Category Archives: house yay

Not a nice person.

Periodically I see references to the idea that every is a good person from their own point of view. Everyone views themselves as the misunderstood protagonist of their own story. Not me. I think of myself as more like an anti-hero. I am not morally superior. If anything I am inferior.

A long time ago it started to seem to me that being a hero was something that just wasn’t available to people like me. I am certainly a protagonist in my story though I am probably mainly an antagonist in other peoples stories.

As Agatha likes to say, “I can work with that.”

I don’t see a lot of point in working hard to be nice.

If I felt physically threatened I probably wouldn’t call the police I probably would beat the shit out of the person threatening me. I’m not so much with the “lawful good” personality trope.

Ok, the first thing I would do is verbally clear up the fact that this person knows it is a really stupid idea to threaten me. That clears up like 99% of issues without violence.

But it is backed up with the real and serious threat of violence. That means I’m not a nice person. I can work with that.

I’m not going around beating people up for casual insults or for doing things I don’t like. I am too apathetic for such shenanigans. I will only hurt someone if I believe I must do so for self defense. I have experienced an unusually broad range of conflict from mild verbal to physical fights.

Calli turns four in August. Then we all get to enroll in martial arts. Whee! It will be good for us. Maybe they can teach me more control over my abysmal temper.

The goal isn’t now or ever to be a nice person. I want more control over how and when I am not-nice but that doesn’t mean I want to be a nice person.

What makes someone a “good” person or a “bad” person. Are all soldiers automatically bad because they have the potential to kill? Some of them even have. The ones who do kill people tend to come home totally fucked up.

I’ve never killed anyone. Does that make me a good person? But if someone hurt my babies and I thought the police were going to do nothing… Well I don’t feel real bound by the 10 Commandments anyway.

I’d take that person to the desert. My babies are off limits. The penalty for fucking with them is your life.

Does the fact that I will defend my children make me a good person? If I don’t defend my children am I a good person or a bad person? I would be a non-aggressive person. A passive person.

Mostly I just make sure they aren’t alone with people. Not even for a few minutes. And they know ALL the technical names for their body parts and explicitly that anything covered with panties is *private* and people who touch you there mean you harm when you are a kid.

My kids will not be victims.

And I’m very ok with that meaning that I can’t be a nice person. Ok. No problem. I lost that potential long, long ago anyway. I will be fierce instead.

If I were still trying to be a nice person I think I would be paralyzed with fear. I have too much bad in me that might leak out if I say the wrong thing. I might have to stop talking altogether if I wanted to be “nice”.

The little slice of the world I inhabit isn’t very nice. I think it is funny that so many of these writers know only people who think they are nice. Really? I know a lot of people who would laugh at the idea that they are “nice people”.

My shrink says that people who have had easy lives don’t feel comfortable standing near me and that is a lot of why I know so many people with ridiculous trauma histories. She tries to get me to understand that my view of the world is perhaps a bit skewed.

I know a lot of former childhood prostitutes, male and female. I know a lot of people who have been arrested for violence. I know a lot of rapists. I know a lot of people who beat the shit out of people for fun or money. Not like, mafia beat people up or anything.

I didn’t manage to end up friends with the nice fluffy spank-o-philes who just like a nice spanking. I know the people who want to be cut up with razor blades and long whips and turned completely black and blue from all the terrible bruising.

I broke a bone in a scene and didn’t stop the scene for health care. I stayed tied up for hours. We stayed at the party for a while after the scene before we bothered going to the hospital.

Pain is part of my life in a way it isn’t for most people.

I’ve had two hard pregnancies followed by two hellish labors (One unmedicated for 40 hours the other unmedicated for nine days) and neither was anywhere near as painful as when a large man picked me up by my pectoral muscles and shook me like a dog with a toy.

I thought that feeling was so overwhelming I would completely and totally combust from pain. That is still my personal 11. Nothing has been as painful as that.

And I have pictures from a long and storied relationship before that showing how I worked up to it.

Then the week after the hardest scene ever Noah asked me to marry him. Then things changed.

Let me tell you, there is no way to tell the story of me and Noah without it sounding like a rescue mission. All of these pieces fit together and layer.

My Owner was pretty happy with Noah as a partner for me. He gave me Daddy’s permission to date that nice boy. Even Puppy (a not-nice person I dated in between the times I dated Noah) gave me his blessing when I married Noah.

Pretty much all of my ex’s came to my wedding reception. They were all jolly and happy and very glad to see me with someone who wanted to jump through the hoops they were not fucking interested in jumping through.

I feel lucky. Despite the fact that I am not very nice people still love me. As much as I talk about being a raging asshole… that doesn’t actually come out much any more. It did when I was much younger. It did when I was a kid, a teenager. I had it mostly under control by my twenties and I’m doing really well in my thirties.

I think mean thoughts but I mostly keep them to myself. To people I say the nice things I think. I’ve learned better how to filter them at full speed. Like all skills it has taken a lot of practice.

But I’m still not nice. Because if I need to say mean things in order to create the effect I want to create I will fucking well do that and probably not feel bad for more than a few seconds.

I have no problem with being nasty to racists but I’m working on doing it with slightly lower volume because I dislike having my throat hurt from screaming. See, still not nice.

My children are the best mirrors in the world. Children learn to treat you by watching how you treat the world around you. They don’t do what you say they do what you do. I don’t really want my kids to have to deal with the punishments that come with being a screamer. And clearly we are all screamers. So I have to figure out how to change myself.

I can’t get through this by telling them what they must do without changing me first. That really blows.

A friend commented with dismay when his childling heard the definition of rules-lawyering and was happy. “No! Don’t do that!” I encourage my kids to do it. Without yelling. Without pestering.

The pestering rule is kinda my favorite thing. Persistence is awesome! Pestering is annoying. Asking for something more than three times is pestering and then you don’t get to have whatever it is that day.

Bam.

When my kids ask for something a second time all I have to say is, “That is your second request.”

And they zip up their lips faster than you can say, “Bob’s y’er uncle.”

I get the impression they react pretty much how I react when someone says their version of “You are getting close to a boundary.”

React with glee! They are defining themselves for you! This is a good thing!

When people used to ask me to leave the morning after a pick up I took that as a sign of healthy boundaries and I left happy to know that I hadn’t over stayed my welcome.

I like my house. I like that I am not going to be kicked out. I can make it as weird as I want to. It’s ok. I have permission. I don’t need no fucking permission. Something. Anything. I can do it to my house.

Kind of crazy.

I look at the houses around me and think, “Man we have different aesthetics.” My neighborhood is full of people doing shit to their houses. Some are gentrifying. Some are just doing general maintenance and repairs to the facades they created decades ago. They like the look of it.

My house right now is just one of the shittier ones (from the outside) in the neighborhood. Not quite derelict, but man do we need to do some repainting. Shabby. Not improved upon since the 1950’s.

Meh. I don’t want to spend the money so I ignore it.

We all channel our frustrations in different ways. I have lots of control issues and I’m not a very nice person. Only I can be very nice and very polite and great to talk to.

Isn’t that why sociopaths are so dangerous (not that I’m a sociopath–too much empathy)? They are so charming. I don’t have to be nasty just because I’m not a nice person.

So many layers.

Noah says I’m consistent. I think I have so many special cases that it is weird that he can find consistency.

I think it is much healthier that I now side track onto thinking about home improvement projects rather than sex or being hurt. I know that I will have to make my own status in this life. I inherit nothing positive. People think of me only as a sum of what they can see.

I can get away with whatever I try hard enough to get away with. If I want to have a community I have to go out and fucking meet the people around me and introduce myself and consistently say “Hi” and smile for years.

Having a distinctive yard is helping. “Oh! You did that!” Yup.

Small pond. A very small pond. I want to be a big fish in a very small pond. That’s all I have the spoons for. I know all those other lakes and rivers and oceans exist but they are kinda scary for me. I like my very small pond.

Here everyone walks to the table completely neutral to one another. We have no preconceived associations other than the most gross (meaning large–not necessarily yucky) and general racial and sexual assumptions.

It was just dumb luck. We happened to move to the same neighborhood during the same span of time. Let’s talk.

I have lived here longer than anywhere else in my whole life. I want to know my neighbors the way other people got to get to know their elementary school peers. I want it.

My kids need community. Communities happen when people create them. Just keep doing things.

I’m not a nice person. But I can be quite charming and fun when I put my mind to it. When I try.

This is why I try to limit my time with people to the amount of control I have to give.

I am an angry girl. But I’m not angry with you. And I try hard to differentiate my behavior better than that. You are not a representative sample of your group to be punished for the whole. No one is. No scapegoats here.

We are not a collective. We are a bunch of individuals. That is why change is so hard. It can’t be mass taught or enforced. It has to be lead.

People aren’t willing to dramatically change their opinion in public. That would mean losing face.

Grow the fuck up.

Need a rest day.

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So on Thursday the girls and I decided to go to the plant nursery. Like addicts. We spent $100 on plants. Because addicts. But I now have a whole bunch of fun hanging plants in baskets out the back window like I’ve been imagining for years. (Mostly because I put hundreds of seeds in the ground and diligently watered and… nada. Stupid seeds. I hate seeds.)

I am tired and weary. Friday we painted the fence some more. It was fun but exhausting. My hands are very tired and sore. Lots of pain.

My back hurts like mad. Calli had nightmares all night long where she was begging for me so I was in their room. Oh man. Ow.

But it is going to be a nice day. Friends are coming over for Girl Genius. They will have to see a messy house cause I clean on Mondays. Damnit.

Oh man my back hurts. But I’m rereading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I have a nice huge mug of tea. Life is good.

The pictures of the fence are uploading right now but later today you can follow this link and see them.

Drips, drabs, ups, and downs.

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We went up to San Pablo yesterday to see some friends. This is after that specific friend coming to my house monthly for ohhh four years now? I am starting to try and do some trips up there in exchange for all the trips to my house. The distance between us is not shorter just because he is a guy with no kids. I can do effort too.

And when I drive up there I get to spend time with his lovely wife. I find the visits to be highly educational in diverse arenas. For one thing: she knows way the fuck more about gardening than I do and she’s happy to talk about plants. Lately getting near someone with lots of plant knowledge who does not eschew my children is somewhat tricky. I’ve tried to sign up for gardening classes THAT ARE BEING ADVERTISED ON AN UNSCHOOLING MAILING LIST and I was told I would have to get babysitting. Stop fucking advertising in this space if my fucking kids aren’t welcome you fucking fuckers. I didn’t say fuck to the people in question. I just dropped it.

Beyond the gardening stuff, I am having a bit of trouble with Callidora. Well, phrasing it that way sounds more extreme than it is. Many of my parenting approaches work really well for Shanna and don’t work at all with Calli. Luckily my friends’ wife seems to identify really strongly with Calli. They are very similar temperamentally and she is giving me a lot of feedback for how to tweak our interactions so they work better.

I feel so much gratitude I don’t have words. Someone is willing to look at me and look at my daughter and look at our relationship and say, “You are doing ok, but you both might be happier if you did……”

Err, in defense of my hubris more than once I have said, “I’m afraid I am going to have to do ____” and her response was “Yes. That is exactly what you have to do.” So she isn’t entirely telling me new information. But she is very good at skimming out the bullshit and getting to the heart of the matter. “This is failing because of x.”

I don’t trust many people to give me feedback. I’m not sure why I trust her feedback as much as I do. For one thing she doesn’t use the word “should” and I’m not sure if that has become a specific trigger. Maybe I explode at people for that word rather than because I am completely unwilling to accept advice? It’s hard to tease out.

Also, she tends to say “Calli seems to be a lot like me. When I was a kid I had x and y and z experiences and this is how it went well and this is how it went badly. If Calli is as much like me as she seems right now, you are going to have to deal with a and b and c. It’s not a good idea to do d.”

I guess there is an implied “should” in that but she doesn’t say it.

It also occurs to me that I push Calli in a way I have never pushed Shanna. When Shanna was three I had a one year old. We did not spend a lot of time pushing the absolute physical limits of what she could accomplish until she collapsed in frustrated tears.

I’m having a hard time understanding fully that Calli wants to be able to do things she isn’t ready to do yet and I need to find a tactful way of bailing her out even as I push Shanna to try. Differentiated instruction is a bitch.

(Err, the bicycle riding project is coming along. We’ve hit a few hiccups. As my wise new running mate commented, “Dude. You’ve been out with them four times? Relax and do more low pressured practice.”

Yeah yeah. You may have a point. But we bought the bikes because we want to ride to the park. I need to decide in my adult brain that even if that is the eventual goal… we sure as shit can’t start by doing that. I should probably not try to leave our housing development again until June. We need more low-stakes practice than we have had. Hours and hours and hours and hours.

It is not just a form of transportation. It is about entertainment. It has to be about entertainment at first or they won’t gain enough proficiency to use it as transportation later. The transportation part doesn’t have to be worked out at three, instantly. Relax you bitch.

Medication has been spotty this week. I (re?)noticed a pattern. Whenever I get to the point of using sufficient medication that I actually feel good instead of having just the edge of the pain taken away I punish myself for days with under medicating so I feel a lot more pain. I’m not supposed to be using pot like a pot head. I’m not supposed to be trying to get high. I’m supposed to be just managing the pain.

I think I am too much of a Puritan. My sister told me I had ancestors on the Mayflower (Not her–different fathers.). Maybe it is too deeply buried within my DNA? I can’t stop believing that I must suffer. Anything that feels good MUST BE BAD.

I have been very consistent lately about giving up my morning “off time” to wake up with the kids. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. On one hand I’m more frazzled and I’m not taking a compensatory amount of time later. On the other hand… we are getting along better. When the kids open their eyes in the morning to me in their bed smiling at them… the whole day is easier. The first thing they hear every day is, “Good morning. I’m so glad to see you again. I’m looking forward to our wonderful day together.”

They smile back and say, “Me too!” then grab my neck and pull me close. Then I get a sleepy “Good morning.”

Sometimes it feels weird knowing that I do this as a parenting gesture in large part to make up for the hole in my heart. No one was ever happy to see me during my childhood. I was a terrible, unwanted burden.

I completely support mothers who need to abort children born of rape. I wish my mother hadn’t allowed her religion to force her to keep me. I was not wanted. And they made my life hell.

Now I have something different. It is so very nice. But it’s a lot of emotional and mental and physical work. And I get really tired.

When I’m tired it is harder to be consistent. When I’m scared I start screaming. That’s consistent.

Calli has asked me to stop raising my voice at her when I’m repeating orders/requests/whatever you want to call them. Demands? She told me (while making eye contact so this is serious as a fucking heart attack) “I will be able to listen to you better if you get close to me and whisper in my ear that it is important.”

If a three year old can so clearly ask for the kind of interaction she needs then I am a fucking asshole if I ignore the request. This is how I teach them ownership of their body and consent and boundaries.

I’ve been working on it. I kind of feel that I should create some accountability tool for myself. Maybe another sheet of paper on the wall. I can ask Calli to help me decide whether I approached her correctly or not and we can decide if I get a mark in the “right behavior” column or the “not so right” column. It will also help her clarify which aspects of the raised voice stuff are a problem for her.

My kids are not going to grow up thinking adults are perfect and kids need to bend to the adults around them. Ha. Ha. Ha. No. We want to live together. We need to adapt to one another.

I’m happy about the upcoming social stuff. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed that people are agreeing so delightedly to come to my events. My RSVPs fill up fast. (Err, RSVP for Easter if you are coming… not many spaces left.)

I have had something like six people in the last two weeks get really excited when I confirm that I’m hosting Easter again. “OH! You throw the best parties!”

I do?

Oh.

Well that’s awesome. How do I do that? What makes them “the best” for you? Because I spend my parties in kind of an anxious hell hoping I don’t offend everyone and run them off such that they never want to come back.

And yet I keep hosting. Irony.

I don’t seem to be running people off. I mean… I do… but I don’t. I run some people off.

I feel very guilty when I admit to myself that I run off people who need things from me that I can’t give. My anxiety and shame around not being able to meet their needs makes me angry and cruel. It isn’t my fault I can’t meet their needs. It isn’t their fault I can’t meet their needs. It isn’t their fault they have needs. I have needs they can’t meet either. But I get mean. This is a major character flaw of mine.

I don’t do this with people who have small needs I can easily meet. If people need something from me that is going to be an up to five hour commitment one time… I love doing that. That helps me feel like I am part of a community and I’m useful and all kinds of good feelings. When someone starts to need 3-10 hours of work from me every fucking week in order to have a relationship with them…

I get mean. I am awful. I am not a nice person. I don’t know how to have healthy limits without being an asshole. I’m not making excuses or justifying my behavior. It’s wrong.

I have been talking to a friend a lot about how different it is in America versus other more crowded countries. Americans apologize for bumping into someone. In China you would never say any word other than “sorry”. So they don’t bother.

I spend a lot of time apologizing for taking up space. I spend a lot of time apologizing for being inconvenient. I spend a lot of time apologizing for not being able to do/be what someone else wants/needs.

I am sorry I am so inadequate. I clearly see that I am.

Right now I’m having anxiety attacks because some folks are mad at me. Folks I don’t really need to “care” about per se. They aren’t my friends. They are the close friends of one of my friends. They are mad at me because my vomiting on Friday caused them some inconvenience. I have apologized profusely for inconveniencing them. I’m sorry they were brought into the situation by our mutual friend. But yeah. I’m the bitch.

And I feel consumed with shame and I have for days. I inconvenienced them. I stole hours of their life and made them about me when they already kind of hate me. I’m really sorry. I did apologize. I have not been acknowledged and that is what I assumed would happen.

I get into these situations. I’m sorry I inconvenienced you. I have very little control over when I vomit. I’m just glad I didn’t make a mess on my floor.

But it impacted your life. And you wish I didn’t impact your life. So you are angry with me because I popped up and existed in a way you couldn’t tune out.

I’m really sorry.

This is more or less why I avoid that whole segment of the “community”. I don’t really like feeling like I am doing something wrong by breathing in a way they can hear.

So yeah. I don’t think I will teach with my friend again. There is a bunch of stress in the lead up and if I get sick there is lots of acrimony, blame, and anger. Not from my friend. He was mellow about the situation. But he didn’t feel qualified to handle the class alone and those are the other people he has in his life to turn to for support.

Yeah well, me hanging around near them feels like an abusive family reunion where they all wish I would drop dead. The sooner the better.

More one of them than the other but… well that’s not a story I’ll write down yet. Maybe a few more decades. It being thirteen years ago still isn’t long enough. Some day.

It’s not all her fault. I was a bitch. But man. Oh man. Ok. Shiny change of topic.

I’ve been having a lot of feelings all week over that. I was doing great last week until I started vomiting on Friday.

I associate vomiting with letting people down and being a bad and weak person. When I get sick my association is that I will also be in trouble for some reason. I am inconvenient when I’m sick.

Noah is working hard to change some of these patterns. He’s nice when I’m sick. He does a lot of telling me that it isn’t my fault and I didn’t do anything bad. I feel really pathetic for needing it. But I do. And he does it. I am so grateful for him as a partner.

I like teaching though. I will look for more opportunities to teach. Just no co-teaching in a situation potentially wrapped in shame-inducing trauma. When I had to cancel a class as a professional teacher… no one made me write a formal apology. I’d like to go back to that kind of treatment. Thanks.

My running mate wants me to stop thinking of writing as a hobby and start thinking of it as a business. I’ve sold enough forking copies of my book that I can stop pretending I’m not a real writer. I shouldn’t have to pay for my book editing and publishing stuff out of my “fun money”. It’s not my hobby. Noah doesn’t take his business expenses out of his fun money. It’s a separate category in the budget. It’s not very healthy for me to demean myself in this fashion.

I will severely limit my career as a writer if I can’t employ an editor until I save up enough fun money by denying myself everything. Denial as a full-time lifestyle in a household that otherwise has a lot of privilege… that’s kinda self-hating. It’s being weird. It’s unhealthy.

Why do women do this to themselves? My writing “doesn’t count”. It’s just… something I do. Like the laundry. And when there are expenses for it, well, they are “mine”, right?

I developed a lot of habits over the years of having the annuities and living with men. What I could have was very strictly limited to what I had in that $1200 every month. I didn’t over extend. And now I have no real personal income and… I’m flailing. The $100/month of fun money is… not enough. Not for me to feel like I can track all of “my” spending separately from household stuff.

We just have a clothes budget. It is for all four of us. If someone gets something then the other three have to wait a while. *shrug* But it changes how I think of things. Although… when I bought the pretty clothes in Portland I took a big chunk out of my personal money. I spent more than $500 on two items of clothing. It didn’t seem fair to make my family give up that large a share of the clothes budget on me getting two items. So more than $300 came out of my fun money. That seemed fair to me.

When the kids really get a big clothes splurge… it goes in the “kid” section even though mostly they come out of the main category.

The kids have a big section of the budget that is amorphously used for classes, home school supplies. books, toys, gear of whatever kind (was baby carriers and diapers now it has moved on to bikes), and rarely clothes.

A long time ago I consciously went out and started spending time with older men. They could talk to me about money. How they got it. What they did with it. I made my own judgments about who lived in which kind of house and who had how much money. I’ve always been tactless as fuck. I would point blank ask them how much cash they had in the bank and whether or not they had investments.

I didn’t understand most of what they told me. But I remembered it. It’s kind of funny to have little memories float up now and again as I’m trying new things with investing.

Be sure you are right, then go ahead. I will, Davey. I will research and research and research and I’ll figure out what I think is right. Of course I know I could always be wrong. Some minute change in my life might make all of my careful risk calculations moot and irrelevant.

I have no way of predicting that. So I have to just act and hope for the best.

Save.

Debt is evil.

Make your money work for you.

Pay yourself first.

Sometimes I think I turn to these mantras as the only way I have of blocking out all the voices in my head who want me to think I am stupid and a bitch and I should just stop inconveniencing them by breathing.

I’ve been really stunned by the intensity of my suicidal ideation this week.

I also haven’t been doing my daily check in calls with my friend. She’s really busy on a project. She’ll be back in a week or so. I support and respect her participation in this event and that means she has no time to think about me. I am a big girl and I’ll keep my big girl panties on.

It is interesting how suicidal ideation is not always about depression. I don’t feel like I am feeling depression symptoms. This is more on the anxious/overwhelmed side. Manic is a word people like. But I’m not… doing anything manic.

Just out of the blue driving on the freeway I see a weird opening where it would be possible to turn and be hit by a semi-truck and I want to do it more than I want anything in the world. I want in that moment to feel a lot of pain and then die. I want it as much as my heart wants to beat. It is immediate and visceral and all encompassing.

I have to breathe very lightly and lift my hands so I have a very light guiding pressure on the steering wheel. Sometimes I get off the freeway to breathe and stretch my neck and remind myself, “Not today.”

The reasons I don’t like driving are varied and complicated and… I’m willing to bet that someday I will not be able to drive any more. It is part of the reason I am as strongly motivated to make friends near my house as I am. Walking will always be a good idea. Forever. For my health.

Thanks, Pam, for letting me write this morning.

My head feels better. I feel a lot less shame. Writing it down helps.

I don’t need to feel shame because other people would prefer that their world didn’t overlap with mine. I could reject our mutual friend so that they never have to hear about me again, but given that he values his relationship with me that seems kind of awful.

But I think I should have different boundaries. Still working on where those need to be. Boundaries are tricky things. You only find out you have them when they are transgressed. Ha. THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE CLASS. And what I got out of it is: I need to make sure I never have to deal with your extended friends again. Awesome.

That’s a lesson I can learn.

They aren’t going to like me. No matter what. Ever. I need to not care about that. They are allowed to have their experience of the world where I am… something. I don’t know what. I shouldn’t speculate. I would surely overstate my importance. I certainly don’t suspect that either of them while away hours just hating me. I’m not that important.

So I don’t need to feel shame because they are feeling irritation. That’s not something I need to take on. I gave an apology. I offered restitution to the best of my ability. That’s what I’ve got. Move on. I didn’t vomit on purpose.

And when I feel shame for my social behavior I rush home to assure myself that I am managing my money properly. No one is going to be able to force me to move. I’m allowed to stay here. I’m jumping through all the hoops that actually matter for my life. I don’t have to care that they dislike me. There won’t be any consequences.

And then I can stop thinking about it.

Thank you internet. That’s the end of my confession for today. I have some dirt to play with and a fence to sand. Tomorrow a bunch of little kids are going to come paint a few sections. We are adding more year by year. Drips and drabs. It’s really fun.

Saturday is the Girl Genius Volume 1 read aloud. Email me for details if you want to come hear Noah do all the hilarious voices.

Be thankful

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Yesterday one of my favorite people asked me what I am thankful for. (Other than her of course. Even if she does split my personality.)

I’m thankful for so much. I’m thankful for my husband and my kids and my house and my yard and my life.

I’m thankful that I have a Dad now who wants me to come see him for holidays. I didn’t spend holidays with a Dad for more than 25 years.

I’m thankful that I can break contact with my biological family and not end up alone for the rest of my life. That was what I expected. That is why most people don’t maintain no contact. The being alone is too hard.

I’m thankful for all the beautiful flowers I have been able to plant in my yard. I am looking forward to next spring. I feel antsy and joyous about seeing all the bulbs come up. Next spring when the tulips and narcissus and wildflowers (a “variety” bag of seeds) and marigolds and hydrangeas and lilies and roses and blue potato vines all bloom I will get to sit outside and know that I’m allowed to pick those flowers if I want to. I’m allowed to look at them as long as I want to without creeping anyone out. I’m allowed to be here.

I’m thankful for that. I didn’t expect to ever have this feeling. This is my home.

Shanna told me yesterday that she was nervous about going to Portland because she doesn’t want to leave Wonderland. “But this is my home. It won’t be the same to sleep somewhere else. I will feel like I’m not as safe.”

I asked her what about Wonderland makes her safe. She said, “Wonderland is magic because it is so full of love. No where else has as much love.”

I just about burst into tears. I did that. I made that come true for someone else. I’m thankful for that.

She eventually decided that since I was going with her the love would come with her and she can consent to the trip. Oh good.

This morning before we go I will churn the custard into ice cream and put it in the freezer (we had a bunch of milk and cream and eggnog–my life is made of awesome). I have more bags to throw in the back of the van. We have food to eat before we leave. But mostly we are ready to go.

I packed yesterday. The older I get the harder time I have doing my packing in advance. It doesn’t help that my kids and I each have less than a week of warm-ish clothes. So I had to wash and pack absolutely at the last minute because… that’s all the clothes I have.

Ok, I have more warm weather clothes. I could go at least two weeks without doing laundry in the summer. In the winter I have about six days of clothes. It’s all coming to Portland.

I’m thankful that I once again have a washer and dryer in my garage. Witness my happy dance of joy.

I’m thankful for every person who works at Apple creating the products that make my life better.

I’m thankful that I can decide to go on a four mile ~~run~~ uhhh ~~jog~~ energetic walk and my body is able to carry me through. I am so glad I have the strength to get through the distance even though I am not fast. It is a step in the process. Not everyone is able to do what I can do. I’m thankful for the strength in my body.

For a large portion of my “runs” I act like a whack job extra who got off the set of Swing Kids. I like dancing down the side walk. It’s a lot of fun.

I think it is funny that I so strongly reject the label of “dancer” because I dance all the fucking time. I love to dance. I just can’t be part of the dance community any more. I know too many rapists there. Not my own–thankfully. That community was easy on me. But I take sides. I have had too many women come to me with the stories of what is happening to them. I can’t pretend it isn’t true or real.

I can’t let the rapists touch me. I can’t be nice to them. I can’t pretend we are friends. I also don’t have the right to confront them. It isn’t my story.

I’m thankful that I can flee from communities and still have friends.

At this stage of my life I don’t get to complain much about what is happening to me. I am safe. I am loved. I am thankful for that.

I’ll finish Outrunning in another day or two. I feel scared and like it is the right thing to do.

One of the ladies on one of my sex abuse support forums (I have such a cheerful life) was relaying a case in her community. An 11 year old girl pregnant by a 15 year old boy. Neither of the kids knew you could get pregnant the first time. Now the boy is in jail for rape even though it was consensual sex.

Do I believe that an 11 year old can consent?

Does it matter if it was consensual? How would their lives be different if they had read a nice book by a weird lady telling them to use two forms of birth control even for the first time you have sex? Would that have helped?

Well, whether or not an 11 year old is ready for sex is debatable. It is not debatable that she is not ready to be a mother. No one is at 11. Your brain isn’t ready to treat someone else as more important than you.

I will try to publish. Even though it is scary. I believe it is the right thing to do. I don’t want to micromanage how people run their lives. I want them to have more information before they make decisions. I want them to understand the choice they are making before they make it. I’m not sure if I can fully help them with that but I can give them some of the first inklings. I can give them some of the outlines of what they need to know.

I’m thankful for all of the people who have written books that I have been fortunate enough to read. I’m so glad I know the things I know. I like my brain.

As I get older I’m not even as angry about being raped. I learned so many things about myself and about human nature. I don’t think I would have been able to learn those lessons from a book.

I feel really bad for the people who raped me. They are all people who are so full of hurt they are incapable of seeing how they hurt other people. I am thankful I am not like them. I am thankful that I can see the hurt I cause. I am grateful that it is not invisible to me. It seems like that would be a terrible burden. I don’t want to be unaware.

How can you be considerate if you are unable to tell how your actions effect people?

I am thankful that despite lots of good reasons to be dead inside I am not. I can feel. I can be sad and angry and happy and joyous and miserable. Not everyone gets to have the full range. (Sometimes I wish my range was spread out a bit more over time but you can’t have everything.)

I like my body. I am learning to be grateful for my brain. I have a great brain. It has allowed me to do a wide variety of neat things.

Go forward. Do your best. It’s all you can do.

(I’m really not mad, Pam. I get why you say what you do to your mom. I love you to the moon and back.)

Didn’t wake up crying.

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I’m up to 38, 471 words. It is getting harder to think of topics I should cover. Almost through the process. Thank goodness.

Therapy was good yesterday. I got to have some time off afterwards because K told me not to come home until two. Yes, ma’am. I sat and ate and wrote. Good thing because I was falling behind in word count.

I have a blank white wall in my garage. Noah suggests islands. My garage is much warmer now. The wall is tilted because it was built around the garage door in such a way that I could believably tell the city inspector that I can dismantle it myself in an hour so SURELY this isn’t a permanent room and thus breaking city code. But it is much warmer now!

Today I need to put plant bulbs in the ground. Daffodils and tulips of joy oh my. So “need” is probably a strong word. They are in the fridge and according to planting guides they want to go in the ground sometime in the next five days. Today is the best day. The lovely rain softened up the ground for me. How convenient.

My therapist and I talked about the whole unmet needs thing. I told her that I’m struggling with the fact that I have actual needs at this point in my life but they are going unmet and they will continue to go unmet and at some point my kids will grow up and I won’t have these needs anymore and hopefully it will be easier then.

I’m kind of used to having needs that aren’t met.

But sometimes even when you have actual needs they will never be met and it won’t kill you. And you have to just get up and keep moving anyway. Even though your needs aren’t being met.

I keep checking the internet. My mother told me that if I took my children away from her she would kill herself. She isn’t dead yet. I guess the need for my children wasn’t as strong as she thought. I think I’m glad. I’m not sure.

I have a lot of good reasons for being an angry person. That doesn’t make it easier for anyone to put up with. That doesn’t mean that people should put up with me lashing out at them.

I asked Noah if I am still harsh with him. He said not anymore but I used to be. I used to be that harsh when I didn’t believe that he would respond well to boundaries or support me or believe me. But I’m not harsh any more. I stopped a while ago.

I blog the way I do, in this stream of conscious sometimes I regret volunteering all of my inner drama to the world sort of way because people like me usually never find a voice.

Being inside my head is not pretty. I really and truly want to accurately reflect it. Being a real person means that you are not always what other people want you to be. That means the difficulties and the good things too.

When I die it will be possible for people to still know a lot about me. The good, the bad, the ugly. It is really important to me for reasons I couldn’t possibly explain. It just is. I hope I am this obnoxious for the rest of my life. Not because everyone deserves to be trashed–that’s not the point. I’m not trashing people.

When I complain about issues I tend to complain about larger patterns and not particular people. I have had a large number of people over the years tell me that they have thought about helping me and they decided not to. That pretty much exact exchange has happened numerous times. I don’t think I have ever blogged about it before (can’t recall off the top of my head) so it is this invisible pattern in my life. It’s a pattern that is causing me problems.

I haven’t talked about it because I know the people involved “mean well”. I don’t actually want to hurt people. I have way more tact than anyone would believe.

But sometimes I am not able to put my head down and shut my mouth and just smile and say thank you. Sometimes I can’t. I regret my lack of control but I’m not sure mastery of this subject is within my grasp in this decade. Maybe later.

If you need to exist out in public that means you will be judged and that means that sometimes you will fuck up in public. Sometimes people will not like how you are acting. That has to be part of the process.

I don’t promise to talk nice in my blog. I promise I will do my best to always treat you exactly how you deserve in person. I’m very sorry that knowing about the difference between what I think and how I act is hard. I am trying to learn how to not be offensive. I don’t know how to turn my brain off though.

I am looking forward to planting and spreading some mulch today. I’ll move slowly.

I’m not going to paint the garage wall this winter. Can’t do it. That means the garage is put back together for a few months. Today I will attach the bookshelves to the wall. That’s the non-self-hating thing to do. I hear.

I’m very glad I get to pick what I do in a day.

I’m very glad I get to spend today with my girls.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time thinking about the fact that when I was Calli’s age my parents divorced. My mom moved a boyfriend in to support her and I was “mean to him” and he left resulting in my mom and sister hating me. We became homeless. I was sent off to live with the first in a long string of homes. That was when I started rocking and crying myself to sleep.

I’m glad I get to be with my kids all day. I want this life so bad.

The house is clean so the kids can help with cooking stuff. There is room and space and I won’t freak out as I trip over things. I can be patient enough to let them make another mess.

I’m not teaching them to be kids. I’m teaching them how to be an adult. Adults have to go do a lot of different things. You have to have skills. We’ll get to academics. Later.

Today will probably be good. I’m almost done with my reading list. I’m almost done with my gardening projects for the whole year. I’m done with house stuff for the year.

I want to put up the outside Christmas lights. We haven’t gotten a tree yet but we’ve done the rest of the decorating. (I had to move the cabinet the decorations were in–I might as well put them up at the time. Also we will be out of town for 10 days of Christmas. I’d rather not have to do the decorating during the shortened time period. I instead get to come home to Christmas. Yay!)

Noah is making cookies already. I should freeze some. He’s made three kinds so far. Sugar is love. Ha.

My house is already clean enough and set up enough for the party in a month. I will only have to do flight of the bumble bee.

We are in the process of eating all the carbs in the house (almost done with the backlog in the freezer) because come January I will have to do an elimination diet. Yes I will work with medical professionals. I need to need less pot to deal with the pain in my body. I need to stop paying for the ability to eat. This isn’t working. It is too expensive. I need to do something else.

I would like to be fully off of pot before I go on the cross country road trip with the kids in 2015. I don’t think I should be driving during the days and getting stoned every night while I camp alone with my kids. That strikes me as wildly inappropriate and unsafe. So I have to be functional in my body alone before then. I have a year to make it work. Ok. That’s what next year will have to be about. Shit.

Some people need a crutch for their whole life and there is no shame in it. Sometimes you need a crutch for a temporary period. I went about 25 years unmedicated (there were some stupid periods mid-way where I tried meds–I was so sick the whole time) so I will have to get back to that. Stress management has always been how I have done it.

Sex, exercise, better food choices for my body (which I don’t have a fucking clue about right this minute), and I don’t even know what else.

I feel good about the fact that my life is so clearly plugging along. I may be whiny but I get shit done. Things are changing.

I will have tulips in the spring and for every spring afterwards.

I don’t know how much gardening this year will bring. I may be growing very different foods next year if I can’t have nightshades any more. We’ll see.

I am trying to organize some local families into a fruit gleaning group. I have buy-in and initiative. I just need to figure out the details and do the back end work. That will probably be part of next year.

Next year I am going to have to find the courage to go get rejected by a bunch of publishing houses. Woo. bleh.

Good thing next year is next year and this year is this year and I am almost DONE WITH MY CHORE LIST!! Ahem. I uhh probably take too much self-identity from this.

I have completed 50 new-to-me books so far and I am more than halfway through two more.

I really changed the yard this year. Man I’m grateful for the help I got. I sing hallelujahs and praise the names. Paying for help does not invalidate that it is help.

I’m happy with the house progress. I’m overjoyed that my garage will no longer flood. I like the pantry set up a lot more than I did. This is better. Once I have the boxes outside for the tools I think the pantry will be perfect for at least five minutes. Then I’ll find a reason to whine. I’m talented.

No, I’m kidding. I think I may have found a configuration that can just last for years. I feel… way more feelings than I should about this. I’m happy with the idea that my house is settling into a shape where I might stop ripping it apart constantly.

I get to be here. I get to stay here. I’m allowed to make this into what I really want. Nope, it isn’t polished and perfect and an expensive looking house. I’m kind of a cheap date. I’m happy with cotton batting over the pipes as a line of clouds instead of a wooden enclosure. I think it is pretty fun.

I don’t need perfect. I’m not perfect. I’m having fun.

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.

Victory, pain, and Zen.

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I finished painting! I’m afraid some areas will require a second coat because Glidden is shitty paint. It’ll be ok.

My fingers, hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, back, and legs hurt. I won’t type much today. Rest is my friend. Pictures soon.

Last night we woke up in the middle of the night and had sex, like we do. When we were done and cuddling I had one of those wonderful, sadly rare, moments of complete calm. I am where I want to be. I am doing what I want to do. I am loved. It will all work out ok. Not everyone is so blessed. Feeling ok is so nice. I want more of that.

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.

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.

Perspective is everything.

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Yesterday I spent a while talking to a woman who has been fighting/is slowly dying of cancer. When she got the diagnosis her plan was to not fight and just go when it was her time. Then her grandson got engaged and she wanted to be at the wedding. Then her grandson knocked up his long-term partner just before the wedding so even though the wedding already happened she just doesn’t quite want to go yet… even though she is very tired.

Let me fucking tell you I did not burden this woman with my problems. It was fascinating to listen to her though. Why does she decide that suffering is worth it? She is at a point where she isn’t sure she has fight left in her. Does that mean anything bad about her will to live? How much will to live should anyone have? She is already in her 70’s. She has had a good life.

I got married and had children because I wanted to believe there was a way I could have those things and have it be different than what I have known. I have managed to have a very different relationship. It requires me to be isolated most of the time because I can’t handle more stress. But I’m doing what I wanted.

When I’m done with this isolated early-childhood experience my children will be socialized the way I want and they will have a very secure attachment from which to go out into the world. I don’t think they are mine to control forever. I just think I am not capable of keeping them safe if there are too many factors in our lives. I lose track of what the left hand is doing if my right hand has to multi-task eight things.

She asked me a lot of questions about what I am doing with the kids. Why am I home schooling? Why do I believe the things I believe about early childhood development. I had answers. Lots of answers. Non-depressing answers! I was proud of myself. I told her at one point, “I’m usually Debbie Downer but I’ve been chipper this whole conversation so I’m pretty proud of that.” She laughed. Overall talking to her was a delightful experience.

The older I get the less people hate me for being weird. I don’t need anyone else to accommodate me any more. When children are weird it creates random and unpredictable work for adults. That is very annoying.

Yesterday I was told that having a big garden is one of the best things I can do as a parent. When my kids misbehave–make them weed. It is productive, non-painful, but always has to be done. Excellent advice. Ha.

I find that older women listen to why I home school and think for a bit then they say, “I wish I had had the courage to keep my children with me. Go you.” I’ve heard that a lot. I’m not sure it is about courage, exactly. I am this selfish. It has taken a long time for me to realize that a certain level of being selfish is utterly required for a human being to have a happy life. Some people are “altruistic” to such a degree that it is actually quite selfish.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would take for me to make the jump to seriously not wanting to die in a permanent way. I mean, I don’t have a choice about dying some day. It is the universal equalizer. How do I stop wanting to be done?

I haven’t had suicidal ideation in a few days. More than a week? It’s kind of hard to track because the closer attention I pay to tracking it the more present it is.

What would have to change in me, what feeling of security would I need to have in order to really want to live? Noah feels sad that he isn’t enough. He isn’t. Noah represents too much potential pain. I trust him more as the years go by. I didn’t think that a man would ever be able to spend time around me without requiring degrading sex. He doesn’t. I don’t really know what to make of him.

I’ve been writing more letters to Noah’s family. Doing so always makes me feel sad. I tell them things because I wish I could tell my mom. I’ve been thinking about my mom every day. Lots of grieving left to do there. I am so sorry, Mommy. I know I have hurt you so much. Maybe in the end I have hurt you more than my Dad did. I feel so bad about that. I’m sorry.

The only way I know how to move the pain away from you is to take it on or move it to my children. The only way you know how to deal with pain is to blame children and say everything bad is all their fault. Even though the bad started before they were born. I can’t let you do that to my daughters. I just can’t.

My children believe that everyone makes mistakes and we have to forgive one another but you are not to blame for actions that are not yours. Not ever. If you are not the one who did something then you should not be punished. Period.

That’s on the long list of reasons I can’t send my kids to public schools. Teachers have to punish whole groups or whole classrooms because they can’t single kids out every time there is a problem. No. Just no. I don’t think they would be destroyed. Yes many generations of Americans have lived through it and “everyone is fine”. I don’t want it for my kids. I’m not fine.

Solving yesterday’s problems. That is what I am doing. It isn’t right. It isn’t fair. It is what everyone does.

I like talking to older people. I more or less beg them to tell me that there are stages of life with less pain coming. Near as I can tell the pain shifts. I will have less emotional pain and more physical pain. I can handle that trade. That won’t be worth dying over. I feel like a loser but I will take physical pain over emotional pain every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Why do you think I cut for so many years?

I was brave yesterday. The person who is building stuff in my yard has a lot going on. I completely respect that. I get that he has five thousand things pulling at him. But every time he comes he gets slightly less done than he hoped to do and he rarely stays for more than two hours at a go. (I track everything.) He originally told me my list of projects would take ~5 days. He is about halfway through those hours. I asked him if he could come more days over the next week because I would really like the yard uhm, neat enough to clean up before the birthday party. Right now I keep hurting myself tripping on lumber in the back yard.

Why is this brave? Because I feel like a fucking asshole for asking him for more times of showing up but once he is done then I won’t have to pester him any more. It is hard to say that I want him to treat me like a priority so he can get this over with and move on. But he’s been coming since February for five days of work and it is August. Time to finish up. I’m not mad. I just want it to be done.

It is hard to ask for things. It is hard to not feel like an overly-demanding harpy. I don’t know if I have been or not. I think I am going to stop hiring people I know for work. I can’t be demanding with them if I otherwise know the circumstances of their lives yet I feel like I really want to be able to be demanding when I am paying someone to do something. Conundrum. (The work he is doing is beautiful. I really appreciate all of his labor. I am not slamming this man in any way shape or form. I’m sorry I am so impatient. Please don’t be mad at me, L.)

Today I need to clean. I’m pretty sure I never cleaned the house in July. I don’t think I vacuumed once. (To be honest now I mostly vacuum before a crawling baby comes over. I only did the once a day thing while my kids were eating floor candy.) I haven’t swept or mopped in a long time. (Thank goodness for a good exterminator getting rid of the ants. Ha.) I have kept up with dishes and laundry because those things getting out of control is just too hard for me. I took pictures at the worst of the mess because K feels so insecure about my ability to keep my house clean all the time. Ha. No, it isn’t clean all the time. I just make sure that I keep little enough stuff in my house that everything has a home and everything can be picked up and put away in under three hours. Or I would want to beat the shit out of someone.

If it took eight hours to clean my house I would be homicidal. It would not be ok with me. No one has the fucking right to expect that much labor from me on a given day. I don’t know where my entitlement comes from. But man I don’t want a bigger house.

The longer I stay in one place the more I like it. The more I feel like I am picking out behavior traits from a menu that was not previously available to me. “Feel content–check.” It isn’t that I am “happy” all of the time. I’m not sure I am physiologically capable of being “happy” all of the time. I spend too much time scared or angry. But I feel secure. I feel safe. I feel content. I feel like I have done such work as deserves pride. I’m not Rembrandt but my house is neat. My yard is fun. It is small and packed with interesting things to do. I make it more interesting by the year.

(Seriously, I spend a lot of time hiding in the blue potato vine secret club house. I pull a chair in there and read during the heat of the day. It is perfectly cool and shaded and surrounded by pretty flowers. I feel so lucky to have the life I have.)

It is kind of funny to notice that I feel anxiety about “not having a job” because I feel like I am letting the sisterhood down. But uhm, the sisterhood has by and large not been great to me as an individual. I’m loudly feminist. I am supporting the Cause and all. Isn’t it ok for each of us to choose what makes us happy? What load we can bear?

I keep thinking that I want to start observing the Sabbath. Not in a believing in anything kind of way. More from a “no technology and no work from sundown to sundown” sort of thing. Human beings need rest. We are bad at observing that. Keeping the Sabbath is actually a very physiologically healthy thing. Then follow that by walking to the farmers market on Sunday morning? That feels like a recipe for increased health compared to what I have always known.

Reduce the harm you inflict on yourself. Step by step, bit by bit. I’m trying. (Every single time I stop and notice that the pain in my abdomen is gone since I stopped drinking carbonated water I feel a bit more stupid. Wow. We really do cause our own misery; we usually don’t understand how we are doing so but we do.)

Ok, people with lifelong disabilities will hate me for that. No, not everything that happens to someones body is their own fault. As a culture Americans are spectacularly bad about causing physical problems through our choices. Walking away from that line of thinking now.

The woman I spoke with yesterday asked me what I get out of thinking through past mistakes. I said it is very important to me to make 10,000 mistakes instead of 10 mistakes 1,000 times each. She laughed. I told her I have the kind of family that makes 10 mistakes. I don’t know how to change that pattern without being very aware of it. I’m not making the same mistakes I used to make–not at all.

Well, there is that whole existentially an asshole thing. But come on, who is paying attention to that as a mistake? That’s mostly considered a personality bug at this point. A very useful one that I don’t trot out much any more. I don’t think I will ever be willing to give up on it. I just try not to inflict it on non-deserving people.

I think I will always be prone to shouting at people who have the audacity to say racist and sexist things to me. I don’t think I have the desire to stop reacting. I don’t want to be one more silent person. Silence is consent. I’d rather be an asshole.

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.

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.

Make art.

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-In the next month I will be painting a fence belonging to a fairly random neighbor.

-I asked my daughters swim school if I could bring in sketches for a mural in their space and they are enthusiastic.

-I am working on a logo for the new Hayward Hackspace because I was asked to make it.

-I want to repaint my kitchen. It is bugging me. I have a weird thing on my ceiling post-light replacement so I need to fix it. I will probably redo the whole kitchen because it was never finished last time. I have a lot of ideas.

And to think about five years ago I would have sworn up and down that I am not creative.

How does your garden grow?

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If I’m feeling blue I just need to think about what I am growing. For edibles I have (in no particular order): tomato, celery, spinach, mustard, sweet peppers, chard, potatoes, sweet potatoes, apple tree, cherry tree, plum tree, orange tree, grapes, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, artichoke, asparagus, corn, parsley, oregano, basil, sage, rosemary.

Today I added pumpkin and carrot and cucumber and watermelon seeds.

In the non-eating realm I have blue potato vine, seven different kinds of roses, jasmine, marigolds, mums, japanese lanterns (that’s what I’ve been told to call them), several kind of lily’s, geraniums, many cacti, and a few I can’t remember the names for them. I have a few other trees and a privet hedge.

I don’t live on a big piece of land. I just use what I have.

I don’t feel capable of figuring out human relationships very well. So I will grow things. I’m not good at keeping house plants alive but I like to grow food. Maybe I will get into house plants once my kids are bigger and less likely to throw all the dirt on the floor. We’ll see. Life is long.

Things are growing well here in Wonderland. It is hard to keep that in mind sometimes. Despite my emotional turmoil and tumultuousness–my life is going really well. I like my house more by the year. I may forgo a trip to Portland and stay home this summer and paint my house. Going to Disneyland reminded me that if you want things to look pretty good all you need to do is refresh the paint.

I feel like I am constructing my nest. I am constructing my frame. If I am going to exist in the world I want there to be a place that exemplifies me. I was here. I touched things. I changed them. Maybe I made them better. I don’t want to be easy to wipe away.

When my uncle died I bet it took them at least six full dump truck loads to get rid of all his shit. But once you finish the dump truck loads it is like he was never there. He didn’t make anything. He just held on to stuff for a while. None of it was his, really. His stuff owned him.

If you want to get rid of all the impact I have on the world all you will need is a few coats of paint and/or a bulldozer. But I hope that the first impulse people have is not to haul away all the crap.

I hope that when I die people will be glad to have well established food plants and a piece of property that was lovingly maintained. I hope that someone values what I have done with my effort.

If I get to write the story that is how it will go. I will live in this house until I am a very old woman. I will change it. When I either die or decide I don’t want to cook ever again I hope that a young family will buy this house. I hope that children will eat the blackberries and blueberries and be glad that I planted them.

That is what I hope.

My children are enjoying the food in the meantime. I’m trying to talk them into letting the berries ripen but so far stuff isn’t making it full to ripe. There is much joy to be had in any case.

We have lots things to do. Lots of plants to plant. I’m totally not using my yard efficiently. Give me a few decades. I’m not done yet. When I close my eyes I know what it will look like when I am old. I’m working for that. This feels like the only thing I get to decide to HAVE CONTROL OVER in this lifetime. I don’t get to decide much about anything else–I’m just along for the ride.

My garden is more beautiful by the year. Time. Effort. I have those to give. I have at least fifteen more years of being in the house a lot. I really hope I am mostly done planting by then. Or at least I will know the schedule well. It will be in my bones.

I want that feeling. I want it as bad as I’ve ever wanted anything. I want to feel that connection to a place progressing through the fullness of time.

I will have it, damnit.

And then! We paint.

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Today some of the home schooling folks came over. We painted my house. Nine kids between the ages of 2 and 11 and two moms (including me–we did clean up not major painting) produced some pretty fun stuff. I particularly like that the butterfly/rainbow are right at eye level when I sit at the table to eat. And just off my line of sight it says “Love You”. I’m glad I did this.

Living in one place is weird.

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I went for a run yesterday. It was a very interrupted run. First a guy stopped me to flirt with me. (That was weird. But he was quite hot so I wasn’t upset.) I ran from that conversation (because I was on a run not because I was scared) playing with my wedding ring. “Soooooo married. Not available. Not hunting. I SWEAR.”

Then I went to the ATM. That adds a lot of minutes to my run time. Then I ended up in several long conversations with other neighbors. One saw me out and about. “Hey! We haven’t seen you in a while! I thought you were mad at me!” Clearly by the facial expression this is something he has experienced severe anxiety about. Whoa. No. I just hibernate in winter. Since we live near one another we should talk about it so that next year you don’t feel upset again.

Another neighbor said he knows the lady with the fence I want to paint on well. He is going to walk over and talk to her with me today so that I look less like a random crazy nut. That project idea might actually work out. I’m pretty excited.

The neighbor who will help me ask about the fence also spent a long time telling me stories yesterday. About WWII and about growing up on a subsistance farm going to a one room school house. I told him that I should come over with a tape recorder so I can transcribe his stories. They shouldn’t be lost to the world and he’s getting really old and worrying about his mortality. I get the impression he is already much older than he expected to get. He’s looking forward to dying.

It’s really weird being as “out” as I am. It’s weird having my late 70-something neighbor say, “So, what do you write? Novels?” Err, no. “So it’s a journal?” “Well I do that too but that’s not exactly what the book was. The book is about incest and rape. I have to process all that happened to me when I was a child. When I talk to women like me they say that you either have to get this processing over with in your 30’s or it will haunt you in your 60’s. I don’t want to be haunted forever. I want to do my work and move on.”

His expression was uhm incredulous? Shocked? Horrified? “If you have things like that you need to work on then yes this is a good time to work on them. Wait. You are in your 30’s? Oh good grief.”

So the incest part was sorta skimmed over but the fact that I am only 31 blew his mind. People are funny.

One of the reasons that believing you are unliked is a problem is because it leads you to treat people dismissively. If you assume that you don’t matter to people then one is rarely considerate. One becomes considerate about ones own impact after one has learned what that impact is.

These guys like seeing me. We aren’t big parts of one another’s lives but they feel sad when I don’t come by. That’s… kind of weird. Oh. How did I become a fixture in your life? How did I become something that you kind of depend on? I don’t know how to manage that. I manage my relationships by ensuring that no one depends on me to “just show up” because often I can’t. That’s the thing about just living near someone. Relationships work out randomly. You get what you get.

So far there are approximately thirty walking kids invited to my house for Easter. Let’s see how this goes. There are more babies invited as well but I don’t count them in my egg number. Right now I have five eggs per kid. I’m sure I will turn up with a few more eggs for hiding. How did we come to know so many kids? Wow. And I did *not* just invite the whole home schooling group. I invited everyone I could think of off the top of my head. Which means I probably missed some people and I will hurt some feelings. I swear to goodness I was trying to just do a sweep of kid-having people. Yes, some of you won’t come. Well sheesh for being Jewish and having relatives in a different state. It means people aren’t at my beck and call. What’s up with that? I’m kidding. You are invited because if you are available I want to see you. Not being available isn’t my business.

This is our fourth Easter egg hunt. Whoa. My yards are way cooler this year than they have ever been before. I will have a lot of fun with the hunt. The party will be anxiety city (This is a remarkably diverse group of people I have invited. Ahem.) but watching the kids will be fun. I just have to pray that none of the parents end up hating me for knowing such a diverse group of people. Ha. Some of the people from the home schooling group I don’t know well yet. Who knows what might offend them. Oh well.

The neighbor with the cool story has lived in his house since 1973. Before Noah or I were born. I want my house to look very different after I have lived in it for forty years. It won’t be a boring tract house with a plain lawn. No thanks. Not my style. I can’t afford to go buy a house that is as interesting as I would want. So I’ll build it. Good thing I’m handy and have time to spare.

I have been having fun lately with revealing things I’m good at. People are surprised. Why is it so fucking surprising that I am good with power tools? Freakin sexist men. “Wow. You finished your garage?” Yes. I had help from someone bigger and stronger than me (read: an AWESOME guy) because I simply can’t lift drywall over my head like that but I did a lot of the work, yes. It’s not rocket science. (For the record: I know rocket scientists. If I felt like it I could totally learn what they know. They aren’t intimidating any more once you talk to them for a few minutes.) Then I did the painting. A few friends helped with painting the ceiling. I look up and see clouds and smile and think of those friends. Even though he doesn’t like me any more.

I had a terrible dream about P!nk getting in a car accident. I almost never dream so this bothered me a lot. I think I worry about her kid not getting to grow up with her. I don’t know why I personalize it but I do.

It’s fun trying to figure out how I am going to live here and take up space here. I don’t know what I will be when I grow up yet. But I will be quite distinctive. I know that much.

Plants are personal.

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Not eating sugar is hard. There is hidden, extra sugar in freakin everything. I’m trying. And I’m not being a fascist with the kids. When other people hand them sugar when we are out I don’t say anything.

Today is a gardening day. And my friend’s husband is coming tonight. I’m going to get a whole bunch of work done. I can feel my heart go pitter patter. It is hilarious how happy getting work done makes me. Slowing the inevitable decline of my house makes me feel better about living in it. It’s a thing.

I’ve been doing a lot of gardening. I really want to put up pictures of my yard. If I’m good I may do it today. I’ve made a lot of progress lately. I will be putting out word that I have more starts than I need pretty soon. The lavender is taking off. I’m going to have almost a dozen plants out of this batch. I’m going to have 40+ tomato plants. Over a dozen chard plants. Those are the ones I have massively popping up so far. I think the parsley is taking off. Lots of carrots are coming up outside. The celery looks happy. Artichokes are doing great. We pulled the flowers off the blueberry bush because you shouldn’t let it fruit the first year.

Lots going on in the yard. I would really like showing off. But I’m bad at taking pictures so I dislike posting what I take. Oh well. Get over it.

I need to write the Easter egg hunt email. I’m thoroughly excited about this year. This is our fourth hunt. I think this will be the first one with a lot of kids. I’ve been hoping that one of these years we would hit critical mass. The hunt is the day after I drive back from Portland. I think this year will be pot luck. And I have to have the house completely ready before we leave. The only thing I will have to do is get up Sunday morning and hide the eggs. You can’t do that in advance anyway. It’ll be fun.

I feel like I live my life preparing for events. That’s how I structure my time. “X event is in Y days so I should do Z work so I am ready.” I check in with my calendar multiple times of day. I keep long task lists for separate areas of endeavor (yard, cleaning, crafty-schtuff, cooking, etc) and I move back and forth between the lists as my priorities shift. Sometimes, when I’m feeling lonely I think about taking pictures of alllll the lists next to one another because it amuses me. But I feel weird about it so I don’t.

Which is to say: I live in an era of over-exposure and I know that everything I put into the world becomes part of how people judge me. How much of my insanity do I want to reveal? Shaping an identity comes in inches. I think it is funny that I have considerably less compunction about writing graphic sexual stories than I have about posting pictures of my gardening.

My gardening is actually personal. I am slowly working towards an image in my mind. I have plans. I am creating something. I am creating something that I want to see for the sole reason that I want to see it. I am being very selfish. I am using a tremendous amount of time and energy.

It feels really good. I will get to hide here for the rest of my life. And I will make it beautiful. That is personal.

Most of the time when I have fucked people it hasn’t been very personal. Probably 80% of my partners were fewer than four uhm occasions. Around 60% were once. I didn’t know them. They don’t know me. They don’t want to know me. I have had sex with somewhere between 120-130 people.

Sex is a physical need. Also, I have spent a lot of my life trying to get through one more night. I grew up with the belief that I should be constantly searching for a sex partner and tolerating inappropriate contact from men. Being married and having kids means that I have the “acceptable model” to kind of default into. It does happen to be a relatively healthy model.

I’m not interested in spending all of my time out being entertained. That sounds like a lot of work and a lot of money to me. I don’t want my children to look at the environment around them as owing them entertainment. They need to create their own entertainment. That’s life. You have to create what you want to see in the world. How are you going to do that? My kids do some really cool things with play silks. They have a lot of time to fill.

I’m excited about the idea of charter school money. I know what the standards are. I know how to measure them. I know how to introduce concepts. It doesn’t require curriculum. It can just happen.

And I forgot to hit post again. That’s ok. Tomorrow will be festive as well. Tomorrow is my last day of incest support group. I’m relieved.

Suicidal ideation

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I love getting eight hours of sleep by 3am. It makes my whole day better. It makes my whole life better. Then I am more cheerful and enthusiastic about what I have to do. I consider it the first thing I must do in a day in order to have a good day. The second thing I must do in order to have a good day is get more than 75% of my chores done by 9am. I have a thing in my head.

I participate in a variety of online support groups–or rather I have over the years, not so much at this second–and it has been a fairly big thing for me over the past ten years “I am more productive by 9am than a great many people are all day.” It’s a thing in my head. I work very hard on it. That way I feel I have the freedom to do with the rest of the day as I please.

Pretty much every online support group has strict rules about talking about suicide. Really, pretty much everyone everywhere believes it isn’t ok to talk about–especially if you are seriously thinking about it.

My furnace dries out the air terribly. I’ve spent all winter coughing and hacking and feeling unhappy about it since I moved into this house. Now my kids join me. So they’ve been waking up a lot at night. It means I have a lot of time in the middle of the night to think about them and to think about suicide and for me to think about what happiness means.

There are a lot of parenting books on the market that will tell you that you are bad bad doomed if you have children because you want to give yourself a reason to live. BAD. DON’T DO THAT! That’s what the books say.

To that I say: becoming a parent is always a selfish decision. Why is my selfish decision worse than yours? I have promised myself and my kids that I will absolutely not kill myself until they are adults because they require care and I am the one who has to give it. I have to say that it gets easier by the year. I’m learning what happiness feels like.

I know a lot of people who work very hard to ensure that they don’t have to “deal with” their kids in the middle of the night. Gosh that is my favorite time. I love feeling like my mere presence keeps the monsters at bay. Because I do. In Calli’s mind and in Shanna’s mind if I am in the room then they are safe and life is good. That’s just the end of the debate.

That feeling is better than every drug I have ever taken and I’ve tried a really lot of drugs. A lot. A really lot. Ha. But I did the vast majority of my drug taking (other than this stoner thing) in under two years after I was a college graduate. Let me get on my pulpit for a second to lecture anyone younger than me about how you should wait until your brain is done forming before you use drugs. Wait until your brain decides which connections it wants before you break sections. Just do. I’m serious. You have a long fucking life in front of you. You don’t need to try everything in the first twenty years. Good grief.

I have never believed that I had a long life ahead of me. I have wanted to die since I was seven years old. For the past twenty-four years I have wanted to be dead more than I have wanted to be alive. Well, I would say that the percentages kind of rock back and forth staying in the 40’s and 50’s. I wanted to die a lot and I didn’t want to live very much but actually killing yourself is harder than it looks sometimes. I did not overdose as a teenager as a cry for help. I simply vomited up the drugs and was found before I could finish dying. Different.

Now I’m really glad I’m not dead. I feel like getting to sleep with my little girls, with their faces pressed to mine as they mumble over and over while falling asleep, “Mommy love you so much. So much. Sooooooooo much” this is the reason that people live. This feeling of love and happiness. This is why people stay alive. The hope of this. The belief that some day they will get to have this feeling. This is the increased joy that parents have that non-parents don’t get. That is one of those things they find in studies. Over a lifetime parents have more joy than non-parents–a shitload more stress too… but it’s worth it.

I never thought I would actually experience having someone love me like this. I believed this would always be for someone else. I’m very concerned that I not alienate my children… ever. I have to behave appropriately in order to deserve a relationship with them. But I’m not very good at acting appropriately.

Sometimes I feel like the biggest fucking hypocrite in the world when I get mad at my kids for breaking rules. Ha.

I told Shanna, about the stealing candy thing, it is my job to teach you the rules of society. I get angry because I feel afraid. If you steal as an adult there are serious consequences. I have to teach you that it is not a good thing to steal or the rest of your life will be harder and you will have a lot of very unpleasant experiences. I don’t want you to suffer. How can we work on you not doing this? I told her that I really don’t know “how this should be taught” because when I was a child the way I was taught was to be hit. I don’t want to hit her and I’m not really sure what the other options are and I feel kind of overwhelmed sometimes as I try to deal with it. I’m sorry I scream so much. I know it is annoying or scary depending on the day.

I asked her if she knew that how much I love her is completely unaffected by whether or not she perfectly follows the rules. I do not perfectly follow the rules and I hope she will always love me. She told me that somewhere else there are kids who always do exactly what their mothers say and they never break rules. I laughed and said those must be the most boring, uncurious children on the planet and how sad for their mothers’. She looked very confused.

I have not thought about killing myself in a bit. Certainly weeks. But I was asked to reaffirm that I understand and will follow the rules of forums and I WILL NEVER POST THAT I AM FEELING SUICIDAL. Thus I am thinking about the concept though I am not experiencing it. I have felt shamed and bad for being suicidal for pretty much my entire life. I’m aware that people are uncomfortable with the fact that I feel this way and their discomfort is the most important thing here.

Talking about it, or not, has not even slightly increased my self-harming behaviors. Over time my self-harming behaviors have kind of melted away. I’m not hurting myself anymore, I’m really not. It was a process I had to go through. I had to be whiny and angsty and I had to really process how much I wanted to die. This process is simply part of being alive for me. I understand that other people don’t like it. I feel very uncomfortable about being told over and over and over and over that because I make other people feel uncomfortable when I talk about it I shouldn’t talk about it.

Well, how much do you enjoy being surprised by someone offing themself? Wouldn’t you have preferred a warning? Dude, seriously.

P!nk has a song on her new album about drinking and doing drugs and running away and I feel suicide is strongly implied. I really appreciate it when people admit in public that this struggle is part of their life. The song is The Great Escape and I listen to it a lot right now. I’ve been thinking about how I understand this whole “creation of something new” thing now that I didn’t understand before. I have a family now. I have never had one before. Oh wow. This is how they are supposed to look? I’ve been thinking about having something to live for.

It’s really interesting watching how the percentages change. Feeling suicidal vs. wanting to live. That’s a ratio I’ve been actively tracking for most of my life. I have visualized it a lot of different ways over time. These days I think wanting to die falls into the teens. I’m very happy about that. That’s a ridiculous amount of progress for me.

But I’m not supposed to talk about it. I’m not supposed to be graphic about my ongoing struggles to not kill myself. Someone else might feel uncomfortable. Welcome to my sandbox, motherfucker. Here the rules are that I get to talk about whatever gets me through the night. If I am sitting here and writing something then I am not cutting. I am not hitting my body against a large blunt object. I am not soliciting some piece of shit to hurt me. I am not offering up sex to people I don’t know just to get through the night without having to be alone.

I’m not alone. I really love that my kids need me in the middle of the night because I need them in the middle of the night. I need to feel love in the middle of the night. I need to feel wanted. I need to feel like it matters that I not die.

The passion and the pain are going to keep you alive someday. I honestly don’t know how someone in my position would work through this without children. I can understand putting off the decision to die because you still have things you want to do–that is more or less the path I was on pre-kids. I made deals with myself, “I want to do ____. ____. and ____ then it doesn’t matter.” I was very selfish and random about the deals over the years and that’s ok. It was a deal with me about how much pain I have to endure.

That’s the plain and simple reality behind my suicidal ideation. Do I or don’t I get to decide how much pain I have to be in? Am I or am I not in charge of this decision? I think this is where I make the jump to atheism entirely.

I want to be the one who decides when my pain ends. I hold that right. I consider it one of my basic rights. Other animals do the same thing. It is natural just like infanticide is natural. It exists in every species. In America there are approximately thirty seven children killed by their parents every week. You don’t see headlines very often. Every fucking week.

Parenting is hard but I fucking guarantee you that no part of this journey has been remotely as difficult as what came before it so I’m still coasting. My second labor was nine days long followed by a blood hemorrhage that left me unable to walk to the bathroom for weeks. I crawled. Otherwise I simply did not leave my bed. But my friend K delivered enough food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three weeks. It was a calm but peaceful period. I learned my baby. I didn’t mind the work. It was nice.

Life is about work. Life is about creating and the things you want to do. I freakin love Richard Scarry. Everyone is a worker. All the work must be done. Some of the work is not more honorable than anything else. There is a hierarchy in pay–that tends to exist because some jobs can be done by many people and some jobs can be done by smaller and smaller groups of people and when you have to compete for the talents of a small group… you have to pay a lot of money.

You have to think about those people. The ones who are so selfish. Wait… that’s my husband. He has spent our entire marriage working his ass off to increase his income. Isn’t that selfish? He didn’t do it until he had a reason to. He didn’t care enough to bother. He wasn’t driven by love of acquisition on its own. But now he has this wife with really expensive travel interests and uhm he has decided that he wants to provide for me. He knew that was who I wanted to be before we married.

He doesn’t want me to spend time wanting to die. He wants me to have a list of things I want to do that is really long and complex and it’s ok if it is also expensive–he knows I am overall frugal and I am providing for our long-term safety before I take travel money out. It’s cool. He told me so. Explicitly. He reminds me every few months. It’s weird but really cool. I appreciate how explicitly my husband wants me to be happy.

He wants to keep me. He thinks that the likelihood is higher if I have a sandbox where I can say whatever I want and not get kicked off a support forum for it. He gives me resources I don’t have to have in my head.

I feel like both of us really changed when we got married. We have someone to work for and that is a powerful motivator for both of us. It has been interesting to see as a progression. We get better and better at not hurting one another as we make mistakes and learn how to talk about them. We really don’t keep making the same mistakes over and over. We make new ones! heh

So, to continue on the P!nk trend: Slut Like You is fun. When you are looking to ensure that you don’t have to be alone tonight it dramatically changes how you act. The stakes are different. You’ll worry about tomorrow tomorrow. You have to get through tonight in order to get there.

I’m trying to figure out what mental hurdle I have to working on the books right now. I know I’m overwhelmed by life. I think that I’m just too tired to think. I need to have some reason for a deadline so I can plan around it. I’ll figure it out. I need to decide how much I want to have done by December so I can backwards plan.

I need to feel like I am moving towards what I want to be moving towards. Right now I feel pretty out of control of my schedule. I’m not sure how to change that. Well no. That’s a big fat lie. I know how to change it. I am changing it. This is a process. The schedule will be back to being shaped how I need it to be shaped in about another two weeks. Then we leave town for a week. See how this goes? Oh man.

Portland, we are practically doing a drive-by. March 25th we drive north towards Eugene. We are sleeping there because the kids will be sick of the car. We are aiming to arrive at Dad’s house at 6pm on Tuesday the 26th. We are spending the day with Aunt Cookie, a truly delightful woman. I have an intense interest in hearing stories about Noah’s family. They shape my story now. I don’t have many sources of information.

Wednesday during the day we don’t have plans and we will probably want to go do something fun. Not sure what yet. Wednesday we should hang out with Dad. Thursday and Friday we are hanging out with A. Ha. I haven’t even emailed her to confirm that yet. But she offered it to me. I’m taking it. (pause. email sent.) We will spend Thursday and Friday nights walking around Dad’s neighborhood talking to him and playing with kids. On Saturday we drive allllllll the way home. With four kids who have had a long week and who will not be happy about being in the car. Thank goodness for iPads. Ha.

What we ask of our children is not natural. How we have to deal with the constraints of their lives is not natural. But beating them isn’t a better option. Sometimes you can’t let them have the pace of travel that is appropriate for them. You have to just get there. It is hard but life is that way sometimes.

Once upon a time travel involved physical exertion… even sitting in a wagon is fairly labor intensive compared to a car. We provide these children padded worlds of strapped in boredom. I am not capable of being entertaining for a twelve hour drive. Not even in shifts because then my “off” shift would be driving and I would have a stroke from road rage. That is not in anyone’s best interests. No, my kids can’t entertain themselves for that long. I understand that this is a tragic failing. Never the less… we are going to use them. They can’t use them for the whole trip so there will be other entertainment involved. It’ll work out. It will be one long day of our lives. No big deal. I’m trying to psych myself up for the trip. I’m trying to lay out in advance how much energy I am going to need for various stages. I’m trying to figure out how I will do it without getting punchy about having to teach my kids new situational manners over and over and over for a week solid. It’s a pain but worth it in the long run.

I need my kids to understand how to evaluate for situational manners. I need to consciously talk about how I am evaluating everything around me for clues about how I should behave. I do this every time we travel. It’s a lot easier at Disneyland because there are a lot of “let loose” places. We are going to be moving between environments that will have wildly different “grown up” rules that are going to feel unfair or inappropriately constricting because they aren’t used to those rules. I’m going to be tested over and over. It’s going to be fun.

But this is the whole process of life. I want to teach them how to do this while smiling. I want this trip to be a happy and joyful memory. Shanna is probably going to actually remember this trip for a long time. We will take pictures. She may eventually remember the pictures more than the day but she will have the same kind of connection to these people that I have to Brittney, the little girl who was born four months before me across the street from my family. I was set in my baby carrier next to her in her baby carrier. I have pictures of us when we are two and three and four and seven and and…

I want my kids to have that. I hope they never lose it.

I didn’t think I would lose Brittney. It is hard finding out how unforgivable existing is. Oh, that’s not true I would be told. I am allowed to exist. But I must be silent so no one ever has to actually find out the specifics because oh man that is over the line. The book. The fucking book. I’m having trouble going back through and editing. This is why I paid an editor. Unfortunately after reading the Kindle edition I am entirely unsatisfied with the job she did and I feel fairly back at square one. I thought I was getting an editor but what I got was a copyeditor and that’s a different job.

I wanted technical editing. I wanted someone to give me feedback on flow and let me know where I am being vague and random. I wanted someone to look at it as a work of art to be made better with a few tweaks. Ahhhhh. I get it now. I did get that. That’s what I asked for. She didn’t make many suggestions for changes. She treated it like it was sacrosanct as a poor incest victims story. It was allowed to ramble and be weird.

Ack. But then people don’t want to buy it and it isn’t actually telling the story I want to tell. I can’t always see when I’m doing that without this ridiculous analytical reading that is really hard to do. A page takes me multiple hours. Actually reading something and dealing with the errors is god damn fucking hard work. Why do you think the overall production values of everything in the everything has gone down? (And why I make no promises about my blog entries. These are not polished pieces, yo.)

But the book was supposed to be. And it so clearly isn’t. I feel kind of morally offended by that. In order to motivate that kind of interest you either need a True Fan or someone who is going to make money off the writing. I had neither. Such is life. I’m slowly progressing on editing. It’s hard. I need to set specific goals and plow through it though. Bleh. Yuck. Bleh.

I am running. I’m tired and I’m switching my days for workouts around like crazy but I’m getting through everything. I have a 10k at the end of April. So far my standard for 5ks has been “I pray for under forty minutes”. I’m hoping to do the 10k in eighty minutes.

That means maintaining a standard pace just barely faster than 1km in eight minutes. That means .62 miles in eight minutes. That means I’ll have to run at least 11:50 through the whole damn race. That is way way way faster than I did the marathon. (My marathon average was 15:40/mile. I’m serious when I say I walked a marathon. I’m still hella proud.)

This pace is going to be a huge stretch for me. My race partner may have a different set of goals and staying together is more important than time to me. Additionally: I’m all for wimping out at mile five and crawling the last mile if I feel bad. Flexibility.

What is the goal: the method or the result? Let’s be clear that when it comes to crossing six miles of distance speed vs. just reaching the finish line is a very different set of goals. I no longer fear not reaching the finish line physically… unless I push myself too hard. I am not in amazing physical shape. I’m in good shape. But I’m not an experienced athlete. I have ramped up at a pretty reasonable rate all things considered.

Every body is where it is. You can’t be too hard-lined about “goals” because progress not perfection kind of trumps any stuck on points. It is quite possible I’m not physically capable of running that fast for that long… yet. I may have to work longer before I reach that goal. I sure as fuck would not have been able to do the marathon at that pace. Not given the conditions (high eighties in temperature, high eighties in humidity, really terrible air quality, I started my period at mile thirteen along with horrible cramps). I just couldn’t expect different from myself that day.

I have to still be alive tomorrow to try again. I have to make it to today. If the pace is more important than anything else I might injure myself and then there won’t ever be another try no matter what. And maybe the rest of my life will be a lot harder. Because I was stupid and careless because I don’t care very much if I continue to stay alive.

I really can’t do that any more. Not if I want to be here for more nights of “I love you soooo much”. I want that more than I want anything else. So I will learn how to be good to my body. So I can have as many of those nights as I can.

The passion and the pain are going to keep you alive some day.

I should probably go start breakfast.

No one ever knows the long-term value of what they do. That knowledge is given to no creature. If I want to be a character that has existed then there must be record of that. Only I care to create that record. Noah is invested in supporting this branch of growth on his family tree. He sees it as vital to his long-term success. I’m not sure how I snow balled him.

I think that talking about suicide is something I need to be able to do. My grandmother killed herself. She overdosed. She had been trying for decades. My mother has stories of cleaning up blood after she got home from school because her mother was cutting her wrists again. My brother killed himself. He left the residential care facility where he lived because he had a severe brain injury and would never be able to care for himself again. He walked to a gas station and bought a can of gasoline. He went behind a local grocery store and lit himself on fire. My father sat in the garage with the motor running.

Have I mentioned that I have turned my garage into a really nice room? Ok, technically I have done nothing permanent because city ordinance says it must be able to hold a car at all times and my response would be “give me three minutes and a person to help me move furniture”. That’s not a permanent room. But it’s a really nice place to hang out. There are not likely to be cars in here.

Harm Reduction means being honest about the patterns of behavior in your life. It means setting specific goals and working to reduce the harm you are inflicting on yourself. Usually you are inflicting the harm (hair pulling, cutting, biting your nails, drinking alcohol, picking at scabs, doing most recreational drugs including pot, any obsessive repetitive damage to your body really) because you are trying to relieve stress from some other place in your life.

Noah said he read an article claiming that the first person likely to live over a thousand years is probably alive today. Think about mortality. It’s changing. The brackets are shifting. Where do I want to be on that scale? I don’t want to live a thousand years. That sounds like work. I would rather just live. But I have a rather lot of decades of work in front of me.

What am I going to do when I grow up? I will probably experience an unprecedented to my species amount of freedom after my children are adults. I will still be married to this guy who thinks I am the best thing since sliced bread. I know the deall: there is some travel he wants to do and otherwise I have to do it alone and not be gone too long or too often. Too long is going to be tested a lot over the years as we figure out what that means.

Statistically speaking I am extremely likely to die by my own choice. Sometimes just sitting with that in the pit of my stomach is very hard. You know what they say about statistics? There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

I believe in self-fulfilling prophesies. I believe the only thing that ever can or has changed the world is someone deciding they want to do it. Yes, of course coalitions are awesome and all… but it takes individuals having a specific vision. A dream, if you will. Otherwise there is no call to exit one’s torpor and do anything. If you are not living up to your vision of yourself… what are you doing instead? Why is there a discrepancy? Are you realistically going to change your life?

Then either change or decide to be happy, right? Happiness isn’t about getting what you want it’s about enjoying what you have. I think I saw that on Pinterest recently.

I want security. I want to have roots. I want a place to come back to. I want community. I want to be allowed to exist without carefully following the rules about what I am or am not allowed to talk about. I like fully informed opt-in relationships.

Now I’m just procrastinating. It was nice to write. I haven’t spent this much time on it in a while. Sometimes it is funny to me the way that writing is one of the most purely satisfying activities I do. I have thought. There. Evidence. Ha. Take that Universe. I have taken up space. In a technological world I have taken up a space smaller than a pin head. Whoop.

But we never know what our impact will be. We have to just exist. And get out of our houses. That’s important whether you like it or not. To be honest I don’t like it very much but I try hard not to take my dislike out on the people who are randomly unlucky and happen to be standing next to me. It isn’t dislike of the people. It is dislike of being out of my house.

It took me a long time to understand that and really fully feel it. I enjoy my work here. I enjoy feeling like I am doing things to work towards my long-term happiness. I am enjoying the physical work and when I am older and less able to work hard I will get to sit in my garden in the shade and enjoy a lifetime of work. Hopefully while babysitting for grandkids who will visit a lot so that I get to know other children deeply.

Now I get it. Now a lot more things make sense to me.

But I have other things I need to do first. Like breakfast. Ugh.

Playing house and thinking about destiny

1 Reply

I have to say that typing my name into the url spot feels good. It’s like I finally have an online home. It’s my god damn sand pit. Excellent.

I have been enormously busy. In the past two days I finished the play house (well, I haven’t attached the planters and I haven’t got climbing plants established–but wood is done), built and mostly installed a raised bed. Started 36 plants indoors and I have a few new food plants coming up in front from the seed spread a few weeks ago. I never label when I do that so I have no forking clue what is growing until it’s done. It’s SCIENCE!

Inside the house I have kept up with the kitchen (doing so requires 2+ hours of work/day between cooking and cleaning), washed and/or folded seven loads of laundry. Cleaned up the whole floor so I could vacuum. I swept the kitchen and the kids scrubbed the linoleum for me (their idea–I swear) and after wiping up the big puddles with a towel the floor is as clean as with mopping so I’m happy.

I also took Shanna to dance class and I have spent 3-4 hours reading aloud over the past two days. I’ve watched three episodes of The West Wing and an interesting documentary called Whore’s Glory (it’s available instant on Netflix–this is how I get movies). If you don’t think white privilege exists go look at what it means to be a woman of color. They don’t have the same options for getting out.

In this country and in Europe prostitution can be a choice. The kinds of scenarios that exist in other countries isn’t enacted here in the same way.

White prostitutes by and large choose it. They may not make the choice with happiness and glee… but it’s a choice.

My great- grandmother was a prostitute and had an illegitimate daughter. My grandmother got “out” of that profession and into a marriage because she was able to blend into society and not be tarred by the brush of her mother.

In some countries if you are a whore you are locked into a ghetto. You are not allowed to leave that slum. Your children are raised there and aren’t really allowed to leave either. None of you have enough money to go anywhere anyway.

My mother was knocked up in high school. She graduated pregnant. She found someone to marry her weeks before the baby was born so that she wouldn’t really be a bastard. Even by 1969 it wasn’t a great situation. Much better than in the 1920’s when my great-grandmother did it.

My sister got married at seventeen had a baby at nineteen was divorced at twenty. Then she had another baby at twenty-two with “guy of the moment” because she didn’t want her kids spaced too far apart and she didn’t want just one. Then she was strongly admonished that she “should” have her tubes tied and she consented. No one in the hospital told her that the procedure wasn’t covered by the state medical plan. It took her more than ten years to pay for that surgery. My understanding is the main benefit has been that she has been able to have a lot of unsafe sex.

People do what they are taught and what they are allowed to do.

I was born into a family where I was not allowed to say no to sexual contact. It was beaten into me.

I am trying to create a family where no one has to do things they don’t want within reason. Like, if Shanna has ballet… sorry Calli you have to go too. Even though you don’t wanna. I understand. I’d like to stay home too.

So there has to be some compromising. But I want them to learn how to be very conscious and deliberate about those compromises. Your opinion matters and the only person who can advocate for you is you.

But there are a lot of boundaries. If you want to scream, that’s fine. Go outside or in the playroom with the door shut. You are not allowed to hurt me by screaming in my face.

It’s weird. I feel like I am negotiating all the time. And I constantly have to put a pause on the whole maelstrom in my head to go mediate some dispute and I have to act completely calm and fair and not scream and be matter of fact and… bleh.

But being able to deliver that consistently… that’s what the pot does.

I don’t know how to describe what it feels like to live in constant heart stopping terror as I go about my daily life because I don’t really think I have ever consistently not felt this way enough to tell the differences.

Sober I have many panic attacks in an average day. I can slow my heart rate through sheer force of will and breath control if I concentrate on it really hard but it makes me seem spacey and kind of dazed. I have to be really selfish and think about my body and it makes me snappy and impatient with everyone else. I often am heard to say “Just leave me alone” even though I know it’s not a good one. I need to develop a better script there but managing panic attacks is really fucking hard. They usually happen out in public where I have none of my usual coping methods.

My kids don’t need to have to learn to live their life around my agonizing stomach cramps. It doesn’t matter to them that I may vomit any minute if I’m not careful. I swallow a lot of bile because I don’t want to admit what is happening. Long-term it’s just not their problem.

The noise is a lot of it. When they get older we can have different discussions about noise but I’m really worried. Our house is loud all the time. We all like to talk. Hilariously, sometimes all four people will be in separate rooms shouting to be heard. I am having a really hard time with how we handle noise. And yet when I lower my voice Noah gets louder and I cringe more and my stomach hurts more and… ugh. It goes better if I try to match his excessive volume.

And the kids are very young and their volume control issues are normal and they are progressing in a completely normal developmental fashion and I need to just be nice about it. This is why people like the part about handing their kid off to another caretaker for most of the day. The noise is unbearable. Sometimes I make my children play out back. We live in California. Even in winter this is a reasonable thing to just go do in underwear. Vitamin D is good for you. And no I don’t put sunblock on any of us. I haven’t in years and I think I can count the number of times I’ve put sunblock on my kids on my fingers. Most of them in New Zealand for playing in the pool. That was necessary, dangit.

And last night I ran 2.67 miles in 31:08. I felt pretty happy about that. I am training for a 10k with my running buddy. We don’t live near one another so a lot of this training is separate but we will be able to practice together a few times. I’m looking forward to it.

I like feeling like getting and being stronger is something that I just do. So our 5k this month was 39 minutes. That means for our 10k we probably should pray we can <80 minutes. But it would be really fun to do it in <70 minutes. That would take actual work towards getting faster. Something I have traditionally been (ironically) steadfastly against. But the goal is different. We have ten weeks. That’s not shaving off a lot of time. If we took it seriously we could.

But it would mean treating out bodies like racing animals. It would mean meal planning for optimal nutrition. It would mean spacing out our exercising as it feels right for our body not for our schedule and hahahaha we will get it in when we can. It means consciously getting stronger alongside the running. Something I struggle with.

And it’s not like I have anything else on my mind at all. Or anything else to do. Why the hell not. Let’s just go with OCD thinking about my body again. CAUSE THAT LEADS TO LIFE BALANCE. Excuse me while I hack up a hair ball.

And my friend? She’s the kind of busy that makes it kind of seem like, “Hey stay at home mom… what is it you…do… all day?” Not that she is like that. But her life is very busy. She has a lot of balls in the air. Way more than I can handle. That’s ok! She’s not me. So it feels kind of extra special that I am getting so much of her attention for this period. Muahaha. I monopolize you for exercise motivation. I’m only kind of a loner. I get lonely.

I get to see Tay today. It’s going to be a great day. I have a life of ease and luxury. It is an accident that I have it this good. I really like having multiple days in a row where I don’t have to drive. I feel so much more physically relaxed. Being in the car is such a high stress load that it really doesn’t leave me with much on the other end. That feels pathetic. But I’ve gotten to stay home. I haven’t been in a car in over twenty four hours! It’s like a miracle. And I have worked. Things came into the house. They are finally resettling again. I get the general impression other people don’t get rid of things at the rate of 2-5 large garbage bags every month. It isn’t because I buy so much. We have generous grandparents. And a lot of old stuff. And figuring out how things work is a gradual process.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the stuff in my life. Why do I have any of it again? If I ask myself too often things disappear really fast. February is already a two bag month and I’m looking at things that are on top of the book shelves because I have nowhere else to put them and I’m feeling fussy. I don’t like looking at all the crap. Grrr Waaa kerflumph.

Tay is coming today and we have swimming. We might walk depending on how moods are going. And we aren’t going anywhere tomorrow. We might get to have three full days without the car in a row. It is really weird to think about. Children and adults need to exercise. The only reason to drive to swim practice is because it’s about 1.8 miles away and sometimes I don’t leave enough time to let the kids walk there. I really should just always plan my day around walking. That’s what their body needs. Mine too if I’m honest.

I have two choices right now. I can either be at the nursery when it opens and get work done before Tay arrives. Or I can take advantage of Noah being home and go to the gym for a dance workout class thing. I honestly think I will be happier with the dirt. Is that weird? This is why I don’t identify as a dancer. I do actually really joyfully describe myself as a gardner these days. I find it kind of ironic that in terms of time spent gardening is probably going to outpace theatre in a few months. I have already been semi-serious about gardening longer than I was really active in the bdsm community. I wonder how many years it will be before I have spent more hours of my life gardening than having sex. I think that will take a while longer. I’m actually looking forward to it.

I’m looking forward to being on the other side of a lot of these little clocks in my head. I am not quite counting the months until my father has been dead for more of my life than he was alive but almost. In three more years it will balance.

I think I’m going to go get myself some dirt. I’m feeling pretty grateful for my mother-in-law money right now. I just deposited one last Christmas check from my grandmother-in-law. $300. Today is the day I’m buying yellow roses. I have today and tomorrow to get them planted. It’s going to be a wonderful day.

I’m almost ready to take pictures. Almost. I’m not sure why I’m feeling so vulnerable about sharing but I am. My house is increasingly beautiful to me. Even the problems are things that I am looking at differently than other people. And I know what I will get to do round about the time I hit fifty if everything goes according to plan. And you know how life is about shit like that.

I don’t care if my words are judged. If anyone says anything mean about my house I will cry.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: house yay

Not a nice person.

Need a rest day.

Be thankful

Didn’t wake up crying.

Think about what you have.

Victory, pain, and Zen.

empty brain, go work.

it will be a busy weekend.

Caved.

Perspective is everything.

I feel lucky

The more things change…

Make art.

How does your garden grow?

And then! We paint.

Living in one place is weird.

Plants are personal.

Suicidal ideation

Playing house and thinking about destiny