I see other mothers who are able to scream or discipline and they don’t have to chant fuck fuck fuck over and over.

Right now my kids are sleeping in the cutest way possible. Shanna is “normal” direction but curled up in child’s pose. (Now I get why that is named that way.) Her nightgown is rucked up around her waist and she didn’t wear panties to bed. So she’s mooning the hallway. Calli is also in child’s pose but her head is firmly up against Shanna’s side so they are at a 90 degree angle to one another. They make a T.

I love how connected they are. They fight more now. But holy tomato they are attached to one another. They want to be near one another. Even when they are mad they don’t like separating. They do play in different rooms sometimes (Calli is very willing to run her own games when Shanna is being too bossy) but mostly they don’t like being away from one another.

Shanna keeps telling me that when she is a grown up she is going to go find my big sister and teach her how a big sister should act.

I tell my kids a lot, “How you treat your sister teaches her how to treat you. If you hit, pinch, kick, or shove you are saying that it is ok to do to you. I will not intervene until you get to the point of serious injury. You need to learn how to be nice.”

It is really interesting how Shanna is starting to take responsibility for “I am older and have more self control so I have to teach my sister how to act.” She frequently tells Calli, “Oh Calli! Please stop pinching me. It is hard to not pinch you back when you do that.” Once in a while she does pinch back. Then Calli wants to cry foul. I play at being deaf.

Today is a weeding day. The front yard is really bothering me. I haven’t weeded all summer. My pansies are getting choked out and fuck that noise.

The asparagus are growing like mad. I had no idea they looked like that. They kind of look like fennel as they grow up. It’s really neat. No one believes me that they are asparagus.

Tomato season is (thank goodness) nearly over. I will probably get another 5-10 lbs this year. One more batch of sauce. I’m ready to stop processing.

I am learning a lot about how I feel about food preservation and eating from my yard. I don’t know where I am going to put more raised beds in the future (maybe my roof?) but I think that long-term I will mostly want to figure out how to eat what is in season and do staggered planting. Like putting lettuce out to start every three weeks. Eat it as it comes ripe. We tend to not preserve a whole lot of fruit from the yard so far. Partially this is just current production size but partially it is that we gorge when things are in season. It feels nice. Then we have a break and that feels nice too. Preserving and eating the same things all the time causes me to get really bored and not want to eat at home.

I am sorta keeping to the schedule I drew up. That makes me feel good. I haven’t worked on Outrunning this week but that is the most serious deviation.

I’m having a hard time writing. I think that I’m actually feeling writers block about the book. I’m scared. I’m scared of really and truly committing to what I think a 12 year old should know. That feels like a heavy responsibility. I don’t want to do it wrong. I don’t want to give too much information and push kids towards making bad decisions.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is that no one wants to seriously think about how much power they have. People don’t like acknowledging to themselves who and what they really are in the scope of things. People either under or over rate themselves. It’s hard to be accurate.

I don’t know how much influence I might potentially have and that is really scary. If Torque (the guy who publicly apologized to me and who gave me specific permission to use his handle whenever I talk about him) had understood how much it meant that he publicly say, “I screwed up and I am sorry” he would have done it ten years ago. If he had been willing to actually deal with me, what difference might that have made in my life?

Sure, he was a softball sized trauma. He violated my consent in a painful way. But he didn’t have sex with me. He didn’t rape me. He did beat me… but I had asked him to so it is a really weird thing to figure out how upset I am allowed to get about the whole situation.

I asked him to do a scene. Scenes are potentially fraught. Everyone has to be responsible for themselves or they SHOULD NOT ENGAGE IN BDSM. If you need to be taken care of then you are not someone who should engage in bdsm. Period.

But he did stuff I told him not to do. And when I screamed “no” and “stop” he ignored me until I said “red” even though I had negotiated not using safewords. But I did have a safeword. I did make it stop.

Recently I was thinking about the last rape. What I really really really hope will be the last rape.

I gave permission in advance for a rape scene. I didn’t understand the difference between compliant rape and a rape I would actually fight against. I never fought before that. I was trained to not fight from when I was a toddler. I was literally physically taught to not fight against being raped from when I was a toddler. When I was twenty-five I finally fought back.

I still lost.

I still got raped. Even though that time I didn’t want it and I was upset enough to fight and I fought as fucking hard as I was physically capable of fighting.

I haven’t ever done that before. I always give. I always know that it is right that I lose. I know I deserve to be raped. I know I deserve to service the needs of people around me because I am a whore and that is what whores are for.

But that last rape was different from all the others. That is the only time I can look at and really believe in my heart, “I was not able to stop that.”

Every other time I acted like it was like the scene with Torque. If I knew the safeword I could stop it but I don’t play with safewords so mostly I will eventually go limp and try to not die.

I don’t say “no” to sex. Well, I do now. Rarely. Barely. I started in pregnancy. I made Noah promise in advance that if I decided to not have sex from the date of conception to three months after delivery that he wouldn’t divorce me. I knew there was the non-zero possibility. I know that happens for some people. I was really scared. I made him promise because clearly he picked me because I am sexually compulsive and at that point we were still non-monogamous and I was pretty scared that he would wander off and not come back if I cut him off.

He didn’t.

I went and did a lot of bdsm because I wanted to find out what it felt like to believe you were allowed to say “stop” and have it work. When that mechanism failed me…

I don’t say “no” much. I learned how to say “stop”. Barely. It took a lot of effort and work. It took really consciously trying to do it. My Owner worked with me. He did a lot of very dangerous things where I HAD to say stop or he might end up in jail for manslaughter and we don’t want that now, do we?

It is kind of funny because outside of sex I say “no” more easily than almost anyone I’ve ever met. I’m pretty happy to add a “and go fuck yourself while you are at it!” But that sex button thing is old.

Lately I’ve been waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror and saying repeatedly, “You will not be held accountable for your feelings; you will only be held accountable for your actions.”

I have big feelings. I have mean feelings. I have sad feelings. I have hateful feelings. I have painful feelings.

I’m not hurting anyone else by having these things inside of me. If I control my temper and manage to not lash out (screaming that I am not fucking mean for fixing the fucking slide aside) then I am not hurting people. If I am not hitting anyone I am not hurting anyone. If I control my tone of voice such that I do not sound mean or hateful then I am doing fine. It’s ok that I am playing a game.

That’s the point. It is all a game.

No one is against you. They are for themselves. Don’t take it personally.

You will only be held accountable for how you act. I don’t know how you feel. I can’t know. That is forever a shut door. I just know how you act. I care about how you act.

That is comforting and very disturbing.

Just another whinging Friday

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It isn’t that I think my kids are bad or anything. They are just excellent boundary pushers. I want them to push boundaries. I flat encourage them in that direction. I want children who are tenacious, stubborn, and sure that their idea is A Good One. But. But sometimes I wish I could say, “I know I’m willing to argue/negotiate with you all day every day but can I please have a friggin break on my birthday.” They just aren’t old enough to understand.

We did have good moments. I feel really bad that it seems like all I do is complain. Doesn’t anything make me happy? Am I ever satisfied? Is there any point in reaching for satisfied or is that just not something I can feel? I feel really guilty for not being able to turn this into a fun trip. It should have been a fun trip. I hate that I am such a downer all the fucking time.

But it felt really bad getting yelled at for what I wanted to order for lunch. I fucking told them four days in advance, “On my birthday I want us to have gumbo and papas fritas and beignets for lunch. That’s what I want.” They were enthusiastic and supportive until we got to the park. Then I was a mean and terrible person for not letting them have popcorn for lunch. Or ice cream. Or a Dole Whip. Or…

My kids rarely have extreme cases of the gimme’s. I don’t buy them things all that often on our outings and I’m kind of nasty about being pestered to buy stuff. Holy.Fucking.Shit. This trip was the most gimme-gimme-gimme I think Shanna has ever been. She actually sat on her ass in the middle of the store and started yelling at me because I wouldn’t buy her a FUCKING SECOND MUSIC BOX. SHE HAS ONE AT HOME THAT SHE BOUGHT WITH HER ALLOWANCE ON OUR LAST TRIP.

I almost lost my shit. If we had been within an hour of home I would have left the park fifteen minutes into the day.

The really funny thing is the DMV portion of the trip was the best natured and happiest all three of us were on the whole trip. We played games and met people and it was a really enjoyable 3.5 hours. Hell, I’m talking to a lady via email after that. She’s nice.

I think it is that whole kicked puppy thing. I was acting like a kicked puppy. I was begging them to please let me have a turn. When you act like a low status person you get kicked like a low status person. So my kids kicked me (only literally a few times figuratively much more often) all day.

It all feels like my fault. If things go badly it is because I planned wrong or anticipated wrong or… something.

Having them both scream at the top of their lungs that I was mean and nasty multiple times before 10am felt really hard. I know this is a current tick. I know that the best way to handle it is to not engage. At this point in time I am having trouble not bursting into hysterical tears or hitting them. I have strong impulses to do both. I’m not doing either but I want to.

Just breathe. This moment will pass.

I have spent ~15 hours over the past week and some working on scheduling. I’m getting close to knowing the shape of my days all the way through the end of the year. If I stick with my schedule. Ha.

In order to make it so that I can potentially accomplish what I want to accomplish I need a schedule with a lot of rest time scheduled. I need to not be booked all day every day. I have to have multiple days in a week where what I do is hang around the house and putter. I need to have scheduled “sit on the couch and read books and snuggle” time with the kids just about every day.

I have to run more. I just have to. Not running is feeling a lot worse than running. Which is hella funny. We have gone out all four of us a couple of mornings in a row. We hope to get the kids used to going for a morning jog. Noah and I take turns doing sprints up the block and back to the family because the kids are a lot slower.

Outrunning Suicide is starting to take shape. I have mostly written several chapters. I have a skeleton. This one is very different than No Secrets. The entire writing process feels different. This will feel more like a collection of essays than a story, but there needs to be some sense of story in it as well. I am trying as hard as I can to be conscious of the fact that I want this book to be appropriate for twelve year olds. Even though the mothers of twelve year olds will say that it is too mature. The mothers are wrong.

I need to start working on painting in the back yard. All of the stuff that was built this year needs to be painted so it doesn’t rot quickly. Oh man.

I don’t want to go out very much over the next few months. I want to get work done. I want to home school my kids. I need to stop looking outward for a while. We will go to park days. I will continue to try to make time for Noah’s friends who have all had kids and the few people I have hanging on who had kids.

I need to stop looking for new people. I don’t have the bandwidth. My monkey spheres are full.

I like having a lot of… I’ll call them third tier friendships. People generally don’t want to think of themselves as third tier, but oh well. At this point the only person I have near daily contact with who I don’t live with is K. Thank goodness for her. That is the first tier. Second tier are all of the people who have kept contact with me for long-stretches of time and they know real things about me and I know real things about them. These are people who very consciously schedule with me and make sure that I know that they think about me. The third tier are the people I don’t see a lot of and they know very little that is real about me but I want to feel acceptance and love so I try very hard to maintain Appropriate Behavior around them and I know there are consequences if I slip up.

The third tier is where you get into the idea of Community. These are people I want to know. They add value to the world and to my life in particular but I don’t think they actually like very much about me so I have to carefully construct what they see or I will be shunned again.

I can’t overload my second tier. When I overload my second tier then I see the ending of nearly-decade-long relationships and the backlash hurts me for years.

The third tier is where I spend most of my time. I carefully dole out just small bits of my personality to people. It all tends to feel very artificial. I know I need to be careful not to be too real. I need to not saying things that will upset people. Good fucking luck guessing who is sensitive to what.

Why is the third tier so important? Because I have absolutely stressed the first and second tiers to the limits of their ability to support me and if I have free-floating miasma of need and I get it met in bursts of random kindness from the universe. I depend on a lot of Pay It Forward. Mostly this has worked out fairly well. Humans in general are loving, kind, and they want connection.

But then we get to this punishment thing. I think that most people have trouble understanding that they are punishing people. I know that I struggle with understanding how and where I punish people. I do it but it is hard for me to understand the mechanism of it. It is hard for me to understand that I have the power to punish people. I don’t feel like I have such power. I feel weak and powerless.

My second tier has worked very hard to step up since I had kids. As much as I am still in a place of great hostility towards the idea of “chosen family” (given that most of the people who have emphatically told me that I am their family no matter what no longer speak to me I think I get to be hostile to this concept) I… feel conflicted. Clearly I have friends who have moved into family roles.

I feel like I am understanding how other peoples limitations work better as the years go on. Like, I’m not inviting people on trips. It isn’t that anyone wants to hurt me (I don’t think that the desire to hurt me played any part in people not being able to go on the trip–major health concerns came up for everyone) but I am still here hurting. How do I move towards hurting less?

I have been asking for help with things where I can’t handle the answer “no”. That is always where I get into trouble. This is consistent for me. I wait until the lack of support will be crippling then I ask for support then I get told no because other people don’t have the bandwidth and I crumble.

I need my life to require fewer spoons. I need to not need help.

Having children has been humbling and humiliating. The amount of help I have needed has been really hard. Things like going to the doctor for an ultrasound of my abdomen. That turned into a huge long lecture at Kaiser about how I need child care or I can’t get health care. I understand why my dentist pushed me to get the dental implant I needed while I was pregnant even though the pain meds aren’t optimal because “Mothers don’t take care of their teeth when they have children under ten.”

It is kind of weird and hard to talk about but since having children I am more house bound than I was before simply because of how my bathroom habits changed. I have always had a small and urgent bladder (common problem with early childhood sexual abuse) but after the kids my life-long diarrhea problem became urgent and explosive too. And then there is how my periods have changed. Having a body sucks.

Having kids is hard but I did not anticipate the specific ways this would be so hard. I anticipated getting sick of laundry and wiping up poop and being screamed at. I didn’t understand that after having children it would be a rare thing for me to be able to handle three hours between bathroom trips–I get a few freak days once in a while. I normally go to the bathroom every half hour or so. I don’t think I would physically be able to teach right now. I used to have 110 minute class periods. I can’t hold my bladder that long any more. And it is illegal to leave in the middle of a class to use the restroom. I did it anyway but you aren’t supposed to and there are severe potential punishments.

You want to know why I have so much anxiety about neglecting my children when they are playing in another room and I can’t see them but I can hear them? Because I went through teacher training and discovered just how much trouble I can get in if I don’t “properly supervise” other peoples kids. Apparently properly supervise means sit on top of the child and physically prevent them from ever breaking the rules. Good luck.

I swear this all ties together in my head.

I have historically depended heavily on the third tier. Why do I consider them third tier? What I can ask of them is much smaller and more limited and I have to be careful of watching how often I ask. The tiering is how much of my need they have demonstrated an ability to handle. It isn’t about me judging them negatively or thinking they are bad people. I’m intense. I hurt people without trying. I need to be careful to notice when I am hitting stress points for people and withdraw so there can be a next time. If I push third tier people too hard they eject me from their lives.

With children this is different and difficult. At this point I feel like a user if I ask people for anything. I try hard to bully K to let me come do work at her house because I feel like such a user all of the time given how much support she gives me. It isn’t actually a better dynamic.

I have a hard time knowing that at this point in my life I need more support than I give. It has been true for years. Maybe for all of my life. This totally plays into being financially dependent. I feel ashamed of myself. I look at the women in my life who are not dependent and I feel pathetic. This is part of that defining myself by being not-like other people. It isn’t good for me or anyone else.

I don’t feel like the things I do are good or worthy. And yet I really really really want to do the things I am doing. With fervor and intensity I want these things in the world and I don’t think anyone but me will do them. I take that as a sign they probably aren’t worth doing and I am just a waste of resources.

Part of the problem with an extensive third tier is someone always needs help. People are always struggling and I wish I could help more. I wish I had more to offer. I wish I had more energy. I wish I had more time to give them.

But instead I will stay home and weed my garden and write a book and paint. I am selfish and small. My life is limited and unimportant. I totally struggle with that Gen Y thing of, “But I am SPECIAL”. No. I’m really not. I don’t have anything unique and special to offer the world.

But sometimes I feel like I do. Sometimes I feel like I am good at helping people see their own value. Because I think so little of myself I view basically everyone in the world as higher status as me. When I explain to people all that I see about them that is good and wonderful they tend to be surprised. They are not able to see themselves that way. Isn’t that ability good and useful? Is that enough? What is enough? Enough of what? Enough for what?

I don’t know.

But I need to pull back into my little shell. I need to count my spoons and carefully lay them next to tasks. I want to read more books this year. I want to look out my back window on New Years Eve and see a rainbow castle. I want to finish writing the book that I really needed to read when I was twelve. I want to teach my children the daily habits of picking up after themselves. Even though it is hard. Even though you would rather do it later. If you do it now then you are free to go do anything you want on a whim. It takes practice to learn these habits.

I want my children to think that physical activity is just part of life. So I have to model it every day.

I want to not be fucking screamed at. I have already made a lot of progress on my own screaming. I will figure this out. It is going to be hard and it will take patience. We will figure this out. Without anyone getting beaten. There may be a fair bit of time out in our future.

I don’t think that anyone did anything wrong per se on my birthday. But I think that at this point my birthday is such a thing that I’m not sure anyone can do right. I don’t think it is anyone else’s fault at this point.

Rope bridges last a long time but eventually decay. You aren’t doing anything wrong by jumping up and down as you go across a rope bridge. Sometimes a log may break and you could plummet to your death. No one actually did anything “wrong” but there are still end results that suck.

I don’t know how to feel special. I want that feeling so bad. I want to feel loved and appreciated and like people are really really glad I am alive. I don’t feel that way. I feel like people tolerate me so long as I can fill their needs and not be too annoying. I know that people don’t actually feel that way about me. I don’t think I offer enough trade to actually justify that belief.

It isn’t that I believe that Noah and Shanna and Calli secretly hate me. It is clear that they all love me with great intensity. But something inside me is broken. It is like pouring boiling water into a tank of liquid nitrogen so that you can warm it up. That just isn’t going to work how you hope.

I feel raw. I know I am “over sensitive”. I know I “shouldn’t take things so personally”. But I am. I just am. Maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe I shouldn’t exist. But I do. And this is how I feel. And I can’t make it go away just because it is inconvenient for me or for other people. The only thing I can do is try to stop being in a room with anyone else on my birthday so that it is very very clear that this problem is in me and not because of anyone else.

My birthday is really hard for me. I’m afraid it always will be. I desperately desperately want a kind of feeling loved and cared for and appreciated that I’m not getting. I don’t know what it is or how to get it. Everything I have tried so far has failed miserably. I really and truly have tried to change this pattern.

I wish I could stop feeling like it would be better if I was dead. Then I wouldn’t be so fucking inconvenient.

I know it isn’t “true”. I had kids so that I would know beyond the shadow of a doubt that my labor is necessary for a few decades. Nothing would be better right now if I was dead.

But I don’t know how to feel loved. I feel despised. I feel unappreciated.

Which is ridiculous. Noah couldn’t work harder than he does. And he clearly is doing it for me–he didn’t work like this before me. My Owner was a workaholic. Noah was kinda lazy when I met him. He was certainly unfocused–that is probably a better word than lazy. He works like a dog, largely because he is doing it for me. He wants to make all of my dreams come true.

And I reward him by crying and crying and crying and feeling like a worthless piece of shit. He is very confused. If I knew what to ask him to do he would do it. I don’t know. I don’t know how to stop feeling this way.

I mean, in the abstract I know how to deal with this feeling. Feel it. Cry while you have it. Wait. It will end.

That’s the awesome thing about feelings. They change.

Sometimes I do feel that Noah loves me. Sometimes I do feel that my kids love me. But somehow when it comes to my birthday that is broken. There is this big brick wall. I don’t feel attached. I don’t feel love or loved. I feel worthless and stupid and pathetic and bad and mean and unwanted and like I should just die.

And god I miss my mother. I miss my mother so much I want to curl up into a ball and never eat again. I am not worthy. I dishonor the woman who bore me. I am a piece of shit. I am not protecting her and taking care of her. I know she needs it. She has always needed it. She has always needed to be taken care of more than I need it.

And I think my kids need more taking care of than I need. Except for one day a year. Where I think I am going to need to have different boundaries.

I have started grieving really hard for the apology I was told I would get and I didn’t get. That guy in the scene I went and talked to who said he would write an apology. I’m sorry I made myself vulnerable to that.

I’m even more grateful for talking to the guy who made me uncomfortable at the wedding.

I know that I have to keep trying with people. Every relationship is unique. Every dynamic changes over time. I need people to jump over hoops for me. I need it. I’m pretty clear and direct about how and where I need it. I try not to be too demanding of any one person. But I do ask people to jump through hoops for me.

I want people to show me with their actions that I am actually as important as they verbally claim I am. I want my body to matter. This is a really dangerous kind of validation to want. Because I am not going to get it. People will say they will do ______ and not do it.

Do you know what makes people happy? Giving help to other people. Do you know what makes people feel shitty? Needing help. I hate my neediness as much as other people resent me inflicting it on them.

The kids are slightly sick. Runny nose on elder child, both are coughing. Younger child keeps telling us she needs a bucket but she isn’t vomiting. I’ve been crying so much I don’t know if I am sick or not. I scheduled a potentially light weekend because I am S-M-R-T.

I am looking forward to fall and winter. It will feel really nice after the frantic work pace of spring and summer. It is a puttering kind of day. I will go grocery shopping. I should wash the windows. Then they can color on them again. Ha. Right now they are too full to be fun.

I should stop typing. Annnnnnnny minute here……

Caved.

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I sat down yesterday at my computer intending to buy three tickets to Texas for December. I said to Shanna, “You understand that I’m not going, right?”

Her eyes got as wide as saucers. “But you have to go. I can’t go meet new people without you. When I am talking to people I don’t know well and you are there I am brave because I know I am wonderful. When you aren’t there I am scared and I can’t do it. I need you.”

“If I went with you to Texas and I stayed in the hotel with you but you had to go to your grandmothers house with just your dad and sister would that be good enough?”

“Yes. That would be good enough.”

I’m going to Texas in three months, apparently.

I’m fucking serious about not setting foot inside that woman’s house again. Maybe I will go visit the great grandmother or great aunt instead. Or I will sit inside a fucking Starbuck’s.

I can be nice in letters–I think I am very fucking nice in the letters I send. I sent five to seven page letters about the kids a few times a year. I’m all neutral but upbeat and such.

I want my kids to know them. I want my kids to have a family. But I’m aware that they will never be my family. Such is life.

The whole rest of the year is travel heavy. So much for a save year. My end of the year reckoning on Mint is going to involve some head hanging with shame. It’s a good thing Noah is earning money at a faster rate than planned for. I’m not making every savings goal. But I do have a god damn fabulous back yard now. It’s a trade off.

We leave on Monday for Disneyland. It will be me and my girls. We will have fun together. Since Calli’s birthday Shanna has been drawing me picture after picture because she wants to decorate for my birthday. I think I will bring a stack of them and scotch tape and put them up on the windows in our hotel room. I am so fucking glad I get to be their mom.

I haven’t been sleeping well. Lots of mom stuff. The last three nights have been pretty bad. It’s lead up to my birthday so I’m not surprised. Six days and counting. I think that knowing that I will be alone with the kids is both helping and hurting. On one hand, I feel sad. But I don’t have the anticipation of waking up in my house with having it just be one more shitty day when I should do laundry and scrub the floor. (Not that my days are shitty–I like my life and I like my job. But man I’ve got this birthday thing.)

I don’t give very many birthday presents any more. I want to spend time with people on their birthdays (or near their birthdays) but gifts aren’t the thing. Only if I find something that seems talisman-like. That’s hard to just decide to find.

I have things scattered throughout my house. Talismans. I’m loved. I should keep writing. People want to know what I am thinking.

Connection. Multiplicity. Embrace plurality. So many things to think about. How to not be scary.

I feel like over the last year or so I have had to realize that all of those hours I spent during my childhood practicing my “scary” expressions worked. Becoming non-intimidating is taking a lot of conscious work.

I feel like I am walking this razor thin line. If I am intimidating then I run off the people I want to love. If I am not intimidating… well I know how that goes.

Better to be undefended and on the verge of death at any moment. That makes people like you more. Then you aren’t scary.

Maybe being scary is just one of those important parts of life. I’m pretty sure my kids aren’t actually afraid of me. When I ask them they emphatically say they aren’t scared. Shanna says, “Sometimes you startle me. But that’s not the same thing.” But I am scary to other people. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the fear.

Speaking of fear, I bought a bicycle. One that can have a kid trailer thing on the back. First I need to take Shanna out on her bike. After she feels comfortable riding then we will get the trailer for Calli. The bike store fellas told me I can’t have a kid being pulled and a kid on my handle-bars. Just one or the other. Bah humbug. I bet it would have worked two years ago. They are a lot heavier now. I went on a five and a half mile bike ride. I haven’t done that since high school. I only felt like I was going to die for 75% of the time. Hopefully that goes down.

People in my family get hit by cars while on bicycles. It happened to both of my brothers and my dad. My mom and sister were smart enough to stay off of fucking bikes. Now I’m stupid. And risking my kids. Oh god.

September and October are probably as fully booked as I want them. November is probably already as booked as I want it. In December we will be out of state for nine days. I will probably not do very much other than travel in December. If I don’t decorate for Christmas in November I won’t do much beyond a tree. So realistically I have the next three and a half months scheduled. I won’t be bored. I have a lot to do.

It’s time to write Outrunning Suicide. I want it done before New Years. I have a rainbow castle to paint. (This sucker is huge.) I have to install a bunch of hardware for the swings in the back yard.

Not to mention educating my children. That is probably enough to do for the next three months.

Disneyland, two camping trips, over a week in Portland and a weekend in Texas. So much for 2013 being a light year.

I can’t go to Disneyland next year. (No time share points) I think the only traveling I want to do in 2014 is a half marathon in Portland with two of my very favorite ladies in the whole wide world. I hear I already have buy-in from the spouse of the one who will have to travel. This is a good sign.

I’m wussing towards encouraging the home schoolers who live within five miles of me to start thinking along the lines of a Free Democratic School. Driving is a real issue for everyone in the bay area. Having to drive 40-50 miles round trip in order to hang out for a few hours is prohibitive on a long-term basis. If you look at history a lot of who people know is based on who lives near them. It isn’t about “who is best“. Life is about making the best of who is there.

I think that part of the reason I am doing the stuff to my house that I am doing is because I think of future parties and events. I am not good at going out into the world. I am not good at feeling like the world wants me very much. If I make this a good place to be, people will come to me. That is just the nature of how things work. I feel like a spider spinning a web. Err…only I don’t want to eat anyone.

I want to know lots of kids and watch them grow up. I want to have them love visiting my house. So I build a playground. And I paint murals. And I provide endless quantities of fruit, vegetables, and cheese. I only rarely make guests eat ramen.

The part that makes me feel like a spider is how I know that I have to sit and wait. I’m not actually ready for the kinds of relationships I want to have with growing up kids. I don’t mean that my house isn’t ready–though it isn’t. If I went and grabbed people now and tried to fill my house with people… well… my kids would rapidly learn a lot of things I don’t want them to know. My kids are not yet ready to have their reality fucked with.

I’m fairly aware that I go through life with a big reality distortion bubble around me. (I think everyone does to a greater or lesser extent–you see the world from your point of view and not from an objective point of view.) Right now I am carefully crafting the reality my children will have as “baseline” for the rest of their lives. Based on everything I have read about child development and psychology this is important.

Most people don’t seem to think about this much. They just live their life and their kids share it and that is how reality is created thankyouverymuch. My childhood had no consistent reality. I moved more than fifty times. I got to see that every “reality”, every set of rules that people lived by were totally arbitrary.

That means that if I want to I can sit down and make up the rules for reality for my children in any fashion I want. There is no right way. I personally believe there are a lot of wrong ways but not any particular right way. What is right is so individual based on personality and inner strengths.

How I behave with my children is a carefully constructed little universe that isn’t a lot like how I am with the rest of the world. How I am with my children is how I am without defenses and without fear. I do not have the ability to extend that beyond my front door at this point in time.

I feel so lucky that I get to be alone with them so much. I feel so glad that we get to spend a lot of time in an environment where I set the rules. Pam says I am a permissive authoritarian. I think that will shift a lot with time. After a while it won’t be my place to set the rules with such fierceness.

Only I think in some ways I will get much more fierce. I told Shanna flat out one day when she was being very rough with me, “This is not an acceptable way to treat my body. If you continue to treat me this way as you get bigger I will eventually start hitting back. I am not your punching bag.” She stopped hitting me. She hasn’t tried to punch me over and over since.

I have no idea how this will go over the years.

I want my children to believe in the core of their body that they have the right to beat the living shit out of someone who crosses their physical boundaries. I want this to not be a question in their mind. It is just simple fact. We are animals and sometimes we have to defend ourselves. Yup. That’s part of how it works in the world.

But here in Wonderland we don’t hit. We don’t scream. This is a safe place. The violence needs to stay out there in the world. We do not hit our family members. Well, until they are clearly beating on you then go ahead and defend yourself. It needs to take a lot of provocation though. Don’t. Hurt. Your. Family. We are in this together.

I make a big deal out of this being a conscious creation because this is not like anything I have ever known. I was taught to expect people to hurt me. I was taught to hit people as a sign of affection. I was taught that the way to make yourself feel bigger is to hurt the people around you as much as possible.

It is hard for me to change. It takes so much conscious effort. But my children show me the fruits of my labor every day. It is worth it. They are worth it. This life is worth it.

I think about my mother a lot. I think about what she taught me and how she taught me. And sometimes when Calli moves her head just right I see my mother so clearly it is like she is in the room. I have no idea how this will all go.

In medias res. We are always in the middle of the story. There is no beginning and no end. My children have to go to Texas. That is part of their story. I get to choose how much disappointment mom delivers when. I will never be enough to meet all of their needs. That just isn’t how life works. But I have choices about how many needs I meet and when and which particular things I want to skip.

I have so. much. privilege.

All I’m doing right now with my life is hanging out and being available to meet their needs. This is surprisingly exhausting. And sometimes I pick up a side job or two. Mostly if I am not available to meet a need of theirs it is because I bloody well choose to not do it right now.

I sent Shanna to Texas once without me. Sending both seems different. And Shanna is a lot more sure she wants me to go. Some day she will want to do things I will not be up for doing. Then she will go without me. I can understand her wanting to stand near my reality distortion field. I am what she has always known and I have been really good to her. Other people are less predictable. She has figured that out already. I am always ready to smile at her. Other people… not always.

I will focus on this hurting me in my writing though. This is a choice. I’m not a victim here. But I’m making a choice that is questionably right for me. I don’t feel very good about having a relationship with Noah’s abusive mother after walking out on my abusive mother. I don’t know how to describe the kind of betrayal that represents.

My sister told me over and over and over “Abused children are the most loyal.” She said that consciously to tell me not to talk about what I saw in our house. I broke ranks. I broke fucking ranks. I can’t now go silently put up with someone else’s abuse. That’s just not ok. No. I’d rather punch the fucking bitch in the face. And it’s not really cool to fly from California to Texas in order to punch your mother in law in the face so I just won’t set foot in her house. I understand my triggering mechanism. I’m rather realistic all things considered.

“Just be nice” isn’t useful advice for me. Part of the reason that I don’t want to go is I know I have a rather lot of latent rage and she’s a nice safe not actually threatening target who likes to act like people are kicking her all the time. I’ve met me. If you stand in front of me and whine and cringe and cower as if I have been kicking you for hours… I will start kicking you. I understand this impulse only too well. I try to avoid kicked dogs for this reason. My experience of Noah’s mom is that she is a kicked dog.

I am a kicked dog. That is how I went through my childhood. I recognize it very well in others. Being a kicked dog is part and parcel with being a bully. You assume that people are mean to you so you push them towards being mean to you–you antagonize on purpose. Kicked dogs are the meanest little curs.

It’s a vicious cycle. I try to stay out of vicious cycles these days. I try very hard to stay in virtuous cycles.

A virtuous cycle, for the purpose of this essay, is one in which my positive behavior towards a person is rewarded by positive behavior and so on. I believe that kicked dogs need love too but they usually can’t get it from one another. They need to go find someone who isn’t a kicked dog, best if it is someone who is kind of bewildered by the experience, who will react in non-patterned ways.

Patterns are the problem. Patterns are how it keeps going. Vicious cycles. If you snap at someone and they snap back then it goes from there. If you snap at someone and they blink at you and say, “Are you ok?” well… that’s just not a similar sort of pattern. If you snap back it is obvious that you are a fucking asshole and that’s not good. Don’t do that.

Virtuous cycles involve people who are able to look at you and say, “You are having feelings. They are not about me. Would you like to talk about them?” Vicious cycles are more like, “You are clearly having feelings ALL ABOUT ME AND NOW I AM GOING TO YELL AT YOU ABOUT THEM.” Well, other people have other vicious cycles. But the ones I’m thinking about right this minute are like that. There are lots of other cycles. Don’t mistake me here as being the source of information about vicious cycles. Oh man.

I am home schooling my kids so that as they go through life they always have someone standing near them who will smile back. In my lofty experience there is always someone in the world who will smile back. Even if you happen to not be standing near that person right now. It is hard for me to keep faith in that belief sometimes. For most of my life it has been just a faith not unlike most peoples faith in G-d. Someone will smile back.

A while back I read some article about “computer face”. If you turn on peoples cameras secretly they all have the same slack jawed expression. I very consciously work on smiling the majority of the time. I try hard to have my muscles assume that position by default.

I have very deep grief lines. I turn thirty-two next week. If I am not careful I will be a very stern and unapproachable and lonely old woman. I know this to be true. If I want to have my future be the way I want it to be I will have to work hard on every aspect of my character. It feels so daunting.

I had children so I would have a permanent motivating force to change and get better. So I’m going to fucking Texas. I’m not going in the house. My reality distortion field is big enough to extend that far. Yes, Shanna. I will go so you know you are wonderful.

In the end, she won’t remember it much. I’m only kind of sort of doing this for her. I’m doing this so that I know I made all of the choices about creating space between us for reasons I feel ok about.

Recently I was talking to a mother who was not feeling happy about her day care experience in one relatively confined way. Mostly she was satisfied so she said, “I just had to decide that when you are paying someone you have to accept that they are doing their best and let it go.”

That, in a nut shell, is why I cannot put my kids in day care. I would do it if I had no choice and I had to work because I needed the money. But that is why I have made the choice to stay home. (That and ridiculous financial privilege, let’s be clear here.) I don’t want to just put up with the best that someone else feels like giving me.

I need to know that when they are eighteen and I send them off into the world (really I doubt it will be that long) I need to know that my kids have had all of the experiences they need to have in order to be competent at handling themselves. I can’t live with trusting someone else to “do their best”. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I’m glad that other people have such loving trust. I think it is quite healthy.

I don’t know anyone I trust enough to have the charge of my kids like that.

I trust the Godmamas enough that I send my kids there unsupervised and I have legal documentation saying they are the next of kin. But I still don’t want them setting reality for my kids. I love them and I want their influence… but as an add on or in case of critical system failure. Err, I’ll be a dick and say I think that I will do better. But they will be getting traumatized kids and I can’t think of anyone in the world I would trust more to adequately and lovingly raise traumatized children who started out being raised by me. They will be the most gentle adjustment to not-Krissy reality of anyone in the world. So I don’t pick them to be like me. I pick them to love the results of being like me. It’s kind of a different metric.

But geezus on toast I don’t want someone else teaching my kid how to be a kid for eight hours a day. I don’t want my daughters going through life not sure if someone will smile back.

There are a lot of gifts I can’t give them. I don’t mean financially–I mean in terms of spirit and family and community and sense of place. I can give them Wonderland. Where they are wonderful to me. We do go out into the world lots. And they are doing more and more things away from me.

I’m going to Texas because I had to rock myself to sleep crying for my mother too many times. I need to be there. Just in case. She won’t always be little. I won’t fucking do this for a twenty-five year old I shit you not. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t do it for a fifteen year old. This trip will hurt me. This trip will hurt a lot. This trip has the high potential to be miserable. I have to go through airport security. I probably should not fly with pot. Alcohol makes my stomach hurt and that makes my temper shorter. I do have trusty-dusty Lorazepam! I will have to cut the pills up substantially more to take them during the day. I take 1mg at night and that knocks me straight out. (Not every night. Thirty pills lasts me for four to five months.)

Texas really hasn’t been good to me. I don’t like going there. I must like these kids a whole lot. It won’t be very long. I will be there for moral support. I will read a book. Maybe five. Maybe I will spend a lot of quality time in coffee shops writing Outrunning. That would be kind of funny. Not ha ha funny. Just funny.

Time for breakfast. I have missed you, internet. I shouldn’t make a habit of this for a while. The book is going to eat my hands.

do what you can do

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Looks like I won’t be putting together sex ed. *phew* When people ask me to do things I have a hard time saying no. Much like some other people I know. Do I want to be on the hook for teaching other peoples kids sex ed? Maybe? Not sure. I’m glad I don’t need to think about it any year soon. I’m glad I have less work to do.

I’m still coughing but the fever is over. Progress.

Today will be gardening and cleaning. I’m actually really looking forward to it. I get to talk to the kids a lot on this kind of day. I have been flat shocked by how much Shanna has developed the ability to be actual help recently. I know some people start chores at three or four, I didn’t. I started at five. So she’s catching up on progress that could have been made more slowly, I suppose? I just know that I didn’t think she would actually clean up her toys yesterday (she had like six different sets all dumped on the floor at once) and it took her half an hour.

I feel scared a lot of the time that I am doing everything wrong. I am going to ruin their entire lives. I am going to make it so they can’t have normal lives. It will be all my fault.

But I enjoy them so much. I enjoy spending time with them. I want to hang out with them all day talking about why different plants do different things. Huh, what is similar about these kinds of flowers? What is different? Why do you think they are different like that?

I have never had a time in my life where I haven’t been afraid and completely sure that I am bad and wrong. I have learned to kind of ignore that feeling. But sometimes I am bad and wrong. It is hard to figure out where the difference. How can I tell when I am legitimately doing something wrong and when I just feel self-hating? I don’t know very well.

My kids seem happy and like they are making progress. I’m pretty sure if I was doing it “all wrong” that they wouldn’t be blooming quite so well. Which isn’t to say that anyone else’s way is wrong. But if my kids are happy and growing and learning maybe I don’t need to feel like a steaming pile of shit.

No one is perfect. There is no platonic ideal. Not everyone would like my kids as much as I do. I have a number of friends who would probably feel like my children were a curse instead of a blessing because those folks are sensitive to noise and my kids bring as much volume impact as a ten piece brass band.

The volume bugs me and yet I want little girls who think the world needs their voice. The social consideration is an older persons game. I want them to just feel in their bones that they have a right to take up space and make noise with it. I know that isn’t a trait universally preferred among parents. That’s ok with me.

In many ways I let my children cross a lot of “rudeness” boundaries because I have never understood them. I have never agreed with them. So I don’t enforce them.

Pam told me that I was a weird mix of permissive and authoritarian. Yup. I set the boundaries. Within the boundaries I stay out of most things. They have to make mistakes. They have to do things that annoy me. For the love of Crisco I am not trying to raise little people who will “not annoy me”. Ha. If you don’t annoy me you aren’t being enough of a kid. Keep trying.

But they are going to hit the wall of other people. I can’t soften it and I can’t make it easier. The world is what it is. I can prepare them and then I have to just let them bear their own consequences. Other people have different opinions and if you want to deal with other people you have to deal with their opinions.

I don’t want to teach my kids to put people in boxes the way I do. I went to a funeral this weekend. He was a remarkable man. Partially remarkable for the sheer variety of different skill-sets he mastered in different communities. And he compartmentalized everything and very few people knew almost anything about his extensive connections. Everyone there was surprised by how he touched so many other communities. He seemed busy enough in the community I knew him in!

I have levels of trust and like and tolerance. They are all different. I wish that I trusted men more, but I don’t. I trust some men in particular ways. Even a large number of men who totally believe they have already “jumped through hoops” to prove they are safe are people I won’t be in a room alone with.

I don’t care if it hurts your feelings. I can’t. I have my own feelings to worry about. Find someone else to validate you. Someone with a lower rape count.

Women aren’t easier. Women want to nurture. So they bury their own feelings until they can’t any more. Women look trustworthy until they really really really aren’t. Whereas men tend to start out looking untrustworthy and slowly work their way up.

But my past experiences with specific people should not be a good enough reason to damn the other people I meet. Only that is how I ended up having so many problems. I kept trying to trust.

I believe I would be able to trust people more if I weren’t someone who bothered people so much. I believe that a big part of the reason people break trust with me is because I make people feel so wildly uncomfortable.

People won’t remember what you said or what you did. People remember how you made them feel. (Isn’t that Fitzgerald?) If I make people feel uncomfortable every where I go… that is what there is to remember. I am uncomfortable to be near.

Noah doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Shanna doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Calli doesn’t feel uncomfortable. They like me. They have to be enough.

I mean, what am I complaining about anyway? Everyone makes me feel massively uncomfortable. Such is life.

There is a part of me that would like to hide away from all people, basically forever. There is a part of me that wants to start opening my house once a week. But I don’t think people would come. I live in an inconvenient place. It really isn’t worth the effort.

I don’t know how to build community. I am not able to maintain the effort of showing up at a hobby to produce community. I just don’t have it. I feel pathetic, but there it is. I’m not going to get my community through any of the fair(e)s. I am not going to get my community through something I show up at once a week and pay my entrance fee.

I don’t think I am psychologically capable at this point. I get to the door, look around, note that no one here needs me and I turn around and go home.

I’m not a joiner. If I’m going to sit by myself watching other people have fun I can do that in my front yard for free without having to go any where. My neighbors are outside a lot. I don’t need to pay for dance events so that I can go cry in the bathroom.

And yet it isn’t anyone else’s responsibility to show me a good time. It is my responsibility to have a good time or not. So I don’t go. I’m not very good at “having fun”.

So I make progress on my house. It doesn’t effect anyone but me. No one else cares. But I do. I may not feel like I have community, I have friends, but it seems different. I don’t know.

I have at least two people I can call in an emergency. Depending on the emergency I could potentially go down a list of other people who could help. The last time I asked anyone but K for help it didn’t go well.

I worry about asking anyone for help too often. K saves my ass a lot. She has been the reason I can see a therapist, or do other major health stuff if I can’t work around Noah’s schedule. The kids still visit their Godmamas once a month. I hire people to do some work sometimes.

But the last time I called someone who told me “Call if you need anything” I was told no. I won’t call again.

If you can’t handle hearing the answer “no” then you shouldn’t ask. Most of the time I can’t handle being told no. So I don’t ask people for things. Hell, I’m starting to feel like I shouldn’t be inviting people over so much.

I’m afraid of letting my kids get used to having friends in their lives when I know that no one stays in my life very long. I’m afraid that if I invite families over for my kids to get to know that my kids are just going to have to get used to the disappointment that the moms are going to decide they don’t like me after a while and there go their friends.

It is hard believing that if there is a social problem it is probably all my fault. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it maybe isn’t all my fault but man isn’t that the most convenient scapegoat. I’m a great scapegoat. Everything is my fault. If I weren’t such a fucking asshole I wouldn’t have so many problems.

That thought is one that makes me want to swim out into the ocean as far as I can go.

If I weren’t so fucking bad I wouldn’t have all these problems. But it is too late to change that now. So now what?

More gardening. More cleaning. I’m pretty sure I know how to do those bits without fucking up my whole life. No promises on any other topic.

I feel lucky

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It’s kind of weird, but with the letter writing I find that I am enjoying Noah’s family quite a bit. I had expected to spend most of my life quaking with terror when I saw his mom’s handwriting on a box. These days I take an intake of breath and prepare to manage the arguments (she sends a mish mash of stuff to “the girls” but often she doesn’t label what goes to whom or there isn’t something obvious in one kid’s size and there are a lot of tears) but I’m grateful to get the boxes. The letters from his grandmother are really nice too. (I got one yesterday. Thus I am thinking about it.)

I have a really good time describing the kids to them. They will never really know my children. They live too far away and don’t have any interest in visiting. *shrug* I have offered. After how many times I have been rebuffed, well, I’m planning a driving trip through there in 2015 and that’s all I’m promising in the next ten years.

Turns out I *totally* didn’t need to move the concrete this week. The dude who is picking up my hot tub came over to scout but he won’t be back for it for two weeks. I feel semi-stupid but really buff and I’m still riding that endorphin high. It was not necessary but I feel like it did measurable good for my body. Which is a little weird. Maybe I should take up weight lifting? I had no idea what a high I could get from that. (Way cheaper than pot–lemme tell you. Since weight lifting I’ve used about 1/2 of what I usually do in that time period. Ok, part of the reason for that is also because I have to go to the dispensary today. But I don’t feel undermedicated. This is nice.)

Yesterday the girls and I had a really great day. Most of our days are perfectly tolerable with some highs and lows. Yesterday was just freakin wonderful. I am so happy that I get to do this with my life.

I went and taught an English class at the Hindi temple. I get the impression that if I want a job teaching English there I can have it for as long as I want. I get the impression I could even negotiate for pay and everyone would be thrilled. (This first class was a test-run of a program that a woman is putting together. I knew it was a volunteer gig and I was cool with that.) Random people came in and asked me if I would provide tutoring. I refrained from committing.

The kids are fun. They are young. The kind of young I DELIBERATELY WENT INTO HIGH SCHOOL TO AVOID. Ahem. I’m forcing them to read Sherlock Holmes. And Grimm Fairy Tales. It’s fun. I’m forcing them to find connections in their lives and write a lot. I feel drunk from the power. 🙂 But apparently the kids are having fun and parents are already asking if I can continue this series during the school year.

My kids are remarkably good while I’m teaching. Shanna sets up “her classroom” on the other side of the room. Next time I am bringing stuffed animals for students. She goes back and forth between her different kinds of toys and “teaches” the “students” how to make things. It’s really fun. Sometimes she has to come and ask me a question about how to teach something and it is more fun than disruptive.

Then we came home for lunch and we waited around while lumber was delivered and the hot tub guy came scouting. Then we went to the water park! I am having so much fun with the girls at the water park. That season pass was the right choice. Both girls went around the lazy river once without a life vest! That’s huge. Then we went and got life vests and things were easier.

Calli begged for macaroni and cheese for dinner. I thought that might make me sick (hilariously I ate a three cheese pasta instead–I just couldn’t handle Kraft then) so we went to Applebee’s. Which is, in Calli’s opinion, the Mac’n’cheese Restaurant! Sure, why not.

I have been a lot more consistent lately with, “You must fulfill your responsibilities before you get your privileges.” I feel that is making the whole house run more smoothly. I’m not an arbitrary asshole deciding if you get stuff on a given day or not. There is a WRITTEN CONTRACT! WITH PICTURES! Things are just easier. Both kids are pitching in more with less fuss. We are still a house of screamers. Sigh. We are working on it.

I’m almost done with Little House in the Big Woods with the kids. Shanna loves it and Calli seems to only pay moderate attention. That’s on target. I haven’t done any personal new reading in weeks. I’m so tired. I can’t wait for July to end. This month is just brutal. My plan for the weekend is to spend as much time painting my neighbor’s fence as I can. Once I get that off my plate, and my friend’s husband is done at my house (I feel zero crankiness at his rate of progress–I think he is a small step down from Godhood for the rate at which he works. I don’t often feel impressed by peoples work ethics. I’m a really judgmental asshole on that front. This man impresses me a lot.) things will calm down again.

I still have more stuff I want to do in the yards but I think once he’s done with his current list I should be done for the year on yard stuff. (Monetarily–not in manual labor.) I need to talk to him about his company doing the bathroom upgrade (that wouldn’t be just him) and then that is all I can do to the house this year. (The bathroom damage from water leaking is obviously spreading now. Ah shit. It is becoming a very bad idea to put off longer. Crap crap crap. Well, good thing I have a well padded savings account.)

I feel so lucky. I have things go wrong. I have things I need to fix. I have things I’m making progress on. I can fix things. I have the money to hire people to fix things. I have the luxury to sit around just making progress on my own lists of things to do. This is not a life path every one gets. I get to decide how my time is used. I feel happy in a way I didn’t expect to feel. I feel so much gratitude for my life.

I think the PTSD support forum helps me keep this in perspective. For someone who has the symptoms I have I have a blessed life. Given how “crazy” I am–I’m doing so very well. I *am* nice to my kids. I *am* nice to my husband. Ok, I get grumpy too. On balance my grumpy days are infrequent, usually not too intense, and I apologize profusely for every word out of my mouth when I can feel that my tone of voice sucks. I know that the problem is inside me and not with anyone else. I am good at separating that.

I feel so incredibly lucky that I get to have a marriage where I can’t blame any of my mood shit on my partner. My husband is so nice to me. He is patient and kind. He is affectionate and loving without being demanding or pushy. Ok, sometimes he’s pushy. But he doesn’t push me for sex. He doesn’t push me to do things I don’t want to do. He pushes me to set higher goals. He pushes me to rest. He pushes me towards believing that I am competent and talented. He only hits me if we negotiate a lot and I ask very very nicely and then he only hits me in ways that I like. (I’m telling you, endorphins are your friend.)

Girls like me don’t end up like this. I am stable. I do my god damn meal planning a month at a time because my life is so stable. Every month when I put a new month on the white board I meal plan for the whole month and I try to invite people for dinner at the rate I like and I set up events for a whole month at a time. We have like a 75% success rate of following these plans. (Ok, I often reverse which order a given set of meals happen in but I don’t feel bad about that. We follow my plan on a month level, not on a day-by-day level.)

I’m going to travel this year to Portland to see friends. It is getting closer. This on top of having a Portland friend come down TWICE this year. That was rad. And a different Portland friend may be down here in about two weeks. I will travel to see the rest of the extended clan.  I feel very lucky that I have people who want to see me so much.

And I managed to get in some solid work on Outrunning Suicide this morning. I seem to be alternating between which book I’m writing. OS  is very different in tone, feel, and mostly in content from Part 2.

By the end of this year I hope to have another book finished.

Sometimes I feel mighty. I know I can’t do “anything” because I have limits. But I feel like my limits are so far out there that it is almost impossible for me to reach them. I don’t hit the wall very often. I just slow down and keep working.

I have these two amazing daughters. I have to be a mighty example. I have to show them that women are powerful and smart and competent. I have to show them that even if someone is financially a “dependent” that doesn’t make the person weak, ineffectual, lazy or stupid. It just means you have a contract with another person.

I want to be a positive influence so much I feel like I am choking on it. I want to be a person worthy of respect. That means I have to behave in ways that earn respect. I have to be consistent. I don’t have to be perfect.

Where are the lines? What is “good enough”?

I keep looking backwards over my shoulder at the pergola in the back yard. (Apparently that is the most accurate name for what this structure is.) I feel kind of shocked that I wanted something there and… now there is something there. It’s like magic.

In the past week I have given two mini-lectures on the topic of grafting trees. I had no idea I knew so much. But apparently I do. I read a lot. I’m very curious about how things work. I want to be able to do a lot of things. I want to be so competent that it is incredibly hard to kill me–even for me.

Martial arts are coming. Not this month. This month I can barely hold my head above water. Soon.

When I was a child there is no chance I would have believed that I could be a bad ass. According to my wonderful Shanna there is no doubt–I AM a bad ass.

I don’t know everything. I don’t know the right path for other people. I do have a lot of useful skills though. I do know a lot about human development. I do know a lot about the limitations of safety and strength. I do know how to teach. I do know how to break things down into pieces other people can grok. I’m not always good at taking things apart the first time–I need coaxing to keep taking things into smaller and smaller pieces. I can explain almost any topic to almost anyone. But it may take me a few rounds of getting deeper and deeper into the explanation in order to find the correct scaffolding for a given person.

You have to understand schema. It’s the fucking coolest concept.

I am not perfect. I am not ideal. I am not unreservedly good. I am an asshole. I am selfish. I am self-absorbed. I also stop to genuinely look at people and evaluate them–for good or for ill. I like to believe I can see people pretty well. (Not in the needs glasses sense.)

I’m good at guessing that people are underrating themselves. I’m sure I can encourage people towards being their better selves. But only if they can handle my extremely rough form of affection. I’m not sure the trade is actually worth it.

Off-schedule freak out.

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It is very rare for me to wake up at midnight freaked out. I usually make it to 4am before I wake up and start feeling anxiety. I went to bed with abdominal discomfort. I woke up with more. It’s obviously not just carbonated beverages.

For some reason when I woke up this time I started thinking about Thanksgiving. I kind of spend most of my life planning for the future. I think I will make it up to Portland this year for Thanksgiving because I want the kids to see Dad’s house this year. I want my kids to get to know him.

Then I leap-frogged to thinking about the Amanda Fucking Palmer concert on the 7th of December. I will probably drive south on the 6th of December. I am hopefully going to not do that drive alone.

December 6th is my mother’s birthday. She will be 63 this year.

I feel so bad for missing my mother. All of this separation is my fault. But I do miss her. I miss her so much that sometimes I feel like I cannot breathe. Thank goodness my kids don’t ask about her much.

I’ve been thinking about my mom and crying on and off for a few days. Do I want to be a stay at home mom so much because she was? I want to prove that one can do what she did *and* keep children safe at the same time.

I feel so needy and pathetic.

I am considering NaNoWriMo. Apparently if you want to participate in the mid-month Night of Writing Dangerously (more or less a mid-month party to help you catch up on word count) you aren’t supposed to just buy a ticket. You are supposed to ask for sponsorships. I’m not sure if I have the courage for that. This may actually keep me out of NaNoWriMo this year. Because the party sounds fun and if I’m not allowed to just decide to go I won’t go. If I have to ask other people if I can get to do it… I just won’t. There are too many people and things in this world much more important than this. I’m not going to ask anyone to fund my hobbies.

I don’t know how to live with this lack of feeling deserving.

Mostly what I am doing is changing my house and yard. I don’t get to control much in this life. I get to control what my environment is like. I know I don’t deserve much but I have the ability to do this anyway.

Hide. Refocus energy. I don’t have to deserve something in order to get it. I don’t necessarily avoid the things I don’t deserve. It all seems so random.

I think I work so hard because I wish that I could share it with my family. I wish my mother knew how hard I work. I wish my mother was proud of me. I wish my sister bragged about me. I do a lot of stuff. I’m pretty neat. Instead they hate me and deride me.

Just keep breathing.  Just keep walking.

I try as hard as I can to not get my hopes up that something, anything, will ever make me feel “better”. I don’t do things “to make me happy”. I don’t think I can make me happy. I don’t think that improving my backyard will “make me happy” but I certainly hide grief in activity.

It’s a lot more comfortable to think about hanging plants and rope lights. It’s a lot more fun to think of ground-cover plants that will make my feet more comfy. It’s a LOT more fun to think of swinging outside and watching my garden grow. I really like thinking about having parties and watching hordes of children run back and forth.

I like imagining that I won’t always be alone in my space. I like imagining that maybe me and my house will be so fun to visit that I won’t have to spend my life alone. It’s a dream.

Heck, I’m not alone now. I have the usual three people sleeping and a guest. I’m not alone now. I just feel alone. I feel unworthy of love.

Hopefully I will get back to sleep soon. Thursday involves a trip to the zoo and painting. Must paint. Eleven hours in. So far to go. The month is more than half over. I need this task off my list. There is too much anxiety associated with this project.

When my friend’s husband finishes his list of AWESOME things to do I will need to take a break and not spend more money on the house this year. That’s not great because the bathroom is in dire straights. I will probably try to schedule that remodel next year. I know it is becoming urgent but I want to expand the front of the house anyway. I don’t think it will matter that much that the wall has to be ripped out. That will be done no matter what. Yet I can’t wait until the damage causes my time frame to be tomorrow. Then it will be more expensive.

Distraction is awesome and terrible.

Is it distraction or is it just not allowing my general sense of self-worth define what I am allowed to hope for? I’m not sure.

The more things change…

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Lots of stuff changing in the house. My friend’s husband is a construction worker. He can do basically anything. He built me a beautiful shade structure right outside my back door. He fixed the sink I have hated for seven years. He changed the water heater filter. That was all just today. He has done more on previous visits.

Next week he is starting the kid play structure in the back yard (I am ridiculously excited about this) and fixing my fence and connecting my fence to the arbor so the grapes can grow over from the fence and shade the house. And another post will go in the ground for blackberry trellis. And he will fix the washing machine issue (it floods the garage–no bueno).

All of this can happen because Noah can afford to just pay someone to do these things. This is privilege. I can decide to make my life better and then… just do it.

I have pulled every extra dollar out of every portion of the budget to shove it into home for a few months. I think this is worth it. Ok, so it means less driving for a few months (gas is one of the easiest things to cut) but I will have these structures for years.

I feel lucky that I can make these choices.

I wouldn’t want to cut into my budget to provide me with more childcare. I would consider that a waste of money. There is a certain amount of childcare I would consider paying for if we didn’t have the Godmamas but I don’t feel that motivated as is. I *do* get down time almost every day.

Today hasn’t gotten above a two or three on anxiety. Given that I have driven and gone shopping with a list of things for someone else (something I usually seem to do wrong) and dealt with Hindi class that’s really good.

Ok, the Hindi class is pissing me off. The head of the program was gone for over a month. The class has been “taught” by whoever gets roped into it that day. On the FINAL DAY OF CLASS the head teacher decided to add 55 fucking words and tell us we will be tested on them in two weeks without a class in between for practice.

I feel pretty angry. There is no need to punish the students because they haven’t had a fucking teacher. You don’t fucking “test” people on material that has never been presented. Bad teaching makes me so mad.

Level one should be about the alphabet, colors, animals, foods, numbers, some simple phrases. She’s not doing that. I mean, those things are being covered, sorta. But then there is this pile on. And introducing sentence structure and grammar on the penultimate class?

I HAVE VIEWS ON THIS SHIT.

It was funny when I was talking to the teacher today about an email exchange we have had. She entirely talked to Noah. Cause those menfolk are the ones to focus on and all. It was weird and blatant enough that even Noah noticed.

Overall it has been a good day. Tomorrow is a wedding. Yee haw.

Just emptying my head.

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Babysitting was wonderful and very hard. By the end of the weekend I was so tired I could barely hold myself upright while I sat. I got 2.5 hours of sleep on Saturday. That makes it sound so much worse than it was.

The kids are one and three. The three year old is autistic. That does change the parameters of dealing with him. On one hand I feel like a big asshole for reminding myself all the time that he is autistic–I should just like him for who he is and not worry about his diagnosis.

I didn’t worry about whether or not my shaman was autistic when I got to know him 12 years ago. But now that I know he is autistic it helps our relationship for me to know that. It changes how I present information. It changes how impatient I allow myself to get.

Those skills translate nicely to this little boy. It helps that he is one of the sweetest things on two legs. When he freaks out (every 20 minutes for the first few hours) it is clearly sad and scared. There is no anger anywhere near him.

I think that hanging out with my shaman has allowed me to finally understand that men and boys can be scared and sad without being angry. I don’t get sad or scared without also getting angry. It kind of blows my mind that other people don’t get angry out of self-defense when they feel sad or scared. I am having to change my behavior very consciously because people are not feeling what I would expect to feel in that situation.

At this point I have my patter down pat with him. “I agree with you that you need your mom! You have the best mom in the whole world! Of course you need her. She will be back to get you soon; I promise. Until then would you like to cuddle with me? I’m not as good as your mom but I love you very much and I would be honored if you let me take care of you while she is gone.”

He smiles and hugs me. I’ve been cuddling with him since before he was a year old. Even though he is sad and scared he trusts me. It blows my mind. No matter how hard this is to get through at the time the later-effects of being proud of myself for being good and taking care of him properly do wonders for my self-esteem.

His sister is much much easier than him even though she isn’t a low-needs sort of baby. My wonderful friend got two very high needs kids. I think she is a saint for managing.

The baby isn’t used to sleeping in a bed without walls. It was hard to convince her that a bed without walls is worth staying on. Oh dear. Luckily no matter how many times she got off the bed in the middle of the night, “But Krissy! Stacking cups is SO AWESOME THAT I SIMPLY CANNOT WAIT UNTIL MORNING!! DID YOU KNOW THERE ARE CUPS RIGHT HERE THIS IS THE COOLEST THING EVER!!!” Sigh. Ok baby, one more try. Let’s go to sleep.

Then she nuzzled into my armpit, put her thumb in her mouth and smiled her way to sleep. For 45 minutes until she woke up to repeat the whole process. Her brother just woke up to let me know he needs his mom then he ground his skull on mine and went right back to sleep. Every 30-ish minutes all night long. So the kids weren’t really alternating. I’d sometimes get two of him in between a week up from her. Oh dear.

But we got through and I was nice and loving. By the end of the visit the baby was willing to leave her daddy and come back to me because she likes me. Even though her daddy is her favorite person in the whole world. I feel pretty good about that.

I had mean thoughts a lot while they were here so I feel pretty bad about myself, of course. I was not nearly kind-enough in my head. But I’m pretty sure my hands and my voice were kind-enough all weekend.

Sometimes I feel jealous and hateful that everyone else deserves to have a childhood where people are kind and gentle with them but I did not deserve that. I can’t do anything to change what I received. But I can figure out that it was wrong and do something different.

Today I have to be at Fry’s at 8am when they open. I have to buy printer ink. Then I have to run home, print out Shanna’s permission form then take her to ALL DAY science camp. I’m kind of freaked out. I will miss her. I’m not sure how Calli and I will do without her this week.

Shanna is starting to ask about doing school stuff more formally and officially. She is having trouble sitting still and being patient in Hindi class and I told her that it is hard because she doesn’t practice sitting still and listening. It’s a skill like learning how to make your own pbj. She wants to start practicing so she can be better at it.

I feel like I am drowning in the things I “should” be doing. I should be writing books. I should be running. I should be practicing Hindi for 15-25 minutes every day. I should be practicing French 15-25 minutes every day. I should be practicing Spanish every day. I have to water plants every day. I have to figure out what to do about our bathroom because the water damage is getting egregious and my neighbor told me that once we get to this stage of this rot if we don’t handle it we will end up with major damage on the whole front of our house.

I should be saving more money. I should be…

I don’t feel good enough. I don’t feel smart enough. I don’t have enough energy to do all the things I should be doing and the things I have to do and the things I want to do. Drowning. Drowning. Drowning.

But today is another day. I have one kid for today. I “should” go work on the fence. I should …

Oh man. I’m tired. So tired I just want to crawl under a rock. At least I have AC.

I keep telling myself it will be easier to run in about three years when Calli can actually go out with me. Not even three years. Maybe a year and a half.

I have been avoiding running because all of the people I like to run with are much faster than me and I feel so ashamed of myself I just don’t want to run at all. I don’t want to be the reason they have to walk–because I am too pathetic to keep up. That means I should just avoid it as a hobby. Because I am bringing people down.

Even though I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open I read Shanna a chapter of Little House in the Big Woods when she asked before bed. I want to be available more than I want anything in the whole world.

Thank you, hormones, that’s better.

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I participate on a support forum for PTSD. I was just refreshing my memory of how PTSD effects body stress levels and coping. It is hard not to feel ashamed of being broken in the ways I am. It isn’t my fault though.

I haven’t thought about killing myself in over twelve hours. I track these things not to make other people nervous but rather because I have to believe there is enough of a pattern that I can make sense of it over time even if it never makes sense to anyone else.

My friend K has talked me through some blow ups with the kids over the past few days. She came and spent Wednesday with us because she was worried about me. I appreciate her a lot. She talked to me about how it is actually ok to have consequences with your kids and I’m not a meanie head. Life has consequences. Not punishments–that’s a horse of a different color–but there are sometimes unfortunate results to your actions. Bummer.

Having to be the heavy significantly depresses me. It is a fat load of stress and it feels terrible. I prefer it when my kids just kind of go along and do as they are told. Ha. Specifically at 9am the house was clean and I said, “Ok, remember that when you play with stuff you have to put it away when you are done. We are leaving in about three hours for an event and I do want the living room neat when we go.” I went to take a shower in the last half hour. Apparently Barbie needed a pixie cut. And some confetti. And and and and and and and. When I walked out and nearly had a heart attack my dear daughter smirked at me and said, “This is too much for me to clean up. I guess you are going to have to do it.”

We didn’t go to the event. Once she had the consequence and we talked about it and I had the few minutes of being mad while I did indeed clean up the mess we talked about responsibility and consequences we had a better day. It was like we needed to have a blow up. Then we got along. I don’t mean she did what I said for the rest of the day. (Cue hysterical laughter.) I mean that getting to say, “No. If you ignore your responsibilities there are consequences” made me more patient with the other boundary incursions all day. I got to put up one brick wall. This is a line. I WILL DEFEND IT. Then I felt better for the rest of the day. I could be more gentle.

We were sad to miss our friends. I think that was actually a lot of why the day went well after that. We did a lot of commiserating about how much we miss our friends and how sad it was that we didn’t get to visit with them yesterday. We were “on the same team” about being sad about not going. We had another chat about who is responsible for doing what in this house. “No actually it isn’t my job to follow you around all day picking up after you. It is your responsibility to clean up after your stuff. If you can’t clean up your stuff clearly you have too much and we should get rid of a bunch of it. What would you like to start with?” I do a lot. And often I am happy to help with stuff that isn’t “my job” just because I’m a nice lady–do not take advantage of me. I won’t be real friendly.

Alright, confession time. I left the room where the kids were and I put another dent in the drywall yesterday after I came out and saw the Barbie hair everywhere. (Really child. If you are going to give a haircut STAND STILL AND DON’T WALK AROUND THE WHOLE LIVING ROOM WHILE YOU DO IT.) I didn’t mean to. I was barefoot and I didn’t actually feel like I was kicking with force.

We went to Home Desperate and got drywall patch. I fixed the new one and the hole that has been in the wall for about five years now. While I fixed the holes I talked to Shanna about consequences. See, I have consequences for my bad behavior too. I have to fix the holes. It is a very bad idea to put holes in your wall. I am not being very responsible when I do it. I have to fix them now and that is annoying and inconvenient. But–better walls than people. Walls are easier to fix. You never never never kick a person when you are angry. Or hit a person. Walls don’t have feelings. It isn’t good to hit or kick them but better than a person. I waked into the wrong room.

I have been trying not to walk into the garage every time I get upset. The punching bag is in the garage. Unfortunately pot is also in the garage and the associate me going in the garage with smoking and I don’t want them to think that every single time I get upset I smoke. I don’t. It’s hard having this feel like an image problem.

I think that having kind of a scene was what broke the suicidal ideation this time. I don’t like that as a pattern. I don’t need to blow up at my kids in order to convince myself that I shouldn’t die. To be fair I don’t think it is a major pattern at this point. That hasn’t happened many times–specifically blowing up at the kids to deal with being suicidal, I mean.

But I do need some kind of stress-clear-the-air thing sometimes. How can I do that and preserve my relationship with the kids? So far they don’t hold a grudge against me for getting angry. It doesn’t happen all that often and it always blows over quickly and I don’t hold a grudge against them. I don’t stay angry with my kids. That’s a big thing for me.

Right before dinner I asked if the kids were upset with me for not going out. I was told that they missed their friends but they weren’t upset with me. Consequences happen. Both of them said it. I understand that they are at an age where sucking up to me is a survival trait. I hope I am not teaching them to squash their anger or upset because only I am allowed to have feelings. I comforted them when they were sad about not seeing their friends. We talked about when we will get to see them soon. We talked about how to ensure that we don’t have to miss out on seeing our friends again.

I also didn’t let them have the screen. We did have dessert and all other privileges. I don’t want to be too over-kill. But if you get in so much trouble you can’t go play with your friends I’m not going to give you the iPad to distract you with. Hell no. I talked about how I have to create my own entertainment and so does their dad. They have to learn how as well.

I don’t feel ashamed of how I handled it overall. That’s good. No, I’m not perfect. There is always room for improvement but I did ok. I have to understand that given how hysterical I was on Tuesday during the EMDR that my mood on Wednesday and Thursday was close to unavoidable. It will happen again. Welcome to deep trauma work. It has consequences.

How do I apply the principles of harm reduction to this new stress? Well, I’m only seeing my shrink twice a month because I can’t handle more. I feel like doing as much EMDR and as much group work as we have done is causing me to feel really emotionally guarded with my shrink. I feel besieged. I am very used to client directed talk therapy. Therapist directed EMDR heavy therapy is… different. I’m having a hard time adjusting to this whole, “Here. We’ll do this EMDR on you for basically all of our time together because that is a magic button that will fix you even though we don’t have a relationship.” It feels a lot like a fuck buddy, really. Here, let’s get together to do ____ together because even though _____ is fun on your own it is more fun with someone else! Now go away because I don’t actually want to talk to you afterwards. Err, maybe I don’t think about processing like other people do.

Just keep swimming, right? I’m busy. I’m keeping very busy. Only a few people have RSVPed for the Easter party even though I have had a lot more people get excited in person. I don’t know if people are coming or not. Maybe we will end up with ten pounds of sugar for five kids. That would be scary. Could be up to thirty kids. I guess I’ll find out the morning after a hellish drive. Ha. I’m pretty stupid. (Yes, 1/3 of a pound of sugar per kid is still a lot but I figure the parents will steal some as well.)

Today is my last full work day at home before I go to Portland and before the Easter party. That’s kind of intimidating. I am technically capable of doing work on days when I have other obligations but if I want to be nice to my kids I keep it to a bare minimum. It will all work out.

Drywall patching. Laundry. Clean the kitchen. Put out Easter decorations. Make lunch and dinner. Fill eggs with candy. Clean bathroom (really). And I’m sure my kids will want me to read to them and play with them and snuggle them. That sounds like a full day. I’m already tired. I haven’t slept well all week. I feel bad when my discombobulated cycles coincide with Noah having a rockin sort of week (he was interviewed by this internet business guru guy and he’s selling a lot of books) because then he feels guilty.

I don’t want Noah to feel bad about being successful because I am a loser. That’s not a healthy dynamic. I specifically and directly benefit from him maximizing his awesome. I don’t want that to be a fuzzy thing.

And all of a sudden I am having a full stream of words in my head for the wedding ceremony in May. I’m going to close this window and go work on that.