I will definitely finish the 50K words for NaNoWriMo, but my hands hurt a lot. I am not going to die of cancer in the next year. I don’t need to finish the whole book this month. I don’t think trying to do that is good for my mental or physical health right now.

I’m struggling with vulnerability and emotional stability. When I lived in California I struggled with this. These are things I don’t handle well. I am having a hard time with the lack of pot, the knowledge that I really should stop drinking entirely (linked to 9 kinds of cancer), and I’m on duty around the clock with a lot of stress.

The house is a money pit. Once we get everything fixed (it feels like fucking everything) hopefully it will get easier, but it’s really stressful. Getting things here is super stressful. I’ve been waiting ALL FUCKING DAY for the delivery of baby gates to help with boundaries for multiple days but the company just isn’t getting around to me and they tell me I have to be available from 7:30am-9pm just in case they feel like getting to me that day.

If I write about my kids and what is going on with them there is potential judgment there that is a bigger problem than just shutting the fuck up and not getting support.

Boundaries are hard. Where do boundaries need to be placed to preserve relationships and where will boundaries mess up a relationship? I don’t know.

I don’t have a lot of adult contact in my life. There are a bunch of reasons for this and I’m not complaining about it–I’m just noticing that it’s part of the constellation of stress and anxious. I don’t feel very safe reaching out and that’s complicated. I am not blaming anyone else. I am not reaching out. I am not reaching out for eleventybillion reasons. I suspect that a bunch of my friends would be happy to talk to me more, but I feel like a needy burden and that means I need to just shut the fuck up and wait it out until I can listen and be a supportive friend again. I don’t feel ok in any way with needing support.

I found out yesterday that there is a family from Sacramento in our school; they moved here at Easter. We talked about live shooter drills and how much of a problem they were for her kids. She understands why I home schooled there. She said that in her experience there really is zero support or understanding for it here. All home schooling here is termed “interrupted learning”.

I’m feeling a lot of hostility towards the idea that home schooling means that kids are inevitably damaged. As if the fucking kids who go to school are all alright.

The longer period of darkness means my family is sleeping a lot more. That’s good. There is this well of existential exhaustion we are all trying to cope with. It’s good but it means there are fewer hours in the day for us to do our work and that causes anxiety too.

I’m going to start shooting for more like 1,000-1,500 words/day for the rest of the month. I won’t finish the book, but I will rest my hands more. I am so tired and I hurt and I feel bad about myself.

Writing the book is incredibly hard emotionally. It feels like a trip down Krissy-is-a-fuck-up-lane. I have fucked up a lot of relationships. I make a lot of bad decisions. I don’t feel good about myself almost at all. It is really hard to stay present with “I should be making choices that extend my longevity” when it feels like the world would be so much better if I were dead. I’m not feeling suicidal, but it’s hard to think about “I should cut back on meat, dairy, eggs, sugar, eliminate alcohol, watch my exercise very carefully, get frequent full body scans for cancer, cut back on stress (hahahahahaha), etc” all so I can… live longer and spend more time as a shitty person who fucks up all the god damn time.

And Noah is off for nine days. He’s visiting with his besties (this is a great thing!) and going to a conference (this… is important too). I know he needs to go. I support him going. Being alone with the kids is going to feel like a lot. Taking delivery of the boat stuff alone is going to feel like a lot.

Installing the baby gates alone (if I can ever get them delivered) is going to feel like a lot.

Today it is hard to feel hope.

In brighter, money-pit news, the lovely joiner dude who is helping us with stuff looked at my drawings for the book shelves and thinks they look fun to build. He was a little worried at first about cost “I wouldn’t even know how to estimate how long this will take and I’m nervous about the cost of materials.” I said, “Well let me tell you how I did my bathroom. (show pictures–watch eyes bug out) I bought all of the materials and I paid for hours every week. The construction company started out saying ‘It’ll take three months tops!’ I laughed and said it would take a minimum of six months. It took seven months. I paid wages every single week like clockwork. This is my project. I know it is huge and complicated and not something that can be estimated. I will pay for the time it takes. I would prefer if I can count on something like one or two days a week of dedicated labor (you have other clients to take care of on other days, I get that) and it takes how many weeks it takes.”

He said that sounds really neat and he’s looking forward to all the research he will have to do to put this together. He won’t start till the new year, which is great because I’d rather not have the mess during Christmas. We are talking about types of wood, both whether to use treated wood (lumber in the US, timber here), where to use untreated raw wood for aesthetic purposes, hard woods vs soft woods… this is going to be a really fun project.

But exhausting. Whyyyyyyyyy must I do this.

I don’t have forever. If I want to have time to enjoy things, get it done. I am not Pam. I won’t live till I am 100.

Noah has been trying to talk me into resting more for a while now. So yesterday I swept and mopped all of the floor that can be swept and mopped and did a couple of loads of laundry and… that was about it. I didn’t bustle through cleaning off the counters. I did move the food that had been in the laundry room into the kitchen cabinets.

I played ball with the baby. I read parenting forum threads. I didn’t comment. I get into trouble (with myself and my emotional dysregulation) when I comment. I wrote an email in response to an old friend who reached out. I’ve had a phone call with my former neighbor who moved back to India.

Today I will take a shower. I will make some progress on the counters in the kitchen and in my bedroom. I will ride my bike to the store before our shopping list gets long and heavy. There is some possibility Noah and I will go into town so we can add my name to the bank account and I can start figuring out how to apply for a credit card. I am 100% not ok with having to ride on his credit. That fucked my mother.

I have retirement accounts in my name only. I was the primary name on most of our credit cards. I was on every mortgage and title document. I am not dependent on him being nice to me for my survival. I utterly refuse.

Being a dependent is scary enough without also being trapped if things go sideways. I always have the power to leave. Not that I want to. Noah is an absolutely top notch partner to have. I don’t want to leave. But it is good to know I could if I needed to. That’s important.

We are kind to each other and we caretake for each other because we want to, not because of need.

I am starting to access that deep well of exhaustion from the overwork I’ve been doing for a long time. I am trying not to do that thing I do where I shove it aside and keep pushing. I don’t need to push anymore. I can just rest. I can putter. I can slowly get things where I want them to be. There’s no rush. My kids are upstairs playing. In between bouts of bickering it is fun to listen to. Kids.

There’s a sprinkling of rain coming down. It’s so beautiful here.

I really didn’t. I don’t feel like I have ever gotten to truly calm down and heal from all the shit that has happened to me. I have been running at full steam ahead for decades. Almost four decades. That’s not hyperbole, that’s reality.

All the moves. Trauma. Schools. Jobs that I worked 50-70 hours/week. Pregnancies that sapped the nutrients from my bones. Traveling. 24/7 care of my kids.

I could really use a break.

Noah is scared of us trying to live on a low quantity of money. He doesn’t feel the relief I feel. Having money and knowing you can spend money changes the entire focus of your life and the pressure on you. Knowing that you don’t have the money to do things…

Well, I’ve been there before. If your basics are covered and you do not feel stress over losing your home or food… it’s pretty chill. I like that feeling. Our house is paid off. We will definitely be able to afford food. But we may not be able to travel much for a long time. Right this second that sounds awesome. We won’t be eating out much; we will probably save up and eat out every other month. That’ll be a massive lifestyle change for us. I think it will be healthy.

I wonder how much my current illness is related to just collapsing under the weight of everything I have been doing. I want to slow down so much. I am not doing much today. Probably not tomorrow either. I am so dizzy that walking around our tiny apartment requires breaks to sit down. It is literally unsafe for me to try to go walk around Bangkok like that where I cannot communicate and I have three children to keep safe. I also wonder how much this feeling of illness is related to the truly deep tissue Thai massage I had the other day. That lady broke up super deep adhesions and ground out knots that have been there for six months and more. My body was literally flooded with all the stuff that has been stored up in my muscles. That can totally make you sick. (Yes my pee is totally a massively dark brown despite me drinking twice the amount of water I usually drink.) It was a much harder massage than I have gotten almost ever before in my life. Next time I will say “gentle”. Notice in that article where it says that EDS might make this problem worse? Yeah. I have that. I think I should stop requesting deep tissue work.

Putting my oxygen mask on means knowing that today I have harsh limits. I felt like death the day after the massage. I can’t do that any more.

There are so many things I want to help with in this life. I need to heal first though. Or I am not going to be able to live up to the obligations to my children that I already signed on for. That’s just a fact. It is hard being realistic about that.

I am not entirely sure what healing means at this point. Having real energy? Not feeling tapped out and exhausted before I open my eyes?

Even though I feel sad about not seeing Pam this December I feel very excited for having a family winter time in our new home. I don’t know what I want to do. I keep talking about it with my family. We are not Christians and Christmas is not much of a secular holiday in Scotland. They care about NYE (Hogmanay). But we don’t have attachment to Hogmanay at this point. Maybe it’ll grow for us in our spirits, but right now it still feels like almost appropriation?

I wonder about Winter Solstice. We are all pagan-adjacent in our spirituality. I wonder if shifting focus will help us build a different future around who we want to grow into being?

It’s time. Today’s the day. We are leaving. Noah has plans to return to the country in November for work/seeing his best friend. I don’t have any plans to return. I may someday… life is long, but I have no idea when. It might be a decade. I might come back for a book tour. Maybe there will be a wedding or a funeral I can’t miss; I don’t know.

I miss my mother already and being much further away from her increases the likelihood I will maintain the severing of our bond. I need to and I hate it and I feel so sad for her. This life has been so spectacularly unkind to her. It’s a lot easier to see that after I have been cherished for years. Noah and my kids like me. I am not sure my mother has ever felt like that. It’s really sad.

I don’t know what it will mean to be Scottish yet. I am looking forward to finding out. I look forward to uncountable hours wandering the Highlands. I wandered up and down and forward and back in Fremont. I used to wander the Santa Cruz Mountains. I wandered the woods of Oklahoma. I wandered the freeways and highways of the entire United States. I want to know Scotland in my bones; that’s going to take time. I am not a sporty person, but I am active. I want to be active in the glorious Scottish rain.

RAIN, Y’ALL! IT’S GONNA RAIN ON ME UNTIL I DON’T LIKE RAIN ANYMORE. I am from the desert. That seems like a miracle. People keep telling me that I will get sick of the rain. After the Mojave I have my doubts! We’ll see! It won’t be happening in the first five years!

The first five years are assured. Past that… we don’t know yet. I have hopes but that’s not a plan and even less of a fact.

Our flight leaves in 14 hours. The car is due back in 11 hours. I have a solid workday left in the US and no more work to do. We are packed. The only shit still out is the stuff we need for hygiene and I have a nice empty hole in a suitcase for that equipment when we finish. I have another load of leftover groceries to bring to the neighbor who has been so kind over the summer. She feeds a lot of people because her kids and grandkids are always over. She’s absolutely thrilled to get free food. Her husband has spent a bunch of time painting with my kids. My children love her grandkids. It’s been a really blessed summer.

I am not trying to make it sound like there is no good in the US. I know good people. I know how to make a life here. Even though Portland can’t be my home I understand the appeal. Excellent donuts, decent weather most of the year (WHAT IS UP WITH THIS SUMMER), and absolutely stunning scenery. I get why my friends love it here.

I just have this internal drive that says I should not be here; this is not for me. I don’t know how much of that is related to my feelings about colonization. I am an 8th generation Californian and I still feel like I shouldn’t be there too.

Feminista Jones says she only wants to go places where a face like hers is unremarkable and welcome. I understand that feeling deep in my bones. It’s like Trevor Noah says: there are places where it being mostly white people is a problem (hello Australia) and places where it being almost entirely white makes sense (I am running to Scotland as fast as I can).

I feel like my existence is a problem in most of the world. My ancestors were the raping, pillaging thieves who helped wipe out other cultures. In many ways my body being here has continued their efforts whether I meant to or not. It’s white guilt and it isn’t. My ancestors were driven out of the British Isles. I’m coming back, bitches.

Not really “bitches”. I mean… it’s complicated.

My entire species has been on the move for hundreds of thousands of years. Is there really a “place” for any of us? I don’t know. I really don’t.

My buddy last night tried to do the “I will come visit you” dance and she didn’t appreciate it when I stepped off of the dance floor. She wanted me to hope. I can’t do that. There are two people I am pretty darn sure will travel to the Highlands to see me but that’s because A&P like to wander up and down the UK every summer. They’ve already been doing that for a while and I won’t be much more out of the way of their summer wanders than I was in the bay. Everyone else?

I can’t hope. I can leave space in my heart for you. You will always be welcome. I would love to see you. But I can’t live with feeling let down or disappointed so I can’t hope. I will wait and see. It’s part of how I can’t move to the PNW because my expectations would drown me. It isn’t that anyone else is doing anything wrong.

The tension I felt managing Dad this summer was awful and really depleting. I love that man even though sometimes I wish I didn’t. But his behavior and attitudes and personality… managing him takes work. I don’t have that to give in this life. If I stayed here I would feel compelled to work on him and help him be a less shitty person. Kind of like how I spent my childhood lecturing Uncle Bob about how he really didn’t need Auntie to wait on him hand and foot; he has hands and feet he can go get his own damn iced tea. I would lecture Dad. I would try to change him.

I would tell him that either he formally adopts that kid or he needs to stop fucking encouraging a child with a developing brain to think of him as their father. It is going to be monstrously cruel if this child grows up to find out that the only father they have ever known only financially provided for his “real” kids. But it’s not my circus and it’s not my monkeys and I’m not sure I could force him to behave ethically and I sure as fuck can’t watch him behave unethically.

I don’t want to do the dance with this little kid about why my children can’t spend the night in their house ever again. It isn’t their fault that the grown ups have different feelings about what appropriate behavior in front of children means. It would hurt the kid to be rejected all the time when they ask for time together in their home. But I can’t throw my children on the fire with them just because they want to be burned with company.

I have obligations to keep three children safe. I am not capable of being the boss of everyone’s children. I tried with the Bonus Family and that blew up in my face. I miss the Bonus Kids like an open bleeding wound. But their mother told me to go the fuck away because I couldn’t allow her to continue educationally neglecting her kids. Ok. I’ll go.

I don’t want to get into a position where I love another kid I can’t help and that feels really chicken shit.

I can’t save everyone. I’m not even sure I can save me but I’m trying.

We must leave this house in 6 hours.

Tick tock.

Hello Bangkok, it’s lovely to see you. Even if I fear I will feel like I want to die in the heat. Please slap me if I ever say “I think I’d love to go on a vacation in a hot place.” Hawaii was so hard; I spent a lot of time feeling like I couldn’t move or breathe. Bangkok… is going to be hot. Like holy shit hot. Upper 80’s-90’s and raining most of the time. We are showing up for monsoon season; I’m actually super excited about that part.

And we are going through Hong Kong airport on a Saturday while protestors are trying to shut down the airports on weekends. It’s going to be an adventurous weekend! If our flight gets fucked up I will consider that a very worthy outcome. Good for you, protestors. Keep it the fuck up. Fight. I absolutely support your efforts, even at my own expense.

I am so forking happy I never have to sleep on this shitty mattress again. Yes.

11 days until we go home.

This is like the end of the road trip only it isn’t because I asked Sarah to join us for the last week of the road trip so I didn’t say “fuck it” and just come home early.

Speaking of open, bleeding wounds.

Run away, Krissy. Run away from all the shit you can’t fix. All the people you tried to figure shit out with but you failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed.

It feels like it is all my fault. If I were less controlling, less of a bitch, less demanding…. maybe I could have a mother or a Sarah or a Bonus Family. But I can’t.

So go.

Stop fucking crying and go.

I don’t feel like a victim. I feel like if I wanted to have these relationships I would have been less of a fuck up.

I am looking forward to the chance to be an entirely different person in a community. Maybe if I don’t show up wanting to find enmeshed friends things will go better. Jenny has always been incredibly good about holding her boundaries. I have never been able to push her to inappropriate intensity in over 25 years. I have a lot of hope that we will figure things out. It certainly seems worth the attempt.

I am very lucky. I get to keep trying. I get to keep striving and growing and becoming. Even if I am a grown ass woman. Not everyone gets to keep changing throughout their life. Lots of people get to a place/level/situation and they feel stuck. I don’t. I feel full of utterly limitless potential.

I want a quieter, smaller life so I can write more books and make more art and watch my children grow without being distracted by having to drive 90 miles most days of the week.

And we got through the birthday dinner with great civility. Huzzah. I was not trying to burn bridges. Kiddo says they had an absolutely perfect day. Today is our last full day in Portland. We will do a load of laundry and pack those clothes. Big kids will practice writing. We will almost certainly walk to the park to stretch our legs and get some exercise. Tonight we have dinner with my only buddy who lives in Portland who was born in Portland. Seems nice to close out my Portland time this way.

We are otherwise packed. We have just enough leftovers in the fridge that we can scrounge up a couple of meals. Oh, we should probably bring the groceries we didn’t get around to eating to a neighbor.

I think we are going to have 9 rolling bags. One of which must stay with us as carry on (it’s a little kid size) because it is all art supplies. 3 backpacks and a diaper bag. 3 purses. That sounds like a lot and it sounds like we have reduced a lot. We are not at the maximum for weight limit with a single bag. I probably have at least a cumulative full bag of weight leftover. The heavy shit is on the boat. This is fun because on the way to Bangkok we get 2 checked bags per person with a seat. 8 rolling bags: perfect. And 8 carry ons. Technically we could turn that into 6 carry ons with a grocery bag. Going from Bangkok to the UK we only get 1 checked bag per person. I will combine things so we have 5 checked bags and 4 carry on roller bags to go with 3 backpacks and a diaper bag. The purses can get shoved into the roller bags for security. No trouble.

That’s even under our baggage allotment, just barely.

I could have at least one more backpack full of stuff. Technically one of the roller bags is MCs backpack.

It is lighter and easier to manage than we’ve had all year. This is good. I also plan to go to the airport hella early because I am over rushing to an airport. I’d rather hang out there for an extra few hours doing laps with the baby. We have to check out by 11. The car is due back by 3:30. We will probably have lunch somewhere and then go straight to the airport.

I still haven’t figured out where I can drop off the car seat that is now old enough I should not rehome it. Hm. That’s a problem I need to figure out today. I have time.

Apparently the host for the Bangkok apartment is sending a relative with a van to pick us up from the airport. That sounds absolutely awesome. Did you know that Thailand requires you to have enough hard cash to pay for most of your trip or they might not let you into the country? Did you know that stays of more than 30 days require a special visa you have to get in country? How about did you know that if you overstay your 60 day visa (that requires special permission to begin with) by even 1 day you can get permanently banned from the country? I assume this is a rare worst case scenario but Thailand doesn’t fuck around. Alright then.

Gotta fill out the passenger information for the tickets. Go to the post office.

We leave on the 30th. We don’t arrive until the 1st. It’s going to be a very long trip.

Ok, passport information is now entered for the trip. Woo.

The brick of passports is even more solid and intimidating than usual because it has all the paperwork that allows us to enter/stay in the UK. It’s the size of a huge cell phone/small tablet but it is so dense that if someone handed it to you casually you might drop it from surprise. Vaccination records, international drivers licenses, Global Entry cards, and some travel cards for companies. Our life depends on this brick. Today we are wondering if we should photograph the stuff in the brick for record keeping. But then all of our most sensitive data will get stored in either iCloud or Dropbox and frankly that’s scary too.

Ayiyi.

25 hours until we check out of this house. 12 days until we go home. We looked into flights to Taipei for Christmas and I about choked. It would cost nearly $5,000, maybe more, just for flights. Given how fussy I am being over not wanting to spend $5,000 furnishing my house it seems kind of ridiculous to pay that for a trip right this minute. Perspectives shift. Priorities change. It wouldn’t have been as expensive to fly straight from Bangkok if we were staying in Asia for months. But we aren’t. Because it is time for school.

I emailed the head teacher yesterday. No response yet. I assume telling her about a problem that will arrive in two weeks isn’t that urgent yet.

Also, if you are a Girl Genius person: WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH LUCREZIA!??!?! I don’t understand how she has been doing this wandering in and out of time business. What was her ultimate goal?!?! I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS AND THESE AUTHORS HAVE TAKEN OVER 20 YEARS TO GET THIS FAR I MAY NOT LIVE TO SEE THE RESOLUTION. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I am looking forward to having a more curated life. I am hiding from reality and I know it. But my brain and my body need a break from stimulation. I need to slow down. I don’t know that I will hide forever. Just for a bit. Until i don’t vibrate with pent up energy because I never slow down.

What will I feel like when my life is smaller?

I can’t wait to find out. I want to walk. I want to explore. I want to look at plants. I want to learn to eat plants as a bigger part of my life. I want computers and internet friends to take up a smaller percentage of my life. I want video chats to be a bigger chunk of my online time than forums and I suspect I will never get above 5 hours a month of those.

Social media makes me feel like my friends don’t prioritize me or care about me very much. Not being on social media means that when I talk to my friends I feel showered with blessings because they took time out of their busy lives to acknowledge me.

I don’t want to be on social media again. It seems unwise for my mental health.

I should make the kids sit down and do all the last reviews for their classes and clear out my inbox today.

I keep hearing the Rascal Flatts song I’m Moving On in my head.

I did not write my mother a letter or postcard or anything. Silence will inflict less pain. I do not want to hurt her any more than I already have. Just… go.

I know very well that Bailey didn’t come up with the quote about friends being around for a reason or a season or a lifetime, but she told me in a way that really influenced my life and my thinking and so for the rest of my time in my head that will be the author of that line. If I was pretty sure it came from a woman of color I would probably try harder to accurately attribute the line but I’m an asshole and I don’t think it did so I don’t care to be more specific.

Don’t we all have our own sense of priorities on these things? Who is important to acknowledge and why. You decide for you and I decide for me. It’s hard to tell who will be important in what ways. I am quick to cite people I don’t want erased from the greater story.

Aren’t we all creating a story? The plot differs, the setting is wildly different from place to place, the characters vary but we are all in medias res.

Who shapes your story? Why are they important to you? How did you pick them as the influencers you want upon your life? Did you ever consider whether or not you can deny them the power to influence you? Can you deny someone the right to influence you? Do you want to? If you do the opposite of what someone says is that still being influenced by them? What if you were doing a thing before they gave you advice and you kept doing the thing no matter what they said? Does that count?

I have no answers, only questions.

Question everything.

Especially your mother. She is not G-d. Even though sometimes it feels like the creator of your being, your former host must be the same thing as a G-d.

I feel like the level of emotional distress I feel in the US is directly tied to my feelings about my mother. It’s just different when I am farther from her. I want her, I love her, I miss her.

I will keep on missing her.

It is interesting trying to start coaxing my kids towards behavior that will be more appropriate for school. I have been calling them on a lot of little shit lately and they are kind of stunned. I have never paid so much attention to their small annoying habits in their lives and they are clearly gobsmacked. This is going to be an interesting transition for all of us. I really wonder if either kid is going to say they want to home school again. I honestly don’t know if we should. I think they need to learn what being Scottish means and I am literally incapable of teaching them.

Holy tomato sauce. Becoming Scottish means not expecting to see rows of tents living on the side of the freeway. We are moving to a first world nation. No we aren’t. We are moving from a declining civilization to one that is thriving and caring for its citizens. I fear that the American Dream is dead; long live the American Nightmare. That period of time when white supremacists would rather set fire to everything than share one iota of the beauty created often by POC.

I wonder when someone will use dynamite to sever a nose from Mount Rushmore to make a symbolic point about what this country is doing to itself.

So yeah. I am thinking a lot about the casual rudeness we embody as we move into this new culture. We are collectively trying to develop our Super Egos and that’s kind of wild. It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick situation. I have no adapted that well to the US. How will I adapt to Scotland?

“One in ten women in Scotland has experienced rape & one in five women in Scotland has had someone try to make them have sex against their will.”

Uhh, I think I will adapt ok. I think things will feel a lot safer. Even if sexual crimes are practically the only crime still increasing in Scotland.

I really should take a damn sleeping pill and go to sleep. Erf. I was half asleep all day but gosh I just feel so so so so awake. I am stretching my legs. 6.5 miles today. It was a good day.

I have been leaning on vices and coping methods really heavily for months. I need to stop. When I leave the country I need to not buy alcohol for a long time. Maybe six months. Maybe longer. I am drinking in a way I don’t want to continue financing. Pot is off the table. We need to take a break from sugar. I need to not do *mumble mumble* anymore.

I think I want Noah to make less money because when he can fund everything we need and vices… I have vices. When it is vices or food… I just don’t have vices. I mean, low key mellow non-self abusive ones.

That’s not true. I substituted free much more abusive methods. Hm.

Well I can’t be self abusive ever again. My visa depends on it. Talk about motivation. I declare myself cured. Guess I’d better get real into running. We live on a one track road that leads off into a running path. I am going to find out how long it is. I want my biggest hobby to be walking all over memorizing the city. I am going to walk around until people start nodding at me because they recognize me.

Which means not looking at my phone. It means being prepared to smile at pretty much any time. It means having a whole set of pre-prepared scripts that are as socially acceptable as I can manage.

1. Weather
2. How great Inverness is.
3. How awesome rain is.
4. Questions about gardening.
5. (After multiple conversations) Requests for information I should know about living here.
6. Travel observations.
7. Talking about children in an upbeat and unrelentingly positive way.
8. Cooking.
9. Questions about their hobbies.
10. Books.

I think that is what I’ve got. I hope it’ll get me started.

I figured out how to thread the needle of respecting the boundaries I feel are important while still seeing a Portland friend. This stuff is so complicated. I feel proud of myself for how I handled it. I learned a lot from the parenting forum. When an offer was made that I was not comfortable with I said, “We will look at our schedule and get back to you.” As a family we talked in privacy about what we could counter offer with that might be well received. We figured out a plan. Our plan was accepted. Yay we get to see each other.

But there’s a lot of tension and pain all around. This is why I feel so bad about having judgments. I don’t want to hurt someone else just because I don’t want my children exposed to their life. I feel like it is saying that I am better somehow and that’s not it. I’m not better. I’m a different flavor of asshole; a hypocrite about slightly different things; I fail just as often.

But I would rather fail myself than my children. I pick them over and over and not everyone prioritizes their life around making choices I want to expose my children to. That’s ok. That doesn’t mean I’m better.

My kids ask me why people do various behaviors I don’t model and I usually say something like, “Well people are trying to cope with the things they are having to experience. They have been taught some set of behaviors by their family and school and community. They have their natural impulses. They have the badly constructed bridges between those two things. Sometimes a bad choice is the best choice you have available. A choice may be bad for one person and not bad for another person. Sometimes there are health/financial/life consequences for needing to use a coping method. Life is hard.”

My *mumble mumble* usage does not do good things for my body’s overall vitamin absorption rate. It is good that I don’t have a choice about leaving it on this continent. The amount of sugar I have been eating has increased the inflammation in my body. The fatty food we eat contributed to Noah and I both developing fatty liver.

Choices have consequences. I am not better.

I kind of feel like I don’t need to bother trying to cut people off at this point? I don’t need to worry about future influence because, frankly, I don’t have plans to bring my kids back to this continent and that limits the influence of everyone here. I am going extremely low contact with… everyone.

That’s not true. I have a growing list of people who are scheduling video chats. And I have some awesome friends who type at me all day long sometimes. And I am going to increase my consistent in-person contact with Jenny for the first time in ten years. I am going to learn from her. I will get to enjoy who she has grown into being.

So yeah. Generalities are rarely correct. I’m not moving away from everyone. I’m moving into a more curated level of exposure to people I love.

And the US has many lovely places to live where people are very happy.

More than one thing can be true.

Objectively I think I am doing better at handling my feelings than in the past. But right now I have about 938,201 feelings. I feel sad and happy and bitter and excited and nervous and proud and ashamed and embarrassed and tired and competent and strong and weak and foolish and brave and stupid and like I am a rat running out on a sinking ship.

“Why are you moving to Scotland?”

“Because I want to put my children in school and have them not suffer through live shooter drills.”

I’m not making friends on my way out the door. And a lot of the old friends who are reaching out to tidy up old ends… I’m leaving them frayed. If I haven’t seen you in person in 5 years despite you living less than an hour away from me? I truly don’t have time to see you one on one for a personal send off. Are you nuts?

I appreciate the kindness of people reaching out to say goodbye. I do. I also feel bitter that it took this for these people to acknowledge me. If you have spent time with me or if you live far away I am probably not talking about you.

I don’t know if I am proud of me yet; I know I feel bursting with pride in my children and my spouse.

Today was complicated. We went to a party at Noah’s bosses house. Me and the kids felt out of place and like we didn’t do all that well socially. I had to talk my kids into not frantically running around tidying up after the party. We are not here to be the help and these aren’t good friends who really need our support. Leave the damn water balloons on the grass. Someone else will handle that problem. But I teach them to pick up litter on the sidewalk?

It’s different. It’s not that I want to say fuck you to Noah’s (very polite and civil and decent) boss but I don’t want my kids arriving at a mansion and immediately going into cleaning mode. No.

The little suburb where this house resides is outside the bubble of poverty growing and simmering in Portland. Right next to the country club.

It’s All Fine Here.

Rome is burning but It’s All Fine Here.

Raise taxes. Massively. Save the fucking country. Save all of the people who are literally not able to save themselves because they were born with the deck stacked against them. That sucks. It’s not fair.

There is no fair.

I’m anxious about this discussion tomorrow. I fear that I inserted myself more than I should have last time. It’s not about me. This is not my space. Just shut up already.

I think that if Jenny were less demonstrative in her glee about us moving there I would be flipping the fuck out. Instead every time I touch base with her a little she talks about another way she has thought up to ease my transition. I have bawled. She wants me that much.

People don’t extend invitations to me much. They expect me to invite myself. And then I either do it for too long or too short and I’m wrong again. She didn’t invite me… but she has greased the rails in ways big and small because she isn’t demonstrative but gosh she wants me there.

I want to be there.

I am nervous about all the changes. This will be a change in lifestyle from top to bottom. We are going to try to live on a very fixed, much lower income. (We have failure routes if that’s a problem.) We are going to put the kids in school for the first time in their lives. I will have my own bedroom where I can go be bitchy and not be bad. I can’t buy pot and I really shouldn’t buy much sugar or alcohol cause shit’s expensive. I’d rather furnish my house. I get to drink the fabulous tasty Scottish water and tea–unsweetened.

Unsweetened tea is going to be a hard jump. I’m just saying.

But I’ve made bigger, harder jumps before. I HAD FUCKING VEGETABLES THREE MEALS TODAY. LIKE A GOD DAMN HEALTHY PERSON.

Ok. I think I am tired enough to sleep. I hope. Ugh.

I really am my favorite person to talk to; I feel like a narcissist because I enjoy writing to myself so much. But, oh well. Maybe I just have fleas.

I should be asleep. Two hours ago I took two sleeping pills because I ache in the atoms of my bones from exhaustion. Can’t sleep. Brain will eat me.

Grief. Loneliness. Pettiness. Spite. Greed. Fear. Desire. Frustration. Generosity.

I have all the feelings and then some.

I haven’t heard back from Dad about tomorrow. I assume that means he is blowing me off. (I contacted him twice and he didn’t respond. I am not reaching out again about Saturday.) If I don’t hear from him in a prompt and timely fashion in the morning my plan is to take my crew to Ikea. We had a really successful first trip and I learned a lot of important details about what I don’t want from a few lines but I still don’t know how I am going to solve a few problems and Noah’s opinion matters. Thus Noah has to go. We will be there for a bit talking and debating. Luckily, no actual shopping. Just reconnaissance.

In the afternoon his boss is having a house warming. We need to go and be polite and mannerly and pretend we have et-e-ket.

Sunday I am seeing some of my very strongest influences for who I am as a woman of Leather. This is the Middle Aged Guard who brought me up and I love them so much. I’m glad I made it for one last meeting. It’s a mitzvah.

Monday and Tuesday we got nothing. We have enough food to not need the grocery. We have no social plans or obligations. I think I am out of shopping and errands. I might want to spend a little bit of time on Tuesday working on packing, but we aren’t really unpacking at this point…

Wednesday will be a Middle Child birthday kind of day and we will be letting our little darling set the tone all day long. It will be fun. We won’t work much, I expect. The current plan (that Dad did agree to) was hanging out at the park for an hour or so before going to a restaurant. I know that means he will bring his whips. I’m leaving. I don’t have to face this issue head on.

Thursday I will spend all day packing and cleaning and trying to not stress myself out. We have everything we need to make this all work out. We’re fine. Thursday night my buddy C is going to have dinner with us so she can have a second visit. I’ll tell you plain, internet, that if I had gone to Michfest when I was 18 like I wanted to go… C is the kinda gal I would have tried to hitch my wagon to. It’s not just her looks, it’s her personality and attitude and grit and intensity. That’s a woman who knows how to melt my butter.

Good bye, love.

Folks think I am so pro conflict but I’m not really.I’m a coward.I have up and left so many places and faces and jobs and communities… There’s a problem! And no one cares. Bye.

Hi America, you can keep the guns. I’m out.

It’s not that I think that everything or everyone here is bad. I could start describing the mythical beauty of the Black Hills and go on all day. I could talk about the sheer terror of driving down some of the giant mountains on this continent with an over-loaded minivan and a trailer. I could talk about the jaw dropping awe of seeing Alaska. It’s just bigger than a place has a right to be, and so beautiful! The sunset in Louisiana. The sunrise up over the Florida Keys. The best ice cream in Wisconsin. Going from one corner of Lake Superior to another and finding completely different types of beaches and wondering how the water pattern created that…

There’s a lot of good here.

And I’m not even touching on the people properly. God I love the people. I have had some over the top, amazing relationships here. My dating history was spicy and exciting. I have had excellent friends. I have had a solid community. Hell, I even got a good education. I was raised in California and I worked there. I gave back.

I feel this overwhelming horror that I Must Go. I don’t know if it fear of earthquakes or fires or more concentration camps, or guns, or my mother, or just plain being too hot and having diarrhea for more years as punishment. I don’t know if I can stay here and learn more productive/useful/healthy relationship patterns with my friends. Not because they are incapable of change, because in this environment I can’t even figure out what change is needed let alone how to implement it.

I am overwhelmed. I hurt more than I’ve hurt in months and it is from the driving. I’ve barely been typing so that isn’t it. I know the beds suck, but it’s not that kind of hurt.

This itty bitty house is kind of a microcosm of our problem. I can be a very good mother if I have time to myself to decompress and do things that I don’t want my children seeing. If I have to be “on stage” 24/7 I get bitchy. I run out of ability to see what needs to change and I don’t have the energy to change things.

I need access to more boundaries for me because in this space… I don’t get any. I have not had personal space… really in years.

It was amazing how relaxed I felt during travel in terms of hypervigilance. I mean, I felt stress. I was anxious sometimes but hypervigilance is different. In the bay area I am always on alert because a family member might show up and I might have to react in some way that I don’t want to. I am going to let my half crippled sister die believing she could always kick my ass. I don’t need to show her what I learned in Impact.

I can just leave.

I think that part of the reason I can’t sleep is because my butthole hurts so much. I got more hemorrhoids with each child I birthed. Being on my period makes them worse. And we’ve had terrible toilet paper lately and that stuff is like sand paper. My poor butthole. Now I have Tucks pads and lidocaine. I love me some lidocaine.

I miss anal sex. *sigh*

Bodies. Life.

I can’t even begin to process the ending of this chapter of my life. All the people I will never see again.

Friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.- Bailey

I just don’t feel good and I can’t shake it. I got like 9 hours of sleep last night and I feel like I can’t wake up. I’m bone weary. My kids are all complaining about feeling off too. Noah hasn’t felt fully well in a while.

I’m feeling a lot of grief. I think I am displacing it onto “safe” topics. Like: I am absolutely weepy and upset over my teddy bear being gone (almost 4 years since he was lost on the road trip) and my cat dying (a year and a half ago). I can’t hold on to people and I can’t even hold onto my fucking teddy bear. I feel like it isn’t safe for me to develop attachments to things or people.

I am struggling with feeling like if I fall more in love with Jenny’s family I will fuck that up too. I fuck everything up. I am just a fuck up.

I told the kids we are on academic vacation this week because we haven’t had a lot of vacation time this school year. We have far less “vacation” than traditionally schooled folk. We need a break.

I am really emotionally struggling with “You are disabled; get used to it. Change your life to accommodate it.” I know it is true but I am feeling really bad about myself. I don’t feel bad about other disabled people needing help. I am happy to provide support and I see how others need it. I am not feeling ok about needing it for myself.

Pain is really getting to me. It ups my anxiety and depression by so much. It is hard to feel like anything is good even though objectively I feel like most things are going well. It feels on the verge of explosion any minute here.

My jaw hurts. That’s not a standard part of my pain experience and it’s really distracting and awful.

I am starting to low key pack. Stuff that will stay in Jenny’s garage until we come back will get shifted in the next 5-10 days. We are leaving in 13 days. Donation stuff will go at the same time. I’m starting to pack things that we are bringing with us but not using before we leave (shorts, tank tops, sandals). There are a few toys in the kid backpacks that might stay here because they don’t use them often they just can’t bear to get rid of them. We’ll see. The lighter we can make our load when we leave here the better. It means that we can acquire things that we want in our next long-term home.

It’s hard to think about it as a forever home. It will be a permanent address though in the sense of putting it on ID and credit card bills.

Maybe it will be forever? Forever is hard to see. I really want this house. The downstairs main bedroom would be mine. The annex could be used as a combination of AirBnb (for income) and letting friends come and stay. (I mean, there’s a separate kitchen in the annex. That would make longer stays less stressful.) The upstairs sitting room would be perfect if we were legally allowed to host classes there.

Once my kids were big I could have grown up parties there.

This house would be so rad.

We are feeling nervous about buying a house before we have a visa in hand. But if Noah can’t get in on the exceptional talent visa and maintain his California salary he can instead get a job with a Scottish company and get a visa that way. He will be able to get a visa. It’s not in question. It’s just a question of whether we are putting money into our investment portfolio hand over fist for the next couple of years before we get permanent settled/citizenship stuff dealt with.

The average salary around here is under £30,000/year. We are going to be fine one way or another.

It’s only ~1/4 acres for the property, but that’s a lot bigger than the 1/8 we had in Fremont. Listening to folks remind me that I can’t get in over my head on wanting a lot of garden that I won’t be able to maintain…

I’m feeling really scared for my future ability to do things.

Tommy lit himself on fire partially because he could not cope with being helpless. So much of my identity is tied up in being functional and capable and strong.

I am scared.

I did 100% of my PT yesterday. Even the dilation. The dilation was really wicked uncomfortable. My vaginal tissue is not in a happy place. I feel scared that my cunt isn’t ever going to really feel better.

I don’t mind my body aesthetically. But I sure wish it was in less pain.

Today we are going to go meet the solicitor who is 2.7 miles away instead of 105 miles away. This feels less stressful. He’s not going to have to be much better for me to think that it is worth not doing that commute. Even though he is a dude and I have my thing about dudes. GU matters, yo. (Geographically Undesirable)

I need to stop typing. My arms are on fire. I don’t know why I feel so disconnected. My family is being great. Jenny’s family is trying so hard. I am really enjoying getting to know her husband; he’s really funny.

It’s just… me. I suck.

And it’s pronounce pro-gress not prog-ress.

We met a nice lady solicitor in Aberdeen. It was a long day getting there and back and we missed the first train so everything felt more hectic and stressful than necessary. I was not nice to the kids as I mostly flailed myself for us missing the first train. I apologized of course, but that’s shitty of me.

Apologies bake no bread and all that.

I am running out of spoons for “don’t get frustrated and don’t ever let your creeping frustration impact anyone else in any way” without pot.

It’s coming to Scotland!

Anyway, nice solicitor lady. Other than being 100 miles away she seemed like she would be great to work with. I liked her attitude, her mannerisms, the way she answered questions, and the fact that everything we asked was met with an immediate answer and a flip to the page of her hand out where she was getting the answer. Noah’s first choice for visa is a new scheme so she had to look up a lot even though she’s been working with immigration for 12 years. There was one question where Noah had a different interpretation of the text but I think she clarified and got it right in the email follow up. Her rate is noticeably lower than the nice lady we worked with in Fremont so I don’t feel she is overly expensive.

We have one more solicitor interview to go through.

I didn’t do PT yesterday with being out of the house 12 hours. Deep sigh. I will get it done before I go out today. I am trying a new massage place. Fingers crossed. They list it as deep tissue and I did a 15 minute add on of “just my hands” so we’ll see.

I hurt so fucking bad it is hard not to curse all day long at speed. But my kids have asked that we all work on not cursing together because it is going to be a rough transition to school if they keep dropping f-bombs as casually as they do. Totally reasonable. Yes, we can do this together.

An ATM here charged me double but only gave me one set of cash. If I challenge it they will turn off my ATM card. I don’t have PINs for the other bank accounts. This is not so good. I should probably try to get PINs first then challenge it. Ugh. Or, I eat losing £200. Which is less stressful?

I am super weary. I’m glad it is Friday. This weekend is lightly booked. I have stuff today for body care. Tomorrow I am going to go out after supper to a munch to meet folks. (I’m going to have to taxi there and back because it’s later at night.) Munches are sitting in a chair and listening to other people brag about how exciting they are. It’s fairly low energy at this point. I’m not hunting and I’m not trying to catch up with old friends. I miss people. One person, Miss V has been at 90% of the munches I’ve ever been to and I miss her like an open aching wound. I don’t get the impression I am going to meet someone here quickly who is going to have her dynamic intense energy. That’s good and bad. I don’t have it in me to hero worship someone else like I do her at this point. But I miss her. I will miss the way she makes me feel yearning and love and admiration. She is so inspiring. I want to top. I want to bottom. I want to wallow in all the intense energy of power.

Sigh.

But, if I am going to make it here I am going to need friends other than just Jenny and I’m not a knitter. I can’t just make mommy-friends. I need to be a mostly in the closet freak for the sake of my kids, but perversion is absolutely bone deep in me. I need to know other kinky people. I just do. Even if I don’t have the spoons to do anything with it yet.

Bdsm is part of me. It is part of the background radiation of my life. I won’t walk into a party here and have the old timers tell the newbies to back off and let me do whatever I want… but I can make lower key friendships. I can get to know people. They will never witness the full bloody insanity I used to engage in and that’s ok. I don’t think there is space for that here anyway. Not in public.

Noah and I will figure out a public persona together. That will be healthy.

Frankly it will be good for me not to be leaning on the full throated ferocity I established as a teenager and young 20-something. I can’t live up to that any more. Not because I am less perverted, but because my body can’t take it. Damnit.

There is almost no bdsm education culture here! I see a niche… We’ll see!

Aberdeen had decently tasty Mexican food. Their “4 chili” level spicy was nothing to burn a mouth, but hey. If I go back I will ask for double the habanero and maybe there is a way to get some actual heat. I don’t think the Scots in general like to burn their mouths in the same way. Which is interesting because I had a vindaloo that left me with intense burn the next day. It was lovely.

I used to have a stick up my butt about not eating Mexican food outside of California because it always tasted wrong. Then I went to Mexico and found out that Californians do it wrong. Now I am more keen to try the variations I can get all over. We live and learn, yo.

I get to have pot in at most 18 days. I am feeling utterly grateful right now. I feel worn to the bone. I haven’t had any in 3.5 months.

ack, bye

This lady who is coaching me is really awesome. She’s a no bull shit person. She is a horse trainer (so she’s used to trying to get animals to change their behavior without being able to talk them into it) and she has recovered from a TBI so she deeply understands the frustration of being disabled and not able to just do for yourself the things you want to and are used to being able to do for yourself.

She has some good suggestions about how to manage home schooling stuff that we can’t do exactly how she did it with her family for logistical reasons but I can take inspiration and we can adapt to our circumstance and we will see how her system works. It involves a lot more of the kids getting to free wheel picking their schedule Monday-Thursday and Friday and Saturday have to be available for punting and not doing fun things because you haven’t earned them.

That’s complicated for me because I like making advance plans with Jenny and her family but if my kids have behaved in a way that we can’t go, I feel like I am punishing Jenny’s family. I’m not. That’s not the point. But my kids have to get their stuff done and they have to learn how to take responsibility for it and part of learning responsibility is you don’t get the fun end-of-week pleasures if you haven’t earned them.

I will have to work on my feelings here as much as the kids will have to work on their behavior. I’m not punishing anyone if my kids have to stay home on Saturday to do their work because they haven’t done it during the week. That’s my kids choosing that screwing around Monday-Friday was more important to them than seeing their cousins. That’s not MY CHOICE.

It is not my responsibility to force my kids or bribe my kids through doing their day-by-day work so that they can have fun pleasures. That’s a fucked up dynamic, yo.

That’s not a good preparation for life.

We can’t do the white board/magnet solution that she used. But we can tape an extra piece of paper over their day planner week with the master list of assignments for the week. They can cross things off and write them down on the day they got them done so they can track their progress. I like the idea of having brief check ins at dinner Monday-Thursday to ask how things are going without being controlling or pissy. Friday and Saturday are tentative scheduled things. “If everything is done then we can go to…”

It is a level of bribery but it isn’t minute by minute day by day bribery. The Friday outings will be more academic and the Saturday ones will be more social. (Other social activities aren’t possible on Friday without a home schooling community.)

She wants me to have a master list of my chores that I’m supposed to get done as well. Resting is supposed to be on it. PT exercises. I am supposed to try to develop the discipline to not go help the kids if my taking care of myself isn’t done.

Given that I am currently gritting my teeth and counting the days until I get back to pot because my entire body is on fire with pain…

My current method of coping is not sustainable.

A couple of days ago I had a lively conversation with friends about cleaning ones own house. It was interesting how the motivation to clean up ones own house is not related to salary/house hold income but often about perceived by the self social class. I very strongly view myself as not the type of person who pays other people to do my work for me. It’s not about if I can afford it (I can and Noah wishes we would) but it’s more emotional. It’s about a lot of lectures from my mother about people who won’t clean their houses being lazy. It’s about my sister being utterly unwilling to clean her house to the point of living in squalor. It’s about my overweening lack of self regard. I don’t deserve to have help with basic chores. I should fucking do this work myself because I already take more resources than I deserve.

*sigh*

But I can’t keep doing this much work. My body is degrading faster over the years. Medical care at this point is bailing water instead of fixing the hole in the boat.

I feel really bad about my body needing help.

It isn’t that I judge other people negatively when they get help. I massively supportive when Sarah could finally afford to get cleaning help. I could easily see that she needed it. I can see how my other friends benefit and it adds positive to their lives to get such support.

But I don’t feel like I deserve such support. This is a really hard conversation to have because I don’t ever want to make it sound like I think other people don’t deserve the help and almost any way of framing this conversation has a blast radius of people interpreting my self worth as applying to my opinion of them. That fucking sucks, yo.

It’s kind of like how sometimes my brother Tommy would rage until he literally blacked out because he was so frustrated with requiring help for basic body hygiene. He fucking hated himself because he couldn’t feed himself or do a lot to dress himself or brush his hair or or or or or.

He would burn the shit out of his mouth drinking boiling drinks because having someone else help him and cool it off offended him so much. He got blisters. He injured himself because he didn’t want any more help than the absolute bare minimum.

I am stupid like that.

I know it is stupid.

I know.

I know it is self hating.

I know.

Noah is trying to make deals with me about the rate at which I pick up projects once we move here. I am going to have to write this timeline out or I will “forget” and start doing work I shouldn’t be doing.

I am really freaked out that cleaning is something I probably really should outsource as I am adapting to permanently living without pain meds.

Well, until I can get medical pot in Scotland. It’s coming!

I genuinely don’t respond well to other pain meds. The pain specialist believes my next step is oxycontin and I don’t want it.

I think I will be willing to accept that as a pain reliever when I believe death is imminent. Until then, I prefer having my brain; thank you.

But my entire body is on fire. How much do I believe that is allowed to matter? I don’t know. I’m going to cry as I think about it. Every joint. Many areas are explosions of nerve pain. My neck. My back.

I don’t have a headache though, so no Ibuprofen. That’s the line. As long as I can think, no Ibuprofen. I need it to work in emergencies and if I use it all the time it won’t.

That sense of triage is very hard to live with.

Took a break. Did morning hygiene, went on a walk to the store to get the things we noticed we messed up on the grocery order (it’s a minimum of 2.5 miles round trip so that’s not terrible), and did goals for the kids for the academics for the week.

I am thinking that I will try to get my PT stuff done during nap time. I need to get a template going for myself of tasks. Really I need to figure out something like Noah’s insane Omnifocus stuff but… that takes spoons too. I will start with it on paper.

The problem with paper is that when I kind of forget about it for a while… I forget about it in a semi-permanent way. The computer thing popping up will maybe be harder to ignore? I don’t know.

I will keep thinking about the cleaning hiring out. For now, changing apartments every few months + the kids doing most of it and Noah doing part of it means that I’m not actually doing that much. Yes I still need to be doing less because of how much pain I am in.

This is a process.

I have been walking around saying that phrase to myself for a few days. “Walls and mirrors.” My relationship with my kids is so complex. I started saying complex because of the therapist we did ecstasy with. He didn’t like the word complicated; he liked complex. Ok. Sure. Whatever. I don’t think I differentiate it in my head the way he does in his.

My children are both walls and mirrors. They are like me; they reflect aspects of my personality that I both love and hate. They are not like me; they are difficult to understand and opaque.

I truly believe that one of the big life goals I have for myself is to figure out how to have healthy relationships with them as adults and I don’t know that I know what that means. Are we enmeshed? Not according to the definition of the word because we all get to have our own very separate feelings and experiences. But we want a closer relationship than is standard for white USians. What does that mean? Do I want them to reflect me? Do I want them to be a wall on which I can paint?

I learn from my children. I learn things about who I do and do not want to be. I learn how I do and do not want to act. Sometimes I learn these lessons by fucking up and sometimes they forgive me and sometimes they hold a grudge. Both are reasonable responses in my world view. But both are problematic too. It’s all so hard to figure out.

Lately we are struggling with the changing dynamic that comes from them having adult sized bodies. They have long felt it was wildly unfair that people treat them like how tall they are and not how old they are. But dude and dudette, you are fucking huge. You can’t act like you are still little and to be coddled and tolerated as you are rough. When you roughhouse it fucking hurts and I am not supposed to respond as if an adult-sized person is hurting me you want me to act like you are still my precious toddlers.

This is part of why I wanted a third child. Even they are kind of able to understand “Oh. That’s what a toddler is. Not me.”

We normalize off of one another. We decide what is and isn’t ok by committee in ways that I don’t see other families doing and I don’t know if this is wrong or not. But I don’t have a handbook or a culture to fall back on to decide how things should be so we decide together what we want for our family. We prioritize things like trying to be healthy for the express reason that we want to be able to be together for a long time because we like each other. Fitness, vegetables, sleep, education… we talk about these things in terms of how we each fit into the family unit and how we will have to pursue our own paths. So far they still struggle to perceive that they will want their own space to the degree I predict they will. I remind them that a few years ago they were not capable of perceiving that they would want the space they want now… and I predicted it… and I turned out to be right. Maybe I am right about how much more they will want a few more years down the line.

We’ll see.

Maybe I am wrong.

We imprinted hard on the highly enmeshed babysitter we had for five years. She is her mother’s best friend. She is 21 now and barely starting to pull away and be her own person. My kids saw her going through her teen years hanging out with her mom all the time because her mother was her favorite person. They expect to feel that way.

Only I can’t fucking home school them that long. I can’t. I feel like this is too much for me at this point and I am going to struggle to get through the next year. What would make it better for me? If they were actually self directed instead of depending on me to be their externalized brain. I ask them about their goals then I set the path based on what they claim they want then I hold them to it and it fucking sucks. Because they drag their feet kicking and screaming the whole way. As they remind me weekly that they want the end result and I need to get them there. This is not healthy.

I am failing to teach them how to be self directed. I have such a powerful internal motor, such a strong sense of I MUST KEEP MOVING AND ACCOMPLISHING THINGS that Noah and the kids just… kind of fall into my wake. Which isn’t fair or true entirely because Noah’s career arc has been of his own making and there is a self-directed learner if ever there was one. But he didn’t ever want it until I told him I had big dreams and he wanted to hitch to my wagon. He wrote a book after me (and did way better at that than me).

Noah is incredible and it’s not all because of me. That potential was there before I met him. He had a burning desire to change and get out. But it is utterly undeniable that his career arc after marrying me was meteoric and it wasn’t before our marriage.

I don’t want to be that for my kids. And that’s complicated. I don’t want them to succeed because they are doing so for me. I think I communicate that to them in complicated ways so they don’t try hard because they don’t have much they want to accomplish for themselves. Their just-go-along life is good and they are happy. I mean… that’s good, right? Only it’s mixed.

I want to differentiate more from them and I don’t feel I know how to while also preserving how very close and connected we are. I come from a family of people who violently hate each other. Noah comes from a family of people who low key hate each other. Our kids really like us and want to be near us all the god damn time. It feels like a miracle. I like this. I want this to continue. Only I also feel like I am suffocating and I need space.

I don’t know what the balance is.

This much constant connection with my kids makes me not want sex and that’s complicated.

I went to a munch today. I met a few local perverts and it was quite lovely. It’s… going to be different here. A large party is the size of small house parties in California. More people go to Folsom Street Fair than live in all of the Highlands. There is no education network to speak of.

Meeting these new people made me want to write Part 2 so much. I want to write about all of the things I learned from the bdsm community in California. My mis-education in the hands of the Middle Aged Guard. I love the people who taught me so much. I am so grateful to and for them. I learned so much about life and what I wanted and who I want to be.

And now I need to go off into the world and be that person and I don’t feel like I know how to do that and have the appropriate space from my kids.

I miss sex and I miss bdsm. I miss feeling that yearning and want. In some ways I feel like it will be very good for my marriage to rediscover what those things mean to me away from that community. My wants and yearnings are so tied up in the people who kink-raised me. I am glad I will get to go do some processing of what that means in Portland before I land here permanently. Some of the more big-sister feeling people from the California community moved up there over the last few years and I get to touch base with them.

That’s a gift.

My life is so full of gifts.

I got to dig in the earth today. I put two plants in the ground in Jenny’s garden. She is so kind to allow me to come and do that work. Touching earth calms me down and makes me feel happy in a way very little else does. And I will get to visit these plants for years to come and hopefully see them thrive. I will get to know that Jenny and her family will see them daily and feel pleasure. I hope they will feel that I am extending a little branch of love into their lives.

My life is so full of gifts.

I am very excited about moving to the Highlands partially because it means I need to get my poop in a group and keep it there. I won’t have the patience and background radiation of living in therapy-culture. Folks won’t be the same sort of tolerant of my quirks. That will make many kinds of growth absolutely mandatory if I want to be happy and connected.

I did not talk about my psycho childhood at the munch. Boundaries will be so different here.

There are two Part 2s to write and I want to write them both. I want to write about the community that kink-raised me for other grown ups and I want to write about everything that lead up to Noah for my kids. Those are two very different books. One will be highly chronological (the latter) and one will be full of amalgamation and simplification as I figure out what the important lessons were and how I learned them (the former).

Even if no one ever buys them or reads them… I want to know that I have told these stories. Noah will read them. Noah will understand me better. Jenny will read them. Pam will read them.

So someone will know me better.

(But I will give them copies for free.)

How will I talk about that group? Will I call it the crucible? The binding? The synthesis? The smelting?

Ha.

It will start with driving to the first party I went to down in the mountains. Where I met my Owner even though the invitation came at a munch the week before. I have relived that drive in my head thousands of times. I know the music I listened to. I know how it felt to have all the windows down and the wind rushing through my hair. I was hurtling as fast as I could around all those curves in my mad rush to find myself. To find the mentors I desperately needed.

Thank you all so much.

I saw Dad for the second time at that party. I met him first at PE, and that will come later in the story as a flashback. It will start with that drive. Dixie Chicks: Goodbye Earl. Melissa Etheridge: I’m Only One. Meredith Brooks: Bitch. White Town: Your Woman. TLC: No Scrubs. Rascal Flatts: Waiting All My Life.

There was more of course. But those songs… they were on my absolute constant playlist.

How in the world will I talk about the bdsm and be appropriate for my kids? That’s going to be a tightrope.

The cattle prod. Breaking my arm and staying with him for years. Giving him a 3′ by 3′ by 3′ cage and fucking sleeping in it. Sleeping chained to the bed with just enough distance to be able to reach the toilet.

I want to understand this and for that I need enough distance to look at it. I want to figure out who I actually am and who I want to be. I want to get my poop in a group and be the person my children will want to be friends with some day.

And that means more fucking boundaries.

I don’t even know.

My period is over, mostly? I think? But I am utterly exhausted. I feel exhaustion deep in the marrow of my bones. We didn’t go out and have fun with folks. We did our weekend tidy and then watched gardening shows.

I don’t have a lot of patience so I didn’t try to interact much. No really, I can’t express how tired I am.

Tired. Weary. Pain. So. Much. Pain.

Trying to research Brexit. What a cluster. It’s going to be somewhat like jumping out of the fire into the pot. (It is a step up… kind of… I guess….)

I am enjoying looking at the planting schedule for this gardening zone. There’s going to be a lot more mandatory starting-indoors than I am accustomed to. There will be many months of the year when I really can’t do much. That sounds… useful.

The future is feeling intimidating today. It feels like it takes so much energy. So much work. And I’m utterly weary.

Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit.

Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit.

Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit……

And I hate the whole fucking day.

(To the tune of “Happy Birthday”)

It’s not that Noah or the kids are going to be awful. They are going to show me love and respect and caring. And I am going to spend the day feeling like undeserving dog shit because I “should” be “honoring” my mother.

Emotional flashback for the lose?

Honor thy mother and father. But what if your father is a rapist and your mother is neglectful and cruel?

HONOR THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS BECAUSE GOD DAMN CONFUCIUS SAYS SO.

But what if honoring them will make me end up killing myself?

I know I’m supposed to stop talking about suicide. It upsets Noah. I’m not saying I want to or I should. I am making choices to avoid it. If I were on that god damn merry go round with my mother I think would. I think that I would be absolutely unable to absorb how much she hates me on top of how much I hate me. I have fucking limits, yo.

Instead we had a nice day at the botanical garden and science fair and park. Then my niece came over for her first ever overnight. We had a nice dinner (it was one of those meals where everybody ate slightly different things because they have different preferences) and the kids played and then we read stories. It went well. I am hopeful about tomorrow too.

And hell, I’m ditching Noah pretty early tomorrow to go get body work done and have tea with Jenny. Then she will pick up her daughter after the kids have a day to play together.

The only hiccup is the big kids thinking they can force the baby out of the living room so they can have privacy. Nope, go in your room.

Even that we weren’t mean about, just matter of fact.

I’m reading the forums again. I’m not commenting. I’m not rejoining the groups where I feel so uncomfortable so I can’t say anything. But I’m trying to make myself feel better? Misery loves company? If I read about how other people have it so much worse–they are going through active trauma and I’m just a whiny bitch–maybe I’ll stop crying?

I’ll tell you if it works out.

I took some Ativan tonight because I seriously need some sleep. But it’s 11pm and it hasn’t kicked in. Insomnia is part of depression for some folk.

I want my mother. I hate my mother. I miss my mother. I resent my mother. I love my mother. I feel unworthy of my mother. I feel bad that my existence caused her so much pain. When I think of her I still hear “Mama mama mama mama” in my head and I start rocking without even thinking about why I am doing it or if I want to do it. I have done this since I was 3 years old. Mama. Pleeeeeeeeeeease come get me. Mama. Pleeeeeeeeeeeease love me.

I wrote the book so I can’t rewrite these stories in my head. I can’t give her all the slack I want to give her.

I don’t know if she “really” loved me. I know it doesn’t matter. She neglected me and didn’t teach me that I should be alive.

She failed me.

And I fail her by not trying harder.

Life’s a bitch and then you die.

We all suffer.

Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit.

I don’t want to want to hurt myself because my fucking mommy doesn’t love me.

I feel so deeply uncomfortable sometimes when Noah or the kids refer to me by a mother name. Mama. Mom. Mommy. Mummy. Mum. Maman. They’ve fucking tried everything and I think they see me flinch.

Motherhood is the only club where I am welcomed in to be a member where I want to be there. Only I feel so fucking bad about myself.

I want so very badly to not be bad. I held my shit together today. I laughed. I told jokes. I kept my voice calm. I didn’t criticize. I wasn’t nasty.

I want to be good enough to deserve being kept. I’ll just wait until everyone goes to sleep to cry. Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep. If I cry when they are awake I am bad and I don’t deserve to have them. There is not fucking deserve. But I might fuck everything up. I might drive people away from me because I am a fucking monster, a bully, a bitch who does not get to have people want to be around me. Noah isn’t really asleep. He has his hand on my shoulder. He doesn’t know what to say and neither do I. I mean… I can type. But I can’t talk about this. It’s so repetitive. It’s so pathetic. I feel so fucking embarrassed for being this fucking stupid.

STOP CRYING YOU STUPID BITCH. YOU FUCKING SUCK YOU DUMB CUNT. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

Why do I always want to put a trailing ‘e’ on the end of words? That’s weird

What the fuck does shut upe mean anyway.

Be nice. Don’t be irritable. Don’t be angry. It’s not ok to be angry. If you do people will send you away. They will avoid you. They will tell you that they are doing so because you are bad for being angry. It doesn’t matter what they do. Just stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

But I haven’t cut today. I haven’t done any form of self harm. I sucked it the fuck up and I was nice all day. I gently touched everyone. I gave them what I wish I got. What I can’t allow anyone to give me.

I’m glad Noah fell asleep. When he touches me like that sometimes I feel like I should claw my skin off. I feel so bad. I don’t want him to touch me. Not because of him. Because I am bad and if he touches me badness might get on him and that will be my fault too. I know I’m supposed to trust that he knows what he is doing and he is making a decision (practically daily) to stay with me.

But I know I don’t deserve him. He is far too good for me.

And that’s part of why I get so bitchy. I feel so bad about ruining his life with a stupid whore.

I don’t even put out much anymore. I can’t tell if that is selfish in a good way or a bad way. I just know I feel ashamed. Fucking bait and switch you god damn lying cow.

I have nothing to give. And it would shred me because I cannot be turned on right now. My equipment feels dead. And it isn’t worth bleeding over.

Because I am selfish. Maybe that’s a good thing and maybe it isn’t. I am not capable of evaluating it.

All of life is fucking suffering.

Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit.

I’m not physically sick but I feel like I got hit by a mac truck of exhaustion. Getting some rest is making me feel worse about how much lack of rest I’ve had for a long time.

A bunch of little things are disappointing. Having my screen die the way it did means I might have lost 15 years of digital pictures. I paid for cloud storage. Nothing is on it pre 2016. I lost the road trip. I lost my whole life before then.

I really need the mental health support weekend I thought I was going to happen again this year. Last year was excellent. But the person who insisted she wanted to organize… hasn’t organized anything and she can’t afford to go so I think she is not feeling motivated to get it done. I could potentially buy last minute plane tickets but I don’t think she understands that if you try to book a big house for a whole bunch of people… that takes a bunch of lead time. And this time we are trying to go during a school vacation when everyone else will be on summer break so vacation rentals will be booked up. I think it is going to fall through and I’m feeling super sad. Not to mention that being the one to do the research and figure out where we are going means you need to be able to drop a bunch of money on the deposit and… she can’t afford even her own share let alone floating everyone else’s share until folks pay you back. I am not mad at her. But I feel really sad.

When I express frustration with my kids not following through on the routine tasks that have been in their lives for years someone always always ALWAYS asks if I have tried making lists for them and then I want to break ALL OF THE THINGS. Yes. I write lists for them. They copy the lists. We go through verbal reminders. Then…. they sit and stare at the wall until I say, “What’s next? Check your list. What’s next? Check your list. What’s next? Check your list.” Then by the time I get them through all of the things (WHICH HAVEN’T CHANGED SINCE YESTERDAY OR THE DAY BEFORE OR THE DAY BEFORE OR THE DAY BEFORE THAT) they are all “So how are we going to have fun together now?

And I’m fucking exhausted and frustrated and I want to go in a dark room and cry by myself and NOT FUCKING ENTERTAIN YOU.

Most of the time I suck it up and find something entertaining/bonding/fun to do because I feel like it is my job. But then sometimes (like now) I feel dead inside. I’m fucking rocking the baby to sleep as I type this. Because I am doing something for my children nearly 24 hours a day. (I have talented feet. Thank god this baby will go to sleep in a stroller with rocking.)

I have a growing number of emails to respond to and I feel sheer panic at the idea of trying to respond in upbeat, friendly, supportive ways.

I canceled my online therapy plan because I wrote as much to her as I write here and she would respond with a couple of sentences a couple of times per week. I get more response from my friends. My friends say more helpful things. Why am I paying $200/month for this? Maybe if I didn’t already blog it would be more useful but it really isn’t helpful for me to have that little back from a therapist.

It drives me nuts that I clean up from meals and the kids come back for seconds and make a big mess and expect the fucking fairies to show up and re-tidy the kitchen.

Getting a little bit of a break always feels like it hurts more than it helps. Because it doesn’t undo the damage I have done to myself with overwork and it just reminds me that I need so so so so so so so much more and I can’t have it.

I keep telling myself that it has gotten much less stressful every time a kid hits 18 months old. Only 3 months to go.

I keep thinking, “It would be better if I cut.” Because the very best thing I can do with feeling shitty is to make sure my feelings don’t impact anyone around me. I’m drinking more alcohol than I wish I would (about a shot, occasionally two) in a day because otherwise I will be hitting the Ativan more than is healthy for me because I need some kind of sedative and I keep thinking “It would be better if I cut.” And that makes me feel really bad about myself.

I was googling last night wondering “Is it bad for your kids if you pretend to be happy” and loosely paraphrased the responses I got were “Yes that is bad. So you should use your drive home from work to decompress so you aren’t faking it. You need to be actually happy.” and “No it’s great to pretend to be happy because fake it till you make it! Smiling even when you aren’t happy encourages your body to produce hormones that will make you feel happy even when you aren’t!”

It would be better if I cut.

I have yelled a couple of times since we got to Scotland but only a couple. And not in a few days.

I’m still doing better than I have done in California in years. I fucking hate that Mother’s Day is coming up because I always remind Noah to think about his mother and I always feel like a flaming pile of dogshit that I am not going to do anything for my mother so I don’t deserve to have anything done for me.

I am going out on a date with Jenny on Sunday. It isn’t Mother’s Day in this country anyway.

I have this terrible resentment that people will try to talk about how horrible family estrangement is for them but then you ask them more questions and it turns out they talk to their mother every week or their father lends them money every time they have a problem or their step mother comes over and spends whole weekends cleaning their filthy, disgusting house because it is just “Too hard for them to manage alone”.

And I want to put my head through a window. That’s your idea of estrangement? I haven’t spoken to my mother in eight years. I probably never will again. If I did she would ask me for money and to do things for her in the first five minutes.

It would be better if I cut.

It’s not even that I object to giving people money! It’s that she would combine it with telling me how stupid, ugly, and worthless I am. I am a failure. Now why don’t I pay for all of her needs?

Why don’t I just cut? It would be better.

Why don’t I get up and do more work for people. Why don’t I cough up more money to support people. Why don’t I just kill myself and leave a detailed will so that everyone who is better than me can have access to the only part of me they want?

Jenny has never asked me for money. And I will see her tomorrow and again on Sunday.

But I need to keep my shit together. I need to not be a problem. Or I will lose her too. Like I lost Sarah because I could not pretend well enough that whatever I got was good enough.

At least Jenny doesn’t ask me to fund her vacations while she hides and refuses to talk to me.

I feel really bad about myself.

Just keep moving. Keep pretending you are happy. Don’t let your problems make trouble for anyone else. This isn’t Burkina Faso and no one thinks your problems are problems for the community.

If you get upset again someone else will tell you that you have Borderline and you need to shut up.

Ok, the will I ever learn part is about pain. I got a massage today. Specifically: a Thai massage. Those puppies are magical. The simmering rage and resentment I have been feeling literally evaporated. It is hard to be both a manager and a worker when I am in raging pain. My body and my brain are not interested in doing ALL OF THE THINGS WHEN I AM IN THAT MUCH PAIN while being nice. I can’t. It is something I am literally not capable of accomplishing. I am grouchy, vicious and just plain nasty when I hurt to that level. I’ve been trying not to whine all day long about it because that gets on my nerves but it’s been getting really bad. Travel is hard on my body. Setting up house is a lot of load. Being alone with the kids is fairly brutal. Portland will be… complicated. Luckily I have a lot more access to folks I feel comfortable saying “Can I dump my kids on you and get a massage?”

I probably could ask Jenny but… it’s complicated. My kids are so wild and her kids are so young and she is so much in the thick of it. Her husband is not a loud-screaming-wild-children oriented kind of person and I would feel really bad about my children making him feel uncomfortable in his home. I don’t want to inconvenience them when they are being so nice about hanging out with us when I am there to intervene.

We are talking about doing sleepovers: one kid at a time and that I think will be ok. But all three of my kids on top of their two kids? Brutal. I mean… I could probably do it. But managing large groups of loud-screaming-wild-children is quite literally my thing.

I want them to like us and I feel like that has some decided limits on how hard I can push at this stage. Losing Jenny would be utterly catastrophic for me emotionally. I can’t push too hard or be too demanding. I just can’t risk it.

Which is why I am feeling a little worried about the pain/hanging out balance because I was kind of a dick on Monday. I was a judgy piece of shit. I don’t really mean it. I’m hurting. And that makes my patience levels drop to basically zero. We were in the pool for an hour and I did really well being my little niece’s assigned person. I did very poorly handling MC be… aggressive with me. What the fuck is up with yanking on my hair and ripping my glasses off my face? Why in the mother fucking hell would you think that is ok? He… avoided me the rest of the hour. Which felt a bit sad. I did well being patient with Jenny’s oldest though. We swam around a lot and played kitties and had a good time.

After lunch I was doing way too much nasty expressing how some children’s behavior wouldn’t work for me. It wasn’t necessary or helpful or useful or anything good. Kids are different for a million reasons having to do with nature and nurture and environment and different peoples tolerance levels and….

I don’t need to share my stupid ass unimportant opinion on why other peoples kids would be hard for me. Just shut the fuck up already.

I really didn’t do well at that on Monday.

And when I am hurting a lot I find that I am a lot more prone to ruminate on how much I would like to be hitting everyone who annoys me. That’s a fucking nasty, inappropriate trait.

I am not a perfect person nor a perfect parent. Where do I get off judging other people?

I really hate myself when I act like that. I know I don’t mean it. But sometimes I can’t zip my stupid mouth shut and I feel so embarrassed. Just shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up.

I’m glad I said I couldn’t handle the park. I couldn’t. I was being a dick.

I don’t want to be a dick to my friend or her kids or my kids or Noah.

Thank cheese toast for massage. I loved the massage lady. I will be emailing her to schedule a bunch more work before I go and I’ll be giving Jenny a gift certificate for her birthday. It’s a dang near magical experience.

Like I always do, I spent over 20 minutes talking up why she needs to value her growing experience and talent and raise the rates you set seven years ago.

Body workers never feel they deserve to raise their rates. They always think that what they earned their first year is what they deserve to be earning 10-20 years later. Fuck that shit. You are amazing and you make peoples lives better. Raise. Your. Rates. Your expenses increase. The amount of damage you do to your body causes you to need to pay for support. RAISE YOUR RATES.

But anyway.

One of the many reasons I don’t think anyone should write a parenting book when their children are under 18 is because we are all just throwing shit at the wall and seeing if it sticks. Parenting is one of the few jobs where you don’t have easily identifiable goals (writing a web app, getting 80% of students to increase their score on a standardized test, setting out all the new product in a specific layout dictated by corporate). You make this shit up as you go along. It’s influenced heavily by culture and region and all kinds of stuff. Family traditions. Parental personality.

By which I mean… I’m trying a new thing. Because you throw shit at the wall until it sticks.

My kids are not bad children at all. But I am really struggling with how to teach them stuff around executive function, habits, and frugality. To try to change our dynamic I am going to start paying them more for chores and academics and such. We sat and made a price list for all of their activities. They are not being given a bunch of new work. If they do stuff with no reminders I am going to give them 100% of the money. With a reminder, 75% of the allotment. With 2 reminders, 50% of the allotment. If I have to pester you (defined as 3 reminders in our family) then I do not pay you because you made my life harder instead of easier.

With this significantly expanded amount of money they are going to start buying their clothes, toiletries, and all junk food. I’m not going to keep buying all the sweet treats and potato chips and what have you.

Why clothes and toiletries? Mostly because it’s a math and budgeting exercise. I’m not objecting to how much they cost. But my kids will go through a bottle of face wash in a week. A bottle of shampoo in two weeks. That’s… excessive like whoa. Their junk food goes in boom and bust cycles based around my moodiness and that’s not good for any of us. The kids can’t buy toys until their other needs are met.

I will buy basic foods of course. I will continue to pay medical bills of course. I told them that a lot of their “I want to go to a museum/play park/activity/event/classes” is going to need to come out of their money so they had best save up.

We are going to be paying them pretty much what their share of the budget has been for the past few years.

I know this isn’t an approach that would work for everyone. But my kids are not motivated by most rewards/punishments and they need to find some kind of motivation in this life. I was doing similar levels of providing for myself from not much older with… a very tiny fraction of what they can potentially earn.

And if they don’t want to earn it, well… their life isn’t going to be as cozy for a bit. I think they will find motivation.

And they really want fancy expensive clothes and makeup and more accessories. Ok. Then learn how to set your habits so you get them. This is life training my bucko.

My kids are being exposed to a level of privilege I completely was incapable of understanding at their ages. I don’t know a better way of helping them learn to understand the scope of their life. It’s not that they are a burden and I’m bitter about paying for their shit. I set up a payment schedule so that I’m still paying the same money.

But they need to learn how to set habits without me being their externalized brain.

Maybe this will fail. The point system worked really well until we didn’t have enough to trade that they wanted so it failed. If they are buying the stuff they want and need on a weekly/monthly basis… maybe it will go better?

We’ll see. And if it fails we will try something else. Because there is no way out of this gig but through and they are the sun around which I orbit. We will find a way to learn skills and habits because they are really important for life.

My belly is saying that having vindaloo and other curry four meals out of the last four was… maybe questionable. Hey, I ate other vegetables and meat with it…. whiny body.

I am just about vibrating out of my skin. Noah’s flight should land in about 20 minutes. Hopefully he will be here about 40 minutes after that. So about another hour of waiting. It was my scheduling and choices that caused him to be gone so long, but patience is not my long-suit.

I miss Noah.

I sometimes marvel that we handled several seven week gaps on the road trip. It felt necessary at the time. But now we upended our whole lives so we don’t have to do that.

Putting Her Sweetness to sleep reminded me of Jenny talking about how her nightly routine has involved putting a little one to sleep for many years now. This season of life is mixed. It’s wonderful. It’s tiring. It’s frustrating because sometimes the boogers want to nurse and not go to sleep for hours and my nipples are so over this bullshit. Over five years of fucking nursing sucks. Jenny is at a similar length of time because her kids didn’t tandem nurse and she had a larger gap between them.

This is a season. Why do some seasons last so long? Seasons are supposed to be short! In the long run this will feel short. When my children are adults my memories of this time will be hazy and have a mostly rosy glow.

I will be proud of myself for giving long past the point of wanting to quit. Fuck I want to quit at like six months at this point. Fuck it. Drink some damn formula. But it’s not really about calories. It is comfort. It is connection. It is agreeing to meet your needs with my very body.

Fine. I won’t bloody wean you.

I kind of suspect I won’t be able to wean until we land somewhere permanently. She needs consistency. Where will it come from if not my body?

I ask so much from my children. Some day they will truly separate and they will find out if the world asks more or less of them. I truly wonder how they will feel about it.

It’s hard not to look at property around here. But I really shouldn’t. We are not going to settle for over a year. We don’t know if we could move here. It’s not good to get my hopes up about a house. (Like this one. Doesn’t that look like a me sort of house!? It’s BEGGING to be painted in interesting ways!)

Gah

I don’t want the fanciest or the most modern. I don’t want polished and chic. I want slightly run down so I can fix it up how I want. But a garden is a must. And if someone else has done a bunch of the work to get the garden together, even better. I can spend my time inside painting.

Criminey. I am going to spend another ten years painting a house. That’s going to happen. Oh golly gee. Doesn’t matter where we land. That’s happening.

I’ve been torturing myself with “It’s better to cut than to break down in other ways”. Cutting hurts other people less. One of my buddies said, “Don’t cut. Paint.” One of the buddies that said tell her where I land and she will try to follow me. That sure would be complicated for her. So many kids. So many obligations to ex’s and parents and adult children and grandchildren and… I am not sure she will ever be able to leave California. Filial piety, yo. Some people care about that business. (Yes, she’s Chinese.)

But it’s nice that she says she wants to follow me.

We are having some hard conversations about what it will mean to have to shave off some of our sharp edges to try and conform and fit in and become part of a very different community. This is going to be a necessary hurt.

Here the primary schools go up to grade 7. I suspect… it might be an easier transition for Eldest Child if she gets to have the softness of primary school for a year to transition in before the added complications of switching classes. So… that’s just over a year away.

I suspect we might want to start her on ADD medication when she starts school. She truly struggles with executive function and focus. I’m not sure she will needs meds forever but I worry a lot about her adjusting to everything at once. I don’t know. We’ll keep talking about it. We will get in touch with a pediatrician before she enters school.

I don’t know if Middle Child should wait an extra two years or enter school at the same time. I think that entering school will allow the kids to make friends in a way that is much harder as home schoolers. It will allow them to learn the local culture. It will allow them to learn what normal means here.

We’ll see. I have mixed feelings about admitting this… but I think school is going to be a harder adjustment for EC than MC. MC is seriously motivated by feeling smarter-than and more-accomplished-than in a way that EC is not. I think that MC will blossom when he is put in a room with same age peers in a way that he can’t when competing against someone who has a two year head start.

We’ll see. Seasons. Will Her Sweetness home school? Will I try to help her make little friends by putting her in school quite young? I don’t know.

I am super fucking burned out.

Noah’s plane landed. His bags arrived! He will be here in 20-30 minutes! Woo!

We are going to have to adjust and change. That’s a given no matter where we land. New places require that. New places provide the opportunity to reinvent yourself in a way that is simply not available if you stay in the same place with the same people forever.

No one here will know me for the things I’ve done. I mean, some people might read my blog archives out of curiosity but that still will show them a very slanted view of me. A curated perspective.

What is it going to be like to live in a place where I don’t have a former lover within hundreds or thousands of miles? Holy shit. That hasn’t been true since I was in god damn elementary school.

Talk about reinventing ourselves. I’m going to get a whole lot of being smacked in the face by people having erroneous assumptions about me for better or worse. I will be best served by playing my cards close to my vest and letting people just… make their guesses.

I’ve been talking about that with the kids. You don’t always have to correct people when they make a wrong guess about you. Just… let them be wrong because otherwise it will lead to a fight. It’s not always worth the fight.

I am not sure when I gained such perspective, but I finally have. It’s ok for other people to be wrong about me. It doesn’t matter. The important people know me. The important people can see what I’ve done and where I’ve been and who I am.

If new people guess wrong… I can just giggle.

But I’m old.

Fuck, I was taking selfies to look at the braid I did today (I don’t have good mirrors) and I was entranced by all the gray hairs. I am becoming an old woman. I am not a crone yet… but I can see it coming. Fuck yeah. I’m looking forward to this season. I think my crone years will be fucking awesome.

I will have no fucks left to give at some point very soon. I hear that turning 40 is like falling off a “No fucks left” cliff. I can’t wait. I have literally no desire to look young. This may contribute to my lack of skin care regime. I mean, I do better than I used to. But I’m not trying to slow the signs of aging. Fuck looking young. Fuck pretty. Pretty = harassment. I can’t wait to be an invisible crone.

Time marches on and eventually you discover it marches across your face. (Loosely paraphrased, thank you Dolly.)

I have the money to pay Noah’s taxi on the table next to me. I have the window blind open so that I can see any cars that come into our driveway.

I get my Noah soon.

Noah is on his way. He will be landing in London in a few more hours. He has a long layover (I will get the knack of scheduling travel…probably by the time we stop traveling…) and then he comes up to Inverness this evening. He will arrive after the kids are asleep tonight.

And we have plans to go to the seaside tomorrow with the cousins, weather permitting. Given that we’ve seen hail several days this week and SNOW it may or may not happen. It’s supposed to be 10 degrees for 3 hours today and otherwise chillier than that. Tomorrow at 6am (when I wake up) it’s supposed to be a whopping 2 degrees. Holy cheese toast. I’m not bringing a fucking bathing suit. I would not go in the water unless it was 25+ outside. Forget that noise. Tomorrow’s bleepin high is forecasted as 8. We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

(If the translation is rough for you: 8 C is 46 F. So this is forking cold. 25C is 77F.)

I like the “30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is chilly and 0 is ice” rhyme. It helped me get the perspective well.

Welcome to Scotland!

Could I live with this? I think so. Eldest Child has been running around outside in leggings and a t-shirt proclaiming herself far too hot for a sweatshirt.

We got moving so slowly yesterday. We didn’t get our butts in gear to go visit the cousins till after 3pm. That’s unlike us. I am in a lot of pain and the kids and I are tired. I scheduled a Thai massage for Tuesday. I am thrilled. And I have a more standard massage scheduled for the 12th. Bless Noah’s job and our ability to pay for this care. I haven’t had a massage since Hawaii. It’s been over 6 weeks.

Once again, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude that Jenny’s husband is helping us get groceries delivered so I don’t have to push all of it up a mile long trek up a hill. My wrists were getting seriously fucked up. I was having to wear the braces to push the stroller because bones were popping out of joint and it hurt so much. I am in much less pain thanks to his help. (You have to have a UK based credit card to use the website.)

We had dinner with Jenny’s family last night and her husband ate with us. It was my first conversation with him. He’s not what you’d call a “people person”. He lived alone for most of his adult life and worked at home. He likes quiet. He likes his own company very much. But he’s quite charming and funny when he decides to put up with us annoying humans. It was a real treat. I get why Jenny likes him so much given that she strongly prefers her own company and quiet as well.

I am blessed that these two quiet, reserved people think I’m worth putting up with. That feels like quite an honor. It’s funny how different it feels interacting with them than hanging out with other extroverts. I feel less bubbly, less like I have to perform and be entertaining in order to get them to like me. It’s about as close as I get to understanding the phrase “a comfortable silence”. I think if I lived here I would get to the point of visiting and bringing a book and sometimes we would sit in a room quietly and not talk for a lot of the visit and that would be ok too. That’s… not something I experienced much in California. I would have felt like I was letting people down. Jenny and I are still in the “we haven’t gotten to talk to each other enough in the last nine years” so we still chat a lot during these visits, but I remember us having quiet visits when we were kids.

Sometimes she doesn’t want to talk and that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like me. I don’t… usually feel comfortable with that. That’s a dynamic I usually struggle with quite a bit. But I know Jenny likes me to the marrow of my bones and I don’t feel like I need to struggle to earn it. She decided she liked me about 25 years ago. She doesn’t have an enormous coterie of friends I have to compete with to be interesting enough to get her attention.

And the curry was divine. We ordered in from their favorite restaurant. I can still feel a little bit of burn on the roof of my mouth from the vindaloo. I am most pleased with this sensation. Her husband and I had a chummy amusing conversation about the lack of aloo in the vindaloo. I have been complaining in the same way for 15 years. It was really funny to me.

And her eldest daughter is warming up to me. By the end of the visit she was climbing into my lap and demanding cuddles. My plan of treating her like a cat (Bring nice treats and don’t get in her face demanding attention) is working like a charm. Ha. I am so happy about this. She and I actually have some stuff in common. She has food texture issues and she’s sensitive emotionally. Food texture issues ruled my life as a kid and holy tomato sauce was I sensitive.

It’s interesting to me how kids need to play through what they are experiencing. Jenny’s kids roleplay being cats and babies to get attention. They express that they need help doing things in adamant ways.

The Bonus Kids used to come over and roleplay screaming fights about divorce and yell foul names at each other.

Kids do what they are taught. My kids roleplay “school” and lecture incessantly about how “You have to practice if you want to learn this.”

Errrrrr

It was nice talking to Jenny about mental health stuff. Her perspective is different from mine (obviously) but she doesn’t invalidate what I say. And she doesn’t ever diagnose me casually in conversation. That was such a triggering part of hanging out with people in California. An awful lot of the folks I hung out with in California would default to telling me what they perceived to be my diagnosis anytime I engaged in behavior they didn’t like for one reason or another. That’s one big downside to the therapy culture there. If I am agitated Jenny is never going to tell me I am being manic. If I am angry about something she has done Jenny is never going to tell me that I have Borderline. If I am sad or I feel grief Jenny is never going to say I am depressed.

That’s just… not something she does.

It is fascinating how much less judged I feel. I feel accepted, warts and all. I am not sure I would say I always feel understood in the same way. Therapy culture means that sometimes people can understand some of my twitchiness in ways I still surprise Jenny because she doesn’t have the same pattern matching going on.

People are so complicated.

But feeling accepted and not judged…. I don’t feel like that much.

Making other friends here would be important and tricky. This is a relatively small (less than 50,000 people) city mostly filled with folk who have lived here since birth. They have their friends already and I will definitely be a weirdo. It’s a very church centric town. That would be an interesting match for our pagan/atheist bent. I mean, we would find folk. But it would take patience and time to make a community for ourselves. Home education is not illegal but it is not common.

My kids are talking a lot about how much they wish they could live near the cousins permanently. They haven’t had much of a sense of family in their life. The folks in the bay who claimed they wanted family roles stopped showing up years ago. Jenny’s kids also express a hunger for cousins.

We’ll see.

We aren’t going anywhere today and we have no academic work to do. Thank cheese. I’m so tired. We have leftovers to eat: curry, pasta, breakfast scramble and sausage. Today is going to be so chill. I need it. I’m glad we set it up so it can happen. Maybe we will even put some Netflix on the telly.

Or maybe we’ll read all day.

It’s going to be a nice day.

I’m thinking about Noah basically all of the time. I hope I will keep up the cooking when he gets here. I keep thinking about how I will change or improve things to be more to his taste. I miss talking to him, I’ve been trying not to bug him as he prepares for his presentation today. (It took me days to write this post.) It’s kind of funny how much I think I bother him given that he has devoted his life to hanging out with me.

I am spending a lot of time thinking about how to balance defensiveness with neediness. Like, I have been trying to stay off of Twitter. So I feel this aching loneliness because I feel self conscious about spamming my friends all day long when they are busy. Talking in the Slack feels more like demanding attention. Twitter feels more like talking to myself where other people can hear. I am not blogging more because my hands and arms burn like fire.

Jenny is inviting me into her life and it’s really wonderful. I am enjoying the contact a lot. But I also feel this keening aching because when am I going to be too much? When am I going to say too much? I am a judgy bitch. I speak my opinion when it isn’t useful, necessary, or kind. Who the fuck cares what I fucking think?

I am enjoying Scotland and I am afraid of Portland. There are so many people there and I want so much from them. The way Jenny is inviting me into her family is pretty rare in my world. I mean, we had it with the Bonus family. Mostly folks keep us at arms length because my whole little crew are intense motherfuckers. I am anxious as fuck about wanting to feel like family with friends when I am not their family. I used to say that Eldest Child really wishes that she had been born into a huge family and I still feel like that. I feel like that. We want to have dozens of people who talk to us.

One summer I taught a writing class at the Hindu temple down the street. I asked the kids to explain about their days. They would say things like, “Oh I have a very normal life. Every day I talk to my grandmother, my grandfather, my aunts, my cousins, my uncles check in a few times a week, I have a bunch of siblings, my parents are so involved, I have a bunch of friends I have…”

Normal.

Oh.

I hate that having Jenny love me like this makes it so much harder that for years I have struggled to have this with a lot of my friends and that didn’t work out. I mean, I feel like a fucking asshole because many of my friends invite me in more than they invite other friends. I am not excluded as much as I feel like I am excluded.

But they are friends, not family.

That doesn’t mean anyone is doing anything wrong and I feel like a total asshole for feeling like this isn’t enough. I have so much more than some other people. I have so much more than I could have ever predicted I would have.

But I miss my mother. I miss my sister. I miss my brother. I miss my niece and nephews. I miss Auntie and my cousins.

And my friends can’t change that feeling no matter how much they love me and I feel really bad about myself for having these feelings. I should just be grateful. I am so selfish.

I don’t want to be so selfish. I want to just feel gratitude that I have anyone at all. I have three kids who are pretty much obsessed with me. I have a husband who thinks the sun rises and sets on my ass. I have intensely devoted friends; I have so much love.

I just got an email this morning from an old friend reminding me that he has known me since I was 19 and he was at my 21st birthday party and he is happy I am out exploring the world.

I am not forgotten. I am not nothing.

But I miss my family. I can’t contact them because they are evil and poison. That’s complicated. My friends can’t change that.

Today the topic of PTSD came up at breakfast. The kids have seen references to stuff in shows and movies and they had questions. I explained some stuff. Then Middle Child asked me if I ever wanted to kill myself. I said that was a complicated topic and we’ll get into it when he is older. Which is “Yes but I’m not telling you about it” and he’s smart enough to know that already. I feel bad even admitting that much but I am not willing to lie.

We’ve been doing a lot of processing their feelings (the big kids). They are having a lot of self doubt and self loathing come up. It’s normal. Development books tell me this isn’t my fault. But I feel like it is my fault. I feel really guilty and ashamed.

My boob hurts. Nursing is so annoying.

I didn’t sleep well or much last night and I feel really sad. My kids are wonderful. Jenny is wonderful. But I’m doing a lot of labor and I’m in a lot of pain and I’m supposed to just suck it up.

My kids are wonderful but they need me to give and give and give.

I miss Noah. I feel guilty for how much I take from him. I don’t feel like I give enough back.

Her Sweetness has had a little bit of puke twice in the past 15 hours. She has been a snot rocket for weeks. I think she is feeling off.

I am feeling off. I am sad. I am tired.

I can’t even take a fucking bath because I don’t have that much time off. I think I am not sleeping partially because that is literally the only time I’m allowed to be alone in a room not giving to other people or working.

It isn’t that I want to be alone. It is that I don’t want to give but I don’t feel entitled to take from anyone and that is so fucking complicated.

I haven’t responded to emails. I am so wiped out. I was feeling much better. I don’t know. I’m having a hard day.

I circle around and around and I always come back to…

I wish I had a mother who loved me. But that ship has passed. Move on, already.